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Post by urbanpatrician on Jun 27, 2020 9:49:42 GMT
Lee Remick and Jo Van Fleet for Wild River
I really like those movies with a strong southern ethos against a swampy Old America setting. I felt Lee Remick was snubbed of a nomination. Why did they nominate Shirley MacLaine and Greer Garson instead? There were more deserving and that lineup was weak. Lee was beautifully longing with depths of a southern heart in her portrayal of a Tennessee widow. While Hollywood was moving on from the melodramatic divas that once inhabited the golden age, in 1960 Lee was part of the new generation of actor's studio talents along with names like Julie Harris and Piper Laurie who seemed poised to usher an era to remember in the 60s. For a brief period, Lee was incredible though it's sad her career didn't persist. She deserved to win for Days of Wine and Roses but it was a historically strong lineup so it's hard to say someone didn't deserve to be there from that lineup. Jo Van Fleet in her element again, and always strong and reliable. This is the 2nd win I give this highly underrated character actress.
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 27, 2020 17:33:01 GMT
Ingrid Bergman, Hedda Gabler (1962). "You wanted to spoil our intimacy, drag it down to reality." There's a lot of heat and bitterness behind Bergman's social sarcasm, a cordial buffer hiding her disturbed boredom. She thrill seeks, like shooting a pistol at her guests with a witchy cackle. But she's lost...... Bergman plays all of this with fun size and a knowing knot of tragedy. Also, acts opposite Ralph Richardson, Michael Redgrave, Trevor Howard.....
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 28, 2020 15:44:52 GMT
Matthew Macfadyen, The AssistantGarner's taken most of the ink here and she deserves props for her perf. It's a frustrating and somewhat uninvolving film on purpose, engendering a deepening sense of helplessness in the viewer. That being said, Macfadyen's ten minutes were the highlight for me. He comes in out of nowhere as the douchey HR rep that's just inviting and warm enough to get you to spill your guts before plunging his chauvenistic corporate knife into your soul. Not unlike his performance in Succession; Less funny but just as fun to watch and just as sleazy, with an affected concern masking deep wells of unconcern. A snake in the grass.
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 1, 2020 19:19:57 GMT
Raul Julia / Streep - Kiss Me Petruchio (1981) which mostly captures their 1978 Shakespeare in the Park perf of Taming of the Shrew, with only here-and-there behind the scenes bits. To me this "documentary" is kinda essential for anyone interested in these actors or stage performances. There are certain cuts to reactions and close handheld camera that separates this from a static recording, though it's literally stagy there's sort of a small cinematic feeling to it too - juxtaposing the actor and audience comments, their varying gender views, gives it a droll tug. Not until 1989 would we get to see this side of Streep on screen, hissy and bothered and sex-farcical hilarious. "Let him that moved you hither, remove you hence!" And there's Julia who you can immediately tell as a commanding presence, he has a sway with the Bard verse, and a funny kinda fearsome fixation on Streep - their chemistry is as tight as could be. You wish they'd made a movie of it, then realize you're kinda watching the movie....
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 4, 2020 19:22:08 GMT
Nina Hoss - The Audition (2020)Reviewed in the "most recent movie you saw" yesterday I'm very tempted to pay to see it again, that's how great she is in it. My favorite movie performance male or female in 2020 (and just behind Blanchett in Mrs. America) - it's masterfully controlled and actually integrates control and direction in the performance as a component thematically of the film overall. One of the worlds great actresses.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 5, 2020 23:40:54 GMT
Twilight Zone Double Shot - Cloris Leachman in "It's A Good Life" (1961) and Dennis Hooper in "He's Alive" (1963) - re-watches
One of the great things abut the Twilight Zone is politically it covered a whole lot of ground and rings insanely up to date - these 2 episodes should be watched in 2020 to see how fractured and sad we've become. Leachman is a deeply moving portrait of a mother fearful of what we'd now call "the fanatical Left" - her own child - in fear of her cancel culturing little boy (sort of!) who "sends people away to the cornfield" when they behave in ways he doesn't like or fails his purity tests. Hopper is the reverse and gives a kind of Twilight Zone tour de force - here he's a fanatical Right wing zealot - a new Hitler who is so taken with his own prejudices/hatred that he loses sight of reality or rather what he sees becomes his own twisted reality. He's great in the speeches in particular and he makes this monster painful and mesmerizing too. The first episode is one of the shows very best .......the second is one of its most ambitious.
