Word: sadism
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...second hour. Writers Jody Savin and Randall Miller abandon any sense of character motivation or narrative structure, opting instead to turn the film into a frenetic, confusing revenge play. While “Nobel Son” may be intended as a dark comedy, its casual depictions of sadism and brutality quickly become tiresome. The man attacked in the opening sequence reappears later on, and his traumatic experience is essentially played for laughs. A minor character is also viciously murdered midway through the film, and his death is characterized as little more than collateral damage. The ethos...
...plan to divert water from the peasants of South America. (Bolivia is the new Chinatown.) Amalric, the French actor often seen in harried, sympathetic roles like the paralyzed writer in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, is effectively reptilian here, his whispers tinged with menace, his smile hinting at sadism...
...north Austrian town of Amstetten, was discovered to have imprisoned his daughter as a sex slave in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, Austria has been locked in an emotional debate over what could cause such a crime. Some have claimed Fritzl's sadism to be a vestige of Nazism's moral corruption, others that the psychological strain of living for years under the threat of nuclear destruction was to blame...
...surreal imposition: a Robin Hood duck, whose flattened beak springs out with each repeated faux pas as a reminder of the importance of his primary ineptness), the Warner cartoonists are refreshing iconoclasts because they concentrate on so many other humor antecedents besides brutal mishaps, cultural punning, ballet-like sadism" - then top it with the snappy summation that "the good ones are masterpieces and the bad ones aren't a total loss...
...Lovett and the Beadle (Evan Ross of the Boston Conservatory), sing ballads and traditional songs at a harmonium. And for every audacious plot twist (and there are dozens), there is an almost-revelation or not-quite-coincidence that dissolves at the last possible moment.These little moments of narrative sadism are not without their own kind of generosity. “Sweeney Todd” is a ferociously angry work of art that imagines the world as a place where, as Sweeney sings, “We all deserve to die.” What’s so wonderful...