Word: characterizes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
On the mission of U.S. intelligence. American intelligence today is moving away from the two focuses of intelligence for its first 20 or 25 years [after World War II]. The first focus was on covert action, and the second was a preoccupation with the Soviet Union, particularly the military aspects...
The lines of character and desperation are simply and painfully sketched. A young boy watches his mother become a prostitute in order to get a work permit she needs to feed her family. A man tries to participate in an illegal strike. Another watches his father die because he couldn...
Deathtrap is not the ingenious successor to Sleuth that Levin obviously wanted to write, but a desperate imitation of it. The same sorts of turn-arounds preponderate, and the playwright-protagonist, Sidney Bruhl (John Wood), as unscrupled as Wyke when it comes to murder, speaks in similarly sardonic conceits. But...
The play's advertising representatives have asked the critics not to reveal the plot, but this seems rather silly--Deathtrap is tricky in a very predictable way. One has little chance to be confused: Bruhl constantly discusses the theatrical potential of the murders he commits, and ten lines rarely pass...
The cast cannot redeem. Marian Seldes winces uncomfortably in her pointless role, and Richard Woods cannot enact a plodding, fatuous lawyer without giving a plodding, fatuous performance. Victor Garber coasts fairly pleasantly through his cunning young man role, and Marian Winters twinkles merrily as a psychic spinster, but we can...