SZilla
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Post by SZilla on Feb 25, 2023 13:33:25 GMT
Diane Morgan in Cunk on Earth (2022 / 2023 - Netflix) - 5 episodes I haven’t watched the full series but I’ve seen a few compilations of hers on YouTube over the past week or so and she’s hilarious. Glad to know it’s on Netflix.
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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 26, 2023 12:27:23 GMT
Diane Morgan in Cunk on Earth (2022 / 2023 - Netflix) - 5 episodesAn instant cult classic in our time - the first great "new" thing I've seen on TV / Movies this year - it premiered on Netflix in January 2023 but was on BBC Two in 2022 so ....... Much of the Great Art of the last 50 years has treaded the balancing act between the stupidly brilliant and the brilliantly stupid - The early Ramones, Woody Allen's Love and Death, my posts on MAR, This Is Spinal Tap etc. If you want to be taken seriously - act (too) serious (U2, ahem) - if you want to be thoughht of as an idiott - well, misspelll words........ Cunk on Earth is in that pantheon ^ - so on point and up to the minute timely in its satire of a very uninformed person / culture .........it takes on larger implications - in how uninformed we are in our age of "New Enlightenment" (yeah right) and where we get our info from........... and the idiots we get it from ........ It is so breezy and bubbly you may not even notice how cooly precise it is in taking down Dumb Ass Presentism.........the only way to tell people how laughable they are is to make them think they aren't being mocked (they / we / you are)......taking down not merely all things evil (White Men, Patriarchy, Religion - all of them btw) but by snarky asides to all things Really Evil (Woke-ism, Pretension, Humans - in General btw) Diane Morgan - as Philomena Cunk - is absolutely comic acting brilliance here - doing a kind of performance that doesn't seem like acting at all - narration, speaking directly into the camera, strange asides (likely improvised - some of the time), some physical comedy, clueless in the best sense........this is a Nigel Tufnel level mockumentary performance - and some of this is (a little?) non-scripted too ...........but it's hard to know what exactly in her deadpan delivery........it's a one woman tour de force of idiocy. Like Morgan says while looking at the Mona Lisa "Is this really good? ...........or is it just something we are told is good...........like Seafood?"It's really good....... Also, I can not stress enough how this show should be watched with subtitles to get her full malapropisms - I watched episode 5 again and realized she was actually saying Russian Pheasants not Russian Peasants
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Post by stabcaesar on Feb 28, 2023 11:33:02 GMT
Rewatched it recently. Steve Jobs/Michael Fassbender/Danny Boyle kicks The Social Network/Jesse Eisenberg/David Fincher's ass. Between this and Macbeth, 2015 was a hell of a year for Fassbender. The only minor pitfall in this performance is that he's got too much sex appeal that he still screams dream hunk even styled as Jobs. Winslet is great in the film too.
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 5, 2023 11:28:11 GMT
Isabelle Huppert in My Little Princess (2011) - Rewatch
This is on Youtube in a shitty subtitled auto generated version - the region 2 dvd is better A precise, extremely fine tuned portrayal of a real life sociopath - the director's mother (real life portrayal - not kidding) - who photographed and provided her to photographers while still a child for inappropriate, sexualized photos. Setting her portrayal at an almost frightening OTT level .........everyone she meets she assesses immediately and preys on any opportunity to use her daughter on her behalf...........the stage mother from Hell ............she should have never had a child ........nor been allowed to keep her. Passed over for a César Award nomination since I guess this is so unpleasant to watch, no one saw it........shame because it's something to see. It has less than 2,000 IMDB votes and I can honestly say of all her boundary pushing roles on some level this is the most artistically challenging because it has no sympathetic angle to play at all. How do you make this stuff watchable - and why would any actress play this - you can only be hated in this role........and yet she fascinates in every scene she's in........in outlandish costumes and hairstyles - she's a pathetic, garish trainwreck imposing sexuality on her daughter and her adult appearance onto her childhood as well. The performance and the psychology behind it - doesn't let up at all........and never courts manipulation of the audience .........all while being a manipulative character more than anything. Essential for Huppert Fanboys - and people who can stomach the subject matter in the first place......
