Another one that comes to mind:
Christopher Walken went from Academy Award for Supporting Actor for the Deer Hunter to, well, you name it… How about “Click” with Adam Sandler.
I’m not sure I buy this game. Many of the movies named are not particularly bad. They’re just not great. And half the time the stars are playing minor roles.
I object to Connelly, Roberts, and Swank’s inclusion on this list. I think both Hulk America’s Sweetheart are perfectly fine movie, and while The Core is a stinking pile of donkey vomit, that is hardly Swank’s fault. Plus she’s so absurdly hot she can make any movie she likes.
Yeah but she pissed away her second chance with The Reaping.
Her teeth are just way too big for a woman. I used to watch her on 90210 and they paired her with Ian Zeiring and that was just a dental disaster waiting to happen.
She did look pretty hot in Boys Don’t Cry though. Like a young Matt Damon.
Which was the best movie of last millenium last time I checked
I was also going to come in here and mention how Cuba’s career had gone even further downhill since Boat Trip.
I saw a TV ad for DDC this morning and, not only did they not mention his name, but not one frame in the trailer directly showed his face for more than a millisecond. Hmmmm.
Jeremy Irons: Oscar for best actor, Reversal of Fortune (1990). Then, went on to star in Dungeons & Dragons (2000). Oh, it is ever so bad.
Better a recycled cameo than the steaming pile that was “Island of Dr. Moreau.”
And in all fairness to Joan Crawford, it probably is OK to shill for the company when you own it.
I was thinking Ishtar.
At least Two Jakes was a sequel. You could have gone with Anger Management or something.
Wasn’t Billy Bob nominated for Slingblade? I thought The Astronaut Farmer was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.
Jon Voight has won an Oscar, three Golden Globes, and Best Actor at Cannes, and yet he took the lead role in SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2, which is ranked #9 on IMDb’s list of worst film of all time. (Who’s Your Caddy is currently #1.)
He was nominated for the performance and won for the screenplay.
It’s kind of unfair, but Marlee Matlin was in one hell of a lot of terrible movies after “Children of a Lesser God.”
If that’s the worst you can find for Brando you need to delve back into his filmography. The Island of Dr. Moreau, Free Money, and The Score were all much worse movies and humiliatingly bad performances for Brando. (The Score was noteworthy only for being the film in which Brando and DeNiro were overshadowed by Ed Norton.)
Speaking of DeNiro, while I can’t argue that he’s been in any eye-gougingly horrible movies, he certainly took an artistic plunge from the heights of Raging Bull, The Godfather, Part II, and Cape Fear to utter dreck like We’re No Angels, Meet the ____, and Analyze ____. Sure, he’s using the money to finance his other film projects and philanthropic efforts (and his wife’s expensive jewelry and abusing house staff habits) but still. Next to Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson he stands as one of the pre-eminent male actors of the post-classical/post-studio era to have utterly and unrelentingly whored out talent for cash.
Regarding F. Murray Abraham, the phenomenon is so well knowing there’s actually a principle named for him. For some actors, it’s not so much a choice to attempt to make more money rather than being seen as too high profile to do character roles and too typecast or lacking in charisma to be a qualified lead. In the case of Halle Berry, I think it’s safe to say that she never really deserved the award in the first place, and that movies like Swordfish and Catwoman are really more her natural venue, anyway.
Orson Welles was a special case; although a talented film maker, his main talent was in aggrevating studio executives and investors, and he basically ran himself out of the industry despite early success and recognition. He was by all reports a very unhappy man; being shunned and reduced to doing voiceover work for frozen peas and cartoons was an almost inevitable conclusion for the real-life counterpart to Charles Foster Kane.
Oh, and while I’ve never really been impressed with her even in her best roles (though she was pitch perfect as the neurotic TV producer and brittle abused daugther in Network and Chinatown respectively) she and Peter O’Toole should collectively win the thread for their ‘work’ in Supergirl, which was increadibly, absurdly awful.
Stranger
Re: Cuba Gooding Jr. I’m surprised nobody has mentioned “Chill Factor”.
You know the one with Skeet and the Ice-Cream truck that had a nuclear bomb in it?
