My first OP since resurfacing here after a couple of years of absence.
No more preambles. Maybe this belongs in the BBQ pit. We’ll see. This list without order of preference.
1. Robert De Niro.
Spends more and more time as a somnambulant in all movies. Can register two emotions (sombre and that stupid fake grin of his) but not convey them to the audience. Has not made one good performance since Cape Fear .
2. Al Pacino
Terribly overacting, which started with A scent of a woman. Has since shown poor judgement in choosing parts, or overacted his parts. His own Richard III shows him for the terrible actor he is. Bru Ha.
3. Mel Gibson
Almost half of his listed feature films at IMDB are about revenge, and the only things he seems to be able to convey is rage, to justify the revenge and “Har-har I’m such a guufy dood!”. Revenge movies that come to mind are Braveheart and the Patriot, but of course, there are a dozen more on the theme.
4. Meryl Streep
She hasn’t had a hit movie in years. I find it ironic that the female and the male I find most overrated made their mark in the same movie, Deer Hunter. Streep has the same fake grin, but her eyes always betray her. She doesn’t feel her part. I can always see her acting the part, rather than being the character.
5. Dustin Hoffman
Ishtar.
If that’s not enough, his recent obsession with action movies, as he grows older, is totally pathetic. Is he afraid of getting older and trying to conjure up some machismo to be able to score younger women? Whatever, it doesn’t work for me. Both Sphere and Outbreak got even worse for casting Hoffman.
6. Michelle Pfeiffer
If sucking your cheeks in, being anorectic and wearing dark makeup makes you a good actor, Mrs Kelly is a fine example. The valley girl from Grease 2 has gotten older and is good at portraying a cold hearted bitch. I never see her doing anything else, which for me makes for a pretty bad actor. Why do casting agents give her work? Why do people still claim her to be sooooo beautiful. She looks like a mannequin.
7. Juliette Lewis
If a mark of a good actor is looking like po’ white trash and thereby portraying po’ white trash, Ms Lewis gets top grades. However, if acting is about being able to portray different personalities, and make the audience feel, this person in the audience is left cold.
8. Harrison Ford
With Attack of the Clones coming up, local TV is showing all the older SW movies. When I saw Episode 4, a New Hope, it struck me how terribly bad Ford acts in it. It got me thinking about his other movies. He always portray a surly, stonefaced man who, like De Niro, appears like a somnambulant on the screen. I guess he’s a big heartthrob for women, and he certainly is a Moviestar with box office appeal, but he sucks at acting. Since he can’t act, he walks around trying to look mysterious and macho.
9. Cuba Gooding Jr.
Since Jerry McGuire and his winning of an Academy Award, he’s been doing the same part over and over. I will not see a movie he’s in, because I know he will be screaming his lines throughout the movie. He’s no better than Martin Lawrence, but at least Lawrence doesn’t pretend to be Oscar material.
10. Robin Williams
Is so pretentious it hurts my eyes. He has done some funny shticks in comedy. He was great as a DJ in Good Morning Vietnam, but the dramatic part of the movie bored me to pieces. He was great as Genie in Aladdin. When he’s improvising, and imitating he’s a truly fun guy. However, he lives with the misconception that this gives him the ability to carry of leading roles in dramatic movies. He invariably fails. And anybody with a trackrecord of doing Jumanji, The Bicentennial Man and Hook has automatically disqualified himself from calling himself an actor.
"I’m not an actor! I’m a MOVIESTAR!!!"
Peter O’Toole in My Favourite year