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 6, 2020 18:57:23 GMT
Mary Alice in The Sty of the Blind Pig (1974) - Ivan Dixon directed, a very sad and heavy play, well-acted by Maidie Norman as the mother of Mary Alice who is the real standout. "I got a whole lotta grit in my craw." As an obituary writer she writes of death but fears it to the point of collapse. Alice has a ten-minute scene that is a total abandonment of her meekness, it's a convulsive outcry of sexual repression and religious lunacy - it's a kinda physical acting of squeezing despair on par with Ullmann in Face to Face.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 7, 2020 19:44:11 GMT
Made in Britain (1982) re-watch Directed By Alan ClarkStarring a dynamic Tim Roth - in his early 20s playing a teen - this is one tough watch. As a racist and happy about it - Roth here gives a better performance and less affected one in the same type of role as Crowe (Romper Stomper 92) OR Norton (American History X 95).....and I am pretty sure they watched this too. The way Clark shoots Roth - as a stalking and ready to burst feral animal who knows exactly what he is and wants you to know it too is a performance that should have kept him right alongside Day-Lewis, Oldman in that class of 80s actors. It's THAT good..... A scalding performance that packs a lot in 75 minutes and is devised with Clark in what they want to convey and how to a viewer.
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 8, 2020 12:48:56 GMT
Re-watched Judgment at Nuremberg yesterday and I felt I should point out two very strong performances. Not talking about the Oscar winner Maximilian Schell or the nominee Spencer Tracy. And of course I'm not talking about the powerhouse performance of Monty Clift (who won that MAR poll and gave me the idea for the re-watch). I'm talking about Judy Garland and Burt Lancaster. Garland has a very brief role (only three scenes) but her performance is riveting!!! Having only seen The Wizard of Oz and A Star is Born from her (I think...), I wasn't prepared to witness such a powerful dramatic acting. Deserved Oscar nod, 7 years after her previous movie! And as for Lancaster, his role is much bigger but he was given very little to do in front of the camera until his monologue. Very few lines throughout the movie but his silence speaks volumes!!! And when he finally delivers his speech, boy is he unstoppable!!
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 9, 2020 15:37:50 GMT
Bob Hoskins - Othello (1981) re-watch Not merely does Hoskins steal this decent version from Anthony Hopkins (who is fine, but not great and of course in "blackface" that is "not really blackface") - he also steals Iago from EVERYBODY ever including Frank Finlay (Oscar nominated), Kenneth Branagh. Hoskins is marvelous here not just evil but tremendously funny and his line readings make it sound like no one ever played this part before - he's that fresh and distinct. Iago is always stealing this play in general but not to this extent and it's glorious to behold. In the 80s Hoskins gave 3 amazing performances - The Long Good Friday, Mona Lisa and Othello (yeah and Roger Rabbit)......well his Iago is the most surprising of them all.
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Post by HELENA MARIA on Jul 10, 2020 9:50:10 GMT
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Post by sirjeremy on Jul 10, 2020 19:26:28 GMT
Emily Watson in Gosford Park (2001) She was overshadowed that year by her more famous co-stars, and it's a small role with no obvious baity scenes, but her performance is rich in detail, from the way she holds her cigarette to skipping down a corridor. Her Elsie is streetwise and tough, but not as much as she likes to think she is.
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Post by isabelaolive on Jul 12, 2020 2:40:40 GMT
Jeon Do-yeon in 'Secret Sunshine'I had wanted to watch this movie for a long time, the first movie I watched from Chang-Dong was Poetry and I loved it, I didn't liked Burning so much but I still wanted to watch Secret Sunshine, mainly because of the compliments I always heard in relation to the performance of the protagonist, who even won Best Actress in Cannes. This performance completely shook me, I think it's the best portrait of grief and melancholy I've ever seen, it even surpasses Marion in "Two Days, One Night", Dunst in "Melancholia", Affleck in "Manchester by the sea" ...
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Post by JangoB on Jul 12, 2020 20:42:48 GMT
Rewatched Zemeckis's brilliant " Cast Away" today and was absolutely amazed by Tom Hanks in it all over again. Zemeckis puts a difficult task on Hanks's shoudlers - not only the actor is alone on the screen for the biggest chunk of the movie but Zemeckis also strips the film away from extra elements like music or fancy plotting which could've helped amp things up. There're no shark attacks, no fighting with the cannibals, no escaping from predators. The brilliance of the film is in that it consists of fairly mundane stuff on the island - making fire, figuring out what to do with the FedEx packages, dealing with toothache, etc. And though Zemeckis's filmmaking is terrific (my Director win for the year), it is up to Hanks to fully engage us as viewers and, moreover, turn us into full-on participants. What Hanks does in the film is astonishing. I've also always found the off-island segments of the film to be really strong although many folks consider them to be unsatisfactory. Hanks's most brilliant acting moments are perhaps in those segments - just his face alone tells its own heartbreaking story in addition to the fantastic one-take monologue which we all can remember. What a turn!
