Word: plot
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Franco rally and an abortive plot stir concern for democracy...
...community thrown into turmoil over its schools sprouted in 1947 in a former potato field. Well suited and priced for ex-G.I.s, Levittown soon became synonymous with instant and inexpensive suburban living: a home of one's own, a plot of land, no big city problems, no industry. Levittown also became a symbol of cookie-cutter suburban sameness (immortalized by Pete Seeger in a song about "little boxes made of ticky-tacky...
STALLONE'S DIRECTING is as bad as his screenplay. He overuses close-ups, slow motion and freeze shots in attempting to create the dramatic tension his shallow characters and uninteresting plot fail to provide. In one scene, Victor is delivering a large block of ice to someone who lives up a long flight of stairs: close-ups of Victor's sweating face, shots of the imposing staircase, shots of Victor climbing the stairs, and so on, until he finds the customer did not want any ice. What should be drama becomes unwitting comedy...
...watch Paradise Alley, with its tried and contrived plot and its painfully obvious and ineffective attempt to manipulate the audience's emotions, you realize that Stallone simply lacks the intelligence to make a good movie. He cannot penetrate beyond cliches...
Despite a few minor plot twists, the movie is pretty predictable, down to the camera angles. The script teems with tired devices. When Corky and Peggy gaze into each other's eyes, kiss, then exchange a long look, a bedroom scene is obviously going to follow -- and indeed, the camera cuts to a pair of naked bodies (or naked backs, anyway) rolling around in soft focus. The structure of Goldman's script is equally transparent; he shows the agent telling the story of Corky's life to a T.V. exec, a clumsy means of providing the audience with background material...