Word: splendid
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...inconvenience powerful people, so injustice prevails. Much of the dialogue is barely digested statistics; the silliest, mouthed by a reformist young black woman, argues that essentially every male under 30 is a criminal, so no one should be prosecuted. Despite such balderdash, the storytelling is intense and the acting splendid, especially by Robert Patterson as the prisoner...
...Robert Benton's movie of the E.L. Doctorow novel arrives in a shroud of doom. Well, surprise! There's rare grace and gravity in the tale of a Bronx kid (Loren Dean, a find) who hitches his hopes to the falling star of gangster Dutch Schultz (Dustin Hoffman, again splendid). Forget the Cassandras. Go see a good movie...
There occurs a moment, though, when we begin to be told that the pitied no longer deserve our pity, and to be taught that if only everyone "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps," we would all become splendid examples of individualist accomplishment...
...answer: On Borrowed Time, which Scott also directed (moving its era from the edgy late 1930s to the innocent-seeming years before World War I), is a splendid vehicle for the winsome tricks of a veteran cast. Teresa Wright, whose 1942 Oscar for Mrs. Miniver makes Scott's 1970 award for Patton seem recent, flutters and flusters as the grandmother. Bette Henritze whinnies and hectors as an interfering aunt. Conrad Bain wheedles and soothes as the family doctor. In Scott's wiliest staging, he, Bain, and George DiCenzo test whether death has been suspended by circling around a poisoned housefly...
...splendid, absolutely marvelous," said Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles...