Sentences with phrase «than plot devices»

The screenplay, credited to Geneva Robertson - Dworet and Alastair Siddons, devises a series of puzzles for Lara to solve, though as the action intensifies, it's difficult to follow her reasoning, and the puzzles remain rather puzzling, if they were ever intended as anything more than plot devices.

Now that's not to say there aren't certain characters that are anything more than plot devices but this small issue is exactly that, small (pun?).

is not much more than a plot device and a winking reference.

Daniel Brühl («Inglourious Basterds»), as always, is great in the role but still little more than a plot device - as though the screenwriters thought it would be too dark for the good guys to fracture without a push from a manipulative outsider.

He's at the center of the story, but his character is really little more than a plot device.

Not exact matches

A California company called Dexcom connected a continuous glucose monitor (a device that had been around for more than a decade) wirelessly to a smartphone (or smart watch), allowing the user to read, plot, and share blood sugar levels with anyone, at five - minute intervals, all day long — and sending an alert when patients were at risk.

Nothing is more boring than cardboard characters that just serve as plot devices.

In a shocking plot twist, the Apple earbuds are more versatile than the Google earbuds and actually work with Android devices.

It's difficult to critique this in a spoiler - free way, but to use the example of A New Hope, while the Death Star was a looming, terrifying presence throughout, the big threat to our heroes in this film seems to appear quite late in the day, and seems more important as a plot device to bring key characters together than a genuinely gripping menace.

Not having a major plot device around for weeks (and months) at a time hurts more than it helps.

Critic Consensus: Due to its use of cliched and ludicrous plot devices, this thriller is more predictable than suspenseful.

Grown - up Cosette is bland as can be and nothing more than a pretty little plot device.

Critics Consensus: Due to its use of cliched and ludicrous plot devices, this thriller is more predictable than suspenseful.

In less than two hours (although it feels considerably longer), writer / director Susannah Grant cobbles together nearly every imaginable plot, element, and device except the kitchen sink (although she manages to get the bathtub in there).

Jeanine (Kate Winslet), the leader of «Erudite» (intelligent people — i.e. villains), has taken over the city and is searching for individuals who are «Divergent» (they have qualities belonging to more than one faction), because one is needed in order to open a mysterious box which contains a vital plot device of some sort.

He uses feminism as a plot device, depicting the women as braying harridans and broad caricatures rather than exploring feminism itself.

The extortion subplot involving Ansel's manager and Lance Reddick's shadowy menace (playing a mysterious figure in the way only he can) may be a necessary evil to motivate Ansel toward taking on the family as clients, but in practice it is such a half - baked flimsy concept that it never evolves beyond plot device status, feeling more like manipulation than motivation.

Nebula isn't even part of the story until half - way through, and then is treated more as a plot device than an actual character.

Everyone else exists primarily as a plot device or a comedic element for Nick to play off of rather than a fully realized person; that's all they can be, since he moves around too much for us to really get to know anyone except he and Sheeni.

Indeed, when the antagonist proudly announces himself as a messenger of God, there's obviously something more to the character than a mere plot device.

But that's less of a problem when we come to realize this isn't a character - driven piece, that Lockhart is really just a plot device rather than an actual human being for whom we're supposed to feel something — perhaps pity.

Browning's rich performance keeps Naomi from coming off like a plot device; longtime Beastie Boy Horovitz is a wonderful surprise as the antsy Nick, whose fatherly affect transforms into something more pestering in a way that seems organic (and pathetic), rather than one - dimensionally monstrous.

She likes to get down but doesn't want anything more than casual intercourse — because, well, that's the primary plot device driving this contrived excuse for a farce.

«Slo - mo» creates a plot device that allows for impressive cinematography, making a bullet ripping open someone's face look more like a ballet than a crime.

Maddie and her friends — including Helen (Gillian Jacobs of «Love» and «Community»), who plays a character who, for no reason other than a last second plot device, spent eight years in a coma — not only accept Deanna into their clique, they do so with open arms.

