Word: vacuously
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...good belly laugh every 15 minutes or so. Your funny bone is taken good care of, all right, but a stand-up comic can do the same thing in a fraction of the time. Once the chuckling subsides you are left with just another low-budget Western and a vacuous feeling. Vacuous because the film is silly, and vacuous because you have to sit through all the gunfights, the gallows scenes and the final ride into the sunset...
...production in which everyone may take pride, Tommy Tune excels for the freshness of his choreography. One number, in which drollery parallels satire, has six girls of vacuous countenance with dummy life-sized replicas of themselves clinging to them on each arm. The 18-person line swings into a Radio City Rockettes routine that may, quite possibly, induce laughsphyxia. To match this showstopper, Tune has a show-stomper in which the entire Aggie football team unbenches its mighty legs in unison...
...which is based on the true story of Aguirre the Madman, a mutinous conquistador who led an expeditionary force down the Amazon River on a disastrous search for gold and glory. Critics complain that Herzog treats his subjects too mechanically, and that the film is visually stunning but thematically vacuous. But such criticism misses the point: Herzog's relentlessly realistic re-enactment of the trip--of the assumption of power by a ruthless brute who rapidly develop into a raving megalomamac and whose subordinates lack either the courage or moral strength to overthrow him--is precisely what makes this film...
...tends to get out of hand, particularly in the otherwise compelling performance of Giancarlo Giannini as the son. Scarcely a ciao can be spoken without a soulful stare, a strangled sob or an eloquently twitching nose. The cool restraint of Catherine Deneuve, which on other occasions can seem maddeningly vacuous, here supplies a welcome relief. She is a fetching brunette in this film. Playing Giannini's sister, she floats through all the gnashing and weeping with a fragile and captivating serenity...
...chic world of urban haute bourgeoisie. Moral conventions and religious convictions have been replaced by easy sex and superficial nostalgia. At a party, two women sing the '40s hit Chattanooga Choo-Choo, while an argument ensues over whether there were three or four Andrews Sisters. Inane chat, vacuous stares, Bauhaus settings and Pucci puppets form a familiar narrative glaze...