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Andy, I like The Killers an awful lot. The noir with the evil woman that I like a little better is Out of the Past. I would have done ANYTHING, including taking a bullet, for Jane Greer in that movie. I've come to know both of these movies only in the last 5-7 years. God bless TCM!
Yeah, I wasn't sure whether that actually counted or not, but I figured, what the hell?
Looks interesting - I'll have to check that one out.
Have you ever heard any of the radio show, The Adventures of Harry Lime? It's a prequel to the movie (obviously), so it's just Harry going around and being evil and entertaining. Lots of fun. Orson Welles was great at movies, but he was amazing on the radio.
I try to keep a list. It's accurate for the last 5 years or so, but I'm missing at least a few movies I saw before that. It's just barely over 2000 now.
About two years ago I started compiling a database. I'm at 960 or so. Though that's only movies I could recall well enough to rate. I know I've seen Dead Poet's Society, but for the life of me I can't recall a single thing about it.
The aforementioned criticker.com is a good site to transfer your database to because it matches up your ratings with other people and generates projections as to how much you'll like a movie. It's by no means foolproof, but I find it's helpful to weed through the thousands and thousands of more obscure movies to find one that suits your tastes.
EDIT: To be clear that's 960 ever, not in the past two years. I assume I'm well behind most folks on this thread in that category as it's only been recently that I've taken a liking to film.
That's probably a blessing.
Yes, but I don't go into the past with it. I just started keeping track at the beginning of 2011. I saw 163 movies in that year. I'm up to 19 already this year!
Thanks, I'll check it out.
Holy crap. If you are employed, married and have kids you are my new hero.
I started 7 years ago (replacing the doomed idea of saving ticket stubs) and just now got to a thousand. This doesn't include those from before 2004. I rarely watch things more than once, almost never more than 3 times.
Don't want to go back in time too far because frankly, anything seen before age 15 or so and didn't watch over and over, I shouldn't count as having seen. So there's some gray area.
New York Times 1000 Best Movies list is a good place to start. Obviously biased toward classic Hollywood but includes quite a few things I'd never heard of by directors I'd never heard of. Immediately I started thinking "Did I actually see Jaws, or just fragments? Well I'll be damned, I'm pretty sure I've never seen Jaws. Or Back to the Future. Or the original King Kong."
The Danish movie? That is one that Netflix streaming seems to be absolutely desperate to get me to watch. Up there with Kubrick's The Killing and some bizarre movie called Lo.
I watched Zazie dans le Metro the other day, and while it certainly isn't underrated I'd wager it's underwatched and worthy of viewing for anyone remotely interested in French New Wave stuff (even though it is explicitly not New Wave, stylistically is has much in common with Breathless/Pierrot/et al).
I haven't seen that but that is exactly what I'd say about Malle's Elevator to the Scaffold. Probably more FUN than any Truffaut movie except Shoot the Piano Player.
Now you guys are making me want to do this, it's probably easier for me since I watch more tv shows than Movies, but still sounds like a waste of several hours of my life that I won't really regret doing. (I already went to the clickit site posted earlier, but I'm rating every movie I've seen just once, regardless of how well I remember it...not really good enough to qualify as a definitive list)
Employed, long-term girlfriend, no kids. Note that the aforementioned long-term girlfriend works at the largest video store in the country.
One movie I adore that no one has mentioned yet (I think) is Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Just awesome, twisted and fun. Sam Rockwell just nails the role of Barris, and everyone seems to be having fun with their roles.
Yeah, that's the one. Kind of feels like the subtitled love-child of David Lynch and one of the Coen brothers.
It's probably not a strict comedy, per se, but it has a mordant sense of humor and a few moments of absolutely gut-busting hilarity.
Watched that one, too. Not terrible, but not great, either. An interesting idea handled better and more thoroughly in some parts than in others, made for basically no budget at all. It started life as a stage play, which kind of shows in the small number of locations and the lack of camera movement.
Oh my, yes.
Still, for Clooney's directorial debut, it's mighty impressive.
And a small part of me really, really wants it to be true. :)
@503: that's wild. I'll have to find the episodes.
Except that it includes Biloxi Blues. That concerns me.
Comedies are just much more re-watchable than dramas-my favorites also include "Top Secret!", "High Fidelity" and "Spaceballs". I watched "Teen Wolf" a couple of weeks ago, and it was about 100x worse than I remember.
If you're anywhere near NYC, you have to go see this.
And Zaphod Beeblebrox on the remaining arm?
I wish I understood this joke! To google, though I'm going to guess Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
edit: I am ####### awesome.
