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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 25, 2020 11:16:58 GMT
Gérard Depardieu - DantonIn the 80s Depardieu gave the most great performances and the most diverse too of any actor - male or female in world cinema - and the 80s included a thriving Streep and Huppert for Godsakes. Arguably no great actor ever could go big and small as deftly as him (and not many can do it at all actually) and Danton may be his most amazing turn in the sense that he plays this larger than life historical figure in a way that showboats and has an undertow that pulls on the viewer at the same time. Not only is he flawless (and wildly charismatic) on a scene by scene basis but he also links the character arc to traits that improve the film because he's playing it - no other actor could give THIS performance. When he loses his voice - the character loses his voice - as words after a certain point mean nothing the connection clicks in your head. You respond to the character and how the actor gets that across to you - it's literally breathtaking. More is more:
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Feb 25, 2020 16:10:18 GMT
A Brando mini-marathon: The Fugitive Kind (1960): Kind of a historical document in itself: the best actor and the best actress in the world (at the time) together. Brando caught between self-preservation and giving Magnani what she needs. He's a wary animal and a poet all at once; he knows the power he holds over women and the form it takes (sexually) and how it ties to his self-worth and it disgusts him. And Magnani makes it apparent this isn't about wanting; it's about needing, consuming, just like the "mercantile business" she hates so much. There's a black despair to the perf but when she's with Brando other facets pop up... including grotesque, startling seduction. Major, major perfs from both. The Nightcomers (1971): Acting mostly with children in this one, his frankness here is astonishing, and in this context, perplexing. The child characters love him because he's the only one who treats them like adults. To them he's like a truth-teller, but he's by no means conscious of the things he says or the example he sets. He's half-child, half-sex-fiend; he's always having fun (of some kind!) The way Brando plays the character, he suggests some sort of brilliant idiot. He ties the character's innocence to his perversion and the perversion to his innocence. There's something wrong here, but he's alive alright. Queimada! (1969): Is there a version of this with Brando's original voice? Even dubbed, this is obviously a rich, exuberant perf. He's a natural fit in Pontecorvo's romantic Marxist epic. This is the most commanding I've seen him and that's saying something... driven by a will of steel while his own intelligence gnaws at that very will. (There's also Sayonara, but I thought it sucked, and not even Brando is great in it ). In swashbuckling mode:
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Feb 26, 2020 4:50:08 GMT
Brad Pitt / Jonah Hill in Moneyball (rewatch) I've always loved Pitt's performance here but I used to take Hill's for granted. It required a couple more watches to appreciate how sweet their onscreen relationship is and how Hill is as significant a part of that. Moneyball as character study is fundamentally about a man plagued by self-doubt, contrasted against the confident and straight-talking demeanor (complete with some of that classic movie star charm) with which Beane carries himself, thus the central contradiction in his character. Of all the other people in the story--every single one--Jonah Hill's Peter Brand is the only one who catches wise to Billy Beane's insecurity and tries to comfort him. A lot of this was just great writing because Zaillian and Sorkin were a match made in Screenwriting Heaven, but Hill and Pitt had to put in the work to make this friendship believable and they absolutely do. Hill especially projects a lot more warmth and intelligence than is initially apparent because the performance is so stripped down, but you can feel the intention in his line deliveries and in the way Brand gains confidence through his arc from his friendship with Billy. Hill also gets most of the best lines and his scene explaining to Billy how to find value in overlooked players is the emotional crux of the film and relates to Beane's baggage about being overvalued for the wrong reasons. Pitt himself is pretty marvelous here because Miller creates a character profile with so much depth to explore. Pitt brings a lot of charisma and movie star swagger to the role while still projecting desperation beneath his matter-of-fact readings ("there's 50 feet of crap... and then there's us"). It's when his character's alone that you see the vulnerability slip through and provide glimpses into how much this man is haunted by the past. In that final scene of him driving down the freeway and listening to his daughter singing Lenka's "The Show" and the camera pulls into an extreme close-up of his misty eyes, you can see so much in those eyes; love, uncertainty, frustration, self-doubt, regret, and most of all fear. It's no coincidence he's listening to a song written from the point of view of someone who feels lost and unable to appreciate the good in their life ("life is a maze and love is a riddle") or that the final pre-credits caption reads: "Billy is still trying to win the last game of the season."
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Post by Viced on Feb 27, 2020 5:18:21 GMT
Christopher Walken in The Comfort of StrangersWhat a great joy it is to discover a great unseen performance from a favorite actor... No one (and I mean no one) can play the kooky and uniquely beguiling stranger like Christopher Walken. And no one else could've rattled off that same story five times and still make it have a strong effect. This man is a one-of-a-kind and endlessly magnetic... and this was a perfect role to bring out many of his best qualities.
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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 27, 2020 17:08:59 GMT
Leonardo DiCaprio - Wolf of Wall StreetA no-sh it Sherlock top 10 performance of the decade - maybe higher even - it also works on many levels that reward re-watches specifically. First, he handles the speech scenes - and there are many of those - beautifully, he also handles the physical comedy something he hadn't shown before equally well. But the more you see it, you see how he tries to "sell" everybody at all times - and when he can't, in a great snarling escalating exchange with FBI agent Kyle Chandler for example how small and childish he is. In addition he raises everyone's game opposite him AND he has a ton of dialog in this film on top of it all....
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Post by therealcomicman117 on Feb 27, 2020 17:33:21 GMT
Leonardo DiCaprio - Wolf of Wall StreetA no-sh it Sherlock top 10 performance of the decade - maybe higher even - it also works on many levels that reward re-watches specifically. First, he handles the speech scenes - and there are many of those - beautifully, he also handles the physical comedy something he hadn't shown before equally well. But the more you see it, you see how he tries to "sell" everybody at all times - and when he can't, in a great snarling escalating exchange with FBI agent Kyle Chandler for example how small and childish he is. In addition he raises everyone's game opposite him AND he has a ton of dialog in this film on top of it all.... Still my favorite DiCaprio performance to date. He just keeps getting better and better, the more I watch the film. That quaalude scene is the definition of acting perfection to me, and I love all his little monologues and quirks throughout. He plays a wonderful scumbag.
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Post by Mattsby on Feb 27, 2020 23:42:37 GMT
Caine in Alfie (1966) and Get Carter (1971). There's a bar scene where Alfie is punched and he shrinks and instantly runs away. Can you imagine Carter doing that? Caine is very smooth in Alfie - a somewhat pathetic, isolated, inflated ego, but also sort of charismatic and funny like the very hilarious look he gives the nurse when asked if he sweats at night. Carter he's violent, practically scary, forward moving like a shark, with a subtle, unsettled bitterness to him. He likes to remind people who he is and correct that they know who he is/was.
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Post by Mattsby on Feb 28, 2020 3:18:14 GMT
Ralph Richardson in The Wrong Box (1966) I watched this mainly for Caine, who's pretty good and soft-spoken here; the pic is a dryly amusing farce with way too many characters, but my god: Ralph Richardson is the MVP and delivers a phenomenally hilarious performance. I've seen some of his great perfs like The Heiress and Long Day's Journey into Night, and recently The Holly and the Ivy where he's stern and misunderstood - these are serious, borderline unlikable roles. Here, he is a riot with his perpetual factoid ramblings - at any moment he might mention alphanumeric coincidences, Biblical printing errors, Egyptian knitting, speaking Swahili, Tasmanian banyan bark, the 23rd Revolution of Turkey, Emperor Heliogabalus, or nutmeg poisoning. A lot of credit to the writing, actually, but Richardson sells it so smoothly and with great comic timing. Anyone wanna recommend other unexpectedly great RR perfs??
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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 28, 2020 4:03:41 GMT
Ralph Richardson in The Wrong Box (1966) Anyone wanna recommend other unexpectedly great RR perfs?? Home at Seven (1952) is one to seek out - might have been the only one he directed too afaik? It's a very gentle (or sleepy?) mystery but he plays it in his own distinct way - very British, very talky...... Try to find the filmed version of No Man's Land by Pinter which is great......opposite Gielgud and they also filmed Home for TV but that might be hard to find and is aces too.
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Post by futuretrunks on Feb 28, 2020 4:24:08 GMT
Leonardo DiCaprio - Wolf of Wall StreetA no-sh it Sherlock top 10 performance of the decade - maybe higher even - it also works on many levels that reward re-watches specifically. First, he handles the speech scenes - and there are many of those - beautifully, he also handles the physical comedy something he hadn't shown before equally well. But the more you see it, you see how he tries to "sell" everybody at all times - and when he can't, in a great snarling escalating exchange with FBI agent Kyle Chandler for example how small and childish he is. In addition he raises everyone's game opposite him AND he has a ton of dialog in this film on top of it all.... He's truly impressive in the speeches, but I think people who consider WoWS to be Leo's peak vastly underrate his 2000s work. Catch Me, Rev Road, Blood Diamond, The Departed, all have acting moments as searing and impressive as anything Leo did in WoWS. Think of "Fuck you April!" in Rev Road, his last scene in Blood Diamond on the hill, all of the performative switches in CMIYC. When I see Amy Adams stans talking about how she doesn't get the same complaining about her not winning as Leo did, I can only point to the resume. Amy Adams isn't even half of Leo. Jesus.
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Post by Mattsby on Feb 28, 2020 20:20:03 GMT
Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud in Play for Today's Home (1972) “Communication is a difficult factor.” Plotless and deliberately mundane, it feels like actually witnessing the play performance, but it’s filmed well, in a simple way, too, and ultimately poignant. One extreme wide shot towards the end reveals the location as looking itself abandoned. Ralph Richardson and Gielgud, as two old men in what might be a rest home or mental institution, have droll and perfectly timed chemistry, in the way they auto-reply to each other, and shrink when confronted by two nosy, shrill ladies. In the ladies presence, we get a sense of the extreme sensitivity of the men and their reluctance to reveal any of their deeper selves or situation. RR is particularly great, his line readings and physical behavior, looking as if permanently stunned, he slips away, catches himself slipping, or like when the ladies question him, he's so ashamed, looking away, or bringing up the weather again and again bc it’s easy and harmless to talk about. As he says, “All have our little falls from grace.” thx pacinoyes for the rec! the whole thing is on Youtube!
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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 29, 2020 15:24:42 GMT
Ralph Richardson & John Gielgud - No Man's LandThis is also on Youtube too so I gave it a re-watch - Mattsby , you see this yet? Interested? - an exceedingly beautifully acted take on a impenetrable Pinter headscratcher which gives Gielgud a chance to be at his most ornate and stylized and Richardson to be at his most beguiling and fly on and above and around the text. No one could look off in the distance, at the expense of the other actor in the room (!) and be as funny and strangely haunted as Richardson. It's a masterclass of a certain kind of acting, in perfect harmony among long-time acting partners. Drink up:
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 1, 2020 10:42:57 GMT
Timothy Spall in Pierrepoint: The Last HangmanHey, here's a question for the UK chaps (um) on this board - ibbi, stephen - are you fellas "taking the piss" as you often say? Is this a "bloody joke" - guv'nors? Because why wasn't I told of this fascinating, fairly recent performance - ON A MOVIE BOARD - and which I never heard of (!?!) and which is right in the line of ace true British crime film work like Dance With A Stranger, Let Him Have It and many others....Spall (and Juliet Stevenson who is quite good too) is absolutely mesmerizing here - mesmerizing in his average qualities and the extraordinary nature of what he does for a living - and how the two intersect, sublimate and co-exist. Not for everyone and an awful, awful date movie but ........well you know who you are. Keep me hanging on:
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Post by stephen on Mar 1, 2020 14:52:17 GMT
Pierrepoint rules, and it works best as a double-feature with 10 Rillington Place.
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Post by Mattsby on Mar 1, 2020 19:33:11 GMT
Ralph Richardson & John Gielgud - No Man's LandThis is also on Youtube too so I gave it a re-watch - Mattsby , you see this yet? Interested? - an exceedingly beautifully acted take on a impenetrable Pinter headscratcher which gives Gielgud a chance to be at his most ornate and stylized and Richardson to be at his most beguiling and fly on and above and around the text. No one could look off in the distance, at the expense of the other actor in the room (!) and be as funny and strangely haunted as Richardson. It's a masterclass of a certain kind of acting, in perfect harmony among long-time acting partners. LOVED THIS. I think by far my new fav Gielgud perf. Effete and confessive (which isn't a word but what can you do) - the way he seems to be flickering with how to behave, how active his hands are, tapping his whiskey glass, how he pronounces the word "certainly", and by turns flattering or irking RR who plays off him with a curious and down disinterest. How a bit pathetically Gielgud says, "Heed me, I am a relevant witness....and could be a friend." Pinter's writing here gets odder as it goes but I found it to be mainly brilliant, sharp, and funny too: "He's a very long way from being Siamese." - "This is a universe of silk and 18th century cookery books." - “I might even show you my footstool.” RR has a really great scene around the middle where he feels devastatingly lost - "I am sitting here....forever" - which foreshadows the ending exchange. I agree with you that he looks off into distances with the best of 'em - especially in Home. The younger actor here Michael Kitchen (never heard) is also very good, hilarious, and a little creepy - perfectly conveys a sort of high-horse, elite attitude. Also liked the idea of the opening and ending visuals looking like withered photographs.
