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Post by DeepArcher on Oct 22, 2023 2:51:21 GMT
There's one specific moment I keep thinking about that speaks to the power of this performance - and light spoilers for the movie here - and it's the scene where Mollie sees the owl while sick in bed, a moment that in my theater incited several audible gasps and even one "oh no." It speaks also to the filmmaking, that this image was set-up so clearly earlier in the film that it can have this payoff later. But it's also a testament to Gladstone's performance, that she's made this character feel so alive and has endeared us to her so much that even the abstract suggestion of losing her incites such dread in the audience. I've seen some criticize that Mollie is too thinly written, and maybe that's so, but honestly, if she is, I can't say I noticed. Gladstone does so much, without it ever seeming like she's doing so much, to give us the impression of a complete person. I know this performance has been singled out for praise plenty and will continue to be, but I worry that the quality of her acting might get drowned out in useless lead vs. supporting debates and whatnot as the awards season progresses, and her work (as all work) really, really needs to stand on its own merit outside of all that noise.
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 26, 2023 4:18:50 GMT
Marc-André Grondin and Normand D'Amour in 5150 Elm's Way (2009) Sort of part-Dexter, part-Spoorloos (not remotely, in any way, close to as good - duh) this faux-horror / thriller is a little too cute for its own good.....ok, a lot too cute but the set-up - these 2 men engaged in a game of wits - literally a game: Chess.......allows a lot of time to shift into gradations of obsession and madness. Not great .....but a pretty diverting film with a great ending - that people will later tell to other people ......who will look at the person telling them about that bonkers ending like they're f'n nuts - when you think back on it is (way) too much...... but these 2 totally sold it which is something.......this is one of those movies that when you look it up has mixed reviews that make you want to let a lot slide and praise the smallest things like they matter a lot.... But the acting is.....pretty subtle, sets up reveals extremely smartly without overplaying it or tipping its hand......and is....... a bloody good time......
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 28, 2023 16:09:54 GMT
Mattsby who I think would love the performance.....the movie is a more divisive thing........... Laure Calamy in The Origin of Evil (2022)Call My Agent! star who has now become a César Award winning force of nature is ace here in a Chabrol-like piece of surprising and unrelenting nastiness. Right from the start - Calamy dazzles in a great phone call scene where she seems like she might burst out of her skin.......this movie has a sneaky pull - in one scene the camera is placed on the floor so you see her and her possibly real life rich father - weak of body but seemingly of sound (but aggressive and casually racist) mind - who she has never known (that's the plot, it's very House of Gucci) - leave a room and someone else, the maid - leaves the adjoining room where she was listening to them talk..........that kind of touch makes everything ratchet up a notch and feel claustrophobic........and Calamy herself acts in a claustrophobic and crackling way: All surface level tension and agitated stress in her sad eyes - she is fantastic at illustrating class difference not merely indicating it. An entire chunk of this movie involves her acting in a complex way - presenting a side of herself that is not what you would think and she is particularly adept at not losing character consistency.......there are also elements of Greta, Talented Mr. Ripley and many other films in the Chabrol manner ( La Rupture, speaking of fncked up families - for one) Great performance in an interesting movie......and I wouldn't be surprised if this got an American remake btw..... Reviewed in Variety yesterday btw - raves Calamy in an insightful way - and compares it to De Palma variety.com/2023/film/reviews/the-origin-of-evil-review-1235770149/ Laura Calamy has a face of disarming sincerity, and she acts with a beguiling touch of insecurity that backs that up. She doesn’t come off like a social climber; she’s more like Cinderella in her downtrodden servant-housecleaner phase — abashed and slightly crestfallen, a collapse-of-the-middle-class refugee with a shy smile that lights up a room almost in spite of itself.