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 14, 2020 10:11:28 GMT
Emilia Clarke - Above Suspicion (2020)I wanted to make sure I mentioned this because I could easily see this film being forgotten - some doofus praising it 2 years from now - and getting thanked for recommending it A modern noir right down to its narration but told from the slant of the femme fatale this movie has been on a shelf for at least 2 years (or longer) and when it starts it's easy to see Clarke as "doing a Jennifer Lawrence" if you just tweak her Winter's Bone character a darker way. It seems utterly formulaic. But as this film progresses - and it's not THAT good without her - so does her performance and it becomes something more doomy and desperate - she's smart enough to know how sexy she can be and (as played) not sexy enough to get away without being smarter .......she layers this portrayal in a million little sad and believable details. There is great hope and a crushing sadness in the way she says she needs "rehab and money" and I've seen some great performances this year - Blanchett in Mrs. America, Lindo in Da Five Bloods, Nina Hoss in The Audition but this is the first one that's almost guaranteed to fly under the radar. It shouldn't...
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 16, 2020 19:44:06 GMT
Judi Dench (and a bit lesser but Jeremy Irons too) - Langrishe Go Down (1978) “It’s in the position it should be, moving in the direction Venus ought to move in. How then could it be anything other than Venus?” From director David Hugh Jones (Betrayal, Jacknife) and Harold Pinter (The Servant, Butley, The Collection, No Man's Land, French Lieutenant's Woman, many more incl Betrayal) - I mean, these two summon serious greatness from actors. Every bit role here (an eyepatched Margaret Whiting, and a drunken Pinter himself) is well performed and there's a slow, sad, sexual mood to everything. Irons is interesting in his sway over others, how he overarticulates and lips his words suggestively. Dench as a spinster is vulnerable and lovely and relieved. In one scene she calls Irons "naughty" three times and each time differently, in a startled way, a laughing teasing way, and a quieter worrying way. Best early perf I've seen from Dench (--haven't seen her taped Macbeth which aired three months after this).
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 17, 2020 19:57:54 GMT
Jean Gillie in Decoy (1946)I mentioned this performance yesterday in the Classic Movies Thread ........I had never seen it before and am actually kind of stunned at how insanely evil as a character she is and the zeal with which Gillie plays it. The movie itself is preposterous but Gillie justifies it and makes it definitive of a female type (rhymes with witch). The movie is a precursor to many odd and jarring things - a nasty and cheap noir that has elements of The Last Seduction, Pulp Fiction and The Grifters in it 40+ years early. It's insanely melodramatic but you'll never forget it because of her - despite all its faults.......she's one of the great femme fatale characters I've ever seen.
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 17, 2020 22:01:24 GMT
James Earl Jones - East Side/West Side, S1E7 “Who Do You Kill” (1963). I watched this from the awful-quality youtube upload, which excises the infamous rat/cab scene - the essential doc Color Adjustment talks about the power of that sequence. Aired about two months after the DC March and a few weeks before JFK was assassinated, this was a really momentous network episode at a crucial period - a UCLA archivist said it “might be the most significant socially themed dramatic program to air in the 60s. It dared to confront white viewers with this troubling, honest look at urban poverty and the human cost of racism from the point of view of African Americans. What James Earl Jones and Diana Sands bring to that episode can’t be overrated.” It's a tough, very tense perf from Jones. He has one monologue ("I never knew...how to laugh at things") that is just heartbreaking. He was Emmy nom'd, so was Sands - were they the first black Emmy nominees? - also nom'd were the writer of the ep and the director (who won). They've gotta find a way to upgrade the quality/accessibility of this ep/this series....
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Post by urbanpatrician on Jul 18, 2020 10:38:55 GMT
Nick Nolte and Barbara Streisand for The Prince of TidesI know what people are thinking. "WHAT??? Weird choice, dude. A pedestrian lifetime movie." And let me just preface by saying I don't generally like pedestrian movies, but this one really did me in. It was so romantic, so era conscious, and a beautiful heartfelt story masked under the guise of pedestrian-ism. 90s proves itself to be the best once again, movies like Bridges of Madison County just aren't made anymore. The Prince of Tides feels like Bridges of Madison County as the best example, actually. If you're a fan of Streep and Bridges of Madison County, watch this one, PLEASE. I guarantee you it's worth your time if you just give it a try and invest past the obvious "it's rarely mentioned here, therefore it's not that good."
