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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 3, 2023 13:15:05 GMT
Thomasin McKenzie and to a lesser extent Anne Hathaway in Eileen (2023) -When's the last time you saw a female masturbating - aggressively aware of the sounds and smells btw - and dreaming of being taken by a guy - forcefully, without consent - in a (non-porn) film? Yeah, I can't remember either in our age of dumbfnck-ism and this movie would get a slight thumbs-up JUST for that......but more to the point: In the great noir book and film After Dark, My Sweet (1990) there's a line where Jason Patric says - famously, crucially "What's Going To Happen To You?".....well, Eileen - the book - wasn't written by Jim Thompson but it has the same kind of ominous intonations when Eileen's father says to her "Where Are You Going?" A slow fuse with NO big bang - not sexual or otherwise - NO payoff - Eileen is a kind of feminist noir (almost never works, and I've seen Bound thanx) but with enough dark shadings about motherhood, marriage, sexuality, rights of passage and um, alcoholism to work slightly. It is a lesser, and less ornate step-child of Stoker (2013)The implied, potential lesbianish-ism between Hathaway (an older version of Eileen's younger self) and McKenzie is quite hot in a benign way and McKenzie is quite good at suggesting all kinds of duplicity - when Hathaway uses her name, and assigns her, Hathaway's or how she can't help coughing when trying to smoke........her trip to the bathroom is a marvelous piece of non-vanity type acting....and is more "real" than any bathroom scene you can think of I'd say..... She'll get there - to all possible destinations - one day...........most people will think this movie isn't about anything .......but it is.....it's just too subtle......but that's what keeps the movie from being great.......it doesn't stop it from being pretty good for 90 minutes..... About as hot as this flirtatious only movie gets......not exactly Lily Labeau - Lily Carter in Wasteland (2012) level is it? - but much hotter than most anything else in the movies in its own PG way ......
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Nikan
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Post by Nikan on Dec 4, 2023 10:57:07 GMT
David Wenham in The Boys (1998)... I could hardly look away.
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 8, 2023 12:38:13 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..... Episode 5 is a GREAT Emma Stone performance - I would rank her work here with her film work actually in a weird way - it is basically her Emmy reel all the way through.........she's been ace in every episodes but in Episode 5 she hits a new peak
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 9, 2023 7:26:35 GMT
Emma Stone (yet again) ^ in Poor Things (2023)An instant classic performance by the rightful winner of this years Oscar but last year's rightful winner lost -- so who knows? Stone is doing a kind of broadly conceived and executed type of acting that must have been exhausting - it's exhausting to even talk about: Incorporating silent film poses (she suggests Elsa Lanchester sure, but also Gloria Swanson on Flibanserin), an insane amount of physical acting - so much so she arrives at using her body like a new species.........and vocal intonations that are - by themselves inspired. How all of this coalesces into somethng grand - and um, murderous - and unforgettable is an acting marvel. I would guess many actors - from Johnny Depp to Jim Carrey and many less obvious ones are in awe of the invention and playfulness on display here. I will never forget how she pronounces her own name for one thing and the catalog of facial tics and winning choices she incorporates in Poor Things........along with The Curse this is an all-timer acting one-two punch. Side note: Someone should start a thread about how Emma Stone uses her sexuality (or "whoring" as the film charmingly puts it ) she is remarkable in how she presents it ........and when she wants....... witholds it.
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 11, 2023 10:53:57 GMT
Gary Oldman in Slow Horses (Season 3)By far the best season so far and so good it makes me think the first 2 seasons were really better than I thought in how they set up where it is now - and episode 4 is this week ffs. This may be THE role of Oldman's later career - it fits him like a rumpled overcoat and half eaten food......he slips into this role in a wonderfully comfortable way .......it is - in Season 3 anyway - great fun for him and the audience .....
