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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2021 17:42:14 GMT
Anna Magnani, The Automobile (1971) I like what some reviewer said, that at this point Italian cinema didn't know what to do with her, but she knew what to do with it. This is one of four TV Movies she did with Alfredo Giannetti (Oscar winner for writing Divorce Italian Style) - they were her last batch of perfs. Here she plays a former prostitute named Anna aka The Countess - it lovingly plays on her celebrity and past work like Mamma Roma. It's a great-ish little midlife crisis character study, economically made, very funny, bittersweet. Even tho she's playing a lonely, out of step character - Magnani doesn't brake, she keeps a sharp confidence at the fore, denying nostalgia and shifting interest in order to rebuild. She carries the charming appeal of experience, and observes more than she admits. Underrated perf and obscure gem, a surprise as I never heard of it and randomly played it on Criterion Channel.... What a shame that she struggled to get substantial roles at this stage of her career but her presence alone makes those TV films worth watching ( The Automobile is my least favourite of the four though). If you ever get the chance to see the one called 1943, Un incontro, I would strongly recommend it as it's my favourite of the bunch and she gives affecting performance as a nurse hiding a fugitive Lieutenant in her apartment. As in her star-making role in Rome Open City, Magnani's character is again facing the Nazi occupation but this film is less a political statement and more of a 'slice of life'/love story. It's been many years since I saw it but the final scene is still vivid in my mind .
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Post by pacinoyes on May 31, 2021 23:12:06 GMT
John Hurt - The Naked Civil Servant (1975)One of his best performances - makes a great double feature with Love and Death on Long Island - remarkably perceptive, smart, witty turn. The more you see it, the more different sides of the characterization become clearer and more delineated. Worth seeking out if you've never comes across it....
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 2, 2021 17:39:35 GMT
Bette Davis/Gena Rowlands, Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979) They make this small movie loom... their perfs interlock and it builds beautifully... they make it feel well written like a classic little play or something. I think this is Davis' best perf post-The Nanny.... "Who gets what they want?" she is walled, dormant, letting rage let the pain out. Rowlands brings smartly played charm... her life monologue ("All I ever learned to do was make a pleat....Hey you don't need any pleats do you?") is brilliant and utterly devastating. Davis won the Emmy but Rowlands wouldn't be nom'd til '85 even tho she did a lot of worthy tv work before that...
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 7, 2021 17:47:17 GMT
Joan Crawford and Jack Palance (co-leads) in Sudden Fear (1952)I remember there was a thread a while ago about great perfs in psychological thrillers. Well here ya go. (re-post) Jack Palance is just revolutionary here. His chiseled face full of easily-to-read emotions going from adoration to disgust to rage to just plain terror. He works SO HARD with this role and you can read a lot of sociopolitical stuff into his social climbing and resentment (supposedly the character was written as having been a coal miner). Crawford is no slouch either. There's one section in the middle that must've gone on for several minutes and her acting is exclusively these wordless, stunned and horrified reaction shots, as if she's watching a car crash in slow motion. One might say she's been struck by... sudden fear. (Gloria Grahame is great too btw, she won for Bad and the Beautiful which I haven't seen yet but she's nom-worthy here. A minxy femme fatale full of disdain and coy mischief)
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Post by stephen on Jun 9, 2021 1:46:03 GMT
That world-weary stare. The slouch of her shoulders which intimates the weight that is grinding her down. The unmistakable Delco drawl. It is remarkable when an A-list movie-star is given the opportunity to truly embody a character over a longer course of time, because it feels like they have more time to really show how immersed they are in their creation, to the point that it could easily become a signature part for them (case in point, McConaughey's Rust Cohle). Indeed, Kate Winslet's portrayal of the jaded small-town detective on the trail of a murderer feels like Rust's distaff counterpart, and someone who could easily find herself spiraling into those dizzying depths. Mare Sheehan is a woman who wears her bitterness and frustrations like armor, except there are cracks in it, and one well-placed blow will shatter it to bits. It's barely been a week since I wrapped the show, and yet I can say without hesitation that it is Winslet's career-best performance. (As a side-note, I think it's fascinating that there is DNA from her Ammonite turn here. That performance was extremely promising in what turned out to be a leaden, aimless project, but the seeds were there for something truly special. Ammonite now feels like a dry-run for Mare of Easttown, and what a home run that is.)
