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Post by jakesully on Apr 28, 2018 22:15:29 GMT
As an actor? as a director? Think he has at least one more Oscar worthy performance in him? He's definitely a pulverizing figure. The last film I saw him in was The Gunman and well, it sucked big time and was panned by audiences/critics alike (a mercenary turned charity worker ? ). But not all is lost with Penn. He still has that Mel Gibson collab thats currently in post production (The Professor and the Madman ) . Could be really good we shall see. Anyways, I'm a fan. My fav Penn performances would be... Dead Man Walking At Close Range Carlito's Way U-Turn Fast Times Sweet & Lowdown MILK The Game
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Post by Deleted on Apr 28, 2018 22:23:26 GMT
Solid actor but seems like a pretentious and obnoxious dickbag as a person.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Apr 28, 2018 22:25:40 GMT
Undeniably strong actor even if he is a piece of shit IRL. Doesn't get much better than Milk and Dead Man Walking. Carlito's Way is the only one I didn't care for.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Apr 28, 2018 22:26:34 GMT
Dude got buff.
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Post by thomasjerome on Apr 28, 2018 22:30:08 GMT
He's a hit or miss. Sometimes he overacts to the most annoying level possible, but then there are impressive performances as well, say "Bad Boys", "Falcon and the Snowman" and "Dead Man Walking". His turn in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" is still iconic as ever, and he had been part of some of my favorite films ("U Turn" and his collaborations with De Palma).
As a director, he's fine I suppose. He has made one great film for sure ("The Pledge").
Oh and I keep saying it since 2009 but Mickey Rourke should have won the damn Oscar.
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Post by wallsofjericho on Apr 28, 2018 22:30:39 GMT
I like him to extent but his work hasn't aged particularly well for me. Of his generation I prefer Cage, Rouke and Denzel. Still he is tremendous in Dead Man Walking, Milk and Carlito's Way.
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 28, 2018 22:42:32 GMT
I think he's the best or at least most talented American film actor of his generation - the generation that includes Cage, Washington, Hanks, Spacey, William Hurt, etc. Where it gets tricky is that since Milk he hasn't done much and ........he also has lower low points which people use to bash him, but any of his peers in his flops would go down too. He's much harder to assess than almost any other great American actor I'd say - both because of people's personal perceptions of him and his performance style.
One of the great, unusual gifts he had was to play "part" of a role so well at the expense of other parts of it, that he sort of made you think what was successful acting - usually if you play part of a role well that is only a partially successful performance. But in something like The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Penn was so great at playing unhinged - he was positively inspired in it - that he almost made you ignore other parts of the role (how was this guy ever married to Naomi Watts and held down a job?). It shouldn't work, yet, like a magician almost he made it work.
He did this a lot too - and it's just part of the mixed bag that he was - though he could also hunker down and have great craft and control - Milk is one of his most complete pieces of work. I'd recommend The Assassination of Richard Nixon, The Falcon and The Snowman and 21 Grams in addition to his more famous work.
I hope he comes back because if it more or less ended with Milk for him, well he had a great run, but you can't help think there should have been more.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 28, 2018 22:55:40 GMT
As a director, I think he tries hard and follows the sort of general rulebook of Cassavetes without the magic or the humanity that Cassavetes captured as an innate characteristic of his work.
A lot of people wildly overrate The Pledge imo which has a very good Nicholson performance but is way too heavy handed and grim - it sabotages his intent for me. That applies to his whole directorial career though I did like Into The Wild.
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Post by TheAlwaysClassy on Apr 28, 2018 23:39:31 GMT
Simultaneously one of the best and worst actors of his generation. Deserved Oscars for Dead Man Walking and Milk, and deserved Razzies for I Am Sam and All the Kings Men.
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Post by pupdurcs on Apr 30, 2018 15:17:15 GMT
A talented, insanely inconsistent serious actor who for a very long time happened to also benefit from being the right race and nationality, at the right place at the right time. Once the 1970's were over, a new generation of "greats" had to be annointed by the industry/media/critics. They have to be white of course, and ideally American, like those who ruled the previous decade. There were flirtations with more cerebral actors like William Hurt, but the goal was always to annoint a white American male who could obviously be directly compared to method avatars like Brando and DeNiro. In a sea of "brat pack" pretty boys like Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez and Rob Lowe, Sean Penn with his DeNiro mimicing "method" approach stood out, even though he was still stuck playing mostly teenage roles like most of his contemporaries. Penn was the ultimate Stan/Wannabe, and he did not hide it all. He wanted to be just like DeNiro, Brando, Dean, Hoffman or any notable great american screen actor heavily associated with the method. So he cribbed from their work heavily over the course of his career.
