Tag: greatish performances

Film2 Comments

Greatish Performances #28

Dan Seeger

#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

Film3 Comments

Greatish Performances #27

Dan Seeger

#27 — Wilford Brimley as Pops Fisher in The Natural (Barry Levinson, 1984) When Barry Levinson directed The Natural, he was interested in the mythology of baseball. Aided by Caleb Deschanel’s lush cinematography and Randy Newman’s score which somehow infuses stirring possibility into the very notes, Levinson spins a yarn that makes the misty romanticism of the grand old game and makes it as real and true as the crack of the bat. Hitting the cover off the ball is no longer mere hyperbole; it’s something that mysterious middle-aged rookie Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) can actually accomplish. To accomplish this, … Continue reading Greatish Performances #27

Film4 Comments

Greatish Performances #26

Dan Seeger

#26 — Michael Douglas as Grady Tripp in Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson, 2000) When Michael Douglas was cast as Grady Tripp, I was mightily disappointed. Wonder Boys was a book I adored, and the news that it was being adapted for the screen by the writer of The Fabulous Baker Boys and the director of L.A. Confidential filled me with brave belief that the commonplace degradation of a literary work by the Hollywood machine would be skillfully sidestepped. I figured it would be easy from there. Cast Jeff Bridges as the lead character, and all would be well. Instead, director … Continue reading Greatish Performances #26

Film5 Comments

Greatish Performances #25

Dan Seeger

#25 — Kate Beckinsale as Charlotte Pingress in The Last Days of Disco (Whit Stillman, 1998) I tend to think of The Last Days of Disco as the film that helped Whit Stillman loosen up, as if the propulsive beats of the titular musical genre sent his creative techniques into spinning, swirling revelry. Much as I admire his two preceding films, Metropolitan and Barcelona, their intense refinement can play like reticence. While fully maintaining his capacity for smart, careful, telling language, Stillman brings a little more sweat and glitter to his storytelling, a probing quality that carries the film deeper into the characters’ faults … Continue reading Greatish Performances #25

Film6 Comments

Greatish Performances #24

Dan Seeger

#24 — Thora Birch as Enid in Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001) Expert portrayal of the precise brand of withering contempt found in the American teen-aged girl is, by definition, a talent of fleeting utility. While Thora Birch may have had a few other impediments in her quest for career longevity, it’s not implausible that she would have difficult time pushing past her young adult years simply because she so perfectly embodied a particular stretch in late adolescence, when the intellect slightly outpaces maturity, which in turn leads to a complete certainty that the rest of culture is disastrously backward and inane. Birch … Continue reading Greatish Performances #24

Film7 Comments

Greatish Performances #23

Dan Seeger

#23 — Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Johnson in Creed (Ryan Coogler, 2015) I don’t begrudge Sylvester Stallone the victory lap he got to take for his seventh performance as the hangdog Philadelphia boxer Rocky Balboa. While he’s perpetrated a great many heinous acts on moviegoers (he didn’t just star in Rhinestone, Cobra, Over the Top, and Cliffhanger; he also helped write them!), there’s something appealing, even charming, about his unlikely perseverance in the business. There might have been a little more sourness had the Academy Award nomination he received actually turned into a win, but, as was the case … Continue reading Greatish Performances #23

Film8 Comments

Greatish Performances #22

Dan Seeger

#22 — Oliver Platt as Dennis Murphy in Bulworth (Warren Beatty, 1998) Once a film about politics swerves toward satire, there’s a hope and expectation that it will be simultaneously revelatory and prescient, especially if the cinematic endeavor in question comes from one of Hollywood’s more revered figures. The fourth film to formally credit Warren Beatty as director eagerly viewed as precisely that sort of astute, forward-thinking examination of the nation’s ruptured system for identifying worthy public servants. Even at the time of its release, Bulworth seemed to be missing its target, in part because Beatty couldn’t entirely split the … Continue reading Greatish Performances #22

Film9 Comments

Greatish Performances #21

Dan Seeger

#21 — Jeff Bridges as Jack Lucas in The Fisher King (Terry Gilliam, 1991) Legacy is a tricky thing for actors. When the time comes to start assessing which films stand as their seminal works, a reckoning that often comes after an obituary has been penned and published, the list of necessary titles might be shaped by factors that stand outside the performances themselves. A film that is considered a classic but might not contain the performer’s finest work takes primacy over a compromised or forgotten outing that ultimately holds within it better or more representative acting. I have a feeling … Continue reading Greatish Performances #21

Film10 Comments

Greatish Performances #20

Dan Seeger

#20 — Linda Cardellini as Kelli in Return (Liza Johnson, 2011) In modern cinematic considerations of war, there is a broad agreement that the emotional aftermath when a soldier reached the homeland is just a brutal and devastating as anything that might have happened when they were deployed. Even a film as supposedly jingoistic and fully enamored with battlefield conquest as the ultimate in heroism as American Sniper needs to acknowledge that the military man whose prowess with a rifle is a such that he get deadly superlatives affixed to his name is going to win up staring blankly at a … Continue reading Greatish Performances #20

Film11 Comments

Greatish Performances #19

Dan Seeger

#19 — Eric Bogosian as Barry Champlain in Talk Radio (Oliver Stone, 1988) The play Talk Radio had its off-Broadway premiere in May of 1987, with its writer, Eric Bogosian, in the leading role. It wasn’t exactly viewed as transformational theatre (New York groused, “neither as drama nor as social psychology does it cut deep enough”), but it had the air of sensation to it. And it transformed Bogosian, however briefly, from that unique nineteen-eighties calling as “performance artist” into a more well-rounded creator who needed to be taken seriously. When the property was snapped up for a film adaptation, … Continue reading Greatish Performances #19