Nope, he is disinterested, oops, uninterested, ... disinterested, ... uninterested ... I mean he in disinterested and uninterested in sports.
I'm not sure if he's a one and done for tattoos or not.
You know Haywire is an action movie, right? Gina Carano has a square jaw because she made her name as a MMA fighter. Casting someone like her in this kind of role is just simple realism. You cast, I dunno, Bo Derek in the lead, and she's going to look ridiculous.
That's probably the larger trend behind his point. That there are more movies currently that call for that kind of woman. I'm not sure I buy the argument though. I've been obssessing over women with small breasts and short hair in movies my entire life and from Winona Ryder to Ellen Page there's never seemed to be a shortage of them.
That's probably the larger trend behind his point. That there are more movies currently that call for that kind of woman. I'm not sure I buy the argument though. I've been obssessing over women with small breasts and short hair in movies my entire life and from Winona Ryder to Ellen Page there's never seemed to be a shortage of them.
Not a fan of the Underworld franchise, huh?
Yeah, not so much. I watched one of them, and couldn't figure out why they kept talking about lichens when there were all these werewolves and vampires running around...
Someone should absolutely make a movie about killer lichens. It would be a throwback to 1970's classics like this.
Wow, was that a gross movie.
One of the segments in Creepshow comes pretty close. And this one (based on Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space") has some similarities as well.
Pretty much ever vampire movie made after Interview with a Vampire, has sucked(non-pun intendend). I can see someone maybe liking From Dusk till Dawn, but starting with Blade and continuing on, they have stretched the suspension of disbelief beyond realistic portions(for the record, Twilight is not a vampire movie, it's a super hero movie...it still sucks, but calling that a vampire movie is like calling Schindlers List a comedy) You can't have an entire society of vampires and pretend for it to be in the real world.
ScarJo
Anne Hathaway
Mila Kunis
Sandra Bullock. . . . .
Plus you got TV and the lesser weights
Sofia
Fox
Christina Hendricks
Lohan
Hayek
Kardashian. . .
Then you have all the models with the impossibly large breasts on such a skinny frame.
"Let the Right One In" and "Shadow of the Vampire" were pretty good artsy vampire movies, and "30 Days of Night" had some decent scares.
I saw "Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl" last month, and was pretty disappointed. A lot of the humor (the wrist-cutting club and the Ganguro-as-black stuff) was just lame and off-putting, and the plot structure was similar enough to "The Machine Girl" that it felt lazy and formulaic. As much as I enjoyed "Tokyo Gore Police", I was expecting more from Nishimura.
Some stray notes, hopefully not repeating things others have said.
Fight Club – Had a minor surgery once and was confined to bed for a few days. In the DVD player, Fight Club. Couldn’t get out of bed to switch the movie or flip a toggle from DVD to broadcast television. Luckily, it’s hilarious. I never saw that much in the message of the movie, but I think it takes itself way less seriously than most people caught on to.
Rushmore – Hell, I’m a total sucker for anything Wes Anderson does, though I also totally get why some don’t care for his work. This was the first movie of his I saw and, perhaps consequently, my favorite – I think it was responsible for my briefly falling for the girl I with whom I saw it platonically (and she with me).
I did not like Horrible Bosses at all. Dumb, but not good dumb.
I just (re-)watched Galaxy Quest while hanging out with somebody as part of a suicide watch. Um, so there’s that. It’s a pretty good little movie, though.
Really fun, absolutely ludicrous (and offensive) movie: Crank 2. (Think it was featured on HDTGM, a podcast referenced umpteen posts back).
I wanted to ask this question the other day, but didn’t notice that there was already a movie thread….
Who are the greatest female character actors in recent times?
Kathy Bates.
Allison Janney.
Patricia Clarkson.
Amy Sedaris. For that matter, Amy Poehler would be a great character actor in movies if she weren't too busy being great on television.
They just featured it again with the director sitting in. He had many entertaining things to say about making Crank and Crank 2.
The remake is really good too.
Agree with Patricia Clarkson
Joan Cusack
Melanie Lynskey
Yeah, it was pretty nifty.
To take but one example:
? Yer kiddin me. She's got a jaw the shape of a shovel, with a cleft chin. Jeez. C'mon.
That's not a woman, that's a product.
Shooty: Thanks for hipping me to that! I am there.
EDIT: As for greatest female character actor in recent times, my vote goes to Charlize Theron. Monster, her turn in Arrested Development. But it's possible I am still very smitten from the picture of her coming back from a beer run on Super Bowl Sunday. I literally bit my knuckle and everything when I saw it.