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 29, 2023 19:37:37 GMT
Stephen Graham and to a lesser degree Niamh Algar in The Virtues (BBC TV Series) - 2019
Wrenching, delicate and fragile - deeply emotional 1-2 acting from Graham and the always astonishing Algar masking years of surpressed horror with booze and denial.......Graham's drinking is genuinely reckless in a thrilling, unstudied way - like booze being poured into a child......... and Algar is herself child-like with a scary "she may lose it" too quality - she is hair-trigger and live wire in an exceptionaly smart turn......they are really great together
If this was made years ago - Gary Oldman, Tim Roth or maybe Katrin Cartlidge would have played it - and you can only have seen this alone and know Graham and Algar are the real deal......
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Post by Mattsby on Oct 31, 2023 2:41:56 GMT
MacLeod Andrews and Evan Dumouchel in They Look Like People (2015 on TUBI) -I have (too) many weirdly specific Theories of Life - which is one of the reasons I like Molly Nilsson's music (see her marvelous song - Theory of Life) One is that list culture is in some way straight up evil - and Siskel & Ebert were too by reducing Art to Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down - I get it and yeah I do it too - but my brain doesn't work like that really, movies are trickier than that anyway ........and if this particular thread was actually accurate then the word "great" would be replaced with "interesting" ... That discussion applies very much to They Look Like People which is like when your stupid friend tells you he has a cool movie idea and you decide to hear it just to make fun of him........and this dumbass was totally right and you can't believe it and are pissed that you are not writing down movie ideas instead of drinking so much all the time. Then you start to worry about your friend...... A sort of dumbed down Donnie Darko crossed with Safe, Frailty and Bug - heavy stuff - but this is so amateurish in filmmaking style (but not in that ace story concept!) it's very easy to dismiss - but I dig it a lot.........and more than that I prefer this thinly sketchy idea more than Friedkin's mannered Bug (love the play, not the film) - and I get it more than the florid convolutions of Donnie Darko too (like the movie but not that much). Sometimes bleakness should visually just look like bleak and not cinematic to some degree at least...... I've watched They Look Like People twice this week - while (not really) working at my job - it's only 80 minutes! - and this movie routinely gets 1 star reviews or a few 5 star reviews too (it's 3.2 Letterboxd, 5.9 IMDB, 92% RT) .......and both assessments are understandable - you really, really want to overrate it.......... and punish it simultaneously. Andrews and Dumouchel make this work by fully committing to the "plot" - covered in a dual mental illness (of varying functional degrees), impending doom, dislocation, male friendship (almost never in American movies convincingly), pre-pandemic isolation in the big city especially ............ The actors are willing to look foolish and looking foolish is part of the point too. The entire movie can be read as how dudes can go nuts without a girlfriend .......or at least a good job....... Dumouchel has a fantastic short scene where he talks to himself in closeup in the bathroom mirror before a date ("Don't be a bitch" he says) that I suspect has way more "life" in it than I see at the multiplex lately......later in a subway tunnel he acts exactly, unnecessarily like a bitch. Andrews and Dumouchel make you invest in the absurdity and deflect the easy criticism like "Why do you even care about either of these guys!?!" ...........well sometimes you just have to make the choice to do so, that's all......... particularly in what you see them do and see how they react to each other and others to them.......... The movie - and Andrews character - are a summation of our scary, conspiratorial time: What if the people you know and care about are losing it - politically, personally, ethically ........what's your responsibility to them.........to others you don't even know...........to yourself? The reaction to it requires a certain faith and a certain POV too - the exact ending of the movie is bound to upset people who want a twist or something big to happen when something big kind of does happen but in a small way.......... and the twist may actually happen but it may happen 10 seconds after the movie ends .......though it says something that almost no one I know who has seen it - even thinks of "the possible twist" at all ...... That depends on one of your own Theories of Life too I guess ..........and depending on that POV it ends as one big "Meh"........... or it's just a badly written ending........or it's a beautiful hopeful ending ........or maybe a somber hopeless one .........the ending in this way is a lot like Oldboy (yeah, this is not as