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Post by stephen on Oct 29, 2019 23:01:40 GMT
In the wake of the magnificent Dafoe/Pattinson combo, it should not be overlooked that there is an equally mighty match-up available for a good October viewing right now. Aisling Franciosi's wronged woman hellbent on vengeance is searing in her intensity, and Kent frames her almost like a horror-movie villain at times, with her single-minded fury driving her through much of the story. But it's Baykali Ganambarr's soulful, melancholy turn as Billy which tempers Aisling's Clare, grounds her, keeps her on the path. If Dafoe and Pattinson were two mighty brawlers slugging it out in a cramped ring for ten rounds, what Franciosi and Ganambarr do is tantamount to ballet: graceful, but still a bloody affair when you untie those shoes.
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 30, 2019 10:13:20 GMT
The single most underrated performance of the great Robert De Niro in his career and maybe the best Ed Harris performance period - the acting in Jacknife (1989) is a particular kind of triumph. The "big" scenes are all spectacular and yet some of the very best moments are in the casual interplay between them. When they are quiet they can disturb the balance of life by the chaos they are submerging. I've been watching a lot of the main players big films over the past couple months before eventually seeing The Irishman - this is one that really is quite special - and for De Niro a marvelous bookend/contrast to The Deer Hunter.
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Post by TerryMontana on Oct 30, 2019 10:17:13 GMT
The single most underrated performance of the great Robert De Niro in his career and maybe the best Ed Harris performance period - the acting in Jacknife (1989) is a particular kind of triumph. The "big" scenes are all spectacular and yet some of the very best moments are in the casual interplay between them. When they are quiet they can disturb the balance of life by the chaos they are submerging. I've been watching a lot of the main players big films over the past couple months before eventually seeing The Irishman - this is one that really is quite special - and for De Niro a marvelous bookend/contrast to The Deer Hunter. And overall a very underrated film.
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Post by bobbydpacino on Oct 30, 2019 16:40:33 GMT
Another great performance by De Niro that's criminally underrated imo
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 31, 2019 8:38:05 GMT
Mirosław Baka A Short Film About Killing - rewatchI think many would argue that this isn't a great performance but maybe a director sculpting the performance - that might be true - but it is no less gripping when it descends to violence and in that passages where he recounts his life and his sister - emotionally shattering.
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Post by isabelaolive on Oct 31, 2019 13:28:25 GMT
Giulietta Masina in Nights of Cabiria and Al Pacino in The Godfather I and II. Giulietta's performance is amazing, charmingly natural, this was the first movie I watched with her and the first one from Fellini and I already want to watch their other movies together. Panico's performance on The Godfather is the best of his career, at least among the ones I've seen so far, he has overshadowed even Marlon Brando and he should have been nominated for Best Actor and Brando in supporting.
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Nov 2, 2019 15:10:03 GMT
Simone Signoret in Room at the Top - One of the most erotic, disconcerting performances of her time or any other time. World-weary, inviting, warm... but in one crucial scene the inner character reveals itself and we're given a taste of her intelligence, her wit, her startling repulsion in the face of mediocrity. "You're a timid soul, aren't you?" And she plays it all without the slightest hint of rage (the way a lesser actress might). You never know where she's going to take the scene. She's the real deal--full and alive and incomplete. Almost miraculous that a performance this modern and this great won an Oscar - she was up against Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey & Katharine Hepburn no less - and she lost the Globe and the NYFCC so she was by no means the favorite...
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Post by TerryMontana on Nov 3, 2019 13:47:18 GMT
Both of them but mostly Omar Sy. I wonder how come he didn't have some major Hollywood roles after that film. He only got some minor roles in an X-Men movie and Jurassic World.
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Post by Pavan on Nov 3, 2019 13:55:45 GMT
Penélope Cruz in Volver
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 4, 2019 10:18:39 GMT
Clémentine Amouroux and Catherine Rétoré, Messidor Re-watch Both of these actresses contribute supremely realistic performances in Alain Tanner's ahead of its time feminist classic. There is not a moment of contrivance or speechifying or artifice - the acting and the film gain an uneasy, disturbing and unsettling calm - the environment both natural and personal is a threat.
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Nov 4, 2019 20:35:42 GMT
Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold in Anne of a Thousand Days - Burton's always great but I found Bujold particularly spellbinding here - an indomitable version of Anne Boleyn. Impossible to pin down, she keeps you guessing all the way through, and in the final scenes she really makes the movie come alive. I'd seen her in De Palma's Obsession and you could immediately tell she was a movie star (she has a fascinating presence) but she's just terrific in Anne.
