Word: put-upon
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...put-upon husband in this galvanizing redneck gothic is Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya); he owns a roadside bar and moves and thinks with a gorilla's heavy resolve. His wife is Abby (Frances McDormand), whose sexual desperation has drawn her into a liaison with Ray (John Getz), a bartender at Marty's place. They may not have much more in common than boredom, but it beats sleeping alone, or with Marty. The cuckold is aware of this, so he hires a mean, giggly detective (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill them. The detective has a better idea. He'll kill...
...enough emotional stability and enough skill in performance to sustain under deadly pressure the elaborate impersonation that the Israelis require of her. In other words, what is needed is Annie Hall's neurotic flightiness, or at least her actressy self-awareness. Instead, Keaton brings mostly a sort of put-upon sullenness to her part...
This Amadeus dares to pose the riddle of genius in the form of a traditional celebrity bio pic. In 1781 Mozart (Tom Hulce), once the put-upon prodigy of musical Europe, comes at the age of 26 to the Viennese court of Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II (played with a sly, thin smile and a delicious air of cagey indecisiveness by Jeffrey Jones). There the man of the moment is Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham): court composer, consummate technician and politician, Emperor's favorite, a musical lion of Vienna. Most important, he knows his place, as an educated servant among...
...walkin', friggin' combat zone," Harry's boss tells him. "Your ideas don't fit any more." Alas, they do. Dirty Harry is the raging vigilante voice inside every put-upon urbanite. In the past, Eastwood has carried this contradiction within his own antihero character; now Harry has found a comely avatar. Joseph C. Stinson's script says it is O.K. to kill half a dozen people if you have soft blond hair and a righteous grudge. Agree who will. The rest of the audience will enjoy Director Eastwood's knowing cinematic jolts, the outsize...
...without its patches of agreeable whimsy. But Ron Howard, who has been acting in sitcoms (The Andy Griffith Show, Happy Days) for most of his 28 years, should know more about shaping comic characters, situations and moods than he shows here. Winkler, the Fonz on Happy Days, is pleasantly put-upon here; Michael Keaton, also from TV, is mildly manic; and Shelley Long so resembles Pam Dawber in her squeaky cuteness that one wonders why the producers didn't raid Mork and Mindy for the real thing. Sitcom humor, like water and sex, is something that is more enjoyable...