Tommy Lee Jones

space cowboys

this guy is awful

FUGITIVE

Shakey, he's done bad stuff but yr nuts.

Lonesome Dove

Haven't seen 90% of these. He's great in Coal Miner's Daughter but gets to snuff it on the moon in Space Cowboys, so it's a tossup.

Boy, Ollie Stone can sure bring out the scenery-eating side of Jones, can't he?

lol he was in the "Charlie's Angels" pilot

MiB

Jessica Lange got the Oscar, but he's terrific in Blue Sky.

Voted for Clay Shaw and his gladiator helmet and gold body paint .

Kinda amazing that in the years right before and shortly after winning the Oscar he made 47 movies.

fuk u shakey

I'm so glad I've forgotten so much of JFK.

I need to RESEE his Daffy Duck warden in NBK tho.

my dad still talks about Jones as Howard Hughes (I've never seen it).

TS:

http://www.jfk-online.com/100party.jpg vs. http://images.allmoviephoto.com/1995_Batman_Forever/tommy_lee_jones_batman_forever_001.jpg

Morbs, did you like NBK? It's pretty high on my favorite movies list.

hi dere, Dan!

http://www.jfk-online.com/jones.jpg

NBK is great but Jones doesn't really add anything to it

(apart from the scene with his head on a stick, that is)

RDJ did outdo him, I agree.

NBK is not great but I liked it and the actors.

(more Tarantino scripts shd be taken out of his hands)

RDJs aussie accent = good times

what the hell shakey this guy is great

v tempted to vote MiB

I'm so glad I've forgotten so much of JFK.

Madness. It's the most entertaining movie of all time.

On a related note, though, I completely forgot he was in Altman's last.

we need gear in here

i like him ok, but he/his characters can be tiresome. it's interesting/annoying how he can go through such a range of emotion - histrionic to laconic - while maintaining the same taut stoneface and physical reserve. is that good or bad acting?

Eric, again with yr ambiguous standard of "entertaining."

On a related note, though, I completely forgot he was in Altman's last.

yeah me too, don't recall that at all!

In general I think maybe my distaste for him stems from a lot of his worst movies being in constant rotation on cable - the Fugitive, US Marshals, MiB, etc. and so that's mostly what I've seen. They're these irritatingly interchangeable "I am a deadpan hardass cop with a southern accent" roles that bore me to tears. This is put to good use in NCFOM but he was hardly my favorite thing about that movie (now that I think about it he was probably the most predictable and boring casting choice made). He's awful in that Batman movie. Entertaining in JFK but that's a bit part.

FUGITIVE

― :) Mrs Edward Cullen XD (max), Thursday, November 20, 2008 11:40 AM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no other Woodrow Call fans?

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a163/nationalgeographictre/sp/ld3.jpg

one vote for his beard in Lonesome Dove

x-post!

Under Siege

Criticizing him for playing the same part in "The Fugitive" and "US Marshalls" when he is, in literal point of fact, PLAYING THE SAME PART, strikes me as being kind of stupid.

I gave it to The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada since he directed it too and I adored it so. Absolutely Peckinpah-worthy. But there are many fine performances amongst the latter ten or so titles (even, I suppose, in that VERY well-loved film that I loathe with a purple passion but will say no more about).

The Betsy - Ha! I was a Harold Robbins freak at an alarmingly young age and wanted to see this for the longest time. Now I doubt I could sit through it. Anyone see it?

I saw it about 10 years ago. wow at Olivier/Katherine Ross bedroom scene (and Olivier Midwest accent). but i don't remember a thing about TLJ in it.

memo to self: remove blockbuster hits from next poll

Is it any good? Even in a you can have friends over and giggle at its badness kind of way?

Why don't we drop this poll...it's one thing to engage in badinage with these youngsters, but this sort of thing could be so easily misunderstood.

xp: It's terrible, but yeah, if you enjoy that sort of thing. "It's about THE GAR! THE GAR!"

3 Burials vs Eyes of Laura Mars.

The Betsy was a longtime perennial resident of the $5 DVD dump bin at Wal-Mart. I think that by now, most of those mangled unsold copies have hit the recycle bins.

i haven't seen Lonesome Dove. Want to read it first.

Tempted to vote The Executioner's Song

Criticizing him for playing the same part in "The Fugitive" and "US Marshalls" when he is, in literal point of fact, PLAYING THE SAME PART,
strikes me as being kind of stupid.

haha fair enough - substitute Volcano or Double Jeopardy or the Hunted or whatever for US Marshalls then. Preponderance of "I am a man with a badge tracking somebody" roles is kind of uh waht.

xxpost I love those bins! If The Betsy moves down to $1, it's mine.

are you crazy? The Fugitive is a good movie!