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Post by Mattsby on Nov 4, 2019 20:37:44 GMT
I've owned a VHS of Pascali's Island (1988) forever but never got around to it - watched it last night but on the very underrated streamer Tubi. Ben Kingsley is nearly great in this..... The movie is essentially about - what a great LA Times review calls - "elegant futility" and a deep crisis of purpose and feeling in Kingsley's adrift Ottoman Empire spy, who is enamored by two outsiders (Charles Dance, Helen Mirren) on a beautiful little Greek island where he doubles as a translator. Kingsley sort of traps himself into despair - lost and tragically paused in his post - he says, "There's nothing for me now but to wait" - he only pretends to be disarming, he carries on as the local helpful hobnob, but he's insecure, and intensely curious. It's a very forlorn perf, by the end....
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 5, 2019 9:25:47 GMT
Russell Crowe, Al Pacino, Christopher Plummer - The Insider (1999) - rewatchI watched this for the first time in a while because today, November 5th, is the 20th anniversary of its release. One of the great American films of the last 20 years and one of the best about journalism, journalistic ethics and compromise. Plummer, Pacino and especially Crowe in the performance of his life are pitch perfect and remarkably generous to each other too - each actor gives the other something to work with and doesn't try to steal the show or show anybody up.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 6, 2019 9:11:09 GMT
Denzel Washington, Flight (re-watch)One of Washington's very best turns and among the most complicated in his filmography too - subjugating his (often limiting) Joe Cool persona but also inverting it to great effect. Many scenes here involve his performance within a performance (ie he's maybe drunk but acting convincingly sober) and two passages - one at a funeral, the other at a hospital are real standouts.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 7, 2019 12:05:11 GMT
Peter O'Toole - The Stunt ManGreatly conceived and executed high wire performance by the acting genius - one of his messianic/satanic dual edged roles (he actually has a few) where he enlivens what would be an absolutely nothing movie - much like his character does in the movie within a movie here - it's quite meta and complex. Take Peter O'Toole out of this film and you have a small time botch no one would look twice at - with him in it, you wonder for days about O'Toole - his characters name (sinister "Eli Cross"), his purposes or not, and his acting work specifically ...it's a grand master's grand trick.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Nov 8, 2019 4:36:11 GMT
John Mills in The Family Way (1966) it's strange saying I love John Mills when I've seen so little of his work. He was prolific all throughout the 30s, 40s and 50s but I'm only familiar with some of his 60s output, and I haven't even seen his Oscar winning performance (which I understand is pretty divisive), but fuck it, I'm going to say it. I love John Mills. I have three reasons: Tunes of Glory, The Chalk Garden, and The Family Way, which I just finished. Watch 'em! In The Family Way, he plays Ezra Fitton (pictured below, with daughter Hayley Mills on the right), the working class Lancashire father of two sons, one in a struggling and unconsumated marriage. On that note, lots of rumors swirl around the small town, some of them concerning the son's sexuality (disproved by the by), which in turn brings to the father's mind his own "friendship" with a schoolmate named Billy who disappeared years ago, and breaks down his defenses to reveal a pained and longing soul. The Family Way also features Hayley Mills, Hywell Bennett, and Marjorie Rhodes. John Mills is actually more of a supporting player and the film largely focuses on the struggles of the young newlyweds in finding their own home and consummating their marriage, but what really connected with me was how the town's gossip forces the father to confront his own complicated past, uncovering old wounds that never quite healed. It's in between those [latently homosexual] lines that the film shines brightest, with John Mills in the epicenter. The character required so much range--crotchety but endearing, drunken, immature and self-involved, before giving way to self-reflective sorrow and longing when he gets lost in the distant past, and John Mills delivered. A beautiful, sensitive, multilayered and fully-bodied characterization of conflicted working class manhood. Mills is a treasure.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 8, 2019 9:39:23 GMT
Barbara Bel Geddes - Caught (1949) This is an actress that I kind of can't stand - I often make fun of her incessant, perky annoyance in Vertigo and I love that film - but here opposite Robert Ryan and James Mason she's a guileless wonder. The film directed by Max Ophuls (!) is an almost hilarious female role of tragedies to endure yet she plays it all unassuming and straight which makes her actual motivations that much darker and somehow far more believable - she's on the surface blissfully unaware which pushes towards film noir.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 9, 2019 13:09:08 GMT
Pacino/De Niro/Pesci - The IrishmanNot merely amazing performances but performances which are constantly changing and refracting over the course of the film and then once the film ends and you think back on them. You'd be hard pressed to name 3 performances on this level that are also so dependent on the actors playing them and how they depend on each other for their power.