7% according to Rotten Tomatoes…
MtM
[The Critic]
"Rosebud…
“Yes! Rosebud Frozen Peas. Filled with country goodness and green peaness. Wait a minute, that’s terrible. I’m leaving. Let me just grab a few for the road. Oh, look! There’s a french fry in my beard!”
[/TC]
[QUOTE=Trunk]
I was thinking Ishtar.
At least Two Jakes was a sequel. You could have gone with Anger Management or something.
I’m not sure how being a sequel factors into the decision other than to make me more disappointed at the result.
[QUOTE=
Speaking of DeNiro, while I can’t argue that he’s been in any eye-gougingly horrible movies, he certainly took an artistic plunge from the heights of Raging Bull, The Godfather, Part II, and Cape Fear to utter dreck like We’re No Angels, Meet the ____, and Analyze ____. Sure, he’s using the money to finance his other film projects and philanthropic efforts (and his wife’s expensive jewelry and abusing house staff habits) but still. Next to Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson he stands as one of the pre-eminent male actors of the post-classical/post-studio era to have utterly and unrelentingly whored out talent for cash.
Stranger[/QUOTE]
Man are you off base with your opinion about Deniro. I am not sure what the difference is between eye-gouginly bad and utter dreck but in any case when you make as many movies as Deniro, some are going to turn out to be less than you might have hoped when you signed on. “Midnight Run” e.g. is one of my favorite movies ever, but I can see how it would be easy look at the scripts or plans for this movie and see little difference between it and the “Analyze” movies, which I think are not horrible and the “Focker” movies which I think are horrible. Just because he made all of these movies does not mean he is whoring. He is an actor, he is working. If you want to criticize a great actor for his choices a better example might be Michael Caine.
Since “Raging Bull” Deniro has made “Midnight Run” “Brazil” “Cape Fear” Goodfellas" “Casino” “A Bronx Tale” “Mad Dog and Glory” “Jackie Brown” “Stanley & Iris” “Cop Land” “Ronin” “City By The Sea” “Heat” “The Good Shepherd” and probably 20 more movies, some of which I did not care for. But he is still one of the greatest actors with one of the greatest resumes of any actor who ever lived.
Missed the edit cut-off:
Do you really, really think that when presented with the opportunity to work with Marlon Brando and Edward Norton in “Score” that Deniro said “sure, if the price is right?” Or do you think he simply said yes before he even saw the script?
Except Peter O’Toole never won an Oscar. (Honoraries don’t count.)
I’m not sure what you’re all hot about, but DeNiro clearly did movies like Analyze This and Meet The Parents as a payoff on previous performances as a gangster or cop, and unlike Brando’s turn in The Freshman, done with a wink-and-nudge toward Don Corleone, DeNiro was just “playing it straight”, metaphorically laying back and thinking of Washington, and Lincoln, and Hamilton, and especially Grant. Mind you, they were some nice payouts, making him one of the wealthiest actors (as opposed to action stars like Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger) and allowing him to devote effort to other, less profitable projects. But it’s not as if these films were good ideas that just turned out badly; they came out, in fact, exactly as they were intended; idiotic, forgettable pseudo-comic pablum with high opening grosses and broad audience appeal. DeNiro can do great action/crime movies like Heat or the vastly underrated Ronin, and on rare comedic turns like Heating Operative/terrorist repairman Archibald ‘Harry’ Tuttle in Brazil he demonstrates he can do that as well (I’d also consider Casino to be broad, if mostly unintended, comedy), but the afformentioned Billy Crystal and Ben Stiller movies are nothing more than sitcom material spun to cinematic run time. Definitely whoring. But not as much as Pacino, and certainly not to the extent Michael Caine does, although at least in the case of the latter, he’s openly admitted to it. “I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.” – Michael Caine on Jaws: The Revenge
I think his agent or manager saw the attached names and said, “Bobby, we got both Stanley Kowalski and that scrawny kid from the soap movie attached; we should be able to ask for eight digits easily,” DeNiro responded, “Hey, I played Brando once, in Raging Bull: ‘I couda been a contenda, I coulda…’” “So, should I tell 'em yes?” “Who’s directing?” “Ah, the Muppet guy…something Oz.” “Hey, I like the Muppets. It should be good for a laugh. Sign me up, but make sure I get an extra large trailer.”
At least, that’s how it plays out in my mind. 
Stranger