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Post by Viced on Mar 10, 2020 15:35:51 GMT
Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Béart in A Heart in WinterJesus... these two absolutely wrecked me. The pain and emptiness in Auteuil's eyes, the longing in Béart's... these performances were damn near great based only on their violin craftsmanship/playing alone tbh... but the emotional depths they both go to here are just remarkable.
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Post by DanQuixote on Mar 11, 2020 11:27:43 GMT
Adam Sandler and Julia Fox in Uncut Gems. What a beautiful and sweet relationship that could've easily been super creepy.
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Mar 11, 2020 19:40:02 GMT
Spencer Tracy & Marlene Dietrich in Judgment at Nuremberg - My god was this movie long but these two made it worth it. It's Tracy, not Schell, who makes the movie work - a rather magnificent actor in his old age (both here and in Bad Day at Black Rock which I saw recently). As for Dietrich, the director rather crudely uses our preconceptions of her screen persona to make us distrust her, but she's wonderful. Would have loved a spin-off just with these 2.
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Post by therealcomicman117 on Mar 12, 2020 17:50:03 GMT
Paul Newman in Road to PerditionEasily a later day career highlight for Newman, who was working only sporadically at the time, and a great way to cap off his live-action theatrical career. I hadn't seen this movie in some time, but rewatching it in the wake of the recent Tom Hanks virus related news was something. Hanks is great too, and doesn't get enough respect for his darker turn here, but it's Newman who brings a lot of virtue and respect to the film as the elderly Irish Mob Boss John Rooney, a man who clearly seems to have made a lot of mistakes and regrets in his life, but still lives by a bad moral code. Some of his back and forth conversations with Hanks and then later Jude Law and Tucci, is just spellbinding.
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Post by Mattsby on Mar 14, 2020 0:29:24 GMT
James Spader and James Spader in Jack's Back (1988). One of the very best younger actors during his '87-'94 streak - here playing two roles, one a liberal medical student volunteer, a very likable perf, and the other his harder, seemingly disturbed twin, with all the charm wiped away, he's a bit ominous and fills out the role with a side of secrecy and questioning of himself. There's some sort of residual edge and mistrust of authority, from his past, but this is a perf pushing forward, and Spader understands he's a block who becomes, quickly, more forceful and aware than he may have ever been. Like an interrogation scene halfway thru, when asked if he's jealous of his brother, Spader adds long pauses ("I......never thought I was.....") that could be read as eerie or quite sad, leaving a lot of intriguing room to engage and question him ourselves.
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Post by TerryMontana on Mar 15, 2020 14:39:36 GMT
They were both great but Tracy was mesmerizing!! He was ill during filming and the production company didn't even think he would make it till the end... Yet, his performance was full of love and concern. He died only 17 days after filming had wrapped.
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Post by Mattsby on Mar 15, 2020 17:17:30 GMT
Helen Mirren and Helen Mirren in Thriller S3E1 'A Coffin for the Bride' (1974) Maybe I shouldn't spoil it but I wouldn't recommend this tatty show anyway, Mirren is shockingly amazing in a dual role, srsly took me a few minutes to realize it was her. As the ingenue Stella, tempting a man who murders women for their money, Mirren plays shy, avoiding eye contact with him, working both to tease him and later (after another reveal) makes sense within her design and disgust towards him. In the second role, as the dumpy faux-rich Angie Ludlow, with a harsher North of England accent, she is absolutely hilarious, animated, gibbering, and oddly believable...
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Mar 16, 2020 0:45:38 GMT
Max von Sydow in Hamsun - Portrait of a great but proud mind with a fatal disconnect: between himself and his romantic-nationalist ideas and those ideas and the world. Playing Nobel Prize-winning author Knut Hamsun ("the greatest Norwegian alive" as they called him back then) at the time of WWII, von Sydow's jittery physicality and near-deafness are telling of a psychological state. The world confounds him, but the way von Sydow plays him, the confusion may be a mark of individuality rather than passive antagonism. Going from national hero to traitor after expressing his support of Nazi Germany in the mid-30s (despite disgust for some of its tenets), he (willingly?) fails to register the implications or to face the source of the outrage until it's too late. Then he finds himself, not others, to be the source of his humiliation. The question of whether a man's ideas define the man is at the heart of von Sydow's turn here, and a performance as rich as this gives no answers--maybe a career-best turn.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Mar 18, 2020 3:01:21 GMT
Massimo Troisi, Il PostinoThis is such a sweet performance. I kept waiting for big moments and they never came because Troisi keeps it so grounded, sincere, and close to his chest, which is what makes him the perfect inverse to someone like Hanks in Forrest Gump (not that you can't appreciate both). Troisi's Mario isn't developmentally disabled but his gentle simplicity and puppydog eyes and lack of education is certainly romanticized. Not in a condescending way (which can so often be the case with such protagonists) because Troisi is so restrained. Mario's lack of head-knowledge is treated more as a pathway to celebrate the naturalistic beauty surrounding him and derive poetry from it--a way to cut through the bullshit to observe life's simple joys. I'm sure his death factored into his nomination but make no mistake: he deserved it.