My top 10 from Hollywood:
"The Crowd" (1928, directed by King Vidor)
"The Smiling Lieutenant" (1931, Maurice Chevalier, Miriam Hopkins, Claudette Colbert, directed by Ernst Lubitsch)
"Baby Face" (1933, Barbara Stanwyck)
"My Man Godfrey" (1936, Carole Lombard, William Powell, directed by Gregory La Cava)
"Libeled Lady" (1936, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, Spencer Tracy)
"The Shop Around The Corner" (1940, James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Frank Morgan, directed by Lubitsch)
"Citizen Kane" (1941, Orson Welles, actor and director)
"The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek" (1944, Eddie Bracken, Betty Hutton, directed by Preston Sturges)
"The Apartment" (1960, Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, directed by Billy Wilder)
"The Purple Rose Of Cairo" (1985, Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, directed by Woody Allen)
Were it not technically an English film, "A Hard Day's Night" would have made this list, too, though I'm not certain which film it would have bumped off.
Yes! This was part of the SF Int'l Film Fest last year.... and this is what always gets me in these favorite-movie conversations: I can't really separate the movie from the experience of going to see it. Like, Trollhunter, for instance, isn't the greatest movie ever - but the SFIFF was right around my birthday, and I got a great dinner at Millennium with Amazing GF before hustling over to see it, and the movie was good fun, and the director was there, and it was just an all-round very fine evening.
Or, at the opposite extreme, Zentropa: it's a good movie, I guess, but it's hard to distinguish my memory of the movie itself from the memory of the perfectly miserable night I had with that (different, earlier) GF.
Maybe I've just seen too many good movies to pick just 10, or even 100.
Young Adult is also well worth the price of admission in my opinion.
50/50 is the best movie I've seen in 2011 so far (admittedly the list isn't long, I see about 12-15 movies in theatres a year). I particularly liked Seth Rogen interrupting the emotionally-charged, private conversation with the girlfriend to tell Gordon-Levitt she was full of ####. I'm not sure why I found that so hilarious, I guess I've been in conversations like that before where I really needed an eavesdropping friend to come in and bluntly tell me what's what.
I saw "Devil's Advocate" in a packed theater that was eating the damn thing up, lots of audience reaction, a few well-placed screen responses but not too many. A really perfect movie experience. I still consider that one of the great enjoyable cheesetastic movies of all time. About the only film for me where Pacino not just chewing scenery but swallowing it whole in scene after scene is not only excusable, but absolutely awesome.
I also really like Norah Zehetner, although she isn't in much she's insanely cute in everything I've seen her in.
1. Lost in Translation
2. Garden State
3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
4. The Last Kiss
5. Notorious
6. Edward Scissorhands
7. Casablanca
8. (500) Days of Summer
9. Before Sunrise / Before Sunset
10. Joe Versus the Volcano (My #1 guilty pleasure)
A few that just miss the list are Cry-Baby, Kill Bill V1, Minority Report, Blade Runner, The Wrestler, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
My two favorite movies of 2011 were 50/50 (may end up in the top 10 after repeated viewings) and Drive. Midnight in Paris was also excellent. Still have to see The Artist.
Thelma Ritter was the quintessential character actress -- see Rear Window, The Misfits, All About Eve.
Jane Darwell (Ma Joad) was a character actress.
Charlize Theron is too hot to be a character actress, plus she's the star of most of her movies.
YES.
I can call my Mom on the phone right now and say nothing but "You broke my bird!"; guaranteed she'll fall apart laughing.
DOUBLE yes.
I didn't even want to see "You Can Count on Me" - looked way too chick-flicky - but damned if she wasn't terrific in it.
I had never heard of it, but Branagh, Bonham Carter, DiNero. How could it fail? But boy did it ever.
You should watch Oldman's "Beethoven" next. I'm pretty sure it came out the same year, and it equally sucks. I remember seeing them both in the same theater in Oregon.
As for Charlize, I don't see why being hot and starring in most of her should films disqualify her from being a character actor. Have you seen Monster? That's the work of a character actor. At the very least, she is a character actor in a leading actor's body.
I'd guess we need a definition of "character actor" here. To be honest I've seen it used quite ofte and I'm fuzzy on what it means. At least for some people there's an element of a character actor not being the star of a movie, which disqualifies Charlize. Which isn't to say she doesn't have the talent to BE a great character actor, just that no one uses her that way. Sort of like saying Troy Tulowitzki has all the tools to be a great utility man. But that doesn't mean he is one.
(I realize this analogy doesn't quite work because it implies "character actor" is a easier role to fill, which in many cases is not true)
Anyway, point of it all is let's define "character actor" or else we'll all just end up talking past each other.
