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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 29, 2019 10:09:46 GMT
Spencer Tracy - Bad Day At Black Rock (1955)Where does Spencer Tracy rank for American actors because there is an effect in Art - any Art - that is the achieving greatness without straining to do so - and he is maybe the most obvious actor to do it. Spencer Tracy hasn't made me cry much, or laugh much, or gotten me excited much or challenged me much in his work (And he has 9 Oscar nods/2 wins) and yet, I can't think of anything he ever did which rang false. He's great here and unsentimental and this performance clearly seems like it could be given by someone like Robert DeNiro or Denzel Washington, an older Paul Newman, Robert Duvall or Gene Hackman. It's acting that appears simple but is not.....not in the work itself or influence too. Standing at the crossroads, believe he's sinking down:
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Dec 29, 2019 20:20:47 GMT
can't believe I'm saying this, but Virginia Newcomb in The Death of Dick Longthe whole cast was surprisingly good for what's basically a perverted redneck Coen-knockoff that's all twist no substance but Newcomb was impossible to look away from and did most of her acting through gobsmacked reaction shots, especially in the middle of the film when she needles her husband into admitting something about himself that she can't fathom or unlearn. Revulsion, disbelief and heartache all in one expression: Not going out of my way to rec the film, but if your supporting actress lineups are feeling a bit bare, hit this one up for Newcomb.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Dec 29, 2019 21:03:28 GMT
also want to highlight one that'll probably go overlooked in most lineups: Jonas Dassler in The Golden GloveI initially wasn't sure what I felt about this performance. It's basically a lowkey version of what Phoenix was doing in Joker (and talk about an "oh my god I need to go take a shower" double-header, because Phillips' depiction of the 1980s New York that "created" Arthur Fleck echos Akin's 1970s Hamburg in which Fritz Honka pathetically existed). An even more apt comparison would be to Erwin Leder's deranged turn in Angst, so take that character and put him in a Fassbiner film and you'll have something approaching the open sewer of Akin's The Golden Glove. One thing that disappointed me about the film was its failure to delve into Honka's inner life even a little bit, content instead to see him as an extension of his putrefying environment. Dassler fills in those blanks himself and conveys a lot of complexity beneath the heavy makeup. It's in many ways a dream role for such a young actor (Dassler is only 23!). It's filthy and messy and ferocious. Honka is most violent and unhinged when drinking and Dassler throws himself into those rages with total abandon (you can catch that in the trailer), and those late-night drinking binges are extensions both of his meaningless existence, self-hatred, and incessant horniness (talk about a recipe for disaster). He's a predator but too stupid and simple to be truly evil. He's a man living on the fringes, surrounded on all sides by burnouts and old whores and retired one-eyed SS officers all living in an open sewer, and in the midst of that Honka lives day to day in pursuit of pathetic and base carnal appetites, no more evil than a rat in a gutter.
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Post by stephen on Dec 29, 2019 21:25:40 GMT
A star-making performance if ever I saw one.
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 30, 2019 10:13:16 GMT
Dustin Hoffman - Lenny (1974)One of the finest American actors ever in his peak period - 1967-(through)1988 - giving his best performance. Not merely that but Hoffman is giving multiple performances here - one an imitation and recreation of Lenny Bruce's standup act and the other a full tilt biopic performance too. There are very few actors who ever operated at this level and there are even fewer who could mix the two levels of performance like this and make it convincing and authentic feeling. One of the greatest American male lead performances - ever.
