I see a lot of love going out for Bale, and I don’t see why. He is horrible and ruins every movie he is in. Let me go down the list here.
American Psyco - 3/10 - A great plot, a horrible lead. Christian bale was stiff through the entire thing, on top of that he always look like he has to take an enormous shit.
Equilibrium - 0/10 - I got through about 20 minutes of this movie. Maybe it’s the whole plot that sucks, but still GOOD actors should be able to make a shitty script good.
The Machinist - 4/10 - he lost a lot of weight for the movie, so much weight it was considered dangerous. I’ll give him that, but losing weight and gaining it for movies does NOT make you a good actor. This story could have been great, even better then fight club. But Bale had to go and ruin it. Way too many facial expressions for one sit down.
Batman Begins - 4/10 - To think i was actually giving Bale the benifit of the doubt, and held high hopes for BB. With JoBlo giving it a decent review, and other critics giving it GREAT reviews i thought this one was in the bag. But nooooo! Bale Bale Bale, the guy just can’t act. He was by far the worst batman to ever grace the screen. And again, the story was great, the orgin of batman would be awesome if it wasn’t centered around Bale. God this guy sucks ass.
That’s all i’ve seen with bale in it, and it’s all i will see.
So what is it, that makes everyone think he’s such a good actor?
Run for the hills johnnyboy, run for the hills…
Bale is a really good actor with an uncanny ability to pick good pictures to star in. The fact that you don’t like any of them is more of a statement about your taste in movies than it is about his acting ability.
Why don’t you say who you think would be a better choice in the roles that you have mentioned? I know, for example, that Leonardo DiCaprio was originally considered for the role of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, and I think he would have been a far worse choice than Bale, who really made that movie great.
If he looked “stiff,” it was because he was supposed to be a psychotic man hiding behind a facade of business and propriety. That was the whole point…
I think Christian Bale has been excellent in everything I’ve seen him in. I did not watch “American Psycho,” since I found the book to be wretched and upsetting.
Trying to explain why one enjoys an actor’s performances is a bit like trying to explain why one likes a certain food. There’s no accounting for taste. You like it or you don’t. In the case of Christian Bale, to me he’s a banquet.
And the role in Equilibrium required a similar performance, and I suspect that Batman does too.
He’s a guy you go to when you need “dignified, but reserved”. He seems to pull that off very well. Whether he has a lot of range, I don’t know. But what I’ve seen him in, I thought he was good.
Well, if you don’t want to watch it, you don’t want to watch it, but I thought I ought to point out that the movie isn’t nearly as violent as the book. Most of the horrible things that Bateman does in the book aren’t in the movie at all. It’s no more violent or gory than a stupid slasher flick—less, even.
Ooooh, YES! I loved him in that! It made me wonder if he’d ever done Gavroche in Les Mis onstage, for some reason.
I haven’t seen the new Batman movie, but Bale is one of those actors (like Kevin Kline, Laura Linney, Colin Firth, and Sigourney Weaver) for whom I have good, warm feelings. “Christian Bale? Oh yeah! I like him!”
Maybe it’s the whole thirteen-year-old-Newsies-crush, or the same thing for Little Women, but I like that he takes interesting roles (I just IMDBed him, and I totally forgot he was in the 1999 Midsummer Night’s Dream with Kline!) and seems to have, generally speaking, a good eye for projects.
Whatever it is, he’s conned me into thinking he’s a very likeable actor.
The dragons were the best thing about Reign of Fire. But Christian Bale gave a good performance, I thought. At least he had a British accent again, anyway.