His other films had involved putting novels on the screen, but "Dr. Strangelove," though it did have its historical origins in "Red Alert," a serious nuclear suspense story by Peter George, soon turned into an attempt to use a purely intellectual notion as the basis of a film.
When Serena is finally summoned to the fifth floor, we accompany her with serious interest and suspense.
David Denby came out and wrote to the snobbiest people, those who read the smart people and think serious cinema has to be, pretty much, just suspense or just suffering.
For weeks, Connery's plans were plagued by forecasts for inclement weather in Britain, keeping him and sky divers in suspense over whether he would make a serious attempt.
QUESTION FROM GUEST: Just like the movies... QUESTION FROM MARGARET WARNER: Can't take the suspense AMY DAVIDSON: And, on a more serious note, here are some questions New Yorker writers and editors came up with.
Partly a look at America's dark past, and partly an arty spin on a violent suspense picture, "The Keeping Room" is definitely memorable, albeit too self-serious.
It's like a soap opera but better, because it's also a suspense story (we can almost hear the Inquisition coming down the road), and a serious narrative about the human search for meaning.
Although Walters has always depicted malicious gossip and abuse of the elderly as serious social evils, by linking this behavior to the methodical savagery committed in wartime, she takes the suspense novel into new territory.
But in modern times, literary fiction presents a conundrum: The more craftily constructed its suspense, the more it tempts its advocates — in the interest of airtime — to reach into a serious tale and pull out something resembling a tabloid headline.
