Word: shanley
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Screenplay by John Patrick Shanley...
...latter sort. To be sure, it begins with a serial killer claiming a victim, and it ends with the guilty party being taken into custody. But the deductive process that normally leads to this conventionally ordained conclusion is perfunctory and even somewhat implausible. What interests writer John Patrick Shanley, who won an Academy Award last year for Moonstruck, is the infinite and usually inexplicable capacity of ordinary people to turn flaky without warning or change of expression. The prime example here is Nick Starkey (Kevin Kline), a former New York City cop and now a fireman. As Starkey, Kline...
...offer the ironist cannot refuse. Not only is the commissioner his long-loathed brother, he is also the man who married Christine (Susan Sarandon), a haughty socialite for whom Nick still yearns. His price for cooperation? One tete-a-tete with that ambiguous lady. In Shanley's world, it is inevitable that this does not go awfully well. Nick asks her to listen to the wine breathe, serves octopus for the main course and generally comes on too strong. It is also inevitable that a perfect substitute for Christine will soon turn up. And it does, in the form...
What prevents The January Man from turning into a downscale Dangerous Liaisons is the movie's refusal to let the characters acknowledge this edgy subtext. Shanley instead provides a funny, melodramatic hubbub to distract our attention. His busy plotting may require a suspension of incredulity, but he is well served by good actors; by a director, Pat O'Connor, with a taste for the acrid flavors of big-city life; and by his own delight in human eccentricity...
ITALIAN AMERICAN RECONCILIATION. In John Patrick Shanley's Little Italy, all the women are worldly-wise, and all the men are moonstruck. John Turturro leads the cast of this chocolate-heart comedy at the Manhattan Theater Club...