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

yeah, it has Harrison Ford in it, xp

the way i see it, you plug TLJ into one of those roles and you have one less thing to worry about because he's just so good at it. i think my top 5 would be the fugitive, three burials, jfk, NCFOM, and lonesome dove (which gets my vote, the dude is astonishing in that)

yeah, it has Harrison Ford in it, xp

hahaha Harrison Ford hasn't made a good movie since 1981

still haven't seen it. Do he and Robert Duvall do the Jack Twist?

(er '82)

x-post

hahaha Harrison Ford hasn't made a good movie since 1981

http://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/wrlds/strwrs/pr/img/orig/Episode_3_Obi-Wan_Lightsaber.jpg

xp

Eric, again with yr ambiguous standard of "entertaining."

Did I use scare quotes?

Three Burials. I don't remember him being in Prairie Home Companion.

he was the guy who was gonna close down the theater

a lot of his worst movies being in constant rotation on cable - the Fugitive, US Marshals, MiB

you are such a dumbass

MiB is just an extraordinarily depressing enterprise.

Blown Away is one of the all-time great comedy performances.

Both MiBs are great! Tsk fun-haters.

Will Smith Smile = anti-comedic toxin

It just has neither the scope nor the comedic value to compete with Ghostbusters is all.

I'm doing a Rip Torn poll next.

Also without getting all challopsy here, I'm a Ghostbusters agnostic.

Anyway, back to TLJ and Blown Away.

In a world where Mickey Rourke did Prayer for the Dying and Connery did The Untouchables, being the most hilariously bad Irish accent of all time is some major achievement.

shakey mo, man, what is yr deal

rip torn poll here: RIP TORN POLL

(no songwriter tho ;_:)

Ah well. Larry Sanders was a foregone conclusion I guess.

my deal is that MiB doesn't appeal to me...? There aren't any funny jokes and TLJs deadpan is boring. Hadn't thought of the Ghostbusters comparison meself but now that Eric H brings it up I have to agree. Morbz otm about Will Smith as well, that guy is unwatchable.

ayo shakey i hope u get gaybashed

"meself" FUK U

MIB is pretty dumb, and I know about buttrape.

um... I am not gay...?

He shot up a whorehouse in Rolling Thunder just because his buddy asked him.

the hunted! what a weird performance.

hahaha Harrison Ford hasn't made a good movie since 1981

RONG. Blade Runner and Mosquito Coast excepted.

Voted for Howard Hughes, with Back Roads and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada as my runner-ups. TLJ can make an anonymous movie pretty watchable though (see Black Moon Rising, Under Siege, etc.)

Saw In the Valley of Elah. Pretty good movie, probably aided by TLJ's 'acting'.

I have this theory that there is something seriously wrong with people who dislike Will Smith.

Your theory is "cornyphobia"?

There is nothing wrong with people who dislike Will Smith. There is something wrong with cornyphobes.

MiB woulda been classic if they forgot all about the boring pointless evil-alien-threat-to-destroy-universe plot and concentrated on the inner workings of the Bureau, how it maintains security, surveillance on the "good" aliens, etc. That bit where Jones scans the tabloids and declares "Finest investigative journalism on the planet!" is priceless.

Anyways, "Executioner's Song".

The Executioner's Song really is an amazing work of modern acting, but what a weird movie: Was it condemning itself?

Oh, and Double Jeopardy is so fun. Coal Miner's Daughter is the second-best music bio-pic ever. The Missing and Three Buriels are mixed up in my memory.

you forgot Harvard Beats Yale 29-29

discrimination

it's a documentary, and he still 'acts'!

lonesome dove by miles. (i'd probably say the same for duvall.)

i like TLJ, but the thing he does can border on shtick -- which the MiB movies put to good use, and no country for old men suffers from. lonesome dove is so great, though.

i guess i really got to see lonesome dove. l like the song.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

you forgot Harvard Beats Yale 29-29

He gives a worse "performance" than any of the other ex-jocks. "Ideas were flying like bullets"?

that was lol

He is everywhere in Japan, hawking BOSS coffee on vending machines...

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/98/269752162_728578c04d.jpg?v=0

i dunno, he did pretty well as the Hollywood actor guy

He shot up a whorehouse in Rolling Thunder just because his buddy asked him.

that's why i'm voting for it. "i'll just get my gear."

the missing is heavy and brutal and not very good, but i really liked it for some reason. it has about 45 plot turns.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Got Cobb today. Thoughts?

i remember the nyer raved at the time i think so i saw it but what i remember most is fucking robert wuhl is in it and that tommy lee jones isn't right for the part, duvall would've been better, or maybe have lawrence tierney play old cobb and ray liotta play young cobb. i'm not sure there's a great movie to be made about cobb but if you're going to do it i think you need to embrace the bastard, treat him like henry hill (maybe rogers hornsby is yr jimmy conway figure), not just a crazy coot who was racist and a little psycho but o look there's some sadness there. there's at least a dozen baseball bio pics that are better.

The clips I've seen of Wuhl are appalling. Apart from his one-note acting, the guy's just terrible to look at.

yeah I do remember a few critics sticking up for it in '94 (it was supposed to lead to a Best Actor nod).

btw the author of Cobb (ie the guy Robert Wuhl played) proved to be a big liar.

