Nearly every line of the script drops from the actors' mouths with the leaden clank of exposition, timed with bad sitcom beats.
After a while, Mr. Cerdà exhausts his repertory of spooky effects — too many dark hallways and illogical, foreboding point-of-view shots — and you begin to hunger for exposition, always a bad sign in a horror film.
We all hate exposition here at Bad Advice, but agree that it's usually necessary if we want characters to have had a life of some kind prior to our writing about them.
The last few seasons, despite the occasional burst of ambition or sheer awfulness, followed a predictable pattern: The show set up a Big Bad or two, delivered leaden exposition via internal monologue, and then served up big confrontations at the end of the season.
"Exposition doesn't have to be bad or boring," the artist explains.
But Lions for Lambs is far worse: dull, inert, schoolteacherly, desperately self-conscious in its exposition of the issues - and with hogwhimperingly bad performances.
According to the determined observations of the state of nature, a film can have a good or bad quality including its own characteristics (contrast, speed, fog, digital exposition, latitude and other).
And, in more than six hundred and fifty pages of action, dialogue, and narrative exposition, none of the characters (including numerous armed-and-dangerous bad guys) ever take the Lord's name in vain.
An example of an exposition is "Is fast food a good thing or a bad thing?
"One bad company does not a bad industry make, you know?" The one-day exposition attracted 2,500 people, more than anyone could remember having gathered in the town square before, the Chamber of Commerce said.
