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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2019 1:24:18 GMT
Please, share your thoughts. Are you a fan?
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Post by stephen on Feb 5, 2019 1:26:41 GMT
He's mostly an adequate actor, but his 1998 twofer of Affliction and The Thin Red Line are powerful works that any actor worth his salt would be proud of, and Warrior is a fine turn indeed. But he can also be pretty fucking woeful at times, too.
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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 5, 2019 2:00:05 GMT
He is one of those actors that is subject to a kind of "Actor revisionism" where, desperate to believe that America has produced way more great actors than we really have has lead some to re-imagine his career. In the early 90s (after being Scorsese's boy, how lucky can you get!), he was often called one of our best actors (really?) and he almost won BA twice in that decade - Affliction and Prince Of Tides.
The problem is like others subject to "Actor revisionism" (Michael Douglas for one) - he can't back it up in a deeper way or a less obvious way. He's never understood that if Marlon Brando gave 100 bad performances in a row he's STILL Marlon Brando and if you give a few great ones, you'll never be him - great performances don't equal great actors, it's an indefinable thing that does. He has never gotten that and it comes through in his work - he sometimes seems to act like his simply taking the role is most of the heavy lifting.
In 1994 he had a disastrous year for any actor 3 big flops, 3 different types of roles, that instantly stopped the status he was being granted by some......still he could be great (Affliction) and like a lot of actors he very much wanted to escape his looks (Rich Man, Poor Man) which an entire generation doesn't even know he once had.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2019 13:33:51 GMT
pacinoyes - Welp... I think he has safely escaped his looks now. But yes, he was a total beaut in his day. He was even a model in the early 70s! For Clairol! I watched Olivier Assayas' Clean last night with him and Maggie Cheung, and I was just floored by the performances. I really loved the film, too.
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Post by TerryMontana on Feb 5, 2019 18:01:35 GMT
Never thought much of him. Sure, he's not a bad actor, by no means. It's just that I think he tends to repeat himself. As if he plays the same role again and again.
He had some very good performances through the years (affliction, prince of tides, thin red line), I even liked him in warrior and lorenzo's oil. But I believe that's the top he can get.
I don't know if he was called one of the greatest back in the 90s but I could point out about 20-30 others who were better actors back then and still are.
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agent69
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Post by agent69 on Feb 5, 2019 21:19:16 GMT
Not only a fan, but he's quite possibly my favorite actor. No one can do wounded masculinity like him. He's like a grizzly bear you'd like to hug.
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Post by Leo_The_Last on Feb 5, 2019 21:23:54 GMT
I like him a lot. It's true, there was a time in the early 90's when he took himself a little bit too seriously, thought he was a big star, a GREAT actor, and had some big failures at the same time. Paul Schrader waited years to get him to say yes to Affliction, after Nolte wanted too much money.
Still, I think he's a wonderful actor. Would I call him a great actor? What is a great actor? When I read The Playlist, every flavor of the month is called a great actor. There seem to be only great actors around nowadays. So, I try to be a little careful using that term. But yes, I would call him a great actor. Plus, I just like the guy. He has aged horribly, his voice is at times incomprehensible, but he has shown to use this, that fragility, to beautiful effect, like in Warrior, to embody a touching tenderness.
He has an impressive filmography too. Not that many great great movies, but a lot of interesting ones, even if they don't work overall, or are not that successful dramatically, or just plain not that good.
Under Fire is a minor classic, Extreme Prejudice is a personal favorite, even if I would have trouble defending it, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, he's pretty great in Cape Fear (great movie, hated around here), Clean, The Good Thief, his Ivory collaborations,...
Then there's this thing that's hard to describe. He's just a guy. I mean, a real guy, without pretending to be some tough gangster dude. It's probably a generational thing. The same is true for actors from prior generations. Today, everybody seems like a kid playing dress up. Take a guy like the one he played in U Turn, Nolte had to to show up and sweat a lot and you believed that character. For most actors today you would need a ton of make up and a fake belly.
And a special mention to Q & A, what an ensemble! Not necessarily a great movie, but definitely great casting, all those character actors exuding New York charm/repulsiveness. I don't know how it would be possible to cast such a movie today.
If the Academy decides to give him an Honorary Oscar in the next few years, I at least will be a happy man, opening a bottle of wine or drinking what's left from breakfast...
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cranly
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Post by cranly on Feb 5, 2019 21:55:04 GMT
Probably a minority view here, but I see him as one of the few American leading men from the post-Pacino/De Niro/Hackman generation touched by genius. I'd argue he has one genuinely great performance from the 70s, as the paranoid, mercurial Neil Cassady stand-in in Who'll Stop the Rain (1978), and one from the 80s, as the tormented artist in Scorsese's Life Lessons (1989).
And while the years before and since have mostly been spotty, I would rank (most of) his 90s output with the best work done by anyone during that decade: gracefully navigating a tonally complex Arthur Miller piece in Everybody Wins (1990), a monumental tour-de-force for Lumet with Q & A (1990) (Brando used to carry a video cassette of it around with him he admired Nolte in it so much), managing to solidly anchor and (almost) redeem the garish mess of Cape Fear (1991), a major performance illuminating the splintering effects of trauma in The Prince of Tides (1991), movingly transcending the grief-porn elements of Lorenzo's Oil (1992), one of the few credibly classical latter-day noir leads worthy of Bogart or Mitchum in Mulholland Falls (1996), reaching a career peak with two magnificent character studies in a row: Mother Night (1996) and Affliction (1997), and closing the decade with two more of his patented harrowing studies of masculinity in extremis in The Thin Red Line (1998) and Breakfast of Champions (1999).
