Word: plotting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Warner Bros. cartoons, these types never formed alliances; their fate was always to awaken one another's madness and trigger the chase. It is the genius of John Cleese's plot to imagine them leagued together for a London jewel robbery, which they pull off perfectly. This is when Cleese, Monty Python's Minister of Silly Walks, enters the picture as Archie Leach, a barrister hired to defend yet another member of the gang. Though Cleese has written himself some nice screwball-comedy turns, Leach is no Cary Grant. He is really a grownup Tweety bird, an innocent with...
...Constant Couple and William Wycherley's The Plain Dealer, plus Noel Coward's Easy Virtue, ably done in the West End. At the National, Dion Boucicault's The Shaughraun, a 19th century Irish separatist tract masquerading as a farcical melodrama, proves its author a deft orchestrator of tone and plot...
...problem, as always with Stoppard, is plot. Hapgood is either too much a thriller narrative -- replete with an elaborate opening chase sequence that deliberately recalls bedroom farce in its slamming of doors and dropping of trousers -- or not enough of one to offer any real surprises. Stoppard radiates ambivalence about the genre he has chosen. Again, as with Shaffer, redemption comes from the marvelous acting of Felicity Kendal as an intelligence agent painfully aware of her shortcomings as a mother, Nigel Hawthorne as a wise colleague and, above all, Roger Rees as the defector, who is also the secret father...
...intricacies of the plot, the vivid emotions of the characters, the compelling acting--all contribute to the movie's success, thought it is the powerful political message which viewers are left remembering...
...movie progresses, the monk is forced to assess the traditional concepts of knowledge and faith which have driven him to embrace the Church. What is so remarkable about Berger's message is that the anti-canonical philosophy of the plot is reflected in the personal growth of the characters, as well as in the political evolution of the story...