This is an encouraging opening:

"The first thing that you should know before watching Tommy Lee Jones’s The Homesman is that it operates under the fundamental assumption that everyone who took part in the settling of the American West was, by almost any contemporary standard, insane.... The second thing you should know is that this madness is not, absolutely, thought of as a bad thing in the film—that there is, in the final reckoning, even something a little defiant, a little triumphal in it. It’s an indivisible possession, a good-luck charm, a means for getting through the days without end."

http://www.reverseshot.com/reviews/entry/1933/homesman

the trailer for 'the homesman' sold me on it. great cast, looks suitably dark and unpredictable, and i completely trust his directorial instincts after 'melquiades estrada'.

You might be disappointed, who knows - I thought this was a dreadful movie tbh.

compared to what? best classical western since what, Open Range?

(and hence mostly funded by Europeans)

at the end you even get Meryl Streep bringing a little edge to a Beulah Bondi role.

I thought it was a mess and wtf was that dancing about? Open Range is more like it, get those bastards that shot Tig!

wtf was that dancing about?

john ford to thread

at the end? the man is a dancer.

also shd be seen in a theater (Rodrigo Prieto)

your affection for Open Range never fails to catch me off guard.

it's a 3-star western but i'll take em where i can

The Homesman now available for home viewing

Saw The Homesman a couple of days ago, thought it was really terrific. I thought it had its own thread, but search doesn't bring it up. Anyway, one little bit that has stayed with me is how much Meryl Streep has to put across in about 3 minutes of screen time, and how well she does it. Her character has to make a judgment call on an awful lot of information flying at her with zero notice, decide how much of it is the truth and how much of it she'll accept whether she thinks it's the truth or not. It's all there in her face -- a noteworthy performance, I thought, worth getting her for a couple days' work.

^this man has the right ideas

I'm full of 'em.

I could have sworn this movie had its own thread.

I have a high tolerance for implausibility when it comes to junky thrillers--why fight it?--but Double Jeopardy is some kind of preposterous.

i love that movie!

I haven't gotten to Tarantino's chapter on Rolling Thunder yet--fully expect him to go overboard--but it is good, with a very unusual, almost catatonic lead performance from William Devane (who's usually at the more florid end of the acting spectrum--and does lots of celebrity-testimonial commercials nowadays). Very proud that I recognized Paul A. Partain from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Franklin), one of only seven films he ever made (one of only five that didn't have the word "chainsaw" in the title).

I find it funny that Shakey said TLJ is "awful" and could only justify this by saying he kept getting cast as hard-assed cop characters that Shakey found boring. TLJ kept getting cast in those parts because Hollywood kept making films filled with hard-assed cops and Jones did them very well, bringing an extra touch of humanity to them that worse actors couldn't achieve.

xp

Enjoying Tarantino’s podcast, but guy certainly (nothing new) enthuses over some undeniable crap. Rolling Thunder is legit pretty good though. Dig the vibe and performances. Remember watching a VHS rip of it a few times during my college years.

I bought Rolling Thunder on Blu-Ray a couple of months ago and yeah, it's pretty dark and fucked up. (Written by Paul Schrader, so...surprise, dark and fucked up!) Jones and Devane are both really good.

(xxpost) Also, even if that is your objection, you can hardly lump No Country in--a cop, yes, but far from hard-assed.

I'm finding the book useful, annoying--the way he uses italics is sometimes ridiculous--kind of random in the films that get chapters, informative (the title aside, there's lots of good making-of background on the films he writes about), and, for better and worse, true to his own films. My guess is he's a better podcaster than author.

I was surprised to see Schrader in the opening credits--don't think I knew that. Happily, was able to watch it for nothing on Tubi.

Written by Schrader for John Milius apparently. Final product not purely Schrader’s though, the other credited screenwriter did a pass on it. It’s a good script too, lot of quietly potent lines in there. Exploitation done with some gravitas.

Think I’ll rewatch it tonight if it’s streaming, been a while.

John Flynn was a cut above the usual exploitation director. He also directed The Outfit of course but also a trio of B-flicks in a row (Best Seller, Lock Up, Out For Justice) which aren’t amazing but are good genre movies.

Probably the kind of journeyman director that Tarantino loves, and the kind they don’t really make anymore to an extent.

TLJ rules.

Alfred I thought of you when I came across this recently but forgot to post it

https://www.julienslive.com/lot-details/index/catalog/167/lot/69314

Is Rolling Thunder the one where Schrader's original script had a Travis Bickle cameo?

Definitely thought of Taxi Driver while watching, especially the last 10 minutes.

My goal of watching every film beforehand that gets its own chapter will be put to the test with Paradise Alley.

Alfred I thought of you when I came across this recently but forgot to post it

https://www.julienslive.com/lot-details/index/catalog/167/lot/69314

― omar little

I hope you like squab!