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Post by DeepArcher on Mar 18, 2020 18:29:36 GMT
Bruce Greenwood in Meek's CutoffAn always reliable character actor giving perhaps the best performance of his career -- Greenwood as the titular trailblazer is at his most transformative and unrecognizable, playing this nasty racist and sexist who slowly experiences a crisis of confidence in his own abilities and identity. The man is fully immersed into the complicated role and he doesn't miss a single beat in selling us on the character -- it's captivating work.
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 18, 2020 18:51:44 GMT
Jessica Lange - Frances (1982) - re-watchI hadn't seen this in a long time and I think off the top of my head at least it's the best performance in a "bad" movie - ever. That's too harsh maybe but without her it would be awful - the film is too long, sloppily directed, weakly written and not even surrounded with good supporting turns. She absolutely makes this movie. Lange is OTT in the best way here and of course before that became a crutch for her (at times) and OTT in the right ways too - playing an actress removed from herself and removed from issues which haunt her mind. Her Frances Farmer is acting out the role in real life and it's terrifying. A spellbinding performance.
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Post by notacrook on Mar 23, 2020 1:04:18 GMT
Mary Tyler Moore, Timothy Hutton, Donald Sutherland in Ordinary PeopleThree of the best performances I've seen in a loooong time. They all have their 'big' dramatic moments (and sell them beautifully), but what really makes these performances great is the endless depths of subtlety and nuance that they imbue their characters with. Every look and every movement feels true to the script, with no one going rogue in an effort to showboat. Just honest, genuine work from all three. Throw in the also brilliant Judd Hirsch, and you have yourself a powerhouse little ensemble here.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2020 4:00:02 GMT
Jack Nicholson in About Shmidt. Every time I watch this performance, I always forget about Nicholson's acting clout and watch this performance as if he didn't have 3 Oscars. I forget that he's a 65 year old pro who's in his fourth decade of a storied career. This was like a brand new Nicholson. He's brilliant as a man who's life is turned upside down after retiring. It could have been a depressing performance, but Nicholson gives so much hope to his character.
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Post by therealcomicman117 on Mar 23, 2020 19:19:53 GMT
Henry Fonda - Once Upon a Time in The WestJust recently rewatched this classic, and it was still as good as the last time I saw it. Fonda's casting was a bit of a surprise in 1968. The ultimate "American Hero" was suddenly playing a character with no morals or values and in a spaghetti western no-less, and you know what it worked wonderfully. Fonda's Frank is a cold and calculating villain, willing to do anything to accomplish his "unethical goals". Fonda never relishes in his villainous turn, never dials things up to eleven, and yet you can we can feel his presence lingering over the film, even when he's not on screen. It's an incredible hard right turn from one of the great U.S. Actors of the mid 20th century.
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Post by sirjeremy on Mar 24, 2020 17:55:44 GMT
Nick Stahl - The Man Without a Face (1993)He gives one of the most natural, self-assured and sensitive performances I've ever seen from a young actor, holding his own opposite Mel Gibson (and sometimes outdoing him) in only his first feature film.
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Post by JangoB on Mar 29, 2020 1:41:30 GMT
The entire ensemble of this painful and pretty powerful film is wonderful but Kathleen Quinlan is truly fantastic in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, giving a fully realized portrayal of mental illness and, most importantly, reaching inside and finding the very soul of her character.
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Post by Longtallsally on Mar 29, 2020 10:27:09 GMT
Nicole Stéphane in Le Silence de La Mer (1949)Expressing everything through her body language, what an impressive achievement by an actress in her debut film!
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 29, 2020 17:02:20 GMT
Very rarely do I single out a big name actor for a bad performance - I like actors, I don't want to see them be bad and I don't like talking about it - and when I do it (Russell Crowe in The Loudest Voice) they reward him with a SAG anyway. But, here it goes: Laura Linney and Janet McTeer - love 'em both - are not "good" in Ozark Season 3.......the only people who were ever really really good in Ozark were Peter Mullan and Jason Butler Harner. Linney and McTeer are not bad either but like the show itself ......um, they're overheated. You have to go along with it....it's fine. So I went back to something where one deserved that acclaim (speaking of which I bet you Linney wins an Emmy this year - her FIFTH - GTFO) - this time Janet McTeer in Tumbleweeds. A delicate, marvelously appealing turn that builds on her quirks from scene to scene. You could do a lot worse than to revisit Tumbleweeds one after binging Ozark .....
