Word: plot
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...answer is that director Paul Verhoeven has decided to "develop" the "plot" of the movie by creating what amounts to a long, tortured, protracted, hyped-up episode of "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers." The film has all the profundity and credibility of this celebrated kiddy sci-fi vehicle. We must sit, restlessly, as actors whose most memorable feature is their ridiculously large and white teeth wax sentimental about leaving the bonds of friendship, as they compete for girls, as they experience the trials and tribulations of the rigorous military training, yet learn to laugh it all off and put their arms...
...with themselves for creating swarms of giant bugs, big fancy space-ships, and massive explosions, and so sure the audience would be equally taken, that they neglected to try to make a passable movie. The admittedly impressive effects are not supported by any other aspect of the movie: not plot, directing, editing, characters or acting. They are presented so blandly and matter-of-factly, and so isolated from any other elements of storytelling, that they are barely enjoyable even in and of themselves...
...streamlining of the book emphasizes the basically melodramatic quality, when stripped down to the essentials, of James's plot. In turn-of-the-century London, a well-bred but impoverished young woman, Kate Croy (played by the matchless Helena Bonham-Carter), is confronted with conflicting demands of a secret engagement to a penniless journalist (Linus Roache) and a wealthy aunt who wants her to marry well. Into the midst of this crisis sails Milly Theale (Alison Elliott), an ingenuous American visitor who--in true Jamesian form--happens to be encumbered with an enormous fortune. Milly becomes friends with Kate...
...premise sounds surely irritating, but the final product betrays the trite-sounding plot line. Wallace Ritchie (Bill Murray) is a high school actor whose ambitions landed him smack dab behind the counter of his local Blockbuster video store. His brother (Peter Gallagher of sex, lies and videotape fame), on the other hand, is a smooth talking well-dressed I-banker in London. Wallace decides to drop in on his brother for his birthday (thankfully Gallagher saves us a reprise of his recent flop To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday). The brother, James, freaks, being on the cusp of a multimillion...
Louis' is not the only weak will in the play. In sort of parallel plot, a legal clerk named Joe (Geof Oxnard '99) exists in a permanent conflict of ideas and realities. He insists he loves his wife Harper (Jessica Shapiro '01), a fragile agoraphobe with a Valium dependency, but he seems to find plenty of reason not come home on time. He is careerist enough consider a move to Washington, D.C., despite his wife's objections, but also has enough belief in his Mormon ideals as to request that his boss refrain from taking the Lord's name...