The Laser-Beam Eyes

[koganbot]

Dave Moore on "Regulate":

"I can't believe this happening in my own town." That line struck me at 10. I often fantasized before drifting off to sleep, when my mind was most feverishly imaginative, that something would go wrong in my own town. I'd be left to prove myself, maybe for a girl, or for a faceless crowd, and all of a sudden I, like Nate

Comments

[skyecaptain]

No, haven't seen that but will check it out! I'm always looking for a good hero reveal. Emily and I just watched The Verdict last night, and there was a great moment where, Paul Newman silently accepts the responsibility before him. It's kind of the emotional center of the film and makes up for some of the film's more garish melodramatic flourishes.

[koganbot]

Was very moved by The Verdict but also disappointed, it coming shortly after Lumet's extraordinary Prince Of The City, which - to quote Sarris not about Lumet but about Preminger - had the right-wrong of one side facing the right-wrong of another. A long painstaking movie, showing all sides of the jar at once. Absolutely loved it.* The Verdict played with this a little, at the moment when the brother-in-law is vastly pissed that the Newman character hadn't taken the settlement, his ferocity almost upending the movie. I still remember his thick body, thick with upset. But that was the only moment like that. What's most interesting about The Verdict is that you get a visceral sense of the lawyer's self-distrust, his sense of equivocation even when there's nothing to equivocate about. But it is, ultimately, right versus wrong, just that, with a nice, emotional scene with the terrified woman doing testifying in court, in tears. I was in tears too, of course.

*Tremendous Jerry Orbach role, too.