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Post by JangoB on Jul 24, 2021 22:36:53 GMT
Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap. And no, this ain't no joke or post-irony or Letterboxd-type overadoration for something nostalgic and cute. I recently rewatched the movie after MANY long years of not even thinking about it and was legitimately blown away by how great Lohan was in her first movie role. And it's not even about the fact that she plays two characters (with different accents) both of whom go on to pretend to be each other - although that is an acting magic trick in its own right. And it's not even about the fact that she does it at such a delicate age, making it one of the greatest child performances I've ever seen. It's about how damn powerful and utterly genuine her emotions are throughout the flick. I couldn't help but smile along when she smiled and feel a lump in my throat when she was crying. There's a heartfelt, soulful quality to her performance here that is a rare thing among kid actors who are often either too rehearsed or too shapeless in their portrayals. She truly lives her characters here. It's a marvel to behold, turning a decent but somewhat forgettable film into something properly sweet and moving and charming. What a shame that what happened with her happened. I have no doubt that she could've achieved some great heights.
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Post by Viced on Jul 26, 2021 2:36:43 GMT
Jimmy Smits in DexterThe first actor on the show that's been anywhere near Michael C. Hall's level... and those two worked amazingly well together. King Jimmy's equally intense and charismatic in the early episodes... but once more is revealed about his character he turns out to be legitimately scary. Very believable as a manipulative man in power who'll do whatever needs to be done. That rooftop scene is legendary.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jul 26, 2021 2:41:33 GMT
Viced oh man, you're gonna love Lithgow
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Jul 27, 2021 19:38:47 GMT
Kazuo Hasegawa, An Actor's Revenge - If the movie satirizes Kabuki from within, Hasegawa's perf is like the ultimate actorly satire of Japanese gentleness and propriety. He plays dual roles: a famous female impersonator in the Kabuki tradition, and a common thief who falls in love. As the female impersonator, Hasegawa suggests a hairy geisha... he's like all those demure great ladies from 50s Japanese films, only gentler. And everyone keeps falling for his ambiguous charms. This has to rank with the great comic turns from any actor. (He doesn't tell you when to laugh, which I appreciate). It's his delight in the role and his general ambiguity that's disarming. This was Hasegawa's 300th (!) movie... in some ways (good ways!) it feels like his 1st.
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avnermoriarti
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Friends say I’ve changed. They’re right.
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Post by avnermoriarti on Jul 27, 2021 21:32:29 GMT
Kazuo Hasegawa, An Actor's Revenge - If the movie satirizes Kabuki from within, Hasegawa's perf is like the ultimate actorly satire of Japanese gentleness and propriety. He plays dual roles: a famous female impersonator in the Kabuki tradition, and a common thief who falls in love. As the female impersonator, Hasegawa suggests a hairy geisha... he's like all those demure great ladies from 50s Japanese films, only gentler. And everyone keeps falling for his ambiguous charms. This has to rank with the great comic turns from any actor. (He doesn't tell you when to laugh, which I appreciate). It's his delight in the role and his general ambiguity that's disarming. This was Hasegawa's 300th (!) movie... in some ways (good ways!) it feels like his 1st. Saw this movie recently as well, I have to admit I had a bit of a hard time trying to get into it exactly because of what you said ( is a Kabuki satire ) and while the style is unique became a bit repetitive but it was Hasegawa's performance that rounds the whole thing, playing it for the laughs and never taking the material seriously, it was a pleasure to watch him manipulate everything to his advantage through his talents as a performer and sensuality in ways no one ever could, or at least nothing what I've seen from the period. From what I read, as a it of trivia, Ichikawa made this film as a tribute to Hasegawa who already played this role in the 30s with a different director.