That it is more fictional than Twilight. I can accept the fiction of "Amadeus" because there's SOME basis and it's written well, at least. "Beethoven" had neither of those factors helping it. I rarely am troubled by embellishment, history is like that. But this one simply
embellishedinventedobliterated too many facts. The idea that Beethoven was a total PLAYA with the ladies and that he wrote the 9th because his father abused him (and then vanished following the premiere to lie on the ground and look up at the stars in comtemplation) was a little too much for me to take. (I understand this criticism it has a OH I KNOW HOW IT WAS THESE PEOPLE RUINED WATCHMEN sound to it, but, even so, blech.)I always took "character actor" not to mean someone who could play a lot of roles, but who did so almost constantly - even exclusively - in support. And while I see this as obviously incredibly fuzzy (Philip Seymour Hoffman? Has he been the LEAD lead in a lot of films?) that's how I've always defined it. The most perfect character actor I can think of is Brad Dourif.
Are you ####### kidding me? That was one of the most retarded movies I've ever seen!!! The only thing that could have saved it was if the wolves were werewolves or some other mythic beast, then at least I would have hada chance of suspending my disbelief of the entire thing.
Right off the top, there has never been a clearly documented case of a wolf killing a human in North America, and even aggressive behaviour in wolves towards humans is extremely rare.
- the CG wolves didn't really look much like wolves, and they growled more like bears than wolves
- the plane crashed and they said it was -10 F. With the wind chill, the suvivors would have died hypothermia within a couple of hours
- they had magic torches that never went out
- have none of these guys ever heard of a club?
- their backpacks were obviously glued to their coats, because they never took them off, even when their buddy was being eaten alive and they were sinking in the snow up to their knees trying to run back to him
- the amount of fake snow in their beards was ridiculous
- they were at high altitude somewhere in northern Alaska (according to the flight path map on the plane). Such a high altitude that the big black guy apparently died of hypoxia, yet there were lots of trees around. They are hit by a huge blizzard, yet in the morning there is no snow on any of the trees, and now they are suddenly surrounded by a coastal rain forest with huge spruce and cedar trees. Its like they were magically transported 15 degrees of latitude and 5000' of altitude overnight
- who in their right mind comes to a huge canyon and then just decides to jump across into a tree without even considering that if you walked downstream a mile or so you could simply wade across?
- towards the end Liam Neeson's character jumps into the rushing stream that would have been about 35° F, and wades around for several minutes trying to get out. In this situation, he would have MAYBE 20 minutes before he died of hypothermia, yet he continues trudging along, soaked to the hide, without so much as a shiver
Dumb, dumb, movie.
I saw the Tree of Life last night, it was pretty impressive.
Greg is making me realize that maybe I don't know what a "character" actor is, after all. I always applied the terms to actors who have the ability to absolutely disappear into a role, sometimes to the point where you say, "Holy ####, that's HIM?" Maybe I am confusing character acting with method acting.
However for those of us unable to nitpick all the details, it was very good.
- realizing that that was not a term I ever hear used
- subsequently struggling to define what a character actor is
...so this is going where I'd hoped; carry on, please.
Everyone I know that saw The Grey hated it, fwiw.
I went with four other guys, and all of us just sat there when it finished and looked at each other with blank faces for about a minute or two before we could even articulate a sentence.
Yeah, this is why musicians who whine about "Amadeus" annoy me.
(Yet MY OWN annoyance with "Beethoven" is justified, TOTALLY! Really. I swear.)
I'll kind of disagree at this point. As much as I love Hoffman, he's now a whole lot of Dustin Hoffman playing dress up.
Awful threadjack here, but my wife and mother-in-law - who both can barely tell you how many outs in an inning (6) - both LOVED Moneyball. One of their favorite all-time movies.
They claim it's not just because Brad Pitt is hot, either.
One, and primarily, it can be actors that very frequently have indelible and eccentric supporting roles. John Tuturro, Steve Buscemi, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, etc. I don't know how important it is, but these guys are often funny looking, which is probably why they don't get the starring roles that their talent merits.
Two, it can be a way for the media to label actors who have been in many movies and have familiar faces but about whom we know nothing. "That guy" actors.
Either way it has nothing to do with acting philosophy. Some of these character actors might be method actors. And I would agree that having a starring role almost precludes one from being a character actor. (Not in small quirky films.)
This is wrong. You might as well say that Marlon Brando was a character actor. Or DeNiro. The word "character" in the phrase doesn't mean that the actor can subsume his personality when taking on a role. It means that he plays lots of characters, which is to say, lots of unusual and memorable personalities. I haven't seen Monster, but she won the Oscar and got rave reviews for her incredible and complex role. In a way that is opposed to what a character actor does. Because the roles are almost always supporting, the character actor isn't known for creating complex portraits but rather for being able to take on a large variety of quirky (but more simple) roles. The complexity comes from the range shown across a number of films.
