Word: screenplay
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COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER Directed by Michael Apted Screenplay by Tom Rickman
...protagonist is afflicted by marital conflict, pill addiction, desperate loneliness and a nervous collapse. True, these tragedies happened in life, but in the movie they seem phony: Lynn's later personal traumas are not so much dramatized as displayed like flash cards for predictable audience response. As the screenplay loses its energy, so does most everything else. Apted's direction takes on the facile, rushed quality of his 1975 film about the rise of a rock star, Stardust. Spacek's big scene, her onstage breakdown, is so imprecisely drawn that she has no chance to duplicate...
...Screenplay by Jay Presson Allen...
WISE BLOOD Directed by John Huston; Screenplay by Benedict Fitzgerald...
Unfortunately it is not. After a brisk 20 minutes, the movie loses its assurance and sense of purpose. Indeed, Jay Presson Allen's screenplay reels around like a drunken sailor. From moment to moment, Just Tell Me is a somber and confusingly plotted story of corporate power struggles, a syrupy account of a love triangle, and a sloppy satire of show business-rather like Lumet's Network. There are still some bright moments, but they are separated by flaccid, poorly connected scenes that go nowhere at great length...