I also greatly admire his post-millenial work in Trixie (2000), The Golden Bowl (2000), The Good Thief (2002), Clean (2004), Warrior (2011), and the abortive David Milch tv series, Luck (2012) - particularly ep. 4, directed by Phillip Noyce.
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Post by Mattsby on Feb 13, 2019 20:28:37 GMT
Never liked him, to be honest. But this thread made me catch up with just a couple of his movies. Already had seen Affliction, and didn't watch Life Lessons but that's by far my fav of his. Here's what I watched -
Noth Dallas Forty (1979) - really posting so I can talk about this one, which hasn't been mentioned yet - actually compares to (same director) Ted Kotcheff's masterful Wake in Fright in terms of machismo, debauchery, physical breakdown, etc. This movie is wholly a product of the the '70s, anti-establishment, it doesn't play by the rules like the characters don't play by the rules. Nancy Dowd had a hand in the script, tho it isn't quite Slap Shot, it's interesting. Not many sports movies focus solely on the vice, body destruction, and ultimate irony of athletes. To the biz, they're products, and like a soiled product they can be disposed. Which brings us to Nolte, who's battered in more ways than we can count. We get a great intro to his character - morning weary stirred with physical agony. That's a throughline to his performance which makes it immediate, there's a feeling to his performance bc that physical aspect is always there. And there's an effortless off-hand charm too him too, making his emotional eruption at the end a new, felt breakthru. I'd maybe rank this #3 for him - think, he only had three movie performances before this, yet it feels like a veteran turn.
Q&A (he's supporting I'd say) - a dark, smart, disquieting performance. We know he's cruel, it's right there in the opening. But then we get that long take of him telling that story - the story itself isn't important, it's how he commands the room with his seasoned no bullshit charisma. But we know that's a front, he's perversely disturbed, he devours others' ease by getting too close to them, touching them, intimidating them, and it's all peeled away to reveal this utterly violent menace, which we knew all along. The weight gain gives him that extra size to hang over others.
Lorenzo's Oil - an odd and oddly endearing performance in a movie sometimes surprisingly well made but difficult to watch.
Affliction - maybe his best leading performance, a character so tragically stupid. Greatly nuanced by Nolte with humor, confusion, anger, and craggy pride.
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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 13, 2019 22:53:04 GMT
The first two are the first two sides of his career (the third side is just craggy bastard, lol) - North Dallas Forty, Who'll Stop The Rain, Under Fire where he showed he could do anything besides be a matinee idol and then that late 80s/early 90s period where he was sort of ordained as THE next major American actor - 2 Scorsese's, Lumet, and Prince Of Tides. North Dallas Forty is a great book too written by Peter Gent a former player. If you really want to go nuts consider Ted Kotcheff's career - this, Wake In Fright, the (underrated) First Blood - talk about machismo run wild! - and they pegged him as a director of comedies - I mean that is an element of NDF but not for the kind he was shoe-horned into later. Hollywood really didn't know what to do with Ted Kotcheff
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 24, 2019 20:57:27 GMT
I watched Olivier Assayas' Clean last night with him and Maggie Cheung, and I was just floored by the performances. I really loved the film, too. Solid movie and Cheung is very good, acting across three languages, her best scenes I think are with her son where you think she might crumble but she adjusts herself with a decided candor towards him which is surprising and moving. But.... MVP for me was Nolte! He felt like the heart of the film to me even in the smaller role. As a simple, sobering, understanding man - he looks you in the eye and speaks slowly so you know he means what he says, because he's put his best thinking behind it - a man who understands the scope of tragedy and reconciliation and his own aging and incapability. Nolte distills and portrays that beautifully and clearly, that depth.
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Post by Mattsby on Feb 8, 2020 23:40:35 GMT
Happy 79th Birthday! a great life philosophy:
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Post by TerryMontana on Feb 9, 2020 14:05:05 GMT
Happy birthday to the man. Never was one of my favorites but he's an iconic actor of his generation.
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Post by jakesully on Feb 9, 2020 16:45:54 GMT
1992's Sexiest Man Alive. Respect! I like him in quite a bit of things. 48 Hours, The Thin Red Line, Affliction, Warrior, Mulholland Falls & Off the Black.
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Post by jimmalone on Feb 9, 2020 18:51:18 GMT
A good actor, but not a great one. He has given a few strong performances, most notable Affliction, The Good Thief, The Thin Red Line, Prince of Tides and 48 Hours, but hardly memorable ones. He rarely gets me deeper into his roles, there is always something unpolished about his characters. I can't be sure without checking my documents of course, but I don't think I ever nominated him. Well maybe for Prince of Tides and then this would be because it was a rather weak year in that category.
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Post by fiosnasiob on Feb 10, 2020 22:36:16 GMT
I always, ALWAYS call him kurt Russell and vice versa, they don't even look alike much but my brain can't do otherwise. Great actor, I used to have a VHS of Who'll Stop the Rain as a kid and I saw it many, many times, he's great in it.
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Post by Mattsby on Feb 8, 2021 20:38:23 GMT
Well, I posted here for his 79th bday, so how 'bout the big one. 80y/o today! Hope he's enjoying it.
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