Word: soulfulness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...film is quite another thing: an outsider's report, not autobiography but psychodrama, with a texture as real as newsreel. And yet its plot skeleton bears similarities to Platoon. In both films, two strong men fight to establish American values in a hostile country, and to claim the soul of an innocent. In both films, the local nonwhites -- yellow or black -- are less a group of dramatic characters than a plot device, a shadow, a chorus, a landscape, an idea...
...REVOIR LES ENFANTS Tragedy awaits, irony abounds in this memoir of friendship and betrayal in a boarding school during World War II. Without italicizing a single emotion, French director Louis Malle has created the year's strongest indictment of the totalitarian mind and the conformist soul...
When Australian films vaulted to world prominence a few years ago, at the heart of the action was screenwriter David Williamson, whose credits include Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously. Like many a successful artist, Williamson apparently discovered that only part of his soul was committed to artistic integrity. The rest lusted for wealth, fame, power and a sweeping view of Sydney's harbor. This confrontation with the dark side is the central theme of Emerald City, Williamson's winsomely cynical comedy of manners among the media hucksters Down Under. It is now enjoying a deft, engaging production...
...with the world as a detective would -- tough-minded and able to manipulate it." In the pain- streaked world of Dennis Potter, that counts as a happy ending: hero cured, beautiful woman on his arm, and Vera Lynn warbling We'll Meet Again in the tuppenny jukebox of his soul...
Robert Towne's plot recalls the old James Cagney melodramas in which righteous Pat O'Brien fought for his soul and rotten Humphrey Bogart tried to perforate his body. But the moral is utterly today: it's about going straight without paying the price. As handsome and slack muscled as a surfer past his prime, the movie renounces ambiguity for confusion. In the end, like an old set of tires or a frayed friendship, Tequila Sunrise just wears...