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 9, 2021 17:58:51 GMT
James Earl Jones in The UFO Incident (1975) NBC Movie - So the alien design is hilariously awful and the real-life story overblown, so what. As a psychological drama and dissection of an interracial marriage in the '60s... it's quite interesting and deepened by the perfs. It's too bad they had to market its catchy factors and even portray those yikes aliens bc it does dampen it and make it seem goofier than it is. For the most part, this is therapy-interviews interwoven with flashbacks and all of that is really well done with sly transitions - one reviewer likened the movie to Bergman and, believe it or not, you can see where he's coming from. Frank Perry came to mind for me, with the mixing of paranoia and the pierced American dream. Estelle Parsons as the wife is very good and kinda comedic in her liberal hooting ("I'm not white, I'm human"). But it's Jones who gives a remarkable, giving-in, childlike perf... He adds a lot of little subtle moments of conceding and fear ("I can't afford to be a fool"). He also has a hugely effective crying scene that made me think how many of our great actors haven't ever pulled off something like that (Brando and Nicholson have, but the others....). I think fans of creepy podcasts or the recent Vast of Night would like this. And JEJ fans too... He has so many great tv perfs.
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Post by stephen on Jun 9, 2021 18:32:30 GMT
James Earl Jones in The UFO Incident (1975) NBC Movie - So the alien design is hilariously awful and the real-life story overblown, so what. As a psychological drama and dissection of an interracial marriage in the '60s... it's quite interesting and deepened by the perfs. It's too bad they had to market its catchy factors and even portray those yikes aliens bc it does dampen it and make it seem goofier than it is. For the most part, this is therapy-interviews interwoven with flashbacks and all of that is really well done with sly transitions - one reviewer likened the movie to Bergman and, believe it or not, you can see where he's coming from. Frank Perry came to mind for me, with the mixing of paranoia and the pierced American dream. Estelle Parsons as the wife is very good and kinda comedic in her liberal hooting ("I'm not white, I'm human"). But it's Jones who gives a remarkable, giving-in, childlike perf... He adds a lot of little subtle moments of conceding and fear ("I can't afford to be a fool"). He also has a hugely effective crying scene that made me think how many of our great actors haven't ever pulled off something like that (Brando and Nicholson have, but the others....). I think fans of creepy podcasts or the recent Vast of Night would like this. And JEJ fans too... He has so many great tv perfs. Extremely good call here. Jones and Parsons were very good together and I think that the story of Betty and Barney Hill is ripe for a revisitation nowadays.
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Jun 9, 2021 19:44:41 GMT
Jane Fonda, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) - I'm not much of a Jane Fonda fan, but this is a killer perf. It's like a revival of 30s toughness (and you could argue the best thing the 30s gave us were those tough female characters and actresses... still in many ways unsurpassed). Her anti-charm does wonders and (crucially) holds the movie together. It's possible that the virtues of the perf turn against her in the final stretch (I didn't believe the character's actions for a second) but that may be more of a problem with the script...
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 18, 2021 19:23:17 GMT
Sean Bean & Stephen Graham - Time (2021) Three-part BBC drama that aired this month. Slightly prison-simple, trying for realism but it wants your emotions, it doesn't stand out among what we've seen on HBO (Oz, OG, Night Of) or elsewhere, altho we don't usually follow 60somethings as new inmates, so there is an interesting age-reversal... and the whole cast delivers and ups it. It might be career-best work from Bean, who makes himself small and gives an understated perf of shame. Graham....who's done about 50 projects since 2010.... plays his extorted officer with scanning experience, I love the way his eyes keep the scene in check.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 19, 2021 10:42:35 GMT
July 6, 2020 : Any fans of this? Decoy (1946) - ~7/10Preposterous.......nasty ........cheap-ish noir BUT ....... with a greeeeeeeeeeeeeat femme fatale turn from Jean Gillie who makes this weirdly fascinating and of note. This is less than 80 minutes which is insane when you know the plot - just know it involves many implausibilities one of which is that you could involve this many people in under 80 minutes. This plot is utterly weird for noir too and the performance from Gillie is one of the great "what a bitch!" turns in movies I think I've ever seen and I never saw it until today - it got recommended to me from my movie club - finally they recommended something worth seeing ^ Lizabeth Scott - Too Late For Tears (1949) - By far the most interesting performance I've ever seen Scott give although she was good other times .......and bad too in her limited, short career - seeing it (yet) again really makes her stand-out even more. This performance as Jane Palmer is sort of a somewhat softer cousin to Jean Gillie's peerless noir femme fatale Margot Shelby in Decoy (1946) - one of the greatest villains / femme fatales ever. (1 vote for our "Villain of '46" - mine....pretty unimpressive and sh it, MAR )........these would make a really great double feature........Scott does a lot fascinating body acting - so greedy she almost can't hold herself together - her body revealing her mind - and clasp those hands harder baby...........it's a nasty fall.........
