Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...fresh from his Academy Award, again leaves his comedic training behind him in his role as Chris Nielsen, who dies in a car accident and must travel from heaven to hell to save his wife (Annabella Sciorra) after she commits suicide in her despair over his death. Although the plot is the standard quest situation, it demands that the film deal with the question of religion, God and the afterlife. Somehow they drop God from the plot. They're good. How's God just going to be absent from heaven? A better question is how Robin Williams can become sullen...
Truth be told, the plot is hardly action-packed or particularly original, but this doesn't mean that Evening is any less interesting to read. Minot saves us from boredom through her experimentation with words, which becomes the true focal point of the novel and admirably recreates Ann's sentiments and state of mind. At times, the boundaries of grammar dissolve into an endless stream of images that jump from fragments of one remembered moment or conversation to another. Smelling the balsam in a cushion someone gave her, for instance, sets off a chain of memory in which...
Even the Rambo-esque ending cannot save this movie. The audience does at least get to root against the new military (commanded, ironically, by a handful of ridiculously-foppish officers) and cheer when Todd lands a punch. Despite the gory violence, the predictable plot and obvious themes in the film are, in some ways, more painful experiences for the audience. A respectable performance by one actor and the creation of a stunningly vast garbage heap constitute the highlights in a film that cannot last very long in theaters where only the best films survive...
...enjoyable, much of the disadvantage having to do with the evaluation of Rice as a serious writer. The Vampire Armand, I realized, has to be the literary equivalent of soft-core pornography. While none of the sex is gratuitous, it is still so prevalent that it overshadows the plot and weakens attempted interjections of the story amid the sex. Rice catches herself in a paradox--bringing readers in with the skillful language of her sex scenes and then losing their interest when she uses that writing for non-sexual descriptions. For the most part, sex wins over plot in terms...
...narrative toreadors are his brother,Murray Ringold, and Nathan Zuckerman, Roth'sperennial almost-autobiographer. Sitting onZuckerman's deck, burning a citronella candle,they talk, for six nights, about Ira. In the firstthird of the book, the plot of Ira's life has beensketched, and what follows is Murray and Zuckermanunpacking. Murray utters his six-night fractalintensification of detail, and Zuckerman listens,rapt to elderly Murray's deposition on his deathbrother. as a teenager, Zuckerman had taken Ira onas a mentor, and Roth is at his most interestingwhen he illustrates the knee-jerk memories evokedin Zuckerman by Murray's revelations...