#37 — Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017) It’s tough being a newcomer to a lengthy tale eight parts deep in the telling, with each prior installment adding convolutions to the … Continue reading Greatish Performances #37
#36 — Evangeline Lilly as Hope van Dyne in Ant-Man (Peyton Reed, 2015) As impressive as the Marvel Studios business model of craftily interlocking films has been (and markedly difficult for others to replicate), the actual cinematic quality of their … Continue reading Greatish Performances #36
#35 — James Gandolfini as Winston Baldry in The Mexican (Gore Verbinski, 2001) I wonder if it’s all but inevitable that a proverbial “role of a lifetime” brings with it as many hardships as benefits. No matter the pleasures of … Continue reading Greatish Performances #35
#34 — Mira Sorvino as Dr. Susan Tyler in Mimic (Guillermo del Toro, 1997) It was not, according to entertainment industry conventional wisdom, the right sort of project for a freshly minted Oscar winner. A horror film directed by a … Continue reading Greatish Performances #34
#33 — Ashley Judd as Charlene Shiherlis in Heat (Michael Mann, 1995) When Michael Mann’s Heat was released, in 1995, most of the chatter was about the plentiful elements that could be fairly described as highly masculine. The centerpiece was … Continue reading Greatish Performances #33
#32 — Essie Davis as Amelia Vanek in The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014) In some ways, actors in horror movies have it easy. There is a clear vernacular to the art of duplicating terror, honed through decades upon decades of … Continue reading Greatish Performances #32
#31 — Jennifer Lopez as Karen Sisco in Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh, 1998) When Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight was released, in 1998, it was revelatory in about a half-dozen different ways. It introduced the artful showman side of … Continue reading Greatish Performances #31
#30 — Bill Paxton as Dale “Hurricane” Dixon in One False Move (Carl Franklin, 1992) Bill Paxton’s most iconic performances tend toward emotive intensity. To a degree, that’s simply a product of the films that crossed over into broader public consciousness, especially since Paxton was one of director James Cameron’s go-to supporting actors, briefly playing a punk with a hair-trigger temper in The Terminator and famously wailing, “Game over, man!” in Aliens. (The one time Paxton got to try out understatement in a Cameron film, in Titanic, he was saddled with some of the most leaden exposition dialogue in the … Continue reading Greatish Performances #30
#29 — Bill Murray as Frank Cross in Scrooged (Richard Donner, 1988) It is entirely reasonable to disagree about the pivot point that moved Bill Murray from an engaging presence to a shrewdly effective actor. Enjoyable as he is in the various onscreen turns in the first portion of his film career, Murray got by on attitude and scampish charm more than honest immersion in his roles. It was a fitting enough extension of his foundational work with Second City, The National Lampoon Radio Hour, and Saturday Night Live, but it also confined his talent. Rather than stretching, he was … Continue reading Greatish Performances #29
#28 — Kevin Kline as Dave Kovic (and Bill Mitchell) in Dave (Ivan Reitman, 1993) I default to cynicism, enjoying the safety of a reflexive irony when it comes to the most important matters. Believing in institutions — or in the will of the people in a shaky, overlarge republic — is a pathway to disappointment. Isn’t it? I am consistently braced for some sort of collapse, a withering of our sprawling, gnarled tree of humanity. As a citizen of the U.S., I am a patriot, albeit of the partly-cloudy variety defined by Sarah Vowell. The guarded suspicion of that … Continue reading Greatish Performances #28
Coffee for Two 