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 20, 2021 1:49:09 GMT
Ben Wishaw - Surge (2021) This is what happens when Paddington doesn't get his marmalade. Seriously though... where did this come from?? Going into it blind was a great idea - this shoos convention at a narrative level and psychologically, as Wishaw plays his character crack-up with insane elation... a post-prank giddiness. He's instantly my new Lead Win so far this year. It's a spiraling, snakelike, demonic perf that is really astonishing... it's his Keane. I see lotta people also comparing it to Joker - they definitely share elements and specific scenes but it's better in every way imo. It also has a stressful Safdies buzz to it. Wishaw is brilliantly physical, with tics and urges, he keeps turning away but looking back excitedly at "the action" ...freaked, fearing, drawn to what he's causing. Btwn this perf and A Very English Scandal, and stray other impressive work, I'd pick his talents over Cumberbatch's at this point...
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 21, 2021 18:42:05 GMT
Mark Strong - The Long Firm (2004) Another Brit! Four-part BBC crime drama that pivots perspective per episode, but it's all about Strong's Soho gangster Harry Starks who is fictional but inspired by the Krays. I didn't much like Ep1... but Ep2 was kinda great, as if Lena Headey got her own Goodfellas. "He collected me like he collected everybody else," she says of Starks. In Ep2, we get a sense of his shielding ego, ambitious drive, overdisplayed sexuality, the way and why he exerts himself over others. There's also an oddly funny plot point where his Judy Garland obsession becomes his kryptonite. Ep3 is filler, and Ep 4 is average but reminded me of Mindhunter (and surprise, the writer here created that show).... as it stands back and questions the criminality of Starks, so do we. Strong uses his dark eyes and steel stare greatly throughout.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 22, 2021 11:14:56 GMT
Carlos Areces and Antonio de la Torre - The Last Circus (2010) -This movie - directed by a guy / somewhat mad genius who has wayyyyyyyyyyyyy too many ideas for the movies - Álex de la Iglesia - who made a film I kind of love a lot - Day of the Beast (1995) - a comedy/religious/horror satire that one - but something like this - necessitates acting that can fit with his off the wall approach. This movie is one of the most ambitious I have ever seen - with wide ranging indictment of Spanish history interwoven with movie genre mashups like crazy. This movie would utterly fail without this acting work by these two who make it unpredictable, funny, scary, sad.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 28, 2021 7:14:34 GMT
Rebecca Smart - CeliaI talked about this movie yesterday in the "Last Movie You've Seen" thread and I said that Smart's performance makes the entire movie work. That's really true because this movie - a child's coming of age film - in many ways it's a kids movie even - mixed with horror framing and psychological dramatic touches would be a mess if she played at one extreme or the other. It's one of the best mainstream kids performances of the late 1980s era because it doesn't trade on her being cute or precocious......it's played straight.
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 29, 2021 1:48:25 GMT
Naomi Watts in Ellie Parker (2005) Is this Mulholland Drive as a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode? Half-kidding but it does play between the video-cam style and Hollywood sick of Ivans xtc and the hilarious mortification of Kudrow's The Comeback... ok and it reminded me of Camille Cottin's petite-series Connasse but with auditions instead of pranks - they both shot guerrilla style and have similar comic forwardness in the perfs, and Ellie Parker began as a series of shorts actually. I love that they shot this on and off for years, like a Welles movie or something, not only between Watts's mainstream efforts but during (they shot a scene in her The Ring 2 camper) - not to mention her own star trajectory putting an ironic punch to the movie. Her perf is very funny, very game, and affecting too. Drish !!
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 30, 2021 11:34:02 GMT
Patrick Dewaere - Coup de tête (Hothead) 1979Is it possible to be "great" in a movie you are miscast in......and another actor would have been perfect for instead of you? If so, this is kind of it - a wild tonal (and narrative) mess that is a cross between Slap Shot, The Longest Yard, The Loneliness of The Long Distance Runner, and a sort of uncomfortable revenge drama - the movie is still worth seeing because some of it is hilarious.........and there aren't many good Soccer movies......plus (the late, great) Dewaere tries insanely hard in a role that screamed for Depardieu instead - his 70s acting rival when they were the DePac of France. Dewaere finds some way to pull of the athletic part of this role (which is a big stretch) he maybe (at best) conveys a guy good at something because he just is - and doesn't have to commit to it - he's laconically gifted...........like I said that's a stretch but if you buy it - he's also got the other parts of the role to cover. ............and he's far better in those other parts - conveying humor, wide eyed rage and over the top indignation. It isn't one of his best roles but if you never saw him in anything else and saw this first........you'd say "who is this guy?" ........he's that much of a left-field oddball and he's hard to take your eyes off of tbh......he's imperfectly perfect in his way........
