Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...substance, Generation X paints a fairly bleak self-portrait. The narrator drones on about his inane life, his inane friends and their inane lives, and his own pseudo-dys-functional family. The nominal plot revolves around three friends in Palm Springs, California, who spend most of their time swapping wacked-out parables that are supposed to contain within them, somewhere, the meaning of modern life (or lack thereof). The message? You guessed it, Butt-head: it sucks. Everything sucks. "Our Parents Had More," one chapter wails; for good measure, Coupland throws in an appendix of figures illustrating that, in fact...
...sees. Onscreen, the opera singer's gender is never in question; his 5 o'clock shadow gives him away to everyone but the diplomat. Jeremy Irons tries manfully, and John Lone womanfully, to give real life to the characters, but the close-ups defeat them. So do some unlikely plot points: the defendant and his accuser are put alone to undress and wrestle in a police wagon; the diplomat daubs himself as Madama Butterfly before a rapt audience -- of French convicts! Cronenberg is unlikely to find other spectators as gullible as they...
...second thought, I'm not surprised. This predictable complaint surfaces whenever men cease to be the center of attention. When will people realize that shifting the spotlight to women is a necessary remedy for egregious neglect over hundreds of years, and not a plot to marginalize men in return...
Despite the film's dual nature, "King of the Hill" is a cohesive body of work, genuinely enchanting throughout. Soderbergh has done the impossible: he has made a great film about a child's life without resorting to sentimentality and intelligence-insulting plot-twists...
However, the movie's appeal does not lie in its weak plot, its predictable dialogue or the performances of the actors. It's the endless travails of its beleaguered hero. The endless scenes of Rudy being tackled, Rudy being told he's too poor/stupid/short to go to Notre Dame, Rudy being tackled by two guys who are both twice his size, Rudy acting frustrated, Rudy getting tackled again, make it virtually impossible to resist rooting for the likeable little...