Word: taut
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...GLITTER DOME (HBO). James Garner and John Lithgow were two burned-out detectives in this taut, cynical adaptation of Joseph Wambaugh's novel about murder in movieland. Possibly the best movie yet made...
...decry its ambling and the failure of writer and director to develop out of a fertile premise either a well-twisted mystery or some truly wild comic turns. But Murphy is very much present, and it could be argued that their task was not so much to provide a taut story line as to create a cheerful climate where his marvelous talent and his compelling yet gracefully stated energy could sprout in all directions...
...Body Double presents a familiar De Palma loner: a pleasant enough wimp who becomes fascinated, then sexually obsessed, with a faraway female figure. This time the wimp is Jack, a movie actor (Craig Wasson), and the love object is a wealthy young woman (Deborah Shelton) with a body as taut and talented as a porn star's. Too soon, Jack finds he must share the fantasy. Another man is watching, one who has more violent designs on the woman: murder by a power drill that moves toward her and through her like the phallus of death. As usual...
...nobody recalls, Evans was on base when Henry Aaron hit No. 715 in Atlanta. But if he was merely on hand for dramatic events before, he is onstage for them now. With one Royal on and two outs in the taut eighth inning of matching three-hitters, Evans dived for a ball at first base and then beat Willie Wilson in a race to secure Milt Wilcox's 1-0 victory, which won the pennant...
...human nature: Tom is wholly believable in his fumbling attempts to launch a just-us-guys friendship with his father's latest collaborator; Sam's mistress Maria performs a convincing balancing act between servility and possession. Arlen's prose, if too painstakingly crafted, is at once taut and richly evocative. And in its glimpses of combat between father and son, it is fittingly remorseless. -By William A. Henry...