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 2, 2020 21:55:54 GMT
Adrien Brody - The Pianist - Yeah he beat Nicholson and Day-Lewis and he deserved it too. In Roman Polanski's near masterpiece The Pianist - Brody is utterly at the service of and in turn serves his director's vision in embodying a cliched type - the genteel artiste broken - but the specifics are his alone. It's a performance made (but not executed) by the director and how he chooses to convey the character to us and Brody's on the same page entirely with him and the writer - which takes a lot of trust - at times the events border on a demented black comedy. "Why the fncking coat?" ........."I'm cold".......that's funny but of course it isn't and Brody conveys that bewildered, absurd dichotomy at its extreme. There is almost no scene in this film after a certain point until right near the end where he can trust any of his senses - what he sees, hears, speaks, tastes and crucially what he can actually touch (and the things he can not - the piano is an embodiment of most of his senses, altered) - it's not easy to portray and he does it beautifully without any thought that his director will let him falter.
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Post by Mattsby on Mar 3, 2020 2:46:37 GMT
Alan Bates in Butley (1974) In the last week I've somewhat accidentally hopped around to a lot of great, great British actors - multiple films from Olivier, Caine, Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, and now Bates. Also sort of recently saw The Caretaker and The Collection, two very good Pinter adaptations especially The Collection which I thought was Bates best perf, until now. First off - I actually thought this was Pinter directing from his own play or at least something he'd adapted - shows how little I know. His directing stays out of the way, really, but there's something to be said too about not getting in the way when someone is delivering like Bates here at this high a level. Altho I'll say this builds and becomes suddenly very intense, complex, and tragic - you see it in the cutting too - like a later cut to a master shot at the perfect time ("That's rehearsed" "Thousands of times"), revealing the whole disheveled room, or at the ending catching the fleeting looks between the actors. Back to Bates, who gives a genius, dynamic perf. Words might not be enough to get across how great he is here. I like the way Ebert puts it, calling Bates "panther-quick" with "double-reverse charm" - his whole review is very good btw. A lot of the time Bates is defensively play-acting (no pun intended) - his behavior and antagonism is mostly affected, in a way to show off his wit, to get away with the punches that land, in a twisted way to humor himself, and in an even more twisted way to have endorsed his own self-hatred. Bates suggests a desperation without being heavy and blue about it - he's hilarious in some moments, and sharply aware too of what he's in the process of losing, and that makes the performance extra interesting, all these spinning strands and refusals. pacinoyes who's the only mention of Butley on the boards!
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 3, 2020 12:56:09 GMT
Andy Griffith - A Face In The Crowd (1957)Of all the things that opinionated fossil pacinoyes loves to complain about - well there's a lot actually - like " beautiful Rock music" (GTFO that's literally like Astral Weeks and not much else), "great" accent work! (come on), and people referring to themselves in the 3rd person (um) - nothing is more maddening than people saying "memorably subtle performance" because while I like subtlety it is rarely memorable at all.............and that gets us to Andy Griffith, in his (very memorable, very unsubtle) debut. Scorching the earth like Trump at his most attention seeking and not leaving one piece of scenery without a big piece missing - his portrayal - based on acting and selling itself or the grandest exaggerations of it - still packs a mighty wallop over 60 years later. "The best acting is when you can't see the acting....." I submit this as exhibit A in reply ....and I respectfully dissent. More is more - Griffith in A Face In The Crowd:
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Post by Longtallsally on Mar 3, 2020 20:59:34 GMT
Simone Signoret in Room at the Top (1959)
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Post by Viced on Mar 4, 2020 5:19:18 GMT
Rosamund Pike in Gone GirlFirst watch I liked the performance but I think my expectations (from reading the book too close to seeing the movie) for the character/performance were too skewed for me to really appreciate Pike's work. But all these years later... I'd now say she's absolutely perfect. You root for her, you feel for her, you think she's batshit crazy... so many lines to toe and she toes 'em all flawlessly! A calculated performance for a calculated character... definitely some of the best work of the last 10+ years.
