Word: plotting
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...sets the top comedy star of the '90s against the top action and drama star of the last decade. Industry handicappers are predicting that Carrey, with a familiar role in an easy-to-sell story, will score a box office win over Smith, whose movie's central and unrevealable plot twists make it a challenge to describe. (They're saying it could be Smith's first film since the 2001 Ali not to break $100 million domestic.) But both films play to their stars' acting strengths, which means that you will probably laugh along with Yes Man, and in Seven...
...from this saccharine treatment of an action-movie star's adventures in charity, the writer might have been better served building a golden idol to Li. The story charts Li's noble endeavors with uncritical adulation - from plugging shamelessly self-flattering quotes to the strange implication that B-movie plot themes can lay down a foundation for morality. Li's case would have been helped had he received a less frothy and dripping paean. Instead of pushing forward a more thoughtful agenda, TIME used its eloquence to further entrench the celebrity worship that plagues the international humanitarian scene. Jawahar Joshi...
...anticipation sank with the opening credits: "Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood." That list spelled out the plot: damaged veteran, middle-age girlfriend, young daughter. The Wrestler never rose above fight-movie bromides, never dispelled my gloom. The character stereotyping makes Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa, by comparison, seem as swathed in moral ambiguity as Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers. The movie's serioso sentimentality is doubly strange since the script is by Robert Siegel, an ex-staffer of The Onion and co-writer of The Onion Movie. His old job was puncturing clichés; here...
...director Randall Miller aspires to Tarantino-esque flights of humor and violence, his film fails to strike the proper absurdist tone. In more capable hands “Nobel Son” may have become a quirky classic. Instead, hindered by a troubling vision of morality and an underdeveloped plot, it emerges as little more than a jumbled mess...
...dark and at one point plays flashlights across the audience to replicate the effect of blinding searchlights. Another act focuses on a college professor who has experienced the trauma of a series of car accidents, while the third imagines a dystopian future. Though each has a different setting and plot, they are all connected by a common cast. Despite the distinct qualities of the characters in the different pieces, Bohrer found that some cast members suited themselves to similar roles in all three. Bohrer’s acting experience informed his approach to writing. “I wanted...