Performances no one likes except you

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

everyone agrees that gregory peck was disastrously miscast as captain ahab in huston's 1957 "moby dick" - even peck thought so himself. but every time i've seen the film, i always thought he brought an eerie calmness to the role, a deep, quiet, frightening conviction that seemed a world away from john barrymore's hysterics. pauline kael summed up the critical condescension when she said he looked like "a stock-company lincoln," but that's what ahab is, in a way: a psychopathic lincoln, a noble man whose good intentions have been perverted by his pride. admittedly his performance has its ridiculous moments, but he excells in the quieter moments - "it is a mild, mild wind, starbuck..."

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 02:00 (twenty-two years ago)

new "i want to see someone defend john wayne as genghis khan!" answers...

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 02:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Too many to list manually.

― PVC (peeveecee), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 10:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Chris Tucker in The 5th Element springs to mind tho.

― PVC (peeveecee), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 10:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Okay, howsabout Vincent D'Onfrio in . . . pretty much everything he's ever been in, but especially as the noseless speedfreak/dealer in The Salton Sea.

― Lee G (Lee G), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Or, even better, Vincent D'Onofrio in blah, blah, blah . . .

― Lee G (Lee G), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Anyone think John Goodman's character in Big Lebowski is so irritating, that the performance itself becomes annoying?

― Chuck Tatum (Chuck Tatum), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:18 (twenty-two years ago)

yes.

― PVC (peeveecee), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:49 (twenty-two years ago)

fucking hell yes

― s1utsky (slutsky), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 06:15 (twenty-two years ago)

The guy who reviewed Big Lebowski it for our paper when it came out took enormous offense at Goodman's rendition of a Vietnam vet. That's his perogative, but that doesn't mean it isn't both amazingly annoying and hilarious.

― Lee G (Lee G), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 15:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Elizabeth Berkely in Showgirls. (Gina Gershon, too, but plenty of people who hate practically everything else about the movie seem to harbor some love for her.)

Mike Tyson in Black & White.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 17:48 (twenty-two years ago)

A few:

Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People. A lot of people I know simply couldn't accept a woman/mother who was so cold to her son, especially a son that tried to commit suicide. I thought her performance was chilling.

Marlon Brando in Mutiny on the Bounty....fuck Clark Gable!

― ed dill (eddill), Saturday, 29 November 2003 05:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Arnold in T3.

― PVC (peeveecee), Saturday, 29 November 2003 19:59 (twenty-two years ago)

The casting of Elizabeth Berkely in "Showgirls" is astoundingly perfect in the sense that her character is naively unaware of the fact that people want to sexually exploit her and Berkely acts as if she is in a serious prestige film and not something trashy. Everythime I see "Showgirls" it seems less and less likely that the filmmakers didn't know that they were telling and elaborate, ironic joke. The more films by Verhoeven I see confirms this suspicion.

― theodore fogelsanger, Wednesday, 3 December 2003 22:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Rebecca Pigeon in "The Spanish Prisoner"

― Joe (Joe), Friday, 5 December 2003 01:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Heh, I agree on Pidgeon. That's actually a perfect role for her.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 5 December 2003 05:41 (twenty-two years ago)

one month passes...

IN DEFENSE OF JOHN GOODMAN: When I was in the Navy in 1982 attending A school in Virginia Beach, we were forced to wear our dress uniforms whenever we went out on the town drinking. As the nights wore on, inevitably (INEVITABLY I say) some shaggy individual would saunter up to us and regale us with tales of Vietnam in an effort to (a) impress naive sailors (b) initiate a feeling of esprit de corps (c) get a couple of free drinks. No matter what the topic of conversation was,
these people would immediately steer it towards their own heroic service for an ungrateful nation, and give us all the evil eye if we didn't immediately spring for Jack & Soda. THIS was the gist of Goodman's portrayal: an individual who will bring up his experience in Vietnam into ANY and ALL conversations, primarily in a self-serving manner. I thought he pulled it off rather well, with his self-indulgent eulogy for Steve Buscemi's character serving to illustrate what his character was all about.

― Dave Gilbert, Monday, 19 January 2004 03:06 (twenty-two years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.