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 7, 2023 18:24:14 GMT
Lily McInerny - Palm Trees and Power Lines (2022 / 2023)This performance got nominated but didn't win - an Independent Spirit Award for Best Breakthrough in 2022 but I'm guessing people are going to see this as a 2023 performance ..... She captivates from her first scene - the film's first scene where she is center frame (photo below) - both visible and slightly removed - which plays a whole lot into her outcast mindset and behavioral choices. Sexual and childlike in ways that will be magnified and diminished in the movie.......both towering but really dwarfed by the towers behind her.......which is how the relationship she enters into (it's bad) will be too - towering over her....... So achingly real it hurts just thinking back on it......a performance that seems like people you know irl - people who listen so intently you worry that they are processing too much, feeling too much, losing themselves too much, obsessing too much..... A genuinely upsetting movie - like Red Rocket was - but more so..... McInerny has an amazing scene (actually several) where you think she may cry - but laughs - that is free of any directorial flourish or actorly guile (similar scene - also brilliant but played entirely differently in Stoker).....the way she holds her phone and speaks into it like a lifeline........the way she modulates her voice the way an adult might instead use profanity to be heard and understood......because she rarely is..... This was a movie debut and it's just terrific and 100% real work.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 9, 2023 8:58:58 GMT
MacLeod Andrews and Evan Dumouchel in They Look Like People (2015 on TUBI) -I have (too) many weirdly specific Theories of Life - which is one of the reasons I like Molly Nilsson's music (see her marvelous song - Theory of Life) One is that list culture is in some way straight up evil - and Siskel & Ebert were too by reducing Art to Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down - I get it and yeah I do it too - but my brain doesn't work like that really, movies are trickier than that anyway ........and if this particular thread was actually accurate then the word "great" would be replaced with "interesting" ... That discussion applies very much to They Look Like People which is like when your stupid friend tells you he has a cool movie idea and you decide to hear it just to make fun of him........and this dumbass was totally right and you can't believe it and are pissed that you are not writing down movie ideas instead of drinking so much all the time. Then you start to worry about your friend...... A sort of dumbed down Donnie Darko crossed with Safe, Frailty and Bug - heavy stuff - but this is so amateurish in filmmaking style (but not in that ace story concept!) it's very easy to dismiss - but I dig it a lot.........and more than that I prefer this thinly sketchy idea more than Friedkin's mannered Bug (love the play, not the film) - and I get it more than the florid convolutions of Donnie Darko too (like the movie but not that much). Sometimes bleakness should visually just look like bleak and not cinematic to some degree at least...... I've watched They Look Like People twice this week - while (not really) working at my job - it's only 80 minutes! - and this movie routinely gets 1 star reviews or a few 5 star reviews too (it's 3.2 Letterboxd, 5.9 IMDB, 92% RT) .......and both assessments are understandable - you really, really want to overrate it.......... and punish it simultaneously. Andrews and Dumouchel make this work by fully committing to the "plot" - covered in a dual mental illness (of varying functional degrees), impending doom, dislocation, male friendship (almost never in American movies convincingly), pre-pandemic isolation in the big city especially ............ The actors are willing to look foolish and looking foolish is part of the point too. The entire movie can be read as how dudes can go nuts without a girlfriend .......or at least a good job....... Dumouchel has a fantastic short scene where he talks to himself in closeup in the bathroom mirror before a date ("Don't be a bitch" he says) that I suspect has way more "life" in it than I see at the multiplex lately......later in a subway tunnel he acts exactly, unnecessarily like a bitch. Andrews and Dumouchel make you invest in the absurdity and deflect the easy criticism like "Why do you even care about either of these guys!?!" ...........well sometimes you just have to make the choice to do so, that's all......... particularly in what you see them do and see how they react to each other and others to them.......... The movie - and Andrews character - are a summation of our scary, conspiratorial time: What if the people you know and care about are losing it - politically, personally, ethically ........what's your responsibility to them.........to others you don't even know...........to yourself? The reaction to it requires a certain faith and a certain POV too - the exact ending of the movie is bound to upset people who want a twist or something big to happen when something big kind of does happen but in a small way.......... and the twist may actually happen but it may happen 10 seconds after the movie ends .......though it says something that almost no one I know who has seen it - even thinks of "the possible twist" at all ...... That depends on one of your own Theories of Life too I guess ..........and depending on that POV it ends as one big "Meh"........... or it's just a badly written ending........or it's a beautiful hopeful ending ........or maybe a somber hopeless one .........the ending in this way is a lot like Oldboy (yeah, this is not as good, thanx)........which also depends on your worldview ...... and in both cases doesn't seem like a cheat......
