Word: writer-director
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...does Barry every now and then destroy a bathroom or a glass patio door? Dunno. Won't even speculate. Probably just one of those inexplicably surreal accidents that writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson likes. Remember the frog shower in Magnolia...
...writer-director, who had made his rep with no-budget comedies about the filthiest people south of the Mason-Dixon line, for once gave his movie an upbeat conclusion that real life couldn't match. "The Buddy Deane Show" never was integrated; it ended its run in the mid-60s as white-bread as always, and staler than ever. By this time "Bandstand" had moved from its original location in Philadelphia (100 miles north of Baltimore) to Los Angeles, where the kids had better bodies and deeper tans, and even the white-ethnic tinge of the teen dancers disappeared into...
...inspired by a cult comedy from a writer-director at least as famous for his talk-show and other extracurricular appearances as for his movies...
With no sweat. Gyllenhaal is at ease in front of the camera. The huffing falls to writer-director Brad Silberling (City of Angels), who wants his film to be a cross between The Graduate and In the Bedroom, to reopen the wounds of the Vietnam era and somehow to have it all end happily. The film is full of sharp acting and home truths, but its ambition to be different finally surrenders to its need to be loved...
...desk, awaiting punishment. He (James Spader) is a sadist who sometimes lacks the courage of his convictions. But that's all right with his employee. She has enough affection for pain and humiliation for both of them. It may not be quite so all right with viewers, though. Writer-director Shainberg seems to be aiming for a dark comedy, but mostly his movie is coy without being funny, ugly without being truly transgressive, stupid when it needs to be smart...