The dynamic between the more proper intelligence agents and their booze - namesaked counterparts play for some good laughs, but more than anything it's a plot device for the film to raise the stakes for Eggsy and the Kingsman while still being able to provide the team with countless weapons and gadgets, all of which are by far the most creative things in the movie.

The character may be more plot device than person but Mirren's quietly simmering intensity doesn't allow her to be quite as dispensable as the script would like her to be.

I guess my point with Frozen River is if you are going to go misery bleak, then I need more than a clever device to propel character motivations forward in that bleakness, it needs to be the bleakness I know from experience, the ennui of life, and to do that you need to go whole hog and dispense with plot altogether.

Actually she serves for Bertolucci more as a plot device than as a person.

In particular, the great cryptanalyst Joan Clarke's life is twisted into a series of plot devices that never quite ring true while her actual story should have been more than interesting enough.

Too many ideas, too many characters, too many contrivances and not enough depth keep this from being nothing more than a collection of a handful of funny moments strung together by a series of phony baloney plot devices you've seen before (and seen better).

The twists and turns of the narrative are largely predictable — and more than one plot device is lifted wholesale from the «Mission: Impossible» series — but the character shading and vast political subtext provides for a dynamism that few superhero films have attempted.

The three village blondes are mysteriously brunettes now, a more ethnically diverse group of villagers now inhabit the French town, the Beast has an inexplicable atlas of translocation (read: plot device) to go with his magic mirror, and more than a few songs and fun scenes are missing.

Sooner than you can say «plot device,» Magneto is flushed out of hiding and more annoyed than ever at humanity.

Simple plot devices to give the player a reason to do something other than just enjoying the rhythm challenges to follow.

The plot of director Mark Palansky and Mike Vukadinovich's screenplay is little more than a murder mystery, and it's one that doesn't even incorporate the central gimmick into the story enough for the concept of a memory - recording device to really matter.

Martin Freeman makes a welcome appearance in the third tale, as a man whose house is invaded by a poltergeist at the same time that his wife is at the hospital giving birth (minus his presence or support), but he ultimately functions more as a hoary plot device than as a terrified witness to vengeful spirits.

She more often than not just gets in the way, neither becoming an interesting character nor a necessary plot device.

Gyllenhaal had the bad luck to portray a Rachel who was nothing more than an object of desire and a plot device.

also has a role, but it is more a plot device than a role.

«For every author who meticulously examines the latest developments in physics or computing, there are other authors who invent «impossible» technology to serve as a plot device (like Le Guin's faster - than - light communicator, the ansible) or to enable social commentary, the way H. G. Wells uses his time machine to take the reader to the far future to witness the calamitous destiny of the human race.»

Secret societies that protect the human race from monsters are a common plot device in video games, more often than not requiring you to harness superhuman abilities to keep the world safe.

Identifying contradictory emotions adds some nice diversity to the proceedings, but because you can only use the ability at predetermined spots and you're not penalized for wrong guesses, it ultimately feels more like a plot device than an essential gameplay tool.

It's more sophisticated than you might imagine, thanks to a dubious plot device, so you get genetically enhanced, massively armoured super-soldiers, giant dog - like robots and huge multistorey mechs (a Wolfenstein game needs boss - battles).»

Although the device is said to be able to break down the scraps within 24 hours, it's not fully finished compost at that point (in my opinion), but as it appears to be a flow - through system rather than a batch processor, the accumulated output of the system over a week or three could be a significant addition to a garden plot.

Al Green has stated that he's made more money in royalties off the Big Mouth Billy Bass that sings his hit song «Take Me to the River» than any other recording of the song — the singing fish sold thousands of units in the early 2000s and even made an appearance as a plot device in an episode of The Sopranos.

In a shocking plot twist, the Apple earbuds are more versatile than the Google earbuds and actually work with Android devices.