Owen McCafferty, whose Scenes from the Big Picture enjoyed success at the National Theatre, provided a sharp script.
This is a sharp script, and it delivers its cleverness mostly without nudging you in the ribs.
The combination of a sharp script and superb performances makes for constant laughs and gasps, as well as a shiver of excitement.
With a sharp, fast script by Anita Loos, this film lends credence to the adage, "Hell hath no fury... .. Six years and one world war later, Joan's career sorely needed a boost.
12 Years a Slave (97) American Hustle (90), Her (91) Captain Phillips (93), Dallas Buyers Club (84), Gravity (96) Nebraska (86) and even the controversial Wolf of Wall Street (75) were all extremely well received, with Philomena (76) the closest the list comes to the marshes of the middle-brow, and even that Steven Frears picture came with a sharp-tongued script and a jolt of anti-clerical anger.
That masterful film featured strong performances led by Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield, a pitch-perfect sharp script from Aaron Sorkin, and solid direction from David Fincher.
Mixing a sharp, funny script with much-talked about sex scenes, Stranger by the Lake is a brilliant Hitchcock-like thriller that should give its director, Alain Guiraudie, as much attention as his better-known contemporaries.
"The inscription is written in the Jewish script, it was done with a sharp instrument and I think it was done by the same hand.
"After some of the dreck slung kiddiewards in the name of broad entertainment this summer (hang your heads, Transformers 2 and Aliens in the Attic) it's a relief to be able to wholeheartedly recommend a quality children's film packed with enough genuine invention, sharp scripting and sweet-natured charm to power a dozen lesser creations," writes Channel 4 film's Catherine Bray.
The New York Times praised the film, remarking that Pearce and Pierson's "sharp script", Rosenberg's "ruthlessly realistic and plausible" staging and direction and Newman's "splendid" performance with an "unfaultable" cast, "elevates" it among other prison films.