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 2, 2021 10:25:59 GMT
Nicol Williamson - Inadmissable Evidence (1968)You know how people on this board come up with something some dumbass said on Twitter and post it as "proof" of an actor or actresses "stature" (Yeah, you do, I'm sure ) .....well that kind of "cherry-picking" never could apply to Nicol Williamson - who was very easy to flat out hate - immediately and venomously..........and lot of people did ......but he was routinely called the best actor - or among the best - in a class that included Finney, Hopkins, O'Toole, etc. He was the very opposite of a "consensus actor" that everyone liked or even really "got"..... This part as Bill Maitland is a film version of his stage performance - his most famous role - of a sweaty, pathetic, sad man feeling life, work, sex, career all suffocating him - its a filmed midlife crisis. No one ever talks of this movie in the US and if they did it would be to say how stagey it is ......and that's true .........and the way the play is filmed actually hurts the performance. Well I'm saying it's a tour de force anyway........his performance is an amazing mastery of language .....conception....physicality......if you care about acting - particularly British acting - at all and want to see the man who was called by the writer if Inadmissable Evidence as "the greatest actor since Marlon Brando" .......it's a must see, stagey or not....
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 4, 2021 18:15:13 GMT
Vera Miles & Ralph Meeker - Revenge - Alfred Hitchcock Presents S1 E1 -Hitchcock directed this in 1955 - and it sets up a lot of themes of a later film of his too - with much of his creepy/understandable sexual obsession with Vera Miles who he directs here as if she's auditioning for a XXX movie version of Last Year At Marienbad - all wide eyed zombie-like and lifeless robotic in her trauma........and that's intentional - same with Ralph Meeker evoking Bill Pullman at his most honorable good guy-ish. There is a noticeable gap between how Hitchcock shoots the real world - dull, defined, cramped, confined, and clear - versus the world we don't see and are merely "told" about .........unsure, sexual, without borders, open to perception, vague. Hitch shoots Miles in a man's shirt at the beginning (Meeker's) then she removes it, then he lingers on her legs and body (Aunt Bee from Mayberry is in this and looks at her like she's a streetwalker she just stumbled upon ) .......he also noticeably lingers on the couple kissing too - bordering on out of control and suggesting a sexual hysteria - though we never see it - it's the closest link of the 2 worlds we get...........although there's an elevator scene that is similarly caught between two worlds - shot in wide angle with - revealingly - no facial close-ups at all in this scene..... Fascinating stuff....
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 8, 2021 8:39:27 GMT
Alec Guinness (especially) and Jack Hawkins in The Prisoner (1955)A tour de force from Alec Guinness about a Cardinal breaking under the pressure from a totalitarian state. This is one of Guinness' best performances and that's saying A LOT - wallsofjericho , have you seen this? - and he builds the character out of the text entirely.....he must have been thrilled to get this part and he knocks it out of the park. There is a great scene - several actually where you see realizations conveyed on his face at the precise moment he feels them - and which comes at just a beat or two when it's actually said too - you are that invested in what he's doing here. Hawkins is a very fine foil for him - his characteristics embodying the state but scary without overplaying - and together this is a great "2 man" acting showcase......there's some problems with the film in attempts to open it up but I'd call it a must see regardless just to see their work.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 9, 2021 7:22:46 GMT
Marlon Brando - The Nightcomers (1971) I always say that if you want to see what a great actor Marlon Brando was - do not watch his 50s work - his 50s work is obviously magnificent.......but in the 60s and up until this he is is - at best - in merely ok movies almost the whole time ......films he has to make the most of and transcend and you have to work at to see the special work. This movie, a horror really - one of his few into that genre - with a full on "wtf is THAT" great/bad Irish accent of the kind that only the best actors ever can get away with - is almost a TV level exercise. But Brando is just riveting, you never take your eyes off him, when he is off camera you miss him immediately......a performance of wit......presence........a surprisingly kinky sexuality pre-Last Tango.......a genuine oddball and idiosyncratic piece of work.......it's something to see BAFTA nodded ...........which when you see it is in itself particularly funny and utterly appropriate for this most American of actors .......
