Word: streep
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that terror up to Sophie's final and tragic "choice," so that the viewer's reactions parallel Stingo's own. Longer than the conventional flashback, these sequences demonstrate Pakula's scrupulous care in reproducing Styron's tone. An actual concentration camp in Yugoslavia forms the background, and Meryl Streep as Sophie appears with near-shaven head, made up to look perceptibly younger and gabbling fluently in German and Polish...
...Rice (Roy Scheider), a psychiatrist who becomes involved in a mysterious chain of events when one of his patients is found stabbed to death. Shortly after the murder, the victim's mistress comes to Rice's office, apparently curious about what her lover has told him. Brooke Reynolds (Meryl Streep) is a beautiful and very mysterious woman whose nervous desire for secrecy intrigues Rice, leading him to suspect her of complicity in the murder...
...till the last scene, but Benton is evidently more concerned with how Rice sees this mysterious new woman in his life than with the murder itself. Rice becomes obsessed with unraveling the secret of Brooke's personality, and thus the mystery of her lover's death. Throughout the film. Streep brilliantly conveys a vulnerable sensuality and exoticism that makes her character at once alluring and fearfully repellent. Her strikingly blonde hair and pale skin are continually set against a dark background, thus reinforcing her ominous and mysterious image. At times, she seems a lonely apparition in the darkness, a product...
...Meryl Streep's performance is a seamless, seductive piece. Sophie's past justifies Streep's familiar mannerisms: the wistful, knowing smile, the nervous fingers burrowing into a copse of hair, the starts and stops of dialogue, even the red blotches on her skin in moments of high tension. She plays Sophie in a Polish-accented contralto and, in the flashbacks, speaks serviceable Polish and German. In a smaller picture, with a lesser actress, this would seem a highfalutin stunt, a meaningless demonstration of dexterity. Here it is one more challenge that this galvanizing actress set for herself...
...vulnerable and powerful. She works with a telling economy of gesture: nodding wearily as she listens to Odets' manifestoes, sucking desperately on a cigarette as if it contained the only oxygen in the room. Lange's inevitable Oscar nomination will be every bit as honestly earned as Streep...