"While Colin Firth's performance as Henry VI in The King's Speech struck me as incredibly affecting, James Franco's tour de force as misguided hiking adventurer Aron Ralston in 127 Hours absolutely floored me. It was the first time the actor struck me as a method actor who could some day be counted in the same class as Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, and - hey, go with me on this - Steve Buscemi.
A tough, desperate piece of acting gold shines through every action of Franco's character. That it's based on a real guy's severe dilemma makes perfect stressful sense for the odd meta actor whose career is full of conundrums. Franco went to the dark side in his wrenching yet always relatable portrayal of human suffering and perseverance. That he had us so with him as he came out from that darkness into the most life-affirming shot of blinding light I've ever seen at the movies cements his ownage of the part for sure." - Daniel Johnson
"Ryan Gosling’s short but stunning roller coaster of a career has seen epic highs (The Believer, Half Nelson) and forgettable lows (Fracture), but his range and dedication remain unquestioned. He’s a true method actor, a meticulous throwback to the glory days of Pacino and DeNiro where every quiver, twitch, and wrinkle connects with the interior subtext of the character. He has played a skilled serial killer and a drugged-out teacher, a conflicted neo-nazi and a man enamored with a sex doll. But maybe not so ironically, Gosling is best known for playing a tortured romantic in The Notebook, a film that despite its charms isn’t especially challenging for his caliber of actor. All in all, mainstream success has eluded Gosling, and he’s flown somewhat under the radar except for those deeply entrenched in the film industry.
Yet 2010 seems to have changed everything for Gosling. His brilliantly nuanced performance as Dean in Derek Cianfrance’s devastating Blue Valentine feels like a watershed moment, a graduation of sorts to legendary status. The film’s flashback structure is wholly dependent on the contrasting tones of Gosling and his co-star Michelle Williams’ performances, and both are able to construct an entire universe of subtext out of small moments. As a man slowly being torn apart by hidden disappointment, Gosling’s Dean, balding but still piercing, