Rather, the Gray approach recalls the sombre, mirthless style of Alan J. Pakula or Sidney Lumet.
The movie is thin and tepid... "What Planet Are You From?" offers a great many jokes about sex without itself being very sexual — it's a little dry, a little distant, and, after a while, as the mirthless jokes pile up and the vibrating whatsit is heard for the tenth time, the movie seems a smug and awfully safe way of talking dirty.
Gray's aggressive, sometimes mirthless prosecutorial style has been on view since the 1980s in his stints at ESPN (twice), CBS, NBC and Showtime Boxing.
It is a style of American Misery familiar from Mark Twain the styleh-Irish-Amirthlesstyle, mirthless and Methodist and mercenary.
It is a style of American Misery familiar from Mark Twain — the Scotch-Irish-American style, mirthless and Methodist and mercenary.
"Its once glorious attacking whimsy … has made way for a dull, mirthless counterattacking style," Leander Schaerlaeckens writes, "premised on defensive solidity and, that awful word again, pragmatism".
The cute couple in the strained, largely mirthless romantic comedy "This Means War" sometimes walk and talk alike.
There are many personal qualities for which it's no test at all, qualities which, in fact, Conroy Glasser lacked – or showed only in the practice of his art – but which Jillian Glasser had all the way through her: an ungodly determination, a cold and mirthless whimsy, an unshakeable, two-handed grip on the throat of the world.
Offstage, the 43-year-old Moschen appeared tense and mirthless as he spoke with the writer in his dressing room.
Under Joe Mantello's slow and shaky direction, Alan Cumming, Jennifer Ehle and Dominic West make up a surprisingly mirthless ménage à trois.
