Search found 1 match: Nick Cassavetes

Searched query: nick cassavetes

by miss jesus
Fri Apr 09, 2010 9:34 pm
Forum: Movie-Specific
Topic: Best Performances
Replies: 44
Views: 115152

Re: Best Performances

Neat thread. Seen a bunch I give big thumbs up to, particularly Timothy Hutton in Ordinary People. I looooove that movie, and especially him in that. Want to give him a hug and tell him it's okay, every time I see it. Also raising my glass to Citizen Kane, The Lives of Others and Aguirre.

your don't need to be as pointlessly detailed as mine.

Pointless detail?!? That's my favorite!!!

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Stellan Skarsgard in Erik Skjoldbjærg's Insomnia
Understated when it needs to be, crazy and violent when it needs to be. Seeing him in this was one of those film experiences that made me say to myself, "why haven't I seen every film this guy has been in yet?"

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Roger Guenveur Smith in Bill Duke's Deep Cover
A very eccentric and extremely entertaining performance. I started out picking Laurence Fishburne in this movie, but then I remembered Eddie. Oh, Eddie. Smith is far from a well-known actor, but he's been in a bunch of Spike Lee movies and he's just good in everything. This movie, by the way, was written by Michael Tolkin and is definitely a superior cop movie. I highly recommend it.

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Angela Lansbury in John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate
As close as I was to saying Laurence Harvey in this movie, Lansbury is the one who blows me away in this--to the point that I have to say something to somebody every time I watch it. She's so sweet and nice in everything else I've ever seen her in. And here, she's the most evil, horrible mother: what a heartless scheming dragon lady she is in this! It makes you all the more sympathetic for Laurence Harvey that he has to put up with her, and deal with the blowback of her sick plans, and still call her 'mother.' And she is motherly. In a really stomach-turning way.

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David Thewlis in Mike Leigh's Naked
Did somebody say this one already and I just didn't see it? This performance basically is the movie, and it's astounding. A character with so many facets that you can't just feel one way about him. I love him, I hate him, he expresses my innermost unspoken feelings and then does something so horrible that it fills me with disgust. Yet he makes it all work. It's rich and real and totally cohesive. You don't even have to buy it because he's not selling it, it's just what he is. Just incredible.

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Bob Hoskins in Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa
What a great character. George is recently paroled and looking for work when he's told that he has to escort a call girl around. He hates it, he hates her, he just wants his old jobs back and his wife back, but he can't have them. And things change, no matter how desperately you cling to the idea of who you are and what you want. An award-winning performance, and for good reason. This movie also features the hip new song "In Too Deep" by Genesis, Michael Caine, and a very young Lester Freamon.

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Robin Wright-Penn in Nick Cassavetes' She's So Lovely
The elder Cassavetes had a lot of juicy, distinctive roles for women in his films. This one, made from his script, is no exception. Maureen isn't well-balanced. And she deals with her crazy husband by getting hammered and being reckless. She's clumsy, she's not so smart, and I just love her. She knows that her life isn't good for her, including her husband, and one day she turns it all around. It's like two performances in one, and they're both terrific.

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Mickey Rourke in Alan Parker's Angel Heart
Sure, it's just a horror movie. But the story, and the dreamlike presentation Parker chose require Rourke to do a lot of dramatic heavy lifting. It's a pretty selfless performance. Not much I can elaborate on without spoilers. This one deserves at least as much credit as Nicholson in The Shining, though, in my book.

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Gena Rowlands in John Cassavetes' Opening Night
A film in which an actress who is aging and feels her power and dignity slipping away is stuck in a play that seems designed to make her feel worse about everything in her life. She goes through rehearsals in which an ex-lover slaps her, take after take. The author is condescending to her. Her friends can't help her. And the sudden accidental death of a fan who reminds her of herself doesn't improve anything. According to the stories, Rowlands was as hammered as she looked in the climactic opening night sequence. I sometimes question what kinds of acting I value, whether method or realism or just pretending is more praiseworthy...but when I see a film like this one I find it doesn't matter. It's just mesmerizing.

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Willem Dafoe in... I can't pick just one!!!
Seriously, is he ever bad? He was even entertaining in Speed 2 for crying out loud. I have literally never regretted watching a film he was in. I know, I just said 'Speed 2,' but he's always fascinating to watch, and his ethic for choosing projects seems to result in him appearing in a ton of movies that are just damned interesting. He always gives it his all, from what I can tell. I was originally going to say only Shadow of the Vampire, because every time I watch it I'm floored again at how creepy he is, and how he actually makes me believe that he's a vampire. In The Last Temptation of Christ, he depicted an idea of Christ that I hadn't had before, that seemed so different and so much more believable than the bullet points how-this-relates-to-you-and-your-sins version that churches today describe. And he makes sense. Dafoe is an actor that seems completely uninterested in vanity and is more interested in the craft than anything, and because of that, he has put in so many good performances. Sorry to cheat, I just wanted to share the love.