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 10, 2019 7:00:26 GMT
Marcello Mastroianni - The Organizer (1963)A magnificent, and completely modern feeling performance - quite funny but etched with distinctly serious overtones - he plays the big scenes of speechifying (as a professor/labor organizer) in a grand charismatic way and the smaller scenes in a subtle, humanistic and carefully orchestrated way. At times here he evokes Raul Julia in his appearance and the forthcoming next generation of America actors - you could picture Dustin Hoffman in the US giving this same kind of tragic comic turn even.
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Nov 10, 2019 18:35:31 GMT
Jack Lemmon in Missing - Tremendously powerful and you only realize it towards the end - his awakening, his sense of futility. Works marvellously with (the great) Sissy Spacek. And it's rare for Costa-Gavras in that the performance essentially embodies the film.
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Post by JangoB on Nov 11, 2019 11:35:08 GMT
In the wonderful John Sayles movie "Passion Fish" every performance, even if it's a minute long, is fantastic. And the main duo of Mary McDonnell and Alfre Woodard...they're simply sublime. The humor, the wit, the struggle, the warmth, the absolutely human connection they share. What a pair! And I can't leave this without mentioning the terrific Nancy Mette and her hilarious 'anal probe' monologue - a truly great scene stealer!
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Nov 11, 2019 23:21:41 GMT
Anne Bancroft & Meg Tilly in Agnes of God - The movie is a complete mediocrity and yet it touches on fascinating subjects (psychology vs. spirituality; the link between holiness and horror that should be the final paradox of the film). And it's only Bancroft and Tilly who are willing to go there - the director is at a complete loss (and so is Jane Fonda tbh).
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Post by pacinoyes on Nov 12, 2019 11:07:13 GMT
François Cluzet and Guillaume Depardieu - Les apprentis (1995) - re-watchHadn't watched this in a long time and it completely holds up - some of the outright most painfully funny (darkly comic) scenes in modern cinema. When you re-watch it, you can marvel at the behavioral depth of these characters and see it in another way. You also feel very sad as this co-stars, in excellent form, not only the tragic Guillaume Depardieu but also the sadly missed (and also tragic) Marie Trintignant. Cluzet, the French Dustin Hoffman, gives a performance that is a kind of masterclass - full of humor, sadness and almost unspeakably on-point truths. The way he carries himself physically alone is kind of brilliant - suffering the weight of just walking around. Depardieu plays a crucial role - without him you'd have no balance or reason to watch, and on re-watches you can tilt the dialog (which is fantastic) through his POV too.
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Post by Viced on Nov 12, 2019 21:15:38 GMT
Vittorio Gassman in Scent of a WomanGassman really had a certain electricity on screen in a way that not many others have... and he's got room for even more scenery to chew up when going against more subdued co-leads like in this and Il Sorpasso. But unlike the masterpiece Il Sorpasso, this film kind of let down his performance. After he's hilarious and dynamic in the first hour or so, I feel like he became damn-near a side character once they got to Naples! There's really only one or two moments where the facade is lifted and we see what he's really feeling. Of course he's excellent in those moments, but the movie really should have put more of the focus on him instead of the mostly boring kid.
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Post by Mattsby on Nov 12, 2019 23:04:50 GMT
Juliette Lewis in That Night (1992) Not a good movie, 5.5 or 6/10 - it has some pre-Virgin Suicides ideas and POV but everything especially with the kids is awkward and forced. Except for Juliette Lewis - in what's pretty much a star perf. She filmed Cape Fear, then Husbands & Wives, then this, then Kalifornia, and so on. An exceptional stretch in that period and she's quickly rising on my favorite actresses list. So unlike the others this part is a girl-next-door knockout, and she's very lovely and wonderful and emotionally moving. Other than having a sexy side, she has a sweet side, a rebellious side, and a grounded, mature awareness of herself and situation too, never tipping too much in one direction, carrying the conflict and heart of the pic...
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