Mickey Rourke was the other guy who had the qualities being looked at to qualify as the next "great one" for the 1980's generation, but his inability to make allies in the industry (unlike the insatiable networker that was Sean Penn) and his self-destructive attitude that killed off his career for decades, meant Penn got (wrongly) hailed the best of his generation by sheer default. At least 3 men were of his generation, even in the 80's, were better than him, but certain things put them out of immediate consideration to those searching for the next "great one". Denzel Washington (not white enough), Gary Oldman and Daniel Day-Lewis (not American enough). So Penn, despite being ridculously inconsistent throughout the entirety of his career, and despite not fully maturing as a performer till 1993's Carlito's Way, was hailed by many critics and industry folk (especially those Penn ravenously courted favor with), as the heir to the great ones that defined American movies.
There was always a massive disconnect though. Penn was one of the very few "great actors" aggressively pushed by critics onto the public, that the public couldn't quite see what the fuss was about. Critics admired his choices, as did many of his peers. Sure you could blame it on him being percieved obnoxious or irritating, but from Marlon Brando to Russell Crowe, there have been many tempermental and even outright unlikable actors (in their public personas) that the public have embraced, at least when it comes to estimation of their talent. Penn mostly just came off as a reasonably talented, but somewhat overrated actor who managed to keep himself in the tabloids on a regular basis (and that stuff doesn't happen by accident. You don't get as much press attention for non-work related stuff as Penn has without actively courting it. Penn has made it a mission to court publicity. I don't even think he cares if it's negative, as long as it allows him to stay famous).
So over the years, the disconnect has even spread to critics, as even those who once championed him finally began to question if they had been massively overrating him for so many years. So the drip,drip, drip insistence that Penn was the "best actor of his generation" has come to mostly a crashing halt in the last decade, as their is now more of a willingness to allow a Brit (DDL) and an African-American (Washington) to claim or dispute that, while Penn has found his more natural level (somewhere in the middle of his generation, not at the top).
What Penn's legacy going to be as an actor? Hard to say. He was never a good as advertised, though he's got a handful of truly excellent performances on film. But so much poor stuff as well. Penn may have had the right idea courting celebrity to the extent he has, as it may give some people who care little about his film work an incentive to check it out.
As a director, he's pretty heavy handed, though as one would expect, very good with actors (though I have yet to see The Last Face, which was supposedly a low acting point for Theron and Bardem).
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Post by mikediastavrone96 on Apr 30, 2018 16:06:31 GMT
I've honestly only been particularly impressed with him in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Carlito's Way. He's been solid in other movies (Casualties of War, Dead Man Walking among a few others) but I've never thought of him as some extraordinary talent as he's often described. And as far as other actors within his generation go, I can't think of any that miss the mark as terribly as Penn does in I Am Sam or All the King's Men.
As a director, I quite liked Into the Wild and remember finding The Pledge solid (been almost a decade since I've seen it, though) but haven't watched his other work.
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Post by stabcaesar on Apr 30, 2018 16:31:39 GMT
I liked him in 21 Grams, didn't care for him in Milk, Mystic River, and I Am Sam.
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Post by futuretrunks on Jan 16, 2020 22:23:35 GMT
Love him in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, really liked him in Casualties of War, liked him in Carlito's Way/Sweet and Lowdown. I think he's talented but his project selection is seriously wonky, like he thinks what he brings to the table can offset absolutely anything. There's a high level of delusion there, and I think Will Smith and Jessica Chastain have some of it too.
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Post by getclutch on Jan 22, 2020 14:26:16 GMT
Personally, I do not give him any wins as an actor. I really admire him as a film director, yet I still think Indian Runner is his best work imo. However, I just recently watched The Last Face & not sure what went wrong for him. Film was too long & the two leads were just wasted. Did not feel like a Penn picture at all. Still, I am confident he can go back to his original roots.
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Post by getclutch on Jan 22, 2020 14:28:05 GMT
Undeniably strong actor even if he is a piece of shit IRL. Doesn't get much better than Milk and Dead Man Walking. Carlito's Way is the only one I didn't care for. Yeah, he only did Carlito’s Way for the cash to fund The Crossing Guard.
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Post by futuretrunks on Feb 20, 2021 2:19:05 GMT
Is there any buzz on Flag Day?
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Post by franklin on May 22, 2021 16:14:11 GMT
I may bump this thread, but yeah I agree with a lot that has been said here.
