Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...plot is familiar: a gentle stranger (Carlos Gallardo, who also co- produced) in a tough town; a mysterious woman with a nasty patron; and in 82 minutes, 15 perforated corpses. But that's just the outline. Rodriguez, who's been making films since he was 12, and whose short comedy Bedhead won prizes at 14 festivals, realizes that even splattered blood can get tired if there's no wit and bustle in the execution. His mentors -- Alfred Hitchcock, Sergio Leone, Sam Raimi -- knew how to do it, and Rodriguez is a fast learner. Every shot (of an astounding...
...apparent lack of plot or obvious structure reflects the chaotic state of the warring countryside; everyone and everything seems diseased and incoherent. From this madness gradually emerge the stories of a few local families and their amorous and violent intertwining histories. The main storyline, if it can be called that, concerns the killing of Lion-heart Gamuzo, and the later death of his murderer. The narrator is obsessed with the particular mazurka that Gaudencio Beira, the blind accordion player at the local brothel, performs only upon these two occasions. Gaudencio's widowed sister, Adega, contributes her recollections and opinions...
Overall, the plot could have used fewer politics and fewer twists in general. Two and a half hours of puns can drag on a bit. And some of the more obvious jokes (such as using "and a partridge in a pear tree" at the end of a list) should have been chopped out altogether...
...Poor pastel Raoul can never be much more than a Parisian Freddy Eynsford-Hill. And yet -- in the magnificent Lloyd Webber version, the appealing Yeston-Kopit or even the lame Ken Hill -- the story works. The Phantom and Christine sing ) their volcanic sentiments in a plot as spare and potent as legend...
...whose creative credits number Pretty Woman, City Slickers and A League of Their Own (plus, it must be admitted, Laverne and Shirley). For that matter, most do not have TV hunk Tony Danza (Taxi, Who's the Boss?), making his New York stage debut as a hoodlum. (For important plot reasons, he is supposed to be about 27, but Danza looks a dozen years older...