Word: studly
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...Manhattan is a gem of lucid storytelling. Shuffling the sequence of tenses, the film shows Jon as a young man in love, a fellow scarred by a nuclear accident, a boy watching his watchmaker dad, a superhero who can change size and location at will, a middle-aged stud letting his old love slip away as he finds someone younger and finally a sad sack of blue mourning the ordinary life he lost. Again, all is conveyed in a few minutes, a few quick deft strokes...
...story, it has Jer as ultra-nerd Julius Kelp, who sports goofy bangs (the following year they'd be cool, when the Beatles wore them), prominent teeth, and thick glasses - your basic Mo Rocca look. In love with adorable student Stella Stevens, Julius evolves chemically into Buddy Love, a stud crooner with hair glistening like a patent leather handbag. But this doppelganger was not the lush, uncaring satyr Dino (Martin played that role the following year in Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid). No, Buddy was more likely the Jerry Lewis id: the imperious, demanding, borderline-obnoxious personality Lewis displayed...
...Story goes like this. Back in the '80s, Randy "The Ram" Robinson (real name: Robin Ramzinsky) was a hero-stud pro wrestler; he fought "the Ayatollah" at the top of the Garden card. But after 20 years on the downalator - his body ballooned with exercise, bloated with steroids and damaged with the death of a thousand cuts - Randy works tank towns for a few hundred bucks. He's been locked out of his Jersey trailer home for laggard payments. And to secure the fans' roving attention, his ring rivals are getting into extreme fighting; one fellow, who looks like...
...much an endangered species as the company he worked for. While he carefully maintains his house, white picket fence and all, the neighbors' homes have chipped paint and the sag of misuse. He's a cowboy stuck in the desolate Midwest, and instead of stubborn Indians and stud gunslingers, he's surrounded by Hispano-punks and Hmong immigrants from Southeast Asia. And now Tao (Bee Vang), a Hmong teen who's bullied by both ethnic groups, has broken into Walt's garage to steal the old man's most treasured possession: his 1972 Gran Torino. (See the 100 best movies...
...dawdles in sketching Bella's high school chums, and her direction of the dialogue will often bore those who aren't mouthing it from memory as the actors speak it. But she chose her leads wisely: the pretty Stewart is a questioning, questing presence; the Brit Pattinson, a sensitive-stud dreamboat. And Hardwicke is faithful to the book's chaste eroticism. The couple must put off having sex because, well, it could kill Bella. (AIDS metaphors are unavoidable here.) Yet waiting has its own delicious tension...