“The Wedding Planner” was bad in a bland tv-ish way, and “Enough” is actively awful, but Jennifer Lopez has given good performances other than in “Out of Sight”. She was engaging and convincing in “Selena”, and was a consistently good character actress before she hit it big, with small, but well-performed roles in “Mi Familia” and “Blood and Wine”.
“Blood and Wine” is a very good, overlooked movie with fine perfomances by Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine, also mentioned earlier in this thread.
What about these guys?
F. Murray Abraham
Lou Gossett Jr.
Gossett gets a pass in this category because he was Drill Instructor Foley in An Officer and a Gentleman.
Is it me or does F. Murray Abraham get type-casted as bitter guys meant to be the baddies in all of his movies since playing Salieri in Amadeus? He certainly does in Finding Forrester anyway.
Add Sean Connery.
Hell, you could make a whole catagory of “Actors From Great Britain Who Will Act in Anything” (so far Michael Caine, Malcolm McDowell, and Richard Burton have been mentioned). I’ll add Richard Harris as well. And you could throw in Anthony Hopkins. I always like Hopinks’ performances, but some of the actual movies aren’t that good (Bad Company for instance).
And in Sneakers!
Richard Burton!
There’s no such thing as a pretty-good Richard Burton performance or an okay Richard Burton performance. They were all either terrific or terrible.
F. Murray Abraham wasn’t in Sneakers, I believe you mean Ben Kingsley as Cosmo.
Aren’t they the same guy? Cmon. I mean, really.
I came in here to mention Brando.
There’s a great take on his varying performances in Sidney Lumet’s book Making Movies, which is a great read. I’ll quote the reference in Ebert’s review of Don Juan DeMarco:
Julia Roberts is my pick for this… I’m not a big fan of hers, but she can be good. I really enjoyed her performance in Mary Reilly, for example, in which she had to put away all of her usual “acting” tricks in order to turn in a real performance. She even held her own with John Malkovich on the same screen.
And yet, in most of her movies (Notting Hill, Pretty Woman, Erin Brockovich, etc.), she turns in the same stock performance.
Pretty much the same deal for Meg Ryan. Usually she just plays the same sort of character, but she was pretty good in Courage Under Fire and Restoration.
I nominate David Warner – Star Trek V? Quest of the Delta Knights for crying out loud? :eek: 
paulberserker, I second all of those.
I also nominate John Malkovich, if only because I can’t understand why he subjects himself to dreck like Man in the Iron Mask, The Messenger, and - excuse me - Knockaround Guys?
I’ll nomiate Val Kilmer. He should have got an oscar for his performance in Tombstone & he was exceptional in The Doors.
He has a reputation for being incredibly difficult to work with and his work is, at best, very uneven. But, he can be terrific.
I came to say Michael Caine but seen him done to death.
So I’ll echo two other previous mentions but not expanded upon
Sylvester Stallone who turned in a trully great (maybe a top 75 all time) performance in Rocky & then went all action star on us (until Copland +20 yrs later where he acted well).
Sir Anthony Hopkins post Silence of the Lambs to fair – he didn’t need to do this to put bread on the table, instead he took roles that any journey man movie character actor might play & he didn’t steal the show and outshine to the point of being a HUGE reason to see the movie: Road to Wellville, MI-2, Mask of Zorro, Freejack
Actually Freejack was made just after Silence of the Lambs (although it wasn’t released until after SOTL–probably to cash in on his new fame). SOTL was made in early 1990 and wasn’t released for another year, in Feb. 1991. During that time Hopkins made three or four movies before becoming famous for his Lecter role. But, yeah, Freejack wasn’t one of the best (he said he was in it simply because he wanted to meet Mick Jagger). Some of his pre-SOTL stuff wasn’t that good either, like A Change of Seasons. But there was a ton of good performances like The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case, The Bunker, The Elephant Man, A Lion in Winter (to name a few) to even it out.
I second David Warner, Katisha. He was good in movies like The Omen and Time After Time, but stank in Tron and has been type-casted as the British Baddie, like the butler in Titanic.
Yeah, and he was cool in The Man with Two Brains, too!
If this discussion is about inconsistent acting and not the ability to always pick decent scripts, then I nominate Vince Vaughn.
The guy phones-in every other performance. Did anybody else see The Cell or Domestic Disturbance? You can imagine him refusing to do a second take…
“Come on Vince. Once more, but this time act like you’re not reading it off a damn cue card.”
“Screw you. I already cashed my check.”
On the other hand, he was totally money in Swingers and Old School.
Half of my brain says Kevin Spacey – though the other half of my brain says it’s from thinking about that Life of David gale dreck, the very unbelievable K-Pax and the woeful adaptation of The Shipping News where his performances aren’t bad (in the case of TSN his performance was really terrific, in fact) but the films themselves are just Not So Good. I think I’m just so much of a fan that I want him to always turn out high caliber performances in highly enjoyable movies.
I have to say, without reservation:
Renee Zellweger: electric in Chicago and Bridget Jones, one-note cutesy pie in just about everything else.
Albert Brooks: Broadcast News and Defending Your Life, terrific. Mother (Debbie Reynolds notwithstanding) and The Muse, not so much. (I won’t even address I’ll Do Anything.)
Tim Robbins: compare [i[Shawshank Redemption* to Hudsucker Proxy.
Alicia Silverstone:compare Clueless and The Crush to everything else she’s done. Fluffy though Clueless may be, she owned that role. I’m looking forward to seeing if she can acquit herself with her upcoming television series.
Michael Douglas: He’s on more than not, but that makes his stunning lowlights stand out all the more, like Disclosure and his recent thing with his father (Family Affair?) and probably, I’m afraid, The In-Laws.
Ice Cube: wooden in Anaconda, captivating in Boys in the Hood.
I agree with De Niro and then shake my head piteously over Glenn Close, both of whom I love but can produce some of the most awful dreck. I’m sure there are others that make me feel this way that I just can’t think of now.