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Post by TerryMontana on Dec 31, 2019 10:15:37 GMT
The movie was overall kind of disappointing but her performance was aces 👌 I really liked it tbh. Good story and performances, funny and very moving at the same time. Didn't like the end credits scene, ruined the whole story although I was happy for the real life grandma.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 2, 2020 9:52:14 GMT
François Cluzet and Emmanuelle Béart - L'Enfer - re-watch
The two French stars in a tango of fear and madness and the nature of truth for the great Claude Chabrol here at the height of his powers and in the middle of an amazing late career run. Béart is almost impossibly lovely and is often asked to play an audience perception of a character - angelic or duplicitous maybe both. She does it improbably well and convincingly - your heart breaks for her in performance not merely in her looks. Cluzet - like Depardieu in Claude Miller's This Sweet Sickness - goes from a functional sociopath to a completely deluded threat awfully quickly in movie time but makes that part of his characters scary composition. He's also not afraid of being darkly comic or foolish which of course he is..... That's the genius of his performance - he could never keep a woman, certainly not this woman or keep any of their life together forever, and his time and sanity has run out. Crazy about you....... literally:
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Drish
Badass
Posts: 2,017
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Post by Drish on Jan 3, 2020 6:35:21 GMT
Victoria Pedretti (You) Jonathon Pryce & Anthony Hopkins (The Two Popes)
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 3, 2020 10:51:49 GMT
Sergio Castellitto - The StarmakerThe first-rate Italian actor in one of the performances that made his big time worldwide reputation and here he gives a performance that you could only imagine a few actors - all of them world class, giving - Javier Bardem maybe or Daniel Auteuil - with shades of characterization that match the overall film. At first lightly comic, then realistic in a threatening way at times if you think about what he's actually doing and then gut-punch emotional - this film wouldn't work without him and this is an actor and a director working in perfect unison - each trusts the other entirely.
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Post by isabelaolive on Jan 3, 2020 16:25:40 GMT
Antonio Banderas - Dolor y gloria The best male performance of 2019 tied withAdam Driver.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 4, 2020 10:16:38 GMT
Paul Newman - Slap ShotI have often talked about how Paul Newman rates a bit too highly to me on all-time actor lists - he was less than Brando to me and arguably less than 2 guys in his own generation (Lemmon/Scott) and especially lesser than the 4 guys who came along in the late/60s/70s imo and yet.....there is no denying him as the starriest star whoever starred and he is at his very magnetic best here. Playing a part he's too old for, maybe unlikable too, he wins you over and on top of that this is an actor not known for comedy as much and yet embracing it full force. It's one of the few times he went comic and he does the comedic acting and the underlying sadness and drama in his part to magnificent, foul-mouthed effect. He's the chief all right:
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 5, 2020 11:08:06 GMT
Burt Lancaster - Kiss The Blood Off My HandsLancaster here is every inch a post-war noir archetype in this movie - odds are stacked against him, downtrodden, tough, cynical, susceptible to manipulations of others. What Lancaster does is make this character achingly sad and yet actively fighting it and dangerous - everything about him an indication of what we see physically - cornered, panicked, which of course also makes him threatening too - he's simultaneously slump shouldered and defiant. Up against a wall - literally and symbolically - with Joan Fontaine:
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Post by Mattsby on Jan 5, 2020 20:03:07 GMT
Depardieu (and whole cast - Noiret, Marielle, etc) , Uranus (1990) Great example of Depardieu’s special talent of playing both big and small. As evident in the meeting with his lawyer after being imprisoned. He's a roaring presence in a little room, he picks up a chair and crumbles it with his hands like a cookie. Then he immediately goes quiet, throws his arms behind his back and says softy, “I’m bored.” Then he turns misty-eyed and lofty and begins pleading and reciting poetry. Then he revs the engine and booms anew. You’re simultaneously laughing at him, feeling bad for him, thinking he’s mad, pathetic, ridiculous, a little scary.... Later he says "Being in prison, I was practically forced to think." There's a great background detail how he met his wife at a sort of circus, implying the showmanship... He's especially now drunk with new freedom, the very right to his own expression. He's also representative of post-war France a country hobbled and humbled by the occupation, when everyone’s politics are under suspicion and there are those quietly indifferent to the elements (playing it safe) -- the worst thing you could be is loud, or untamable. Like Depardieu. The ending to me, with Noiret returning to his "safe" and jejune poetry about the daisies and Uranuses, it’s just abstract enough to keep him at a passive distance. Noiret also earlier has what might be the best acted scene of the movie, a thundering yet subtle monologue about his deceased wife. Other standout perfs - a serious and assertive Michel Blanc, a matchstick-thin weakling played by Fabrice Luchini, and a very thoughtful Jean Pierre Marielle who has superb chemistry with Noiret on their long walks. pacinoyes who I knows a fan
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 5, 2020 20:18:21 GMT
Depardieu (and whole cast - Noiret, Marielle, etc) , Uranus (1990) An impeccably acted film - and what's really great about it, is you can feel the director Claude Berri orchestrating their environment but not their work - the actors own their specific performances - there's nothing in it where you feel Berri is shaping their work at all which makes the acting even better and the film more alive too.