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Post by Viced on Jul 29, 2021 1:07:56 GMT
John Lithgow in DexterTommen_Saperstein was right. Thought I couldn't love Lithgow any more than I already did... but this might be my new favorite performance from him. Becomes one of the most terrifying characters in TV history from the first moment he appears. And while he's amazing as mostly a mystery for the first few episodes, the more you find out about him the more horrifying he gets. The perfect family man facade certainly had me fooled... and once that truly unravels ("shut up, cunt" is one of the best line deliveries... ever) you're just in awe of how much of a monster he is. Also one of the most perfect castings in TV history. No one can do goofy nice guy (even if it's all an act) like Lithgow... and not many can do deranged as well as him either. If not for his believability in every facet of the role, Dexter not killing him sooner would have been way too hard to fathom.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 30, 2021 18:22:29 GMT
Sean Harris in Possum (2018)This, I think - is one of the strangest movies that I've ever seen. Matthew Holness creator/star of the (very) brilliant BBC comedy show Garth Marenghi's Darkplace went from that - to this - a frighteningly oppressive and downbeat movie - that his mind could play for dark comedy if he saw fit - but clearly does not - he pushes it out of the realm by making the trauma and abuse sickeningly real .........every memory is terrifying and excruciating - every present moment is an invitation to be reminded of the past. Holness directs this movie - by any standard a horror even if you call it a drama - that uses a spider motif to physically represent this experience ( Through A Glass Darkly etc) - and casts Sean Harris as the victim and perhaps perpetrator - who has to constantly "react" and cower or run. He is brilliant at this here - never overplaying or showing you he's acting - he's a walking near-corpse ..........and he's giving you little clues to how what happened to him went into what he is - ie he often leaves his hands at his sides even when running - because to "fight" - to raise his hands - just encourages more abuse and suffering. This is not a great film but it's an astonishing one - where did this exercise in bleakness come from in Holness? He's lucky he has Harris to flesh out this story.....
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 31, 2021 3:41:35 GMT
Jerry Lewis - The Nutty Professor (1963)My dad sometimes references Jerry Lewis scenes but can never get which movie he's referencing right - just the kinda mix up Lewis might instigate. I'd seen some of his other movies, but not this one. I know, I know, what the hell. And it seems, probably correctly, that this is the menu favorite. Rosenbaum called it his masterpiece with an interesting note - "Lewis gets under our skins by revealing too much." As the professor Kelp, Lewis is utterly pathetic, both comically and worryingly (a paleness that seems like sickness) and he's even funnier as his alter ego Buddy Love, a most monstrous creation: the confident man. He corks and complicates the Jekyll & Hyde bit by reversing who seems more plausible. It's Kelp who is surrealized by Looney Tunes gags. Love, a fictional overload ideal of manly appeal (Kelp's sly desire) is either Lewis's self-parody or, more boldly, a ding on former-teammate Dean Martin..... or both. At any rate, it's a singular, indeed revealing perf of the two polar tones of Jerry Lewis, and last note - Nicolas Cage once said this work had "a huge impact on my own tone and performance style."
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 31, 2021 18:57:58 GMT
Humphrey Bogart - The Enforcer (1951) -
Said it before but once you go past Brando and Clift - to me the actor of the 50s is Bogart - not Douglas or Holden - and that's a decade he didn't even live to see end and his "great" decade is considered to be the 40s......but look at his 50s sometimes - one classic after another and one fascinating turn after another. This movie is not a classic but if you know it, it could be considered a quite marvelous movie - tough, smart, exciting with a great ending. Bogart is in heroic mode here but I'm fascinated how this actor - as larger than life and unique as any in US film history - could be in yet another ensemble picture where he fits in so perfectly........there are plenty of actors who would push this .......he doesn't.......... he inhabits and trusts his script .....and this isn't even one of his many clear high points of the decade. It would be a lesser picture without him though......and it's a very fine movie........