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 11, 2023 9:56:40 GMT
Michael Shannon in Take Shelter (2011) rewatch -
I don't love everything that Shannon does but he's an unusally smart actor and the director - Jeff Nichols - treats him like he's Brando or something - giving him huge opportunites and time to build a character in his own deliberate way.....there is a scene in this movie where his wife (Jessica Chastain, quite good) slaps him hard and he essentially hangs frozen for seconds....... That kind of thing underpins his portrayal - hanging between a kind of imminent horror of an ominous and unexplainable kind and also a horror of a more clear kind - watching your mind slip outside your control - and being aware to it and its effects on others. Shannon is very adept at suggesting these contrary impulses - you're never quite sure when he will explode, implode or crack or withdraw - one of the great "walking on eggshells" types of roles played to full effect in its eerie silences where we "think" along with him - and if you know people like him in real life it's dead on target .....both in what it suggests .........and what if you're NOT thinking what he is too.....
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Post by stabcaesar on Mar 12, 2023 14:03:06 GMT
Haven't seen this since it came out years ago. I didn't really care for it all that much back then, but man does it hold up well. I would put Mara slightly ahead of Blanchett as I find Blanchett a tad inconsistent in the beginning, but both are excellent especially in the second half.
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 16, 2023 7:59:59 GMT
Giulietta Masina and in particular Anna Magnani in : Nella città l'inferno (1959) aka .......and The Wild, Wild Women.............. On YoutubeMagnani here is a bit like Mastroianni in The Organizer (1963) - where he builds a character entirely out of his own imagination and influenced Hoffman in particular, Nicholson and US actors of the 70s........well Magnani here plays a part that should be stock and direct and raises it with great wit, brio, ferocity and physicality. She is not only everything you'd expect but everything you would not - deeply touching and affecting in 1 very sad scene especially (the letter scene). Masina plays off her superbly and yields to her - which is not only right but also keeps this piece from going off the rails into screechfests like prison dramas often do. But when she later mocks Magnani who physically strikes her - you feel it - and Magnani is riveting with her back to the camera (!) which is a direct parallel to an earlier fight with another prisoner (again, back to the camera) - "You're a scumbag with your angel face" she hisses - it is dynamic in the way actresses usually are not .........when Magnani plays "cool" here - turning a single word ("stupid") into an iconic kind of one word reference point - she is loose, funny, sweet, real. You can actually learn about acting from seeing Magnani here - not just admire - and that you can also draw a connecting line across many subsequent great actors' work - male and female. She is as iconic as Bogie was too - with deep circles under her ravaged eyes suggesting a weariness in her backstory that no one else could quite suggest in 1959.......
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 17, 2023 8:52:49 GMT
Emma Stone in The FavouriteThe Favourite was not my "favorite" film of 2018 - it was at least behind Roma, Burning, First Reformed and arguably a couple others but it's impeccably acted and Stone is the performance that I love more and more on rewatch (3 times now). First of all she's physically great in this - when she falls, she really,really falls (heck she starts her introduction to us by falling out of a carriage)........her conception of the character as a foolish manipulator is far more interesting than if she played her as a charming one.......when she "cries" in the movie she walks the line between really crying, fake crying, and maybe crying for herself - we in the audience are part of the performance and invested in it........the character acts.........she also seems too modern.......and then the very modern quality makes it better and more recognizanble and historically "right" as it goes along..........her performance has ironic character connections that Stone totally gets: ..........burn yourself with lye.......burn yourself with lies
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Mar 19, 2023 1:16:14 GMT
Emma Stone in The FavouriteThe Favourite was not my "favorite" film of 2018 - it was at least behind Roma, Burning, First Reformed and arguably a couple others but it's impeccably acted and Stone is the performance that I love more and more on rewatch (3 times now). First of all she's physically great in this - when she falls, she really,really falls (heck she starts her introduction to us by falling out of a carriage)........her conception of the character as a foolish manipulator is far more interesting than if she played her as a charming one.......when she "cries" in the movie she walks the line between really crying, fake crying, and maybe crying for herself - we in the audience are part of the performance and invested in it........the character acts.........she also seems too modern.......and then the very modern quality makes it better and more recognizanble and historically "right" as it goes along..........her performance has ironic character connections that Stone totally gets: ..........burn yourself with lye.......burn yourself with lies She should have won Best Actress instead of Colman
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 19, 2023 7:39:57 GMT
Barry Keoghan - Tke Killing of a Sacred DeerOne of the hardest things to do is to act symbolically of an emotion or an abstract idea rather than a well written character who has those emotions That's the challenge of Tke Killing of a Sacred Deer - the deeply flawed, deeply fascinating film by the great Yorgos Lanthimos which is so steep in allegory and conceptual presentational style it risks being infuriating. Within its own parameters - Keoghan is often astonishing here - partly because he plays the least contradictory of the main characters ........which allows him several standout scenes - the biting of his own arm to make a point, the matter of fact prophecy of doom explanation to Colin Farrell and especially a great scene opposite Nicole Kidman where he explains - while eating spaghetti - why Nicole Kidman and her children must die - in one of the most casually lacerating and complexly cruel recent movie scenes.
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 20, 2023 12:03:58 GMT
Mariana di Girólamo in La Verónica (2020 / 2021) -A performance framed around a stunt........or rather framed around a frame .........as a stunt. di Girólamo is shot - in every scene at dead center of the frame - for the whole movie........the visual style is meant to mimic social media - but it will turn a lot of people off immediately .........when people speak to her off to the side you see her reactions - and they can not fully respond to her mannerisms - the way you normally do. When they speak directly in front of her - you can not tell when she is more overtly acting for their benefit (as a character) or honestly reacting in the scene. Near the end where she is directly confronted for example - she may be doing both to reach an end result - literally trolling - and it may alternate line by line. Often when she is passive she may be experiencing a numbing trauma .........or exhibiting the dead "smile" robotics of a posing for selfie (A selfie is to this movie what guns are in typical movies) This is implicit in the film's plot where a pretty horrible woman - controls her social media narrative and by extension - her life to get followers. di Girólamo - so memorable in Paolo Lorrain's Ema - is amazing here in a performance that many people will find frustrating .......as a character that many people will hate......... Ah well..........that's your loss........a performance that requires you to think and not be passive ........and that requires a kind of technical mastery both in what is conveyed and withheld .....