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 17, 2023 22:40:10 GMT
Shima Iwashita in Portrait of Chieko 1967 - rewatchcranly, Javi, Mattsby, themoviesinner, TylerDeneuveIwashita is an actress I have raved in The Demon (in this thread) (1978) - an incredibly bleak more modern film - and she is mesmerizing here again in a delicately calibrated and precise portrayal.....that is as sympathetic as The Demon is monstrous. This movie has popped up on rarefilmm - I don't think it's been discussed on here before ......highly recommended and insanely underseen - very few ratings on any review site I have come across......
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 19, 2023 2:50:28 GMT
Diane Morgan in Cunk on Christmas (2016) - rewatch - It's the time of the year after all......there are two kinds of people: People who love Philomena Cunk and horrible unhappy people Hard hitting casual truths like "The church Wi-Fi isn't as good as Starbucks" .......and......"Santa Judges a child's goodness based on parental income"..........indeed.....full episode below
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 22, 2023 0:19:02 GMT
Dolores del Rio in La Otra (1946)Unforgettable dual role played with great facial expressions, an in over her head duplicity and pointed, too late resignation with a lot more romantic subtext than this genre usually delivers. This is a great noir performance and not of the cookie cutter kind but in the existential fatalism kind.......right up there with all the kind I like from the 40s - Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven, Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Jean Gillie in Decoy, Ann Savage in Detour, Joan Bennett in SCarlet Street........you know the rest of them.......
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SZilla
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Post by SZilla on Dec 26, 2023 17:41:42 GMT
William Bendix in The Blue Dahlia. A great, complicated performance that could've easily fallen into hammy territory, but Bendix (and the script itself) handles his character with a blend of both grace and tension. Bendix is one of those actors that should probably appear in that Great under-appreciated actors thread as well. and Anna Karina in The Nun. Heartbreaking performance. Maybe my all-time favorite from her.
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Post by stephen on Dec 27, 2023 15:47:55 GMT
Homicide: Life on the Street gave us many indelible villains, but perhaps their most notable was Erik Todd Dellums as the ruthless yet charismatic drug kingpin Luther Mahoney. Dellums's performance is so silk-smooth yet terrifying; I've seen him described as an unholy fusion of Prince and the Joker, and honestly, that's a spot-on description. Dellums even considered this role to be a career-killer, as it prevented him from getting cast in other crime dramas at that time, when character actors like him were showing up on all the police procedurals like Law and Order, and even Tom Fontana told him he couldn't envision him in Oz because he was so good as Mahoney. It's a shame, too, because Dellums's performance is one of the most calmly menacing portrayals of evil in television, and you can see where he was a definite forerunner to Marlo Stanfield in The Wire (albeit much more human, which made him even more terrifying in a way).
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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 30, 2023 20:01:51 GMT
Jeffrey Wright in American FictionOne of America's very best actors - particularly across mediums - in one of his best performances - and, crucially a movie star performance. We don't think of Jeffrey Wright as a "movie star" and yet - this performance: tough, sensitive, funny. smart, charming, at times physically threatening (when he is told to leave by his gf, when he decides to name the book "Fuck") and shockingly - at the service of his co-stars. Wright never dominates scenes like he has the right to them - he yields to Leslie Uggams, Erika Alexander, Sterling K. Brown - and yet in his yielding never once recedes.....not to his mother, brother, lover, sisters, friends, colleagues ......there's a lot more range here than you'd first think...... There's a great scene where Wright says he wants the book named "Fnck" where he points with his hand not holding the phone - to accentuate his point........he does that constantly - slight tics or underlines that layer his every choice......it takes less than 10 seconds in his first scene to know you are in the presence of a great actor - even if you didn't know Wright already: He calls on a student - and before calling on her cracks a self-deprecating smile ...which makes the next like "kick it off" resonate in an already defeated way........it's not exactly funny........or serious but it rings true ......so does the way he reacts to getting asked out for a drink.....or looks at his mother.....it's her scene but you also notice his gentleness too This is not only one of the best performances of 2023.......it's one of the most complete in its totality......
