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Best performance by a bad actor?


Reed

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I liked what Melanie Griffith brought to a lot of movies. I think her turn opposite Paul Newman in Nobody's Fool was note perfect. I thought she played off James Woods' manic energy great in Another Day in Paradise. I liked the sweet honesty she brought to Body Double. I liked her in Something Wild. I liked her in Working Girl. 

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R. Lee Ermey in Hexed.  He's no Gunny Hartman in this one, but he did give me one of my favorite lines in movie history:  (as a detective in the interrogation room) "Lady, I'm divorced, with no charisma...I have no where to go."

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This thread went off the rails when Nicolas Cage came up.  I'm not sure there are many actors whose name would come up in a 'Good Actors' thread who have a performance that could touch Cage performances in 'The Weather Man', 'Bringing Out the Dead' and 'Raising Arizona' and those aren't even in Nicolas Cage's Top 3 performances ever.

 

In  retrospect, I wish I hadn't thrown out Nic Cage's name.  When I threw out his name, the only Cage movies I probably could have named off the top of my head were Con Air, the Rock, and the 15-20 movies he's made in the past decade and either been completely awful or mailed it in and only been kinda awful.  I completely blanked on films like Raising Arizona, Family Man, Moonstruck, etc.  Until I looked up his filmography, I forgot how good he was when he was younger.

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But Permanent Midnight is awesome,

 

Permanent Midnight is actually a pretty terrible movie from a screenplay standpoint, the writing and plot just goes everywhere randomly, characters pop in and out with no rhyme or reason, and there's no real point to it, but Ben Stiller is absolutely amazing.  The scene where he's at a job interview absolutely F'D up out of his mind almost makes me think that Ben wasn't acting.

 

 

I think John Travolta is a guy in that camp too. He's a talented guy. Once or twice a decade he'll be in some amazing movie.

 

Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction are obvious.  But his best work is in the little seen Blow-Out, which to this day has one of the best "oh shit" endings ever (two decades before they became the norm.)

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Jennifer Lopez in Selena, and Denise Richards in Love Actually.  Not coincidentally, the former died in the end and the latter only appeared for a few seconds. 

 

Keanu = Ted "Theodore" Logan 4 life.

 

Regarding the Liz Hurley in Austin Powers comment from earlier, I thought she was the best Powers girl.  Of course, I think the first movie is the only must-see one of the series, before it slides into self parody and caricature. 

 

 

/Heather Graham was hot, I'd have to see the second film to see if she was servicable in the role. 

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Would Linda Hamilton in The Terminator movies count? I've seen her in other stuff, and she's really not that good.

You're not gonna count Dante's Peak?

 

 

R. Lee Ermey in Hexed.  He's no Gunny Hartman in this one, but he did give me one of my favorite lines in movie history:  (as a detective in the interrogation room) "Lady, I'm divorced, with no charisma...I have no where to go."

 

I'll throw in Fletch Lives and Saving Silverman for good ol' R. Lee.

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Six pages in and no mention of Mr. McConaughey in Dazed and Confused? I expect better.

 

Because he's spent 2011- present doing nothing but awesome work in everything he's appeared in. Time to update those MM expectations. Go watch Killer Joe.  

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Agreed on Matthew McConaughey.  I said on one of the other threads that his roles in Bernie, Mud, and Dallas Buyers Club have turned into my current actor that can do no wrong.  All this while freely admitting that I haven't seen Magic Mike and have to see what he plays in The Wolf of Wall Street.

 

I guess you could say that's true about him in Dazed and Confused, but that was 1993.  Nobody in the film had become a good actor by that point.

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Matthew McConaughey has to be the most improved actor ever. I also remember seeing Michelle Williams on Dawson's Creek and while, she wasn't terrible, she wasn't that good either. Fast forward a few years and she'd become shockingly great.

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Not sure if Gywneth Paltrow is bad as much as really one dimensional. There's stuff she's been decent in (Iron Man, Se7en), but she has no real range. Her having an Oscar is way worse than Marisa Tomei having one.

 

And I'd throw in Courtney Love for The People vs. Larry Flynnt. I've seen her in other things and she's been fairly mediocre. But I think her real-life attitude and experiences obviously helped her a great deal in that movie and she managed to pretty much steal the show.

 

Even if you're playing a warped version of yourself, it still counts, right?

I would argue that Julie Roberts and Sandra Bullock having them are worse than either of those. . . 

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Agreed on Matthew McConaughey.  I said on one of the other threads that his roles in Bernie, Mud, and Dallas Buyers Club have turned into my current actor that can do no wrong.  All this while freely admitting that I haven't seen Magic Mike and have to see what he plays in The Wolf of Wall Street.

 

I guess you could say that's true about him in Dazed and Confused, but that was 1993.  Nobody in the film had become a good actor by that point.

 

Magic Mike is full of great acting from guys not particularly known for it. McConaughey is possibly the most entrancing, but Tatum is absolutely fantastic in the lead role as well. I really wish they'd given Matt Bomer more to do, but can't have everything. Besides, it has Kevin Nash as a druggie stripper with a Tarzan routine. What more can you want?

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Bullock and Roberts are usually fine, even if neither are outstanding actors. Paltrow, however, has been embarrassingly bad in roles where she has to go beyond "melancholy, aloof blond chick." She has this tendency to deliver her lines in the most flat and distant manner possible.

 

I'd say she's a little like Denise Richards and Kristen Stewart in that she looks visibly bored and awkward on-camera and you can tell she'd rather be elsewhere. Say what you want about Bullock and Roberts, but at least they look like they belong on-screen.

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I haven't seen enough Chiklis outside of The Shield to form a valid opinion. My introduction of Michael Chiklis was the made-for-TV Three Stooges movie, which I heard was wildly inaccurate. The only reason I watched was because it came on right before an episode of Nitro. I didn't see his one appearance on Seinfield until it was well into syndication several years later. Plus, I never saw an episode of The Commish.

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