I watched Pieces of April last night and was pleasantly surprised. I thought it was a good story with interesting characters, and I actually liked Katie Holmes in it a lot. Before I saw it though, I’d sort of pigeon-holed it as just some Katie Holmes movie and I wasn’t expecting much.
The same thing happened with the Butterfly Effect. I saw the posters and the trailers and thought, “that looks pretty cool, for an Ashton Kutcher movie.” When I ended up seeing it though, I really enjoyed it.
What other movies have you really enjoyed that star actors you usually dismiss or don’t take seriously?
Big Trouble starred Johnny Knoxville, Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Patrick Warburton, Janeane Garafalo, Zooey Deschanel, Jason Lee, and Heavy D, among others.
Brendan Fraser in Gods and Monsters. He was still playing a big, thick lunk, but for a change it was a lunk with some charm, depth to the characterization, and sympathy.
Crazy in Alabama with Melanie Griffith. She’s wrecked more movies than most actors have appeared in with that “meow meow meow Mr. Rogers” monotone of hers, but she was really good in that one.
I really enjoyed Eminem in 8 Mile even though I can’t stand him (though I do think he’s a talented singer). It makes me wonder if he could handle a role that wasn’t autobiographical.
Francis Ford Coppola’s Kenneth Branagah’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein had John Cleese in a completely dramatic role and I was stunned. He was great, perhaps the best performance in the movie, as an obsessed brilliant professor.
I had the opposite experience – my first exposure to her at all was in this, so my every subsequent sighting has been “WTF – she was really good in that movie, now she’s Tom Cruises’ beard!”
That’s the first one I thought of, too. Allen can actually act, which I never expected.
Another comedy with some lightweights that was much more enjoyable than I had expected was “Blast from the Past,” with Brendan Fraser and Alicia Silverstone. A thoroughly entertaining film with very good performances.
I’m not a big Jim Carrey fan, even though I do think he’s a decent actor in more serious roles, when he is toned down and not acting like crazy rubber-faced cokehead man. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, one of his dramatic performances, is one of my favorite movies of all time, and he is outstanding in it.
I don’t like Richard Gere, but he was great in two movies, playing unethical, self-interested lawyers both times: the drama Primal Fear and the musical Chicago. That’s just a good role for him!
That, and The Truman Show are good movies with him, and I can’t stand him. “Crazy rubber-faced cokehead man” is the perfect way to describe most of his roles, if you add “extremely annoying” to the beginning of it.
I like him a lot now, but at first I thought Brad Pitt was just another empty pretty-boy. His performance in 12 Monkeys was what first impressed the hell out of me.
It was Fight Club that did it for me. I’d always dismissed him as a pretty boy, but picked up 12 Monkeys and Snatch after seeing he could actually act.
Once Upon a Time in Mexico with Enrique Iglecias. In that movie he plays a latin musician (I know, a big stretch for him, right?) who happens to be an expert pistolero. It was also the first movie where I became a fan of Johnny Depp. Never had any particular problem with Depp before, but this was the first time I noticed him in a movie.
Actually, you have to love the Mariachi series just because every Mariachi we ever see also happens to be a gunman.
Also, Boys and Girls redeemed Freddie Prince Jr. for me after seeing him in Wing Commander , and helped me come to a number of realizations about FPJ:
[ul]
[li]He is good when he is funny[/li][li]He is good when he is dancing[/li][li]He fulfilled neither of these requirements in Wing Commander[/li][/ul]
Bernard Cribbens, a UK TV personality childrens TV host, and actor in lightweight comedy roles.He was the comic relief character in She and the second Doctor Who movie. But I saw his starring role in * The Last Detective* recently, and he was damn good.