I just watched I Am Sam again, and was as completely overwhelmed as the first time I saw it.
Of course, it’s a top-flight film through-and-through, and one of the most amazing collaborative efforts I’ve ever seen, but what I find really surprising about it is the revelation that Sean Penn is a profoundly gifted actor.
I really had no idea. I am chagrined to admit that I avoided I Am Sam, against the best advice, for quite some time, specifically because I was skeptical about his ability to pull off a serious dramatic role.
Of course, the scales fell from my eyes less than ten minutes into the first viewing. What a performance! What an heart-rending, eye-watering, chest-tightening, snot-summoning display of stagecraft!
If his contribution to the film was even the slightest bit flawed, the whole project would have been a embarrassing disaster.
For me, this movie totally reverses what the name “Sean Penn” signifies on a playbill. It no longer screams “Run away!” but rather, “Look closer.”
I guess Pulp Fiction did the same thing for me with regard to both John Travolta and Bruce Willis.
So, now that I’ve got that off my chest, what movies have left y’all with a radically altered perception, (for better or for worse,) of a particular talent?
I don’t know about seeing an actor I really hate in a role that’s made me change my mind… I don’t recall really having that sort of change. I reluctantly admit that Bruce Willis WAS better in his tender moments in Pulp Fiction than I thought he could be, but his other fare is stupid enough that it confirms my general feelings about him.
I can say that certain movies have won me over for their stars permanently - the prime example being Denzel Washington in Malcolm X.
Heh. Wish I could just mentally flip through every movie I’ve seen. I’m not a Brad Pitt fan, but I liked him in 12 Monkeys - and even more in Fight Club.
The first movie that came to mind when reading the thread title was “The Truman Show”. Hey, Jim Carrey isn’t a complete idiot after all! What a performance.
I’ll second Pulp Fiction with regard to Travolta and Willis.
Elijah Wood in LOTR. Yeah, I know it’s obvious. But I’d seen him The Faculty and The Ice Storm and thought merely that he was kinda odd-looking, but interesting. But there’s something about the role of Frodo that really makes the most of everything he’s got – his strangely beautiful features and his general aspect of goodness and otherworldliness. And I think Elijah acts his pants off on the screen – I think his is the best performance of LOTR, actually. Okay, I’m going to stop gushing now.
Also: Bogie in * A Lonely Place*. I though he could only do Casablanca-style cynical roles until I saw that film.
Johnny Depp in Edward Scisscorhands. Up until I saw him in that I’d dismissed him as just another teen idol actor. I’ve been impressed with most of his performances since that film too.
Brandon Fraser, in Gods and Monsters. Up until that, I’d thought of him as a just a big, thick lunk. And, okay, here here’s still playing a lunk, but it’s a lunk with some character subtlety and emotional depth!
Steve Martin in Pennies from Heaven. I thought before that he was a second-rate comedian (Martin always appeared to be funnier than he actually was). This showed he was really an actor (who took on the role of a comedian).
Bert Lancaster in Atlantic City. He had always seemed very wooden to me, but from this movie on, he showed his softer side and was just terrific.
I saw Don Johnson in a TV version of The Long, Hot Summer in the mid-'80s, and was surprised to note, “Damn—he really can act when he puts his mind to it!”
Jim Carrey in The Truman Show (and Man in the Moon)
Brendan Fraser in Gods and Monsters (although it’s possible that even I would look good opposite Ian McKellen)
Frank Sinatra in “The Manchurian Candidate.” I hadn’t seen him in much, of course, but I’d just thought he was one of those annoying singers who went on the silver screen because they could. That movie changed my mind.
It also made me entirely and utterly unable to see Angela Lansbury as that nice Jessica Fletcher anymore.
In his Brat pack heyday, I thought Rob Lowe was a pretty boy with no acting talent. When I saw him in “About Last Night” (which was actually David Mamet’s “Sexual Perversity in Chicago”), I was surprised by how good he was. And he handled Aaron Sorkin’s witty dialogue superbly on “The West Wing.”
For a long time, I hated Keanu Reeves in anything but sumb surfer-dude roles. He was convincing in the “Bill & Ted” movies, but he came across as a dumb surfer dude in ALL his roles (while watching “Dangerous Liaisons” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” I kept wondering what’s a California surfer dude doing in 18th century France or 19th century England?). Oh, he rarelyruined movies, but I liked “Parenthood” and “Speed” in SPITE of him, not because of him.
But, astonishingly, I actually found myself liking him in “The Replacements” and in “Hardball.” He’s still not a great actor, but he’s grown up enough and improved enough to be a solid actor, rather than a one-note embarrassment.
I never thought much of Richard Gere, and I resisted seeing any film in which he was the leading man. I just couldn’t bring myself to root for him in any movie where he was supposed to be the hero… so he won me over by playing a bad guy superbly! He was just so great as the evil, corrupt cop Dennis Peck in “Internal Affairs.” Somehow, I never had a problem with his acting after that.
I’ve almost changed my opinion of Russell Crowe having seen A Beautiful Mind, but I’m still not quite there.
As for a complete turn-around, I couldn’t stand Renée Zellweger (I don’t know if it was the squinty eyes, the pained facial expressions, the absence of any discernible personality…) until I saw Bridget Jones’s Diary. Even then, I was doubtful about how she’d do in Chicago (she can sing and dance?!), but from all accounts she seems to have pulled it off nicely. I’m a fan.