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Mar 5, 2020 2:27:38 GMT
Montgomery Clift & Marlon Brando in The Young Lions - Brando isn't remotely believable as a Nazi or as any kind of German really, but precisely because it's an inarguably American performance, he fascinates. This extraordinarly sensitive potrayal of a Nazi officer must have been quite the shock back in '58: as written and acted he's more likable than Dean Martin's pathetic American. Though there are limits to what Brando can do with the overly idealistic screenplay, he doesn't give in to sentiment, and he's suggestive in the outskirts, in his scenes with the German seductress and the Parisian girl who loves to hate him (he's only ever honest around women). But it's Clift, post-accident, who towers over everyone imo--a small masterpiece of agonizing physical and emotional discomfort, like he's got the whole weight of WWII hanging over him. At his best you feel his will to disappear, a kind of death drive, as if his presence alone embarrassed him. But he's got spirit and weight; he grounds this odd but amazing film. When the movie was over it was his performance I couldn't stop thinking about... and his co-star was fcking Marlon Brando True originals, both of them. They make their imitators look like fakes.
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 5, 2020 23:34:51 GMT
Gena Rowlands - Another WomanThere's many people - many people I know even - who think Gena Rowlands is the best US actress ever. She's certainly in that discussion and this performance - at the heart of Woody Allen's sensitive, perceptive analysis film - is a work of sly, subtle emotional shifts. Rowlands in her work for Cassavetes was fire and here she is closer to ice that melts away to find her true self which means she has to gauge how to play scenes across a wide range of relationships - husband, lover, daughter, friend, neighbor etc. The movie is short - less than 90 minutes - so play those many small scenes wrong and this very specific script gets muddled. Instead she pivots and holds the center from scene to scene - it's one of her best non-Cassavetes portrayals.
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Post by DeepArcher on Mar 6, 2020 18:41:53 GMT
Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill in PossessionJust witnessed this bizarre masterpiece for the first time last night and it's a transcendent experience really -- and none of it works without Adjani and Neill both meeting the director's very particular vision and energy perfectly and delivering something strange at nearly every turn. Neill is wonderful as always in this bizarre over-the-top manic performance that sounds like it should be tiresome on-paper (much like the film itself) but somehow only invigorates whenever he's on screen with so much unhinged rage that he puts Driver in Marriage Story to shame ... all while the show really belongs to Adjani and her absolutely cacophonous, bombastic, incredibly grotesque performance that is even more interesting physically than it is vocally, as she collapses and contorts in ways that we haven't quite seen before, all while also being sort of enchanting and hypnotic doing this Hitchockian double routine. I mean, holy shit. Two of the greatest horror performances I've ever seen and I won't get this off my mind for a long time...
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Mar 7, 2020 1:55:38 GMT
Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as George Smiley (rewatch) I have nothing to say about this that hasn't already been said, but I will say his monologue about Karla is still absolutely mesmeric. Karla is such an imposing presence in the film for two reasons. First, he casts a long shadow while remaining in the shadows himself and we never see him one time. Second, because even George Smiley is scared of him. The delicate push/pull dynamic between Smiley and Karla and on a larger scale between the east and west underscores the entire narrative, and through the Mark Strong character demonstrates its human cost. "We've both spent our lives looking for the weakness in one another's systems. Don't you think it's time to recognize there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?"
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Post by stephen on Mar 7, 2020 1:59:59 GMT
Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as George Smiley (rewatch) I have nothing to say about this that hasn't already been said, but I will say his monologue about Karla is still absolutely mesmeric. Karla is such an imposing presence in the film for two reasons. First, he casts a long shadow while remaining in the shadows himself and we never see him one time. Second, because even George Smiley is scared of him. The delicate push/pull dynamic between Smiley and Karla and on a larger scale between the east and west underscores the entire narrative, and through the Mark Strong character demonstrates its human cost. "We've both spent our lives looking for the weakness in one another's systems. Don't you think it's time to recognize there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?" It says a lot when, as brilliant as Oldman is, he barely makes my top five of that year and even in his own film, this guy steals the show:
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