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 10, 2021 9:24:39 GMT
Daniel Auteuil - Lacenaire (The Elegant Criminal) - 1990One of the worlds great actors in the middle of a very dazzling career hot streak - does something I accuse actors of rarely doing: that is putting in the hard work in their characterization when they can get away "with not putting in the hard work". This film is done very much as a "what makes this monster tick?" so the approach of the movie would allow him to cut corners - he could just play the text or leave it up to the director to get across ........but he doesn't - every gesture, word, look, lie, is indicative of a pattern of sociopath traits that build into a portrait.......... Auteuil fleshes out the script, he never lets the script do the work for him. In fact, I'd say he's TOO good here - he more than suggests things the script and director can't keep up with - latent homosexuality as a form of narcissism, intellectual vacuity in combination with genuine intelligence (VERY hard to project both simultaneously), and the integration of the abstract with the "actual" - poetry vs. mundane things like murder . A meticulous real life performance.....
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Post by isabelaolive on Jul 15, 2021 21:41:26 GMT
Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt and Bruce Bennett in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
I watched The Treasure of the Sierra Madre recently and found the performance of the entire cast to be excellent, especially Bogart. I'm not very familiar with his filmography, until now I considered his performance in 'In a lonely place' his best, but now I think his performance as Fred Dobbs is his best work. The way the film approaches greed and the paranoia caused by it with touches of humor is simply genius. A pity that Bogart apparently did not receive any awards recognition for this performance, but on the other hand Walter Huston won the Oscar for best supporting actor. Other very good performances I've seen recently: Marlon Brando - On the waterfront Norma Aleandro - The Official Story Tyrone Power - Nightmare Alley John Travolta and John Lightow - Blow Out Marília Pera - Pixote
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Jul 22, 2021 19:49:39 GMT
Vanessa Redgrave, Young Catherine - We're used to deconstructed royalty, they're-just-like-you-and-me-but-madder types ( The Crown, etc). But when Vanessa R. plays a monarch they're not like you and me or anyone else. In this 1991 TV movie she plays Empress Elizabeth of Russia: a dazzling perf, superior to her Elizabeth I and her Oscar-nominated Mary of Scotland (she was Emmy-nominated). The cast has other talented people in it (Christopher Plummer, Maximilian Schell) but next to her their acting is exposed as, well.... acting. Like Garbo's Christina, Redgrave is in men's clothes for a large portion of the movie, and she looks amazing in them (this is true to the real story as Elizabeth loved dressing as a man to show off her imposing physique, and forced the other women of the court to do the same... to embarrass them). You believe Redgrave is the embodiment of czarist Russia, and that's no small compliment considering foreigners who play czars (especially Brits) are usually laughable. Hilarious how she dismisses people before she even greets them, or how she watches Julia Ormond give birth like it was her private entertainment. And yet, peculiar and absolutist as she was, the Russians loved her, and scene by scene you understand why--this woman was indestructible. I think I now give her 6 wins in my lineups - not sorry!
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 24, 2021 22:09:17 GMT
Knocked out, freaked, floored by Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass (1961) on my recent rewatch. Whole cast is damn great too - Warren Beatty, Pat Hingle, Audrey Christie, Barbara Loden, Zohra Lampert. These are beautiful, blasting, desperate, heartbreaking, complex perfs. Wood is at her sweet, tortured best... predating the level of Ullmann or Rowlands in evoking a self-haunted psychological stress. Everyone knows the legendary bathtub scene, where she's brilliant...but the scene before it ("Suppers ready!") is masterful as well....from Kazan's blocking, to the polyvalent detail.
Can't find a clip...but it's an timer scene. POV shots, the way the wall halves her, the hopped-up parents trying to regain their daughter thru old axioms and silliness. Wood closes the blinds and turns, as if caught, and gives a genius little b0unce of a smirk to pretend to have played a joke or something. And there's her reaction to her mother's kiss, and the way she whispers to her even tho they're alone. There's a lot of that to her perf and the movie - ideals and joyous impulse struck by uncomfortable unfathomable reality. I've seen the movie a few times and I'm always very, very affected by the ending scene, in an unspecific way, bc the movie, thru all of its pronounced subtext and tragic overtones, its all-over emotional cascade, seems to have built to such striking, graceful, shattering quiet.
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Post by stephen on Jul 24, 2021 22:16:06 GMT
Nicolas Cage gets the ever-living shit kicked out of him at a couple different points in this movie, but the worst bruises he incurs are on his soul, and he lays it bare for all of us to see in Pig. This is a performance so poignant in its calibration and so perfectly measured that you can hardly believe this is the man who is so prone to gonzo nuclear meltdowns. If there is a recipe for giving a performance so monumental and yet so subtle, Cage has mastered it, and it’s a dish I wish he would serve more often because, honestly, it’s an underappreciated weapon in his arsenal.
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