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 1, 2024 19:27:37 GMT
Jeon Do-yeon in Secret Sunshine (2007) - Rewatch An amazing endurance test performance that replicates the near unwatchable plot of a woman who bears an unreal (seriously, unreal) amount of tragedy and drifts towards religion which raises more doubts rather than comfort.......and leads her closer to despair than she was This film - by the director of a masterpiece - or at worst - a near one - Burning (2018) - is a masterpiece of a more exhausting nature......not only is the film tough to watch - it's tougher to watch because you anticipate the cruelties to come. Jeon Do-yeon - puts that into her acting - so she is neither a saint nor a mere victim casualty and every event sparks a reaction that seems authentic not a machination - she absorbs all the tragedy matter of factly with incremental cracks and without a hint of movie manipulation or actress false notes........when the end comes to some it will seem irresolute - maybe - but rather that mirror asks is she the sum of her tragedies or has that made her someone else now? Not for all tastes to say the least ........but if you don't see it or get it.......you will miss one of the most uncompromising films and performances of the 2000s.......maybe the best performance in a movie that's tough to watch I can think of.......
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avnermoriarti
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Friends say I’ve changed. They’re right.
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Post by avnermoriarti on Jan 10, 2024 7:04:36 GMT
Caleb Landry Jones in Dogman. I can't find a way to describe it to cover what he goes through but let's say he is in his Cage/Gallo moment and embrace the material he has on his hands and commits to it, if the movie is an absurd trip he finds a way to make it coherent. The movie itself put on my mind Walter Hill's The Assignment and not for plot but nature / execution of the film, hiding a psycological drama within the confines of a b movie and with a performer finding the right tone to sell it (in that case, Sigourney Weaver).
Could've been a nice Volpi Cup winner so only the highly coveted Bear was left for him to win... sad
I could picture him singing Je Ne Regrette Rien after what he went through.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Jan 10, 2024 8:35:50 GMT
Kyle Gallner in The Passenger. Fantastic.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 10, 2024 13:08:24 GMT
Kyle Gallner in The Passenger. Fantastic. As good (or better) as anybody who will be nominated for Best Actor this year tbh - I've been waiting like literally months for it to get some heat on this board ffs ........also reminds me of a lot of performances from the 1970s which starts one way - in the background - and changes multiple times as the movie progresses
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Post by stabcaesar on Jan 10, 2024 13:22:50 GMT
LOVE
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Jan 10, 2024 14:24:12 GMT
Kyle Gallner in The Passenger. Fantastic. As good (or better) as anybody who will be nominated for Best Actor this year tbh - I've been waiting like literally months for it to get some heat on this board ffs ........also reminds me of a lot of performances from the 1970s which starts one way - in the background - and changes multiple times as the movie progresses Saw this yesterday and echo both of you on how great he was. Didn’t think the movie itself worked fully overall (although it had some truly great and tense scenes within it), but he always kept me engaged.
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Jan 16, 2024 6:46:19 GMT
David Thewlis in Naked (1993) – rewatch Been a while since I’ve seen this (probably my favorite Leigh film), and on first watch I don’t think I realized just how incredible Thewlis is here... one of the best performances of the 90s. A searing portrayal of spiritual despair and the paralyzing effect of curdled intellect. He manages the surprising feat of making this despicable character somehow likeable – he’s funny, charming, and playful (it’s easy to see what it is about him that makes women drawn to him) but also a childish, obnoxious, self-destructive, self-loathing loose cannon who behaves like he’s about to jump out of his own skin. He has an insatiable need to be listened to (but is incapable of listening), imposing his intellect on people condescendingly to make himself feel good. He’s a raging misanthrope while simultaneously intensely curious about people he encounters and the world around him, as if he’s endlessly searching for a reason to quell his despair... but continues to be disappointed.