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Post by stabcaesar on Mar 20, 2023 12:49:26 GMT
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 21, 2023 7:20:17 GMT
Willem Dafoe in Inside (2023)If you could combine the puzzling 1980s class of American film actors strengths (they have plenty) - with none of their weaknesses (they have plenty of those too) - you'd really have something : Washington's gravitas, Hanks' lightness, Cage's imagination, Penn's volatility, Spacey's intelligence ........well in some ways the best American film actor of this group - though not a star - is (very arguably) Willem Dafoe.......... Dafoe has made a lot of movies (too many) .......but he has more great-ish performances - in an astonishing array of roles that you can only do by NOT being a star - than any of the big guys above in many roles they couldn't hope to pull off ......... and in this so-so film he is once again on a high wire in a singular kind of way that the movie can't quite sustain.........it actually is odd in that the movie gets tiresome while Dafoe remains endlessly watchable: Flinging his body around like a prop.........riveting both in a visual sense - in motion and weirdly in stasis - with frantic noise or long stretches of silence - in some parts with text conveyed multiple ways.......an ace monologue near the end, also some singing like a demented Tom Waits, dancing the Macarena, reciting his own cooking instructions and telling a chicken for dinner joke as background that becomes increasingly unhinged.........it's improbably funny in the way that things are not funny at all while they are happening but get absurdly humorous in retrospect........Dafoe's performance becomes a strange work of Art - almost like the Art pieces / objects he's surrounded by..... "There's no creation without destruction" goes the line here........"Is no man an island - or is every man an island?" goes another ........Well.........Dafoe is a wrecking ball on his island........
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 22, 2023 10:54:05 GMT
Don Cheadle in - Rebound : The Legend of Earl "The Goat" Manigault (1996) - on Youtube
Is this a "great" performance? Well, maybe - but it's definitely one of the better performances in a cliched, poorly directed (and cheap looking) HBO movie you'll ever see - co-starring James Earl Jones, Forest Whitaker and Glynn Turman no less. Part freakishly gifted athlete, part wishful romantic, part junkie, part threw it all away self-loathing loser turned into a redemptive kind of hero - this part deserved a better director (and a bigger budget) and less formula, more ON Cheadle in the script too.......this is particularly disappointing in the basketball sequences which are not believable in showing Cheadle dunking and defying gravity .............and yet........there is never a moment where you don't feel Cheadle is this guy in every scene he appears across several years..........and his actually playing of basketball looks utterly convincing even when the director's trickery reproduction of his soaring dunks does not. Cheadle does a great thing in this movie by turning his head and looking backwards or all around him - on court and off - which ties into this guy's life experiences of constantly being chased by something to derail him - of something dangerous ....and then eventually better ......looming just around the corner..................a lovely physical touch. From his mid-90s, exceedingly smart, hot streak.
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 24, 2023 8:50:42 GMT
Maxine Peake in Gwen (2018) British Folk-horror that is like more overly plotted (and less arty) Hagazussa (2017) - and not as good - gives Peake a complex part where she has seizures.........terrorizes / loves her kids...........stares into the abyss of her own fate..........and wields much weaponry......on paper this is absurd - she's the hero of this stuff but pulls it off in a way that plays out her victim side too.......and sort of walks a line from scene to scene between both extremes She reminds me of Julianne Moore here - Peake has a perfect face for this kind of material......hard edged and sculpted - haunted by her past, present - escalating ominously............ and what she sees coming in the future She's both ethereal and realistic - a ravaged apparition .........
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 26, 2023 9:10:56 GMT
John Cassavetes in Flesh & Blood (1979) - on Youtube (Rewatch)
This TV movie is in a few different versions on Youtube but make sure you get the longest one and the one that has sound all the way until the end (wtf) Cassavetes is really great here - but then he almost always was as an actor - I prefer him as an actor even to his direction- I often call him the most underrated Hollywood actor - ever............here he plays a wise and sharp boxing manager (Emmy nominated). This period sees some of his best acting work - this, but also Whose Life Is It Anyway?, Marvin & Tige, Love Streams........ This movie has a lot of dark stuff - Suzanne Pleshette in one of her crazy sex roles (like her (rather hot) nympho in A Rage To Live (1965)), as an incestuous Mom (wtf), Tom Berenger as the lead as a boxer and her son ......... and also Denzel Washington who is awful young though pretty good (same goes for Berenger) and still has that goofy gap between his teeth too This movie doesn't resolve a lot - it rather just stops trying ...........but Cassavetes and some scenes are aces and the cinematography is by the great Vilmos Zsigmond ffs
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Post by stabcaesar on Mar 26, 2023 14:54:56 GMT
Peter Finch in Sunday Bloody Sunday. I was thinking the film was solid but not particularly memorable, then he delivers a completely devastating monologue in the final 2 minutes or so and completely brings it to home. Glenda Jackson is good too, but Finch's melancholic, layered, vulnerable turn steals the show.
