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Bob_Macrae
Reviews
Alleged (2010)
Inherit the Gas
A misfortune from start to finish - flat characterizations with revisionist mangling of historical figures held to improbable dramatic postures to support unlikely plot conclusions. The scenes are vapid. The dialog and language wholly uninspired, the players unconvinced. The idea, added to this script, that evolution is somehow responsible for the emergence of a new brand of human cruelty - is an irresponsible and strained plot device: apparently the only thing they could come up with for the "good vs evil" storyline unavailable to them from plausible historical fact. This film is no help to those for whom dramatic equivalent to Inherit the Wind was imagined. This might better be titled "Inherit the Gas"
The Designated Mourner (1997)
Wallace Shawn as one of the characters
I would have enjoyed seeing Wallace Shawn act out his main character thought Nichols was unforgettable. The vexing detail about this play of course is that one has to listen to get it; a bother I know. It is not, it seems to me,about literature or pompousness or affectation. It is just about character and circumstance, like all great stories, particularly potent in an environment where political fundamentalists get closer to power. It is like any Hollywood story; develop characters, setting and intro duce the plot. When events start to unfold in this story it is unbelievably chilling and you can realize, with a start, that some place in the world this kind of terror is happening to people very much like us, right now. While Texan's are rewriting their history text books to accommodate a brand of right wing thought experiment, people with contempt for free thought scheme for power - Tom Delay wanted to do away with much you enjoy in this country and he got close; we should pay better attention to our own literature.