Word: rueful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Gopher Prairie doesn't have many young to suffocate and embitter these days. Russo's characters in the fictional town of North Bath, not far from the Vermont border, are rueful losers who, late in middle age, have known one another since grade school. They weren't all that bright then, and they don't expect much of one another now. Improvisation least of all; after several decades on adjacent bar stools, they can say one another's lines...
...past to stand on exhibit. This Godfather may not look the same, but when the archaeologist in charge is Francis Coppola, the object is not literal reconstruction but further improvement. If only nature got as many second chances as movie directors. This trilogy has a novelistic density, a rueful, unhurried lyricism and a depth that, singly, the films could not achieve. Altogether glorious...
...prepare for his first 100 days in office, Clinton plans to invite economists, executives and labor leaders to a Little Rock summit next month to diagnose the economy's ills and prescribe remedies for them. "If we're lowering expectations, summit was a bad choice of words," says a rueful adviser. Though the forum is shaping up as a centerpiece of Clinton's transition, the record of such talkfests has often been meager. Gerald Ford's 1974 meeting of the minds produced mainly red-and-white WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons that proved to be little more than good grist...
This film, like Duras's script for the 1959 Hiroshima Mon Amour, is a rueful East-West romance dredged from the writer's life. This no-name affair is a last tango in Saigon -- but with the man in thrall, not in control. The girl, who insists she is having sex only because the money her lover gives her helps support her family, knows the stronger partner is always the one who loves less. The man (Tony Leung, a wonderful Hong Kong actor) is singed, happily, by the flame of his ardor. His naked vulnerability is just...
Perhaps by Sept. 23, the occasional uncomfortable parallels will have faded. And audiences will see that the film's deepest resonances are with Allen's most popular previous works: comedies of urban manners shadowed by his rueful recognition of those abiding sexual confusions that he has always observed with a unique blend of irony and compassion...