It's a calamitously one-note, unpersuasive performance that's a match to that of Jaden, a pretty teenager with jumpy eyebrows whose character remains an insufferable brat.
To my mind, there was nothing simplistic, either, about the lead character in Jumpy; as played by Tamsin Greig, she was a complex, rounded portrait of a woman facing a very real crisis in her marriage.
The first half-hour of the pilot is quite effective: the camera angles, spooky music and jumpy sequences (whenever a character appears, it is sudden and startling) are as frightening as those found in any horror movie, with an added twist of suspense.
Elsewhere, the narrative bounces among several characters' perspectives, which gives it a jumpy and inconsistent quality, one heightened by questions about the twins' identities.
Schiller's polished blank verse (often indistinguishable from his friend Goethe's) sits curiously with the stuttering, jumpy movement of the characters' thought.
A vast and colourful cast of characters: Gulf sheikhdoms, jumpy governments worried about food security, Chinese state corporations, Wall Street and City speculators, Russian oligarchs, Gaddafi's henchmen among many.
The unnamed characters include a jumpy guy who, convinced he is being watched (even a salt shaker is a possible eavesdropping device), becomes a parallel serial killer — his victims are actual televisions.
"Point of Departure" (1988), an essay on the beauty of angularity, transforms themes couched in the clich?of academic serialism -- jumpy, zigzagging lines -- into likable characters within a bracing and sometimes dark-hued musical drama.
Mr. Franco's goofball energy connects the viewer to the character almost instantly, and Mr. Boyle's speedy, jumpy style sends us out into the desert on a wave of caffeine and rock 'n' roll.
Frank V. Ross wrote and directed this slice of Midwestern mumblecore in a style — overlapping dialogue, off-center compositions, a jumpy, disconnected narrative — that suggests Robert Altman without any of Altman's instincts for character and poetry.