Great actor, but not THAT great. I consider Dead Man Walking and Carlito's Way his best work. After 2008 he completely disappeared and faded away in terms of relevance, it's been passed 13 years since Milk (which is just a good performance).
It's so weird how the two Oscars he won are both undeserved since respectively Bill Murray and Mickey Rourke were considered the rightful winners. This new movie he directed doesn't inspire me any confidence for a possible critical or commercial comeback.
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Post by TerryMontana on May 22, 2021 17:24:23 GMT
Definitely a great actor. His work in some movies (like Milk ie) is incredible.
Does he deserve two wins though? Highly doubt it.
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Post by Allenism on May 22, 2021 19:04:12 GMT
Hideously overrated for the most part. He seems to get lauded for the hammiest and most overwrought performances. He can be great when he keeps the scenery chewing to a minimum, e.g., 21 Grams, The Thin Red Line, Dead Man Walking, but unfortunately that doesn't happen very often.
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Post by HELENA MARIA on Aug 17, 2021 14:41:00 GMT
pacinoyes Toughts of the other B-Day boy Sean Penn ?
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 17, 2021 15:18:53 GMT
pacinoyes Toughts of the other B-Day boy Sean Penn ? Well I used to ranked him as THE best American film actor of the "80s class" or whatever that means - the guys in their late 50s (Cage) to early 70s (Bridges) - although that's conflating 2 age groups I guess .......basically I consider all those guys (there are a lot, it's close) battling it out for best their generation ...........and PSH is best of his after that.......and then Phoenix, DiCaprio come after that.......etc. Penn is hated on this board by people who think he has Bill Murray's Oscar or Mickey Rourke's or he overacts or some BS but for me - he still hit higher high points more consistently through Milk than anybody - after Milk.............well not so much..........and Hanks, Washington, Bridges, Dafoe, Cage have ALL surpassed him........ but I'll always love him for that work from the 80s-08 ........he's a lot like Dustin Hoffman in how his career went and when it turned sour for him. He was also a very odd actor in that he would often give "great partial performances" where he would flat out ignore parts of a character while playing other aspects so specifically well he could make it seem more well rounded than it actually was instead of a drawback like it usually is............( Milk is actually one of his most "complete" performances).........You can see this in one of my favorite Penn performances - "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" where he is so brilliant imo at capturing the diminishing mental state aspects that you can't see how he ever had a job, kept a routine or was married to Naomi Watts in the first place.......... but you just go along with it ..........
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Post by futuretrunks on Aug 25, 2021 2:31:07 GMT
This Flag Day tour is weird. It's like he's acting like he's still a celebrity.
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Post by pupdurcs on Aug 25, 2021 2:45:44 GMT
This Flag Day tour is weird. It's like he's acting like he's still a celebrity. It's not by accident. The only way Penn can maintain any relevance is to play on his celebrity connections and ability to still get high profile media promotion (even for turds like Flag Day), and hype up his sanctimonious activism (whether it's "saving" Haiti or vaccinating the world against Covid, and telling the whole world about it very loudly). His actual career has fallen into near total irrelevance, as both an actor and a filmmaker. I also suspect in his own mind he thinks he's started a new Hollywood super dynasty (ala the Fondas and Douglases) with his daughter Dylan.He's just a very obnoxious person in general.
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Post by futuretrunks on Aug 25, 2021 4:20:23 GMT
This Flag Day tour is weird. It's like he's acting like he's still a celebrity. It's not by accident. The only way Penn can maintain any relevance is to play on his celebrity connections and ability to still get high profile media promotion (even for turds like Flag Day), and hype up his sanctimonious activism (whether it's "saving" Haiti or vaccinating the world against Covid, and telling the whole world about it very loudly). His actual career has fallen into near total irrelevance, as both an actor and a filmmaker. I also suspect in his own mind he thinks he's started a new Hollywood super dynasty (ala the Fondas and Douglases) with his daughter Dylan.He's just a very obnoxious person in general. I agree, but this is sad. Into the Wild was really good and not that long ago. But dude has no self-awareness.
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Post by franklin on Aug 25, 2021 9:05:28 GMT
As someone already said in this or other threads, Sean Penn after 2008 didn't simply stagnate, but he regressed compared to all the great actors of his generation. And i find some of his performances in his prime kinda outdated in my humble opinion, or not that great as they were hyped to be at the time (Mystic River).
I don't see any filmmaker, producer, or studio being interested in an actual comeback of him in the future.
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