Word: waterston
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Cliff's only connection to Judah -- until the concluding sequence of this thematically unified but somewhat bifurcated movie -- is through Ben, another rabbi (Sam Waterston), who is one of Cliff's brothers-in-law. The rabbi is Judah's patient, and his eye trouble is quite literal; by the end of the movie he has gone blind. But this blindness is also symbolic. By visiting this affliction on the only character in his movie who has remained close to God, Allen is suggesting that if the Deity himself is not dead, then he must be suffering from severely impaired vision...
...tall, craggy Texan, could go for either tough (the late Jim Davis as Jock Ewing on Dallas) or folksy (Andy Griffith as Matlock). But his passionless style fails to register as either character. Dukakis has the mark of a man doomed to be portrayed in TV movies by Sam Waterston. And Bush is still overshadowed by the era's only politician actually to define and surpass his Hollywood model: Ronald Reagan...
...Yale production stressed the dichotomy between Old World awareness of the burdens of the past and New World faith in the perfectibility of man. This is downplayed by the Broadway cast. So is the Soviet's seductive charm in comparison with his American colleague's priggishness. Sam Waterston makes the U.S. delegate appealing even when he is obsessive. This gifted but erratic actor hits a career high with a scene in which he reveals the personal strain of feeling responsible for the fate of mankind. As the Soviet, Robert Prosky has most of the more poetic speeches, but he looks...
...quakingly vulnerable Lane (Mia Farrow). They include her mother (Elaine Stritch), a bruising emotional bully; her stepfather (Jack Warden), who is a noisy irrelevancy; a neighbor (Denholm Elliott) who expresses love by being socially obliging; a best friend (Dianne Wiest) who is obscurely tense; and Peter (Sam Waterston), the ad man who rented the guest cottage on the property and then failed in two obvious duties: he didn't finish the novel he intended to write there, and he didn't fall in love with his landlady...
...role of Peter is exceedingly well written, and Waterston reaches the heights of shiftiness at precisely those moments when he most openly proclaims his emotions. But all these people are relentlessly and statically articulate, especially when they are obscuring motives from themselves and one another. The humor of their humorlessness is often Chekhovian, and the flow of Allen's camera and cutting, together with the elegance of Cinematographer Carlo Di Palma's light, grants them a certain grace and dignity. But sometimes the members of this precious circle are too glibly elucidated; other times they are backed away from silently...