The ritualistic on-field measurement can be a dramatic, momentum-swinging event as anticipated as any pass or handoff.
What's problematic about this is that Mr. Redford inevitably makes the correct moral choice, which derails any dramatic momentum.
But Finley's superb theatrical and lyrical gifts are never exploited – much of the fifth poem, Darwish's Farewell, is delivered parlando, for instance – and for all their harmonic subtleties the settings never really build any dramatic momentum.
But if you're willing to give yourself up to it, "A Summer Day" exerts a strong but stealthy undertow, a distinctive dramatic momentum unlike any other in New York theater these days.
In contrast to some others Potter felt that "Bryars makes... a success of the ensuing action, which demands, and receives, quicker changes of mood and tempo and the establishment of a real dramatic momentum".
Even with a murder investigation subplot and all sorts of sketchily rendered sin, "Shadow Hours" remains a film without dramatic momentum, an involving protagonist or more than a skittishly voyeuristic and superficial approach to its conflict between good and evil.
A double bill of Shirley Clarke's early '60s race-conscious features "The Cool World" and "The Connection" shows how jazz's penchant for controlled improvisation can be applied to filmmaking without dispersing a movie's dramatic momentum or moral force.
The chronology lurches back and forth as Mr. Besson tries to turn Suu's stubbornness into an engine of dramatic momentum.
This one-act, one-set Dutchman, dominated by a steep wave cum deck of a ship – imagine a recalcitrant piece of lino too big for its intended space – offers a static challenge to a work pulsating with dramatic momentum.
Just listen to the opera's brief overture for a sense of how carefully its composer handles mood, themes, and a growing sense of dramatic momentum.
No matter how many revivals and regional productions Gypsy has received, the show still packs an emotional wallop as it gains dramatic momentum with the power of a runaway freight train.