good, thanx)........which also depends on your worldview ...... and in both cases doesn't seem like a cheat...... Loved this and your writeup. For some reason I assumed this was a Benson/Moorhead movie and it's not unlike some of their stuff (it's better than Resolution, arguable with Something in the Dirt) and the relationship - old friends goofiness but verging mad - brought to mind The Mend (which I love but isn't horror). Besides the literal buzzing, the movie itself has a buzz, a rare no-budget ingredient of immediacy and having small moments feel bigger and intense and specifically frightening. (In the Dark maybe? for an example with a budget It Follows!) Just the shadows over faces, the backs of heads, what's on the rug around the corner... These moments shouldn't carry such eerie tension but do. Props to the one-man-band who made it, Perry Blackshear....I believe he was his own crew, nobody else! Also it never occurred to me while watching that MacLeod Andrews wasn't an actor...Wish he was in more movies, he's a natural and great when it matters. Like in one of my fav moments (that starts up the whole great last act)..... worth watching the movie just for this moment from the back of the car.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 2, 2023 6:38:22 GMT
Michael Fassbender in The Killer (2023)There is an idea in Rock music - usually it revolves around the early records by The Ramones - that says the best music eliminates anything extraneous ......the simpler it is, the better it is: take away as much that is ornamental as possible from the framework of the construction. Michael Fassbender won't be nominated for one award - not one I bet - yet so much goes into a performance that appears to remove all extraneous touches. I called it a "tense slacker" in The Killer review thread......and everything he conveys in this flat, direct carefully conceived way is kind of perfect........as I also said in that thread "funny without generating laughs, a love story without kissing" Fassbender never blinks - lke never - it's downright creepy....but he notces everything.........and so do you. Like Greta Lee in Past Lives and Lily Gladstone in KotFM - Fassbender - disarmingly, blackly comic and witty in a deadpan way - is giving a performance of what he doesn't do - he doesn't raise his voice.....he doesn't lose the tone or manner - pose, or strut - he drains the film of acting bravado and macho posturing........and this is a film about killing ....... : One of the most specific, most maddeningly restrained performances - in combination with how he has been directed to play it - by a big time actor that you will ever see........and there is a scene in this movie - a heavy duty actors scene that he may steal just by listening.......
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 2, 2023 11:16:26 GMT
David Dastmalchian in Late Night With The Devil (2023)Mattsby , cheesecake , Tommen_Saperstein , @horrorfans etc. My fave horror film this year I think ....... This may not be streaming yet (?) but it totally should be for Halloween.......this is a GREAT idea for a horror movie even though THIS horror movie isn't that scary itself .........it is instead creepy and sharp with a couple jolts but also in its Rupert Pupkin satire mixed with horror in a kind of Faustian pact with various devils......... This is actually much better as a movie than Talk To Me is ......and it's got more on its mind too including the 1970s, and 70s celebrity culture and the weird detours of "yeah this REALLY happened" (it didn't but it totally could have!) A lot of fun and if they wanted to play it darker and more specific could have a horror classic....... maybe will show up on Shudder or something........definitely worth seeing when it does........Dastmalchian is marvelous in this part - a perfect mix of smug and desperate ......and how the camera captures his "act" Yup, ^ showing up on Shudder .......... IFC Films and Shudder have acquired the rights to Image Nation Abu Dhabi and Spooky Pictures’ “Late Night With the Devil,” covering North America, the United Kingdom and Ireland. The supernatural horror will also stream on Shudder at a later date. variety.com/2023/film/news/ifc-shudder-late-night-with-the-devil-david-dastmalchian-1235776355/
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 5, 2023 9:30:23 GMT
Gail Russell in The Uninvited (1944) - rewatchA fascinating performance in a fascinating Hollywood horror - well acted all the way down the cast from Ray Milland to Cornelia Otis Skinner (who maybe steals the film tbh). But Russell is so sttiking here - lovely - almost impossibly so - open, guileless .......and particularly vulnerable and quivering.....in real life she had her own ghosts but if you've never seen The Uninvited its almost impossible not yo see it and ask "Who is this actress?"........one of the sadder Hollywood stories and her state in the movie - is like her apparent state in real life........very much in need of help.......
