Word: psychopaths
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Pets brained with blunt objects, toddlers gurgling for help in icy waters, small children lobbed off precipices: The Good Son is good clean fun. Despite the promising subject of a sweet-talking grade-scool psychopath, plenty of mollifyingly gratuitous violence, fine acting, and tension, the film is dull. Not knowing with precisely which weapon the final duel will be fought does not constitute suspense...
They constitute a glum triangle. It is extremely difficult to care which of the two guys may be the resident psychopath, and neither the script nor Phillip Noyce's direction creates a growing, compelling sense of menace around Stone's character. In fact, she is presented more as an object for study than as an object of sympathy -- that is to say, rather voyeuristically. It is, of course, possible to see this as artful irony, given the film's theme, but it feels more like carelessness. Or exploitation. Or simple imitation. For like Eszterhas' somewhat hotter, somewhat smarter Basic Instinct...
Over the years Kevorkian has been generous to his adversaries in the church, - the press, the medical profession, even the euthanasia movement. Every time he speaks or writes he hands them ammunition to dismiss him as a psychopath. "If I were Satan and I was helping a suffering person end his life, would that make a difference?" he asks. "Any person who does this is going to have an image problem." That larger-than-death image grew with each story of his early experiments transfusing blood from cadavers to live patients, his paintings of comas and fevers, his bright-eyed...
Psychologists are inclined to classify Koresh as a psychopath, always with the reminder that such people can be nothing short of enchanting on a first encounter. "The psychopath is often charming, bright, very persuasive," explains Louis West, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles medical school. "He quickly wins people's trust and is uncannily adept at manipulating and conning people." David Jewell, whose former wife died in last week's fire, had a brief phone conversation with Koresh five years ago that left him in shock. "In 20 minutes, he took my entire Christian...
...BUNDY. AILEEN WUORNOS. ANDREI CHIKATILO. Now that such real-life mass murderers have had their day in the media sun, isn't it about time the original celebrity-psychopath got to take a bow of his own? Have no fear; coming this fall to a bookstore near you is The Diary of Jack the Ripper, courtesy of U.S. publisher Warner Books and Britain's Smith Gryphon. The tome purports to offer the authentic contents of a journal penned by the legendary London killer who slashed his way into infamy over three months in 1888 by murdering and mutilating at least...