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Jan 28, 2024 23:33:28 GMT
Penélope Cruz, Ferrari - Blown away. I expect quality from Cruz but the highest quality is usually reserved for her Spanish and Italian work. This may be her first great dramatic triumph in English - officially a great actress in 3 languages now. I like how she teases Driver, shoots him, then casually goes to get coffee or whatever - emotional normalcy, Italian style. A scene where she visits her son's tomb is key - a blank face becoming complicated, then peaceful? But it's peace of a kind you never want to see, peace from the underworld. All through the film she's weaving, everything in the performance a mixture of anticipation and possibility; if Driver gambles with life and speed, Cruz deals in pain and death (always in the shadows). Her final scene may be her peak as an actress to date - I won't spoil it, but it's a game-changer. Mann's filmography has always been about the masculine drive and the action-driven gamble (to live or to die). But of course his former movies never had a character like Laura or an actress like Penelope. In the great last scene, the widow's gamble, the female gamble makes short work of the man's - a man could never have conceived it. Cruz sits us down and stoically gives us the facts (no yelling, no tears, no pathos, no cheap appeal to feminism): the facts of the dignity of her grief and the one thing she hopes Driver's character will honor, which amounts to an erasure of the Ferrari name in the future. She stops speaking, still unblinking, and the camera stays with those dark eyes of hers. She gives texture to a woman for whom the future just means an extension of the past - more death. And does it in Cruz's own terms: on a human, not a cartoon level. This woman is no blind hater, and she doesn't hold wanton grudges. You could meet a Laura in any Italian street. A+ display of acting and my favorite female of 2023 so far - Academy, what have you done?
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Post by DeepArcher on Feb 3, 2024 19:24:49 GMT
Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall. I know she's Oscar-nominated and has been widely acclaimed, but it still feels to me like this performance has somehow been underrated (edit: lmao, turns out I'm like the fourth person to mention her in this thread, guess I missed all those!). Going into the movie, I was completely unprepared for how much she would floor me. She's given an impossible task in playing a character whose chief characteristic is being private and unknowable, and exploring what happens when such a deliberate enigma finds herself thrust into a very public spotlight with every minute detail of her life suddenly put under intense scrutiny. Hüller plays the character as cold and nurturing, funny and tragic, amorous and repressed all at once; in much the way the film itself excels at the type of wishy-washy tonal hodgepodge that I increasingly find exhausting, but here totally works with such a high degree of command and confidence. She has several moments where the facade collapses and gives way to an intense emotional breakdown (getting parmesan out of the fridge, in the car, etc.) that could so easily be histrionic or hammy in another actor's hands, but Hüller makes those moments totally devastating, not least of all because they're so often fleeting (she can switch back to composure just as quickly) and are genuinely sudden instead of telegraphed from a mile away. And while I think that: a.) the movie isn't as ambiguous as many have made it out to be, and b.) the ambiguity isn't exactly the "point" of the movie, Hüller has a handful of moments where it's impossible to read her motivations, or where her behavior can invite multiple interpretations, that it's easy to understand why the movie has had such a Rorschach like effect on audiences. And all of that's not even to mention the impressive multilingual gymnastics and the effect it has on how we perceive the character; the moment in the courtroom where she defiantly switches to English, because the complexity of what she has to express can't possibly be conveyed in a language she doesn't have mastery of, shows such striking vulnerability. Honestly hard for me to pick between her, Gladstone, and Murphy for my performance of the year, but I really can't remember the last time one year had a trio that struck me the way each of those three has.
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Archie
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Eraserhead son or Inland Empire daughter?
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Post by Archie on Feb 3, 2024 22:45:33 GMT
James Stewart in the third act of Vertigo is pure nightmare fuel. Why is this not considered one of the most terrifying performances of all time?
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Post by stabcaesar on Feb 4, 2024 16:05:48 GMT
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Post by stabcaesar on Feb 6, 2024 18:34:58 GMT
Ana Torrent in Close Your Eyes I got hooked once her monologue around 1/4 into the film begins. Such a quiet, hyptonising, exquisite performance.
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Post by MsMovieStar on Feb 12, 2024 10:25:17 GMT
Oh honeys, We often talk about Huppert & Deneuve but Sandrine Bonnaire's work is also pretty good!
She is excellent as the mother in L'Événement.
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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 15, 2024 14:33:44 GMT
Holly Hunter - Thirteen (rewatch)Amazing in its energy, fatigue, physicality, exasperation......I've seen this a million times and each time Im always struck by how immediate and on-point real Hunter is.......and how she doesn't hide behind but rather lays it all out ........a fierce kind of acting
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