Dictionary.com's 23rd definition of character is the relevant one: Adjective, Theater. (of a part or role) representing a personality type, especially by emphasizing distinctive traits, as language, mannerisms, physical makeup, etc. "Representing a personality type" is the important part. That's why it's almost necessarily not a lead role, because lead roles are supposed to be complex, nuanced, etc.
Yes.
Yeah, the label usually stems from the fact that a lot of character actors have physical limitations or quirks which prevent them from playing roles which require more of a tabula rasa.
Method acting is actually a "method" for acting-immersing yourself in a role psychologically in order to inform your performance.
McCoy, you might be conflating "method" with "lead".
And when the role calls for a funny looking girl, it's often just a hot girl with a terrible haircut.
When you see Steve Buscemi's face, you immediately understand that he's not going to be competing with Tom Cruise for roles, and that helps you pigeonhole him as a character actor. But that's not the case with, say, Amy Adams in Junebug.
I have the same impulse with historical movies. But in my old age I've mellowed and have come to realize that they are movies set in history, not movies ABOUT history. I once had a conversation with a history professor about how awful Master and Commander was and after 5 minutes he'd still only covered the historical anachronisms of the cricket game that is on screen for about 5 seconds.
Terp, right on about Frank Morgan. I've come to appreciate what he did in movies. Shop Around the Corner lets him show quite a range. Next time anyone watches the Wizard of Oz, watch his Professor Marvel bit in the beginning. I think he really shines as a human actor in that scene with Dorothy. (Not that he's bad in any of the Oz located roles but those were to be played very broadly).
Lisa Kudrow might be another. Again, not commenting on attractiveness, just on her eccentricities associating her to "character" roles.
Are there really female "character" roles in film any more? I mean, I can come up with Margaret Dumont, but she's been dead for almost 50 years. Most of the examples of actresses I can think of are TV-related.
Sean Bean, Hollywood's go-to guy for traitors and cowards.
Kathy Bates?
Clearly not as many as there are male character roles.
When I think about movies I like with lots of character actors in them - State and Main, Gosford Park, Fargo, Boogie Nights, Midnight in Paris - (and I'm trying to avoid overtly masculine films like LA Confidential or Inglorious Basterds) they mostly conform to what we've outlined. Lots of quirky, funny looking fellas, and mostly attractive women. Well, Kathy Bates is in there, and so is Maggie Smith in her stock absurd rich lady role. Frances McDormand is probably a character actress, Fargo being her one moment to take the spotlight. But it's not a lot to outweigh William Macy, Steve Buscemi, the guy that feeds Buscemi into the woodchipper, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman, Bob Balaban, David Paymer, Richard Grant, Stephen Fry, John C. Reilly. More importantly, the other female "character" roles in those films are played by Heather Graham, Sarah Jessica Parker, Gwenyth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Kristin Scott Thomas, basically, actresses that are not typically limited to character work.
There are other character actresses. Melissa Leo has won a bunch of awards recently. Marcia Gay Harden. Older actresses that have been mostly relegated to character work: Joan Allen, Anjelica Huston, Judi Dench. But none of these people really embody the character actor the way that David Paymer does. Google him and you'll be like, "oh, THAT GUY!"
Yup. It's not possible there will ever be a more perfect mating of actor and role. Pacino was born to play The Devil.
He was good, too, in People I Know. He was solid as a thoroughly burned out NY publicist. Getting older might be helping him rein it in.
Agreed. At least he didn't throw rocks through my screen.
I do think there are points past which a film can become so un-credible that it becomes unwatchable, but The Grey didn't reach that point for me. Still, SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER
there was no reason to immerse Neeson's character in frigid water towards the end, since that would have been impossible for him to survive, or at least survive and walk, making the climactic scene impossible. I agree it was a distraction, since I spent the next minute waiting to see how he'd deal with his imminent death from freezing, but it only seemed like a minor distraction to him.
Crispix--did you ever see The Edge? Good film, of the same type as The Grey.
***
HERE's a page full of male character actors.
Still and all, watching a surly Dan Hedaya grunt a beautifully insincere "mi casa es su casa" while stuffing his face did help take some of the sting out of Alien Ressurection.
Paul Giamatti made the difficult transition from character actor to leading man. So did Philip Seymour Hoffman. That's got to be cool, to have paid the dues and hit it big like both of them have.
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