Word: plot
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...little hug that can be therapeutic or redemptive. The paraplegic cop played by Javier Bardem in Live Flesh doesn't shrug off sexual desire just because he's confined to a wheelchair. Almodóvar suffuses his new film with this notion of the crippled seeking help; nearly every plot point pivots on someone's infirmity. The message is clear: we are all invalids who want to walk, if the fates allow, into each other's arms...
...mood and tone here are less bustling than in earlier Almodóvars. This time his energy went into the dense plot scheme, with its duplication of characters and family dynamics. One thing hasn't changed: the director's skill at bringing out the star quality of his performers. Homar, a Spanish stage veteran, handsomely shoulders the weight of the film. As for Cruz, in her fourth Almodóvar film, she's never been more luminous, serious or sexy. Her Lena is woman enough to justify one man's need to possess or destroy her and another's desire...
...ideas that constitute the film’s core. But viewers who haven’t read the source material may be left somewhat bewildered by the vaguely serialized, disjointed final product. McCarthy’s book, as spare and angular as it was, remained a cohesive, plot-driven whole. Hillcoat’s film seeks to distill the novel’s essence, and in the process loses some of the details that would keep an uninitiated audience engaged. (Given how well the film works as it is, this is not so much a criticism...
...call it “ironic,” “Ninja Assassin” has few fleeting moments of conscious self-deprecation. Its only redeeming characteristic, its constant flow of gasp-inducing, gory fight scenes, is undermined and rendered largely impotent by the frailty of its plot and characters...
...visuals and the narrative of “Ninja Assassins.” The last time director James McTeigue teamed up with writers Andy and Larry Wachowski—in 2005 for the blockbuster “V for Vendetta”—he had an engaging plot for a foundation on which to construct a dazzling series of cityscapes, underground lairs, and fight scenes. This time around, however, the Wachowski brothers produce the film and leave the writing to rookie Matthew Sand and J. Michael Straczynski, who wrote the script for last year’s decidedly...