Word: witlessness
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...temptation in describing a film like this one is to string together several adjectives-witless, ugly, brutal, insensate, stupid. But one word will serve to cover its multitude of sins: The Island is simply vile...
...acceptance speech, Yorkin traced the history of television from the "golden age of live T.V." in the '50s to the "witless programming that now dominates the networks...
...first murder is one of the most revolting yet put on film. It put me off my popcorn, and I'm not easily nauseated. Alien operates thereafter on our anticipation of similar blood and guts; the tension is totally mechanical and rather unfair. The movie proves witless, plotless, pointless, spectacularly unoriginal, and surprisingly cruel...
...gimmicks, monochromatic sets and portentous, dissonant music. He reduces an all-star international cast-Newman, Fernando Rey, Bibi Andersson, Brigitte Fossey, David Langton, Vittorio Gassman-to interchangeable (and often indistinguishable) ciphers. He blurs the perimeters of his images with Vaseline. Though two writers assisted Altman on the screenplay, the witless lines amount to paint-by-number existentialism: "Every time you cheat death, you feel the pure thrill of life...
DERN BEGINS merrily but uninterestingly, engaging in Yellen's witless but stubbornly persistent banter. He gets to be boyish and lewd and folksy, to plead and be charmingly self-deprecating, to do lots of nightclub imitations (accents were Lewis's specialty), to get drunk and be irrepressibly untactful, exposing the hypocrisy of others, to despair and age and writhe in agony. Dern does well, especially considering he's been off stage for 19 years, but the quality that makes him special, that sometimes seems too intense for the big screen, is imperceptible on stage. You'd think that his body...