Have you ever made a video for a class before? It's kind of difficult, scripting, co-coordinating schedules, driving to locations, shooting, editing, and so many other factors. Making a professional film must be this times a number just below infinity in terms of involvement, cost, and effort. Given the number of tasks, roles, and processes involved in making a film, it seems interesting that viewers, including myself, seem rarely interested in anybody outside of the main actors, and occasionally the director. Sometimes, it isn't the actor's fault that the movie is terrible, and they put on a pretty good show anyway. This is my list, in no particular order, or good acting in not-so-good movies.
-Chloe Moretz and Nicolas Cage in Kick-Ass
This was the only time I ever left a movie theatre completely unsure what I thought about what I just saw. Kick-Ass is a horribly violent adaptation of the primitive comics you drew in middle school. The film keeps flipping from a light teen-sex comedy to a gory superhero deconstruction, but can't decide which one it wants to be, and ends up resulting in a hastily scripted film. However, Nicolas Cage gives the dialogue a surprisingly funny reading, and Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl completely owns the movie as an 11-year-old prepubescent Jason Bourne with a foul mouth and a gun. She was 12 during filming. When I was twelve my voice hadn't changed yet.
-Daniel Day-Lewis in Nine
I met the person that lives next to DDL in Ireland. He told me that the method actor extraordinaire could be seen singing and dancing around his house. Once Nine was announced, I was so excited, only to be disappointed. The movie failed at recreating the atmosphere of "Chicago," much less the classic 8 1/2! The songs were forgettable, the movie jarring, the plot underdeveloped, BUT DANIEL COULD SING! and Dance! Well! He gave it is all, and it made me feel good inside. Maybe next time.
-Tobin Bell in the Saw Series
Saw is a guilty pleasure of mine, but I will open agree that it has some of the worst acting in any major release in the 2000's. While everybody is freaking out, the infamously voiced Tobin Bell completely dominates every scene he is in. In my mind, a good villain is not somebody you want to punch in the groin, it's somebody that you, to your dismay, find yourself fascinated by. The world is filled with real villains, and they are always people that can convince you that they are doing the right thing.
-Willem Dafoe in The Boondock Saints
The Boondock Saints is probably the only movie that EVERYBODY loves except the critics. I like aspects of this movie, and it seems so appropriate around St. Patrick's Day, but I'm calling a spade a spade: it's an immature, over-the-top, self-indulgent, Quintin Tarentino knock-off that takes itself way too seriously. The whole movie reads like a smarmy Irish response to Italian gangster movies, and am I the only one that thinks it's a little weird that the brothers get a message from God to kill gangsters and nobody seems to question the theological implications? The action sequences are lazy, every single one of them in slow motion (although the cauterizing scene was a nice touch of realism.) If you want to see good action, watch "The Matrix," watch a John Woo film (Check out "Hardboiled.") In terms of acting, I can't tell the two brothers apart. But I know when Willem Dafoe enters the room. He is such a wonderful character, managing to be a self-aware over-the-top, while the rest of the movie is just ego-driven, over-the-top. It almost seems like he realized that this was going to bomb at the box office and live forever in the hands of teenage boys, and he just has fun with it. Way to go, Willem, best actor to come out of Wisconsin!
-Edward Norton in Leaves of Grass
I don't understand why this film was made. Edward Norton was in Primal Urge, 25th Hour, Fight Club, American History X, The People vs. Larry Flint, The Illusionist and Red Dragon, why is he in this bland, inconsequential indie film? This is one of the few films I stopped watching because it wasn't really that funny and it wasn't really that dramatic either. It was just boring. Ed plays both a charming, successful, sexy Classical Philosophy professor and his drug dealing Oklahoma hick brother. Other movies have done the one-actor-playing-two-characters gig before, but the technical precision is insane, and the two characters are so different, I couldn't have guessed they were played by the same dude. Good acting, but a mediocre movie.
-Jackie Earle Haley in Little Children
This is one of the few non-period pieces Kate Winslet starred in. She is a stay-at-home, thirty-something generation X-er mom trying to avoid turning into a gossipy, shallow housewife, but also married to an unemotional husband that watches too much porn. Patrick Wilson is a stay-at-home dad with a domineering, overly ambitious wife. They start an affair. These two are upstaged by Jackie Earle Haley as a registered sex offender. Sex offenders are the modern-day boogie men, but he manages to craft a remarkably complex character out of "To Catch a Predator" territory. This is not to say we should sympathize with him, but he is the only thing that leaves an impression after the movie's over. Now on the topic of the film itself, Little Children has a terrible ending, and the cinematography tries really hard to be "American Beauty II: The Revenge," but the most unforgivable thing is by far the weirdest, the narrator. This is a grown-up film with an unseen narrative voice. That's right, not a character narrating, but a movie-trailer quality, disembodied voice discribing the characters' backstories and thoughts while also hastening plot development. What kind of lazy screenwriting is this?
-Dakota Fanning in The Runaways/Twilight: New Moon/Twilight: Eclipse
She is fifteen and plays a drug-addled, sexually-precocious, bi-curious rock star in The Runaways. The scene where she tries to openly buy a bottle of vodka with a couple of onions is amazing.
I really don't have to talk about Twilight, but trust me, she's the best one.
You forgot about Dakota Fanning in Hounddog
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