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Post by Viced on Jan 6, 2020 0:43:57 GMT
Cate Blanchett in Where'd You Go, BernadetteSinglehandedly elevates this goofy YA shit into a good movie. Fully realizes a unique character (in the first... 10 minutes?) and makes it look easy... just terrific.
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Post by DeepArcher on Jan 6, 2020 7:00:25 GMT
Rachel Weisz in The Deep Blue Sea -- just, holy fuck. This performance is absolutely devastating. My new favorite from her, some decade-best shit.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jan 7, 2020 7:25:48 GMT
Bill Hader, Sarah Goldberg and Henry Winkler in Barry Season 2
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jan 8, 2020 4:42:59 GMT
Jese Eisenberg in The DoubleWhere has this movie been all my life and why isn't it discussed more? Eisenberg was terrific here. Maybe his best ever. Harried and frustrated and pathetic, which he plays so well. The movie reminded me so much of a dystopian After Hours with a loser protagonist beset on all sides with inexplicably bad luck and misfortune (touches of Brazil too, which I love). Hilarious but also dark and menacing. Fantastic movie.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 8, 2020 11:02:44 GMT
Richard Harris - This Sporting LifeOne of the great performances of the 60s, that clearly influences De Niro in Raging Bull and one of the best examples of an actor triumphing by not speaking the text. Harris has dialog in this film, much of it terrific but the real power comes in looks he gives and things not said and how that world in his gaze reflects an inarticulate artfulness.....it's a complicated, layered performance and the precise connection point between Brando and DeNiro.
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Post by isabelaolive on Jan 8, 2020 14:09:07 GMT
Nicole Kidman - DogvilleI finally watched Dogville and thought it was better than I expected it to be. This is probably the best performance of Kidman's career. Dogville > The Others > Mouling Rouge > To die for > The Hours
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 8, 2020 14:21:26 GMT
I finally watched Dogville and thought it was better than I expected it to be. This is probably the best performance of Kidman's career. Dogville > The Others > Mouling Rouge > To die for > The Hours Just curious - I'm not a fan of Dogville though I like the performance (mostly) but have you ever seen Birth?
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Post by isabelaolive on Jan 8, 2020 15:32:58 GMT
I finally watched Dogville and thought it was better than I expected it to be. This is probably the best performance of Kidman's career. Dogville > The Others > Mouling Rouge > To die for > The Hours Just curious - I'm not a fan of Dogville though I like the performance (mostly) but have you ever seen Birth? Not yet. Birth is on my long list of Nicole films I still need to see, along with Eyes wide shut, Rabbit Hole and Portrait of a Lady.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 9, 2020 18:29:31 GMT
Richard Widmark - Night and The CityWidmark is aces here and definitive as a noir archetype - the endlessly hustling, doomed to failure and just outright doomed, small time guy who wants to be big time. Jules Dassin shoots this film almost by streetlight even indoors and that is at the heart of Widmark's performance - a little light, a little chance, a little time...........running out.
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Post by TerryMontana on Jan 9, 2020 19:42:50 GMT
I often speak about the love I have for Katharine Hepburn and some of the best work she ever did was in this film! A great acting duo with O'Toole. You could never tell if they loved each other or wanted to kill him/her!! Or maybe they wanted to kill the other exactly because they loved them. Hopkins, Dalton and Merrow also did a great job and, I have to say, all of them delivered some of the most legendary lines ever written for the big screen!!!
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 12, 2020 17:50:48 GMT
Kevin Spacey - Swimming With Sharks (1994) - re-watchA great actor but within a very narrow range only - Spacey's Buddy Ackerman is in some ways his most perfect role: funny, exceedingly smart-ass studio mogul who also gets an amazing, long and complicated speech - one of his best single scenes ever. Spacey had an amazing 90s - Seven, American Beauty, The Usual Suspects (and more) - this performance deserves to be remembered with his more famous work too.
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