Word: missing
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...around. Nobody has Shirley's interests at heart; nobody will hear her cry: "I wanted to be loved more!" The girl skitters on the edge of madness, leaping from drab reality to poetic fancy to sheer incoherence, from self-analysis to baths of self-pity. In the process, Miss Gallant's book bounces from high comedy to low, from pure pathos to arch New Yorkerish chatter. But neither heroine nor style ever loses the sharp wit that provides both with rare bite and rarer balance...
...pointblank range, scarcely 20 yards, the guerrillas fired three U.S.-made 82-mm. bazooka shells. They could hardly miss. One shell exploded above the driver's seat; he was killed instantly but clung grotesquely to the wheel as the bus swayed another 60 yards down the road. The other shells hit the body of the vehicle, tearing out the floor and spraying the occupants with shrapnel. Bodies, bookbags and lunch boxes were strewn around the wreckage. Two teachers and seven children died instantly: another student and teacher died later, and the remaining 20 aboard the bus were all wounded...
...dashboard−and quickly go out. What were they? You try to repeat that sequence by quickly punching five numbered buttons in the proper order; in your stupor, you are too slow−or you get one number wrong. Try again. A different sequence of numbers flashes on. Another miss. Better pull yourself together and concentrate. But you fail for the third time and you know that now the car won't start at all for another half-hour; it has sensed that you are not sober enough to drive safely...
...plot creaks around a 29-year-old rich kid named Elgar (Beau Bridges) who buys himself a tenement in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. His elaborate renovation plans change abruptly when he meets his new tenants, including a black free-school teacher (Melvin Stewart), a former Miss Sepia (Diana Sands), her eight-year-old son (Douglas Grant) and slightly deranged husband (Louis Gosset), and a worldly-wise den mother (Pearl Bailey) who feeds Elgar soul food and introduces him around. Friendships form fast. Elgar falls in love with a black painter and part-time go-go dancer (Marki...
There are, however, some remarkable performances in The Landlord. Lee Grant and Bob Klein, as two members of Elgar's family, act with closely calculated wit and an eye for the tellingly ludicrous gesture. Diana Sands is lithe and musky as the former Miss Sepia. Best of all, though, is Beau Bridges. His peppy performance ranges widely between antic comedy and tough melodrama. He handles both with equal facility, as well as the subtler shadings in between. He is surely one of the very best young actors in films today, good enough to make The Landlord worth seeing. That...