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Nov 5, 2023 13:10:05 GMT
Sandra Huller in Anatomy of a Fall. Wide range of emotions and a lot going on under the surface. Often playing one emotions while trying to hide another. Manages to not come off unlikable but still ambiguous enough to question if she’s capable of murder.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Nov 7, 2023 19:12:42 GMT
Jason Patric in After Dark, My Sweet (1990). Really great turn here playing so many different emotions. Damaged, unhinged, paranoid, unpredictable and looking easily manipulable while not showing his hand.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 10, 2023 21:54:43 GMT
Emma Stone in The CurseA kind of livewire control freak masquerading as a laid back cool chick - Emma Stone does some marvelously quirky acting here often without speaking (because she doesn't want to be recorded - get it? Or um, she's not sure she isn't being hit on AND doesn't want to get recorded). Her sexuality is HIGHLY on display here and so is her passive-agressive ball-busting which comes out when something - anything - spins just outside her sphere of control.......Stone is doing a kind of acting that you see Cate Blanchett often do - not quite comic, not really dramatic........... but satiric........and like Blanchett you start to wonder what it is she can't pull off tbh.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 11, 2023 12:47:52 GMT
Katya Paskaleva in Koziyat rog (The Goat Horn) (1972) - rewatchidioticbunny and themoviesinner (especially) have mentioned this bleak, devastating movie but I don't think it is widely seen on MAR - and it absolutely should be. A sort of a more brutal The Virgin Spring - this film is very much - in a way - a kind of pure cinema in how it relies on image and not text mostly.....it's overwhelming really Paskaleva's face and her presence is not only greatish here - she's absolutely, heartbreakingly believable....... I hadn't seen this in quite a while and it still packs a wallop
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 14, 2023 7:56:47 GMT
Nicolas Cage in Dream Scenario (2023)A film about celebrity, cancel culture and that mentions in passing specifically Jordan Peterson (I like him), Tucker Carlson (interesting when he talks economics), Barack Obama (great 1st term, his 2nd created Trump)......how you feel about them and how you feel about my perceptions of them - will go a long way in how much goodwill you extend to this baby Kafka / Tar. Not nearly as funny as the trailer - this movie splits at the half way point into something far less amusing and turns into something heavy handed and like a Horror .......but Cage is sensational here: The first half you could imagine Tom Hanks playing.......the 2nd half not so much.......and Cage - the most daring American actor of his generation (give or take Willem Dafoe) suggests he'd really like to be acting out what others see in their dreams. A performance not just that suggests self loathing but rather is in several ways about it. Mixed bag movie but exceedingly well-played - Cage is fully invested and sells this shaky premise which has a lot of interesting things to say but not always in a way that translates into a satisfying whole "movie" experience.....
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Post by stabcaesar on Nov 19, 2023 6:54:55 GMT
LOVE
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Nikan
Based
Posts: 3,212
Likes: 1,596
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Post by Nikan on Nov 19, 2023 20:44:25 GMT
This MF: Shotout to pretty much everyone who supported him and his insane decision too, including Miguel Ángel Fuentes, Paul Hittscher, José Lewgoy and of course Cardinale.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 20, 2023 17:09:10 GMT
Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman in May December (2023)Extremely well-played by the 2 leads who raise this to Todd Haynes' intent and above it's trash roots by playing TO its trash roots and not avoiding them (it's the Persona of trash)......very stylized performances that harken back to Haynes' Douglas Sirk infatuation(s) and he uses his stars to a disarming effect (and his score too, that piano!). Like The Curse this is about uncomfortableness - in your life and others and it makes the audience uncomfortable too. There is a lovely scene in this movie where Moore puts make-up on Portman that is a kind of genius actor give and take about how to convey a simmering tension - and not all of it is sexual btw - artifice vs. reality and that thing I've talked about of actors "interfering" with another actors space. Very few recent movies use mirrors, reflections - heck sunglasses (on BOTH characters near the end) so deftly...... Good stuff......worth a watch.......this is a particularly great role for Moore and would have been a great role for Kidman btw for all you KIdman obsessed-lunatics out there......tell me she wouldn't be have liked to play this!