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 27, 2023 9:12:44 GMT
Lindsay Crouse in House of Games (1987) -
One of the reasons that Cate Blanchett is the (current) GOAT is how singular she is across actresses in roles she plays: She often plays heroes as villains (or vice versa), and anti-heroes - and roles that "seem" like they are - on paper - written "for a man". All 3 of those things are not the same thing - and for an English language female are rare to get - heck with our gender collapsed acting categories (absolutely insipid) the differences between males and females aren't even discussed except in the most cursory ways. Lindsay Crouse in House of Games - then the wife of David Mamet - back when he was just "the awesome David Mamet" and not "the problematic David Mamet" - plays a part that in the 1930s - 60s and much of the 70s would have been played by a man and maybe the Joe Mantegna role would have been a female .............but in the 80s this shifted - Ms. 45 (1981) signalled it but House of Games is neither exploitative nor interested in providing any real justification for Crouse' actions - and that's by design. Crouse is fantastic in this role - but it's easy to overlook how much goes into the work in what way: She likes being "one of the guys" and what goes with it - if only she'd been born a man - imagine the terrific books she'd write!.........she somewhat resembles a man - childless, no attachments - or has masculine attributes (short haircut, her wardrobe, her posture). She smokes in a way that suggests habit and not the cliched feminine sexual affectation ........drinks and has sex in that way too.......fires a gun (too much!) that way.......yet she's quite easily pushed around too - by her relationship (and behavior) towards her (female, older) mentor for one thing. Recently I've noted some old movies that "fit" our time - Blow-Up (1966) and in a different way - the pre-pandemic but COVID foreshadowing They Look Like People (2015)............House of Games is another one both in the role itself and what the role says about our rudderless culture............. In 1987 the film could be read as bad men getting their just desserts from a smart female...........in 2023 it sure looks a lot more like a female who has lost her moorings and is adrift.............and then behaves a lot more like the worst males........worse even because she is alone........and those fnckers at least had each other.......
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 28, 2023 9:09:52 GMT
Laure Calamy in Full Time (2021) -One of the MVP's of all time great TV show Call My Agent! - Calamy is awesome here in a physical draining, complex role about working for a living......and living to be working A role - and a film about such mundane Hell would be unthinkable in an American film - where people don't have jobs - they are just spies or John Wick or stupid bro-shit...... Calamy is one of the few actresses - like Sissy Spacek where you can't see any vanity - her fundamental warmth is in every scene here and it's a huge strength not a compromising audience baiting maneuver.
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 30, 2023 8:05:10 GMT
Gian Maria Volonté in Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) - Millionth rewatch An all-timer performance in an all-timer film - that the performance itself makes into a great movie from the amazing Volonté (pacinoyes-ism #1 - Great actors are in great movies. Duh).....not only that but the amount of acting styles covered by him is incredile too - not merely in what he conveys but how: His line readings are fantastic, at several times he is acting as if in a silent movie too - yet while also having lots of dialog (?!?) - best of all his speeches here - a sort of running dialog throughout the movie - are as memorable as anything in more straight, speechifying (and far more boring tbh) movies ( Patton, Malcolm X, etc) ........ even more memorable than those actually: Because he is not hemmed in by a real character - yet is tied to "a (fictional but real) history" we immediately get - his speeches take on other dimensions - a fanatical and truer than true quality that historical reproduction in movies can not. The performance does not rest on his speeches - but you feel that only his character could convey to us - it digs deeper because of those speeches: That's where his performance starts - he colors it with wild touches ranging from childish to frightening to intimidating to representative - and across all of those and more he's wickedly funny too........in again an aburdist and "more real than real" way......several of his best scenes are in the extremes - when he is mocked (as being sexually inept or corrupt by the young radical he despises) or doing the mocking himself (his scenes with the man who buys the ties are just masterful).......both evoking a shifting farce but without any wink to the camera at all (ie American Psycho etc) I am always struck by the fact that Volonté - while onscreen the whole time - goes 10 minutes or so (wtf ?!?) in this movie where he only says one line - "I'll cut your throat" - he of course is not kidding ......and it's one of the great opening lines - and ways to introduce a character ever.