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 2, 2021 0:26:23 GMT
Bob Hoskins - Mona Lisa (1986) - less so but shoutout Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine. Tyson gives a perf of toughed gloom - an appealing mix of control, experience, smarts....with a feeling of profound exhaustion, a sort of immortal hangover. Caine is very interesting in the small villain role - he hides around and haunts the corners of the movie, he isn't a movie star bothering it. He has one really great scene, the "little things" monologue that he plays like a tour of his success but can't help display an ugly ego with an underlying threat to Hoskins (whether either realize it or not). As for the Hoskins perf, I like the ibbi note that he's sort of Chaplinesque - there is a luckless aspect and romantic humor to him. His character directly implies he's the Frog to Tyson's Princess for instance, except here a kiss casts no spell ("Pretend you know me"). And his near-decade prison time may or may not be the meaning to his out-of-stepness. He keeps reading people wrong, and it's almost sweet, like the wardrobe or ice cream bit, except he keeps the character sudden and violent, he's nowhere else but a little ahead of himself and he keeps forgetting how secondary he is. Like in (the all-around better imo) Long Good Friday, Hoskins makes rage look like misspelled care. What a remarkable actor...
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 2, 2021 18:28:27 GMT
Marie Trintignant & Stéphane Audran - Betty (1992)My 3rd post today (!) praising this fascinating book ( Georges Simenon), the extraordinary film of it ( Claude Chabrol) and now the 2 lead performances within it. These 2 actresses had done special work before - Trintignant unforgettably in Serie Noire (1979) for one and Stéphane Audran in (many) Chabrol films including Le Boucher (1970). Here they engage in a dance of death, a slippery push and pull and invitation to a kind of self-denial and even worse, self-knowing. They are not only terrific - they are terrific and enigmatic.............together......... Mirror images, except.........not:
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 3, 2021 7:26:38 GMT
Ayako Wakao - Irezumi (1966) -I've talked about Irezumi a lot - I was (I think?) the first to mention it on MAR before it was easily available - and that lead straight into seeing the even more nerve-rattling Blind Beast - both directed by Yasuzo Masumura - I've raved this performance and film in the reviews section and in "The Last Piece of Art That Moved You" thread (along with Blind Beast (1969)).........BUT if you watch the extraordinary and definitive new Arrow DVD of this - you get a level of understanding of how great and sophisticated this piece of her acting work is - thanks to the detailed and informative special features on the disc. It's everything you could hope for in a DVD release. Frightening, complex, otherworldly - both heartbreaking and heart-chilling - it is the perfect compliment to the film's intent and realization. It couldn't possible be played any better by Wakoa and I felt like I was seeing it with fresh eyes on my um 3rd viewing in less than 6 months...... The Arrow DVD cover, with it's striking cover image:
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Aug 4, 2021 17:31:43 GMT
Sharmila Tagore, The Hero - She was the goddess of Devi (appropriately, an avatar of Kali), and also graced The World of Apu and Days and Nights in the Forest. In Ray's The Hero, which might be a response to 8 1/2, she plays the disarmingly smart young journalist who interviews a famous Bengali movie star en route to New Delhi. The movie is many things, among them a dialogue between stage and film acting (an old stage actor has put a curse on the movie star's career, branding him a "puppet"), and Tagore pretty much exemplifies the pleasures that are found in screen acting alone. The camera loves her; that is to say, it's mystified by her, and her mellifluous quality proves the old stage actor wrong: she undoes the old theatrical curse. She might be the most modern girl you've ever seen and the most ancient. The stage doesn't need great faces but the movies very much do, and Ray knows it. Sharmila is to Ray what Liv Ullmann was to Bergman. She's still alive (and very beautiful)... maybe a proper reevaluation of her career and impact is in order.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Aug 6, 2021 15:59:00 GMT
Jean Simmons, Footsteps in the Fog (1955)I'm discovering that I love Jean Simmons and I'm going to be seeing a lot of her in the coming weeks and months. She's stunning here in this soapy British crime drama laced with class anxiety which would be more fleshed out in Losey's The Servant. The movie is quite good. Simmons plays a put-upon maid with dreams of upward mobility, and (this is the good part) she blackmails her wife-killing employer Stewart Graigner with the knowledge of his deed, and begins to possessively insinuate herself into his life by wearing his dead wife's jewelry and clothes (!) The movie deliberately toys with class power dynamics through the character of the maid because her vulnerability has made her insatiable and dangerous. Simmons occupies those complexities brilliantly. One minute warm and giving, the next icy and unscrupulous.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 9, 2021 20:32:12 GMT
Luigi lo Cascio - I Cento Passi (2000)Extremely memorable and lovely and believable central performance as a hero too - in his first film role. I have to say I don't know much about him or his other roles but this one won him a David di Donatello Award ........which is not surprising - he's the heart of the film - a genuine tragic centerpiece and he plays it beautifully and restrained. He adds to the movie without losing his discipline and the camera loves this dude's face here too.
