Word: smug
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sheep to the slaughter (with those same emblematic '50s-family-glued-to- th e-TV shots that Stone uses in Natural Born Killers). Every TV executive is a cartoon villain, from sleazy Twenty-One producer Dan Enright to the Mephistophelian head of Geritol, the show's sponsor, to the smug network chief who sounds like Don Corleone when he tries to get Charles Van Doren to deny that the shows were fixed: "Haven't we been good to you? Haven't we treated you as part of our family...
Step Four: Develop an attitude problem. This is the distinguishing characteristic of any Harvard editorialist. They are brash, loud, and opinionated. They delight in insulting those they disagree with. You must cultivate a sense of smug superiority over the other side (poor, misdirected fools that they are). You must be able to explode in moral outrage at the merest suggestion of your favorite...
...look for love and, when they're not looking, fall in it. Max, "a carefree Sappho lesbo," hooks up with gawky Ely (V.S. Brodie), who finds it hard to commit to anything, even a haircut. And just like real people -- oh, yes -- lesbians can be long-winded, tortured and smug...
North too is in touch with the supernatural. Wherever he goes, a nameless figure played by Bruce Willis turns up in various guises to help him. Director Rob Reiner strives hard for the tones of a fable, but the result is far from fabulous. There is something smug about North, and about the entire movie. All the substitute parents he interviews are as selfish as North's folks are, and the movie posits a mass movement in which other kids, all spoiled rotten, attempt to emulate North. At least the lost boys in the other movies have authentic problems...
Gammons succeeds in becoming the drama's arch-oppressor as the pathologically smug Bertram; in a driving performance, he assaults Leopold verbally and ultimately physically, appending a quasi-sexual violence to the string of cliches he spits out. Gammons flaunts his matter-of-fact power over Leopold, crescendoing to an explosive frenzy with his own discourse; at the time Walling enters, Bertram is literally straddling Leopold, who Rouse has virtually transformed into the "passive object" of sexual, as well as intellectual interest. What Gammons' words and behavior add to the hollowed grammar of Leopard's existence, Fish and Stone...