Word: plot
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Pittsburgh, making his films on the cheap. Rather like Skinflick Impresario Russ Meyer, Romero edits his scenes into short blurts, which gives them a certain spurious energy. His scripts, which hover dangerously close to illiteracy, contain outrageously pedestrian dialogue, mostly shouted. ("Get Dr. Brookmyre a gas mask!") The plot of The Crazies is a graft off The Andromeda Strain, wherein a virus that the Government has perfected for germ warfare somehow escapes and drives the citizens of Evans City, Pa., out of their gourds. The performances, mostly by amateurs, with a sprinkling of peripheral professionals, suggest that Pittsburgh...
...muggings and cops as cynical as the wink of an eye breeze across the stage, less in menace than in roguish mockery. Never mind if any of this is strictly true; it matches the urban mythos of the moment, and provides the musical comedy brass to go with the plot's violins...
...first The Digger's Game seems to follow familiar tracks. It is swift-paced, hard, quickly finished. Yet Higgins' plot exposes character, which deteriorates, producing plot, which further defines character. This describes the intent and achievement, not of a formula thriller, even one that is well written, but of a conventional novel. Of course, one does not want to goad a man who writes well about thugs to write badly about something else. Higgins' most obvious strength, moreover, is a traditional one for crime novelists. His dialogue is brilliant. "All the time, I'm thinking...
...story sometimes suggests James Bond in the 19th century. Blanche practices a tacky spiritualism, but Canning never quite debunks her ghosts. A spirit world flickers on the edges of the plot. The precise rationalism of government investigators softly edges toward the ambiguous realm of séances and contacts with the dead, like a drunk motorist drifting off the road. The total effect is eerily absorbing. At the end, Canning's story is a bit tricky and brutal, but it is somehow charming all the same, and even persuasively ominous...
...Long Goodbye if you have fond and entrenched memories of the Raymond Chandler crime novel. Director Robert Altman has thrown out three-quarters of Chandler's plot, as well as detective Philip Marlowe's hard-boiled mystique--his pithy talk and polish, and his Sir Galahad morality. Altman's film is basically a wallow in the atmosphere of Los Angeles today. Altman's virtues are a good eye and some talent with actors, as well as a healthy distaste for the Hollywood culture which surrounds him. But his flaws are fatal: he doesn't know what makes a plot hold...