Word: serials
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...pressure to prescribe had proved too much. The same may very well happen to Buchanan. After all, it is the Reform Party he has joined. It is one thing to blame minorities-- "those women" (the ones who have helped erode our family values and raised serial killers), "those blacks," "those gays" and "those Jews" or "those other countries" for America's woes. It is quite another to have to find prescriptions to the problems of single-parent poverty, crime and unemployment caused by structural economic change...
Denzel Washington is a quadriplegic forensics expert. Angelina Jolie is a young N.Y.P.D. beat cop who discovers an ugly crime, an unsuspected gift for intellectual detective work and, eventually, a romantic attachment to Washington's character as the two try to ensnare a particularly unpleasant serial killer. The movie doesn't stand up to close, logical parsing. But Noyce's direction is atmospheric in the dank, currently chic manner; his actors spunky and attractive; and the path to the final, rather conventional, revelation is strewn with grotesque and suspenseful difficulties. It's kind of fun--if you have the stomach...
...movies, of course, the rules of mathematics apply less universally than the law of the fluke. Blair Witch was a cunning fluke; Happy, Texas is just the kind of smart, communal comedy (The Opposite of Sex, Happiness, Election, Go) to which the mass film audience has shown serial resistance. Yet here you will find an easy charm, a cleverly unforced sense of humor and a benignity toward all its genially oddball characters that Hollywood would do well to emulate. If moviegoers skip this one, they'll be missing a real treat...
Sorkin's tendency toward the dramatic is exacerbated by casting serial over-emoter Martin Sheen as Democratic President Josiah Bartlet, who makes his first appearance speaking in the voice of God. Bursting into a showdown with religious conservatives, Sheen quotes the First Commandment, then unburdens himself of a pair of minute-and-a-half speeches while Coplandesque music swells and the camera cuts to admiring staff members, in case we've failed to notice how darned inspiring he is. There will be no curtains left in this Oval Office once Sheen has finished chewing the scenery...
...nauseatingly likable and law-abiding (even when driving onto a deserted highway he makes a point of using a signal and looking both ways), you'd never suspect him of having any violent tendencies. He's perfect. Eerily perfect. All right, you guessed it--he's a serial killer; a bona fide psycho (how could someone who uses their blinker on a deserted highway not be?). The disarming smile that's perpetually pasted on his face, however, could fool anyone...