Word: pupil
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...PUPIL Directed by Brian Singer Written by Brandon Boyce Starring Ian McKellen, Brad Renfro...
...Dave has a lot of trouble getting things down on paper," McKibben said of one pupil. "His main emphasis is doing things with his hands. His model of the boat was fantastic. It showed he really knew the information. If I asked him to write it down, it would have been very short." This is just the kind of application Gardner envisions: because McKibben knew that Dave understood the world in a kinesthetic way, she was better able to teach him and assess his knowledge. Dave must still learn to write well, McKibben said, but what counted here was that...
Bryan Singer, whose last film was the crisply devious crime thriller The Usual Suspects, has narrowed his focus from that film's gang of five to a two-hander in Apt Pupil, from a Stephen King story. The other three directors have bought a big canvas (at a cut rate) and splashed strange people on it till it's as busy as a Bruegel. Solondz has a dozen major characters trudging through Happiness. Stanley Tucci, the co-writer, co-director and star of everyone's favorite Italian-food film, Big Night, has created a shipful of fools in his farce...
...dwells blissfully, for now, in Indieville. Singer, who was extravagantly courted by Hollywood (after 25 companies had rejected the $6.6 million-budgeted The Usual Suspects), is ready for Hollywood, on his terms. "My goal," he says, "is to bridge that gap between the independent and the mainstream film." Apt Pupil, a big subject compacted into a wee space and a tidy $15 million budget, may fall between the two. A bright high-schooler (Brad Renfro) learns that an old Nazi (Sir Ian McKellen) is living in his small town. The two strike up a symbiotic suspicion, each playing nastier games...
...with leading roles in two ambitious thrillers, Sir Ian, 59, must face the inconvenience of movie stardom. In Gods and Monsters, he is James Whale, the director of Frankenstein, who in his last days seeks a young man to ease his roiling soul. In the Stephen King tale Apt Pupil, he plays an aged Nazi, living incognito in California, who is forced into an uneasy alliance with a curious teenager. McKellen is the soul of pained grace in one film, the spirit of caged evil in the other; but both reveal an actor totally at ease with the camera...