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Post by TylerDeneuve on Nov 20, 2023 17:12:18 GMT
Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman in May December (2023)Yeah... this film is brilliant. It's up there with Haynes' best. Did you also enjoy Charles Melton's performance?
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 20, 2023 17:20:04 GMT
Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman in May December (2023)Yeah... this film is brilliant. It's up there with Haynes' best. Did you also enjoy Charles Melton's performance? Quite good and it's also in keeping with Haynes' ideas on the material - I don't want to say that it's "sensitive" but it is........ and is played as such and somewhat unexpectedly too ..............the movie kind of works because it doesn't treat Melton as secondary to the stars.......the character could easily have been marginalized and isn't..............the film is smarter than you would think just by the synopsis of the movie really
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 21, 2023 21:30:17 GMT
Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman in May December (2023)Extremely well-played by the 2 leads who raise this to Todd Haynes' intent and above it's trash roots by playing TO its trash roots and not avoiding them (it's the Persona of trash)......very stylized performances that harken back to Haynes' Douglas Sirk infatuation(s) and he uses his stars to a disarming effect (and his score too, that piano!). Like The Curse this is about uncomfortableness - in your life and others and it makes the audience uncomfortable too. There is a lovely scene in this movie where Moore puts make-up on Portman that is a kind of genius actor give and take about how to convey a simmering tension - and not all of it is sexual btw - artifice vs. reality and that thing I've talked about of actors "interfering" with another actors space. Very few recent movies use mirrors, reflections - heck sunglasses (on BOTH characters near the end) so deftly...... Good stuff......worth a watch.......this is a particularly great role for Moore and would have been a great role for Kidman btw for all you KIdman obsessed-lunatics out there......tell me she wouldn't be have liked to play this! I post this yesterday and today Kidman is announced in something (Babygirl) sort of similar but as a genre pic..........she would have loved to play the Moore role I'm sure ^ ............ "Good stuff......worth a watch.......this is a particularly great role for Moore and would have been a great role for Kidman btw for all you KIdman obsessed-lunatics out there......tell me she wouldn't be have liked to play this! "Babygirl An erotic thriller. A career woman in her 40s has an affair with a 21-year-old intern. Romy has a beautiful family (including her loving husband Jacob) and a thriving business - she is adored (and sometimes feared) by all. But when empathetic young intern Samuel (Dickinson) comes to work at her company, Romy's outward facade of perfection is about to implode.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Nov 22, 2023 2:16:51 GMT
Barry Keoghan in Saltburn. Unstable, obsessive, self-conscious, loathing, envious, calculating and so much more. Playing every scene on two levels, the facade he puts on and what he’s trying to hide underneath. And some truly, let’s say, unique erotic scenes.
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Post by ibbi on Nov 22, 2023 20:14:09 GMT
I don't know that I consider the whole thing GREAT, but as it's anniversary day, I'm shouting out Kevin Costner during the Donald Sutherland section of JFK. That guy is so gripped and enthralled by all he hears. I love it. Special shoutout to the bit where he's scribbling in his notepad.
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avnermoriarti
Badass
Friends say I’ve changed. They’re right.
Posts: 2,394
Likes: 1,274
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Post by avnermoriarti on Nov 23, 2023 6:06:38 GMT
A foursome and a threesome.
Afire and About Dry Grasses. Is nice to see millenials being selfcentered, judgemental and question their place and contribution to the world not embellished in a pictoresque world or dive into the typical indulgence and misery. Is great to see Christian Petzold and Nuri Bilge Ceylan bring their focus to a different generation and bring that sort of questioning that I at least, haven't seen all that much in movies. Very much could be the actors' roles of their lifes and they're all so at ease in their directors's particular sensibilities. Kind of funny that both movies are built up as poisoned comedies escalating on tension to finally land to more sincere places despite all the layers of fiction that are on display at that point. Anyways, beautiful performances all around, Merve Dizdar winning Best Actress in Cannes is an inspiring choice as the official selection had more obvious, irressistible options.