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Post by Mattsby on Mar 30, 2020 0:39:11 GMT
Madeline Kahn - Judy Berlin (1999), her last (and seemingly forgotten) performance. To quote from Mick LaSalle's review: "We always knew there was a soulfulness behind Kahn's zaniness, and here we understand it. Even as she prattles on, there's a watchfulness to Kahn's performance suggesting powerful strains of longing." And......... "It's hard to imagine a more graceful exit for a lovely comic actress." There's a feeling of confusion and malaise and drifting childlike wonder in her perf, how light her step is on the empty streets..... It's ultimately a very sad, mesmerized turn of a character lost under a separation with time, both in an immediate way (captivated and scared too of a solar eclipse that unusually doesn't seem to end) and in a lingering, aging away way.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Mar 31, 2020 3:43:28 GMT
Mattsby I'd never heard of Judy Berlin before but it sounds incredible my contribution today is Lesley Manville in Another Year (rewatch)We've all seen it, we all love her, and what's not to love? Another Year is such a special film. I had only seen it once before and that was several years ago. Seeing it now years later makes its themes ring even truer. The film is primarily concerned with how life ebbs and flows and more poignantly how people remain the same throughout those experiences. Another year comes and goes. And another, and another. "Change is hard, isn't it," protagonist Gerri (the underappreciaited Ruth Sheen) observes to her client. That conflict encapsulates what the film is about, and that's more evident in Lesley Manville's pathetic and desperate Mary more than anyone else. When we're introduced to Mary it's clear she suffers from anxiety and deep insecurities brought on by aging anxiety, loneliness and past failed relationships. She talks too much, flatters too much, drinks too much, but you can see the authentic feelings behind Manville's eyes. A need to feel wanted and for companionship in her painfully awkward flirtations with Joe, her outrage and heartbreak at meeting Katie, and the sweet conversations with Ronnie at the end where his answers to all her questions are "yeah" and "no." Manville takes all those scenes in stride and forms a fully-realized woman from them. Most poignant of all is the climactic dinner scene which Leigh frames almost entirely around Mary's loneliness and depression. She's disconnected and in her head and not even trying to hide it anymore as all these people are talking around her like she's not even there. Leigh fades out the noise of the conversation to complete silence as the camera stays on Mary's miserable face and makes the audience feel what she's feeling: total isolation. And then he fades to black.
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Post by Mattsby on Mar 31, 2020 22:35:14 GMT
Geraldine Page in Night Gallery S3E11 "Something in the Woodwork" - apparently the last episode Rod Serling wrote for the show, it's solid though much too quick (I like these kinds of shows at 50 mins)... Page is a creepy, deranged delight here - a glass of alcohol never leaves her hand - as a lonely woman who says to the ghost in her attic, "You don't frighten me, in fact, I could use the company." She proceeds to perversely question the ghost whether it can touch and feel..... Page has two scenes with an ex-husband character and her line-readings there are particularly amazing, stretching words out to their contemptuous potential.
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Post by therealcomicman117 on Mar 31, 2020 23:17:46 GMT
Holly Hunter in Raising ArizonaReleased the same year as Broadcast News (which is incredible to learn), Hunter’s turn as Nicolas Cage’s put-upon “Southern wife” in this Coen classic, is one for the books. Her devotion to the baby they just stole, is something to behold, and Hunter’s performance shines throughout. I never tire of her screaming "Son of a Bitch", and she constantly brings the good. It’s an uproariously multi-comedic turn from one of our great actresses.
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 1, 2020 16:32:58 GMT
Julia Garner - Ozark, Season 3 -"Great" might be stretching it, but very good at least and never once loses her character no matter what the writers throw at her. Laura Linney will win the Emmy I guess for her Acting (capital A) - but she shouldn't and everyone will rave her bi-polar brother and they are fine for what it is, but there is no better acting this season than Garner and watch her deliver THE line in episode 10 and marvel at her knowing her character and how to play every scene she's in: “What are you gonna do, kill me, ya fuckin' bitch-wolf?”
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Post by DeepArcher on Apr 1, 2020 19:42:59 GMT
Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence This was actually my first time watching the film (for class, no less) ... and I'm really not sure yet what to make of the film itself. I definitely can't say I enjoyed watching it, but I'm also not sure that I'm "supposed" to. It's an important exercise in cinema but also kind of an exhausting one, too. Regardless of all that ... this is certainly one of the most groundbreaking portraits of mental illness that I've ever seen, and the performance at the center of it all is nothing short of a revelation. Rowlands has an almost impossible task of acting on her shoulders and what she pulls off is the peak of "transformative" acting. There isn't a second where she isn't totally believable -- it's a cliche claim but it's really true of watching this performance that I genuinely forgot that I was watching an actor while watching it. And usually that's not the style of acting that resonates with me the most, but here you just can't deny the mastery on display. I know this praise is nothing new ... but goddamn, this performance really is just impeccable.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2020 22:03:32 GMT
Barbara Harris in Peggy Sue Got Married
A tender and warm performance. Barbara Harris moves me to tears with her too good rendition of a classic housewife and mother. She's so reassuring to daughter Peggy that life will turn out alright. Her soft voice adds to the lullaby nature of the film. I just adore this performance.
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