Welcome to My Top 10 favorite actors list... Nick Nolte. This guy is always so in command. Why he's not deemed the descendent of Dustin Hoffman I have no idea. He plays a family man just as well. Doesn't have Hoffman's talent for offbeat or comedic characters, I admit but he has other strengths. He plays strong characters with hearts full of passion, and often does he play a man possessed on a mission, very much like DeNiro in this regard. The dude has a wide array of characters in his arsenal. Barbara Streisand... I've always loved her. She's just a lovely actress, so innately tender, and her directorial effort pulsates with romance and passion and serenity indicative of the 90s. Anyways....... I thought Nick Nolte should've won his Oscar here. I like DeNiro in this lineup just as much, but both way over gimmick Hopkins. In fact, fuck Hopkins. Streisand > Foster. I take this entire movie and everything about it over The Silence of the Lambs anyday. *waits for my crucifixion*
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Jul 21, 2020 20:14:29 GMT
Cate Blanchett, Mrs. AmericaWell, Cate is back. Antihero sounds about right—there are times when you root for her on the basis of sheer willpower and force alone. There's pleasure in demolition and she makes an art out of it. It's a very actorly perf and it needs to be—Phyllis is masklike, a parody of femininity, chronically overqualified—but she makes ample use of her natural strengths too. Those cheekbones and that smile go from proud to terrorizing at will. I love how Blanchett hints at disgust for both sexes: women whom she sees as weaklings and men who act like desperate perverts. ( Nothing fits the rhetoric). Only time she seems comfortable with anyone is the scene with her gay son by the piano... but the scene itself is one of deeper discomfort. Killer finale, too. In the telephone scene with Reagan you see the mask coming off—as if she were aging in real time. And while the final shot can be read as Phyllis retreating to the one "role" left for her, the way Blanchett handles the scene, it suggests no more role-playing, no more thinking or activity of any sort... the impression is that she's not even in the frame. She ends this actor's dream role on a disturbing note of non-acting. Enjoyed the supporting cast for the most part though the storylines weren't always that compelling. Shoutout to Tracey Ullman and Margo Martindale who deserve all their praise.
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Post by Viced on Jul 23, 2020 22:11:39 GMT
Lisa Kudrow in The ComebackI feel like there was a decent contingent of people on IMDb who considered this one of the GOAT performances... and I have no excuse for waiting so long to watch it. I'm comfortably in that contingent now. First of all, she's absolutely hilarious... and she carried these 21 episodes like nothing I've ever seen before. She's on screen for close to 100% of the series and never comes close to a flat moment. I loved the show overall, but there were a few iffy/hard to fathom cringey scenes that she still sold the shit out of. And she's giving more than one performance for the entire series (up until the last 10 minutes). Lisa Kudrow as Valerie. Valerie being a phony (most of the time). Valerie as Aunt Sassy. Valerie as Mallory... etc. A fascinating, titanic performance.
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Javi
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Likes: 1,622
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Post by Javi on Jul 23, 2020 22:42:25 GMT
Lisa Kudrow in The ComebackI feel like there was a decent contingent of people on IMDb who considered this one of the GOAT performances... and I have no excuse for waiting so long to watch it. I'm comfortably in that contingent now. First of all, she's absolutely hilarious... and she carried these 21 episodes like nothing I've ever seen before. She's on screen for close to 100% of the series and never comes close to a flat moment. I loved the show overall, but there were a few iffy/hard to fathom cringey scenes that she still sold the shit out of. And she's giving more than one performance for the entire series (up until the last 10 minutes). Lisa Kudrow as Valerie. Valerie being a phony (most of the time). Valerie as Aunt Sassy. Valerie as Mallory... etc. A fascinating, titanic performance. Major, major performance... would have no trouble at all to call it the best female perf of the last 15-20 years.
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Post by urbanpatrician on Jul 24, 2020 0:37:50 GMT
I don't really care about tiers of goatism or anything like that, but I'd definitely say Kudrow is up there with Lange/Frances or Sandy in Come Back to the Five and Dime and those OMG performances from 1982. And I think Kudrow tops Streep in Sophie's Choice, but it's one of my favorite performances from Streep as well. Not to mention there's Bergman that year in one of her finest works. A great performance I'm currently watching is.... Jennifer Jason Leigh - Patrick MelroseJen strikes again. She's so awesome and frolicking. Her usual sensibilities with shades of old vaudeville Katharine Hepburn. Trademark stuff. Also becoming my most overnominated actress along with Redgrave and Swinton and *hmh* trying to think who else I nominate that much.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 24, 2020 10:27:18 GMT
Ian McKellen - Apt Pupil (rewatch)Very underrated (53% on RT), encroaching evil film by Bryan Singer .........but McKellen is a standout here and he goes right to the line of hammy caricature and then pushes and pulls and shapes it with far more sly touches than you might think him capable of in his introductory scenes. The whole performance is far more impressive than any one individual scene taken out of context too. This is a not just a memorable turn by a fantastic actor.......it's THIS actor making the turn infinitely more memorable because he is playing the part at all. There's a history to this character and to this actor - even if you didn't know McKellen's history of roles - he conveys them and much about this character in relation to prior roles all within this portrayal.
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Post by Longtallsally on Jul 27, 2020 19:48:50 GMT
Maurice Ronet in The Fire Within, (1963)
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