AFIRE: Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel and Enno Trebs ( wanna feel old? he's one of the kids from The White Ribbon )
ABOUT DRY GRASSES: Deniz Celiloglu, Merve Dizdar, Musab Ekici
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 23, 2023 9:21:25 GMT
Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall (2023)An unquestionably great performance in a very talky, and I'd say quite overrated piece of female-male marriage dynamics....Hüller comes up with so many almost imperceptible actor nuances - you want the movie to be rearranged in some way to see if you can "catch" her being "actor-ish".......... Her demeanor in this film - a kind of placid resolve and precise (especially facial) control is a little disarming .......in the scene where she's becomining somewhat flustered in court (the "plundering" scene, removes her jacket) she almost invents an unactorly new language - of open directness of something quite certain but in a way that seems like she has not thought of with any guile or duplicity. To watch her here is to wonder who else could have played this........like this........
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Post by Mattsby on Nov 28, 2023 4:48:01 GMT
John Malkovich in True West (1984)Gary Sinise was a teenager when he co-founded Chicago’s great Steppenwolf Theatre Company. He directs and costars here in a production that must’ve bulldozed audiences - it went to off-broadway for 762 performances. Sinise’s screenwriter is heartbreaking - a tantrummy pigeon, he’s like a poker player who folds before he even looks at the cards - but it’s Malkovich, as his haggard brother, who takes over like a kaiju in some old kitchen. He’s another one of Sam Shepard’s pan-seared lost souls, fresh in from a fugue state, some drunken timeout in the desert. He’s too smart to lose a game we presume he’s won before - reversing his own contempt into a sort of transmittable bedlam - he knows precisely which blocks to push to collapse the whole jenga of his brother. There’s a cowlicked Pinter to it - the brotherly tormenters and broken toasters of The Caretaker, for example. And here, appliances will be had. “There’s gonna be a general lack of toast in the neighborhood this morning... many unhappy bewildered breakfast faces,” goes one of the play’s best lines. Malkovich makes mess feel dangerous - he’s all loose-limbed with a lisp (he sounds incredibly unlike himself, actually) and always fixing his clothes, lumbering, sickly. Yet he never lets weakness show on him, he could be poetic (like his Kirk Douglas monologue) but he’s too good at belittling. He’s the vinegaroon to Sinise’s centipede, playing out their beercan Cain and Abel. There’s something to the Malkovich perf where even though I didn’t see these other guys perform it…. thru him you can image the belly-scratching aloofness of John C Reilly, the intimidating intellect of PSH, the teasing disbelief of Ethan Hawke. Etc. Grateful for these PBS filmed plays that are sometimes accidentally Altmanesque - this one isn’t a stage recording like (all-timer perf) JEJ in Paul Robeson - more like a Play for Today (Abigail’s Party or something).
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 2, 2023 22:44:11 GMT
Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman in May December (2023)Extremely well-played by the 2 leads who raise this to Todd Haynes' intent and above it's trash roots by playing TO its trash roots and not avoiding them (it's the Persona of trash)......very stylized performances that harken back to Haynes' Douglas Sirk infatuation(s) and he uses his stars to a disarming effect (and his score too, that piano!). Like The Curse this is about uncomfortableness - in your life and others and it makes the audience uncomfortable too. There is a lovely scene in this movie where Moore puts make-up on Portman that is a kind of genius actor give and take about how to convey a simmering tension - and not all of it is sexual btw - artifice vs. reality and that thing I've talked about of actors "interfering" with another actors space. Very few recent movies use mirrors, reflections - heck sunglasses (on BOTH characters near the end) so deftly...... Good stuff......worth a watch.......this is a particularly great role for Moore and would have been a great role for Kidman btw for all you KIdman obsessed-lunatics out there......tell me she wouldn't be have liked to play this! Here's Haynes breaking down the scene I mentioned above talks the mirrors and tension ("the space" etc) - this is from yesterday btw:
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