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 1, 2023 7:24:51 GMT
Daisy May Cooper in Am I Being Unreasonable? (2022)
This TV show - from the BBC originally - is one of those shows like the arguably even better Flowers (2016) - that throws so many jarring tonal shifts - dark (extremely) humor, deep sadness, some horror like jolts, and an "unlocking the mystery" framework - all mixed with deeply unlikable characters.....some of the more unlikeable plot points I can recall.
The reason no one talks about Flowers (in America) - with Olivia Colman ffs - is because Americans want the comic beats to follow a pattern - and this show like that sort of modern classic does not - at all.......and is memorable because it doesn't....
Cooper is hilarious and deeply revealing too - this is a fascinating role for an actress to conceive herself in - I never saw her earlier hit show This Country - but this is a brilliant portrayal that came out of sketches (with co-star Selin Hizli, also terrific) .....and very much a thing where just when you think you know it - it ........and Cooper........ go somewhere else.
A show that goes from being about nothing to being about something and then to being about deeply troubling things in your own life maybe too.......Season 1 premieres April 11th on Hulu - 6 episodes and episode 6 makes the entire series imo.........a cult classic in the making if they can keep it up in Season 2
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Nikan
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Post by Nikan on Apr 2, 2023 1:00:23 GMT
Donald Sutherland (and his co-stars) in Ordinary People. Hutton and Hirsch owned their scenes, but Sutherland was the heart of the film for me, ultimately. Watches things crumble around him, laughs them off for so long yet has enough sense (and integrity) to observe things, listen and demand answers... How wasn't he nominated for an Oscar is beyond me, considering the film did that well.
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 3, 2023 7:59:54 GMT
Emmanuelle Devos & Vincent Cassel - Read My Lips (2001) rewatch Two performances that I'd say owe a bit to the choices of the director - the much lauded Jacques Audiard who makes many overt references to all senses - not just what you can hear or not.......and positions the actors in that way too. There are great sequences here of the two actors touching each others faces but also of their faces cut off in the frame by environment (particularly well staged when Devos faints at the beginning) an environment of flashing copy machines or obsructed doorways or people rushing past in walkways - when Devos faints - it's as if the office itself attacked her ...... Cassel does a kind of acting I love but never - and I mean never gets mentioned.......the kind of acting that seems like improvisation but likely is scripted. I mean great actors can (and must) improvise but they are actors - not writers either - and what's rarer is that acting of asides or passing comments Cassel does here utterly believably (particularly memorable for him when he mocks Devos at the bar or says "Hello assholes" out loud to himself / her but directed to his co-workers at lunch) This cunulative effect acting by both makes the film - particularly Devos and her self-awareness - of her looks and reactions to looks and "if people know" or not.......Devos has a real heartbreaking brief scene her where she acts out what she might say at a club because she has done this in her life......... a lot you imagine. The movie - hopelessly romantic in the way only French movies can pull off - and including tasteful slow motion even by Audiard - is all about fleeting sounds, looks, touches.....so much so your invested in this love story in a way you never are in more overt love stories..... One of those movies that to separate the 2 performances - and the director - seems wrong ......
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