Thoughts On (The Divisive) Mark Ruffalo?

Not a fan at all. Most of the time he does absolutely nothing for me and occasionally he actively makes things worse. I have never seen his name listed in a cast and think "wow, how exciting!" He's also in this weird realm where I feel like most people agree with me about him, but Hollywood seems to view him as one of their top talents. The fact that with 4 nominations he's reached the same level as Claude Rains (and has the potential the surpass him) is mind-blowing.

I'll give him this, he does look a bit like a young D'Onofrio, but the latter at his best wipes the floor with the former.

I think there are times he is definitely mannered in a bad way. I still laugh when I think about his performance in Spotlight. I seem to recall having similarish problems with him in The Normal Heart.

That said, I think Yorgos found the way to channel that sort of thing to perfect ends in Poor Things.

More importantly, I think there are plenty of times he is not remotely phony on screen and sort of on fire - You Can Count On Me, The Kids Are All Right, Zodiac, Foxcatcher. I even really like him in crap like Just Like Heaven and 13 Going On 30. I think he was good in In the Cut too.

But no, I don't think he's topped You Can Count On Me either, to the point I always think of him as being nominated for it... I'm a big fan though. The good stuff totally overshadows the bad.

Big fan tbh

Usually find him boring as fuck but I can't wait to see Poor Things because that looks like his best performance by a country mile.

It's his most different for sure. 

Mark Ruffalo divisive? I assumed there were three groups - people who like him, people who love him, and people jealous of his wife Sunrise (cool name) for getting to make babies with him.

he seems like a terrific guy IRL. I want to love him as an actor because when he's good, he's realllly good, but his instincts come off hammy and artificial much of the time, even playing normies like in otherwise somber & understated projects Dark Water or Spotlight where his acting sticks out like a sore thumb.

I'm Ruffalo-curious I guess. I wanna love the guy and occasionally I do. His performance in Foxcatcher is maybe his most understated role ever but it communicates so much quiet strength and stability contrasted against his brother's inner turmoil and du Pont's sniveling thirst for constant external validation. Meanwhile he swings for the fences in a double role on I Know This Much to Be True that *could've* gone disastrously knowing his track record but he fucking nailed it.

I actually found Garfield's performance in The Social Network tremendously annoying and miscalibrated. Soured me on him until his strong work in Hacksaw Ridge and Tick Tick Boom. Ruffalo's a bunch of nothing in TKAAR, but I'll take nothing over a negative.

I think he’s good more than he’s bad

I like him a good bit and don't have much to add to what others have said (including hating him in Spotlight), so I'll just add this: Hulk was my favorite comic book character growing up and Ruffalo in the first Avengers movie is the only time that character has been done well on screen. Just a perfect concoction of that constant low-level anxiety and simmering rage beneath the surface all with the surface sheen of professionalism; that kind of unassuming guy who tries so hard to be a wallflower because he knows when the spotlight is on him it can easily result in total disaster. So it was really frustrating (but not at all surprising given the character's film rights) to see how poorly he was immediately written in subsequent films so poorly and watch in real time as Ruffalo was checking out.