Word: comically
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...Professor" (Robert Weil) and "Mammy" (Benjamin Rayson). They are all kept in line by Dr. Nakamura (Tony Azito), a Fu Manchu look-alike who speaks only in sibilants. Enter a Salvation Army lassie, "Hallelujah Lil" (Meryl Streep), who falls for Bill. After that, romance vies with comic havoc...
Jacob the Liar is a film of confinement: at the end of every street, every glance, every joke, is a German rifle muzzle. Inevitably, the comic absurdity of Jacob's mythical radio turns to tragedy. A man is shot down by guards as he tries to pass the cheering news to a group of Jews bound for a concentration camp. In an attempt to redeem himself, Jacob confesses his deception. The letdown causes his best friend to hang himself. Untruth and truth-both come to seem equally false to Jacob...
Between the Lines moves between the lives of its characters, shuttling from one comic vignette to the next--but this movement, like those lives, never seems to lead anywhere. Style is substance, but both are so fragmentary that the final effect, when the credits roll on the screen, is bafflement and frustration. Silver's flair is for the short, neatly-shaped segment. From these segments, the bits and pieces of humor and pathos that comprise the film, she is unable to forge any overarching dramatic unity...
...hackneyed dialogue and other familiar staples in Star Wars will impress itself on the moviegoer from the very beginning. Much of the national media has played up the Flash Gordon comic book angle in the last two weeks, at the expense of toning down some of the other classic themes and frameworks that Lucas weaves into the film's texture. In many ways, Star Wars can be approached as a competent Western set sometime in the quite distant future. Go down the checklist of a classic Western's ingredients, and few items will be missing in the Lucas recipe: bounty...
...place and swims laps, to the astonishment of his aunt and uncle. The slapstick is pure Wilder. He not only stars in the film but is also the writer, director and producer-a quadruple task he says "makes me want to go home and cry sometimes." Despite the obvious comic overtones, Wilder, 42, insists that his film is romantic at the core. Says he: "Everything I write is a love story and emotionally autobiographical...