Word: plot
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Addicts plot the shortest routes to malls, pore over catalogs during coffee breaks, greet store sales help -- and security guards -- by name. Even when they browse with friends, they can be secretly prowling for purchases; often they sneak back to make a "hit." Out on a spending spree, they pick out items in a euphoric daze, but many of their purchases make little sense. Says Alice, 34, of New Jersey, a brokerage-house trainee: "I was possessed when I went into a store. I bought things that didn't fit, that I didn't like and that I certainly didn...
...entertainments and making them feel right at home. He gracefully provides enough information about what has happened in the two preceding novels to keep everyone, including forgetful fans, up to speed. But he is also solicitous toward those who have been present and paying attention from the beginning; the plot and characters of The Lyre of Orpheus gain resonances from the earlier books that only initiates will hear...
From this moment, you know that Working Girl is a fond anthology of old Hollywood's romantic comedies. The film's plot may parse like All About Eve from the scheming Eve's point of view, but its heart is with every '30s heroine who must conquer class prejudice -- with wit, charm, bravado and a little larceny -- before she can win the nice guy away from the mapcap heiress. At first, Griffith's pudginess and baby-doll voice appear to disqualify her from the company of Carole Lombard, Jean Arthur and other down- to-earth goddesses of the golden...
...publicity pushes all the right buttons. "The unlimited potential of the human spirit" is evoked; the word heartwarming is bandied about. And indeed the film's plot profile is indistinguishable from that of a disease-of- the-month TV movie. But partly because director Barry Levinson (Good Morning, Vietnam) aspires to a more conscientious art, partly because he has chosen to examine one of the least tractable and most enigmatic forms of mental illness, Rain Man simply refuses to function sentimentally...
Robert Towne's plot recalls the old James Cagney melodramas in which righteous Pat O'Brien fought for his soul and rotten Humphrey Bogart tried to perforate his body. But the moral is utterly today: it's about going straight without paying the price. As handsome and slack muscled as a surfer past his prime, the movie renounces ambiguity for confusion. In the end, like an old set of tires or a frayed friendship, Tequila Sunrise just wears...