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Post by HELENA MARIA on Aug 13, 2021 15:13:04 GMT
Nicolas Cage in Pig Gosh ! I nearly forgot what an incredible and charismatic actor Nicolas Cage was ! Well , thanks for the reminder dude ! He really brought his A game in this refreshing, intense, inpactful and poignant film.Cage's strong,nuanced and Oscar worthy performance + a beautiful cinematography + a couple of subtle twists = a total winner !
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 13, 2021 18:54:37 GMT
Yves Montand and Romy Schneider - César and Rosalie (1972)Beautiful movie that is both charming and charged up. Yves is phenomenal, a star - he doesn't need anyone else on screen, he holds you on his own, and it's a very buzzy, extremely nuanced, believable perf. Only two César nominations in his career is a joke! Like the following Vincent Francois Paul and the Others, the subtle Sautet has a magic touch, keeping you won and involved while peeling out deep cracks in his characters, and I love how he positions the energized Philippe Sarde scores and odd rear-projection car scenes (but it works). And Yves, France's Sinatra they say, could play guarded insecurity as good as anybody. Romy is lovely, supremely wise, beguiling... She catches the air of the movie and you kinda fall in love with her too. Her scenes with Yves are tremendous - simple dinner scenes sizzle with underneath flickers of looks and tension. There's also a gutting moment where she says - "I want to live a very long time. As long as my children do."
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Aug 16, 2021 18:55:26 GMT
Colin Farrell, The North Water (2021)Farrell continues to prove that he's one of the most interesting actors around. Miniseries was fine but Farrell makes it worth watching on his own. In a cast featuring Tom Courtenay, Stephen Graham, Jack O'Connell, Peter Mullan, the MVP is hands down Colin Farrell who's unrecognizable behind the thick beard and thicker accent. It's the biggest, loudest, dirtiest, most specific performance in the cast. Recalls Tom Hardy in The Revenant, or a mishmash of Dafoe's lighthouse keeper and Hardy's wilderness trapper. Intentionally gruff and intense, sleazy and really fun to watch. Like Hardy, you get the sense that he's the only one on-set having a good time.
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 16, 2021 19:27:26 GMT
Colin Farrell, The North Water (2021)Farrell continues to prove that he's one of the most interesting actors around. Miniseries was fine but Farrell makes it worth watching on his own. In a cast featuring Tom Courtenay, Stephen Graham, Jack O'Connell, Peter Mullan, the MVP is hands down Colin Farrell who's unrecognizable behind the thick beard and thicker accent. It's the biggest, loudest, dirtiest, most specific performance in the cast. Recalls Tom Hardy in The Revenant, or a mishmash of Dafoe's lighthouse keeper and Hardy's wilderness trapper. Intentionally gruff and intense, sleazy and really fun to watch. Like Hardy, you get the sense that he's the only one on-set having a good time. Very good perf! and kinda reminded me of Nolte in Q&A where they bulked and use that to size to hang over others, they know exactly how they make people feel. I think my fav little moment is when O'Connell is bandaging his hand and asks "Is it too tight?" and Farrell just laughs at him, that something as nothing as a bandage wrap could possibly bother, and you see him seeing that general care as weakness.
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Post by themoviesinner on Aug 17, 2021 9:18:44 GMT
Beatrice Dalle & Charlotte Gainsbourg - Lux Aeterna (2019)
An actor "playing" themself is, in my opinion, always one of the trickiest roles, mainly because it's much more difficult to make it feel true and genuine, since the viewer will always be more critical and wary of the actors' movements and reactions, especially if the film is a projection of a very probable real life situation (as in this film). Lux Aeterna is the chronicle of a shoot gone wrong. The two actresses start off lively and hopeful, but as the difficulties and setbacks start to pile up and the shoot tuns more and more nightmarish, we see the anxiety and frustration starting to build. The whole ordeal feels incredibly realistic, as the mental and physical collapse the two actresses are going through seems incredibly genuine. We can feel their pain and uneasiness, through every expression and motion, as everything feels real, there's no exaggeration or artificiality here, despite the difficulty of the roles. Also both performances seem to complement each other, as in each portrays a different kind of suffering an actor has to go through for the creation of a film. Beatrice Dalle's is the mental one, in which all the concerns and worries during the shoot pile up and just become too much to handle, while Charlotte Gainsbourg's is more physical, portraying the fatigue and weariness of the body that comes with hours upon hours of demanding shooting. And all that in just 50 minutes!
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Aug 19, 2021 3:46:34 GMT
Very good perf! and kinda reminded me of Nolte in Q&A where they bulked and use that to size to hang over others, they know exactly how they make people feel. I think my fav little moment is when O'Connell is bandaging his hand and asks "Is it too tight?" and Farrell just laughs at him, that something as nothing as a bandage wrap could possibly bother, and you see him seeing that general care as weakness. Oh for sure, one of the things I'll remember about Drax is how he seemed to find everything so funny. Always chuckling like everything was a big joke.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 27, 2021 22:38:17 GMT
Catherine Keener - Brand New Cherry Flavor on NetflixMaybe the best performance of a witch (?), demon (?) - fnck if I know what she is I'm only on episode 5 - who makes girls puke little white kittens that I've ever seen Ok, it's the only performance I've ever seen like this, but that isn't the point right now: I would have loved to watch her read this script when she saw it for the first time and she was like "oh yeah....... I know EXACTLY how to play this!"? Rarely do you find a 2 time Academy Award nominated actress this willing to go THIS far.....in a role THIS far out there......
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Post by themoviesinner on Aug 28, 2021 18:26:29 GMT
Jean-Claude Van Damme - Wake Of Death (2004)I've mentioned multiple times before that I consider Jean-Claude Van Damme not only a great action star, but a pretty good, even great, actor as well. And his performance in this film is among the best of the year. Through his weary gaze and expressive eyes you can feel the character's pain and turmoil, as he seeks revenge from the people that murdered his wife. It's a performance that is subtle and gritty, shed of all theatrics, that turns, what whould have been a dark, but, otherwise, simplistic and mundane film into something much more brutal that feels incredibly real. No other action star can express such despair and other emotions with only subtle gestures or through a simple glance. Performances in action films don't get much better than this.
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Post by Viced on Aug 30, 2021 16:37:50 GMT
Matt Damon in StillwaterThis is the most I've seen a big name disappear into a role since... I don't know when. No one else could've pulled off wearing a fucking Cabela's hat and those goofy outfits without making the whole movie seem ridiculous. Perfectly toes the line between determined and doofus and has such organic chemistry with a wide range of co-stars.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 31, 2021 15:02:57 GMT
I watched this performance yesterday - still floored by it and not quite sure how to articulate my feelings... I honestly got goosebumps - Jessica Lange in her Emmy-nominated turn as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. I don't think another actress has ever tapped so deeply into the character's dark despair... I can't help but think Williams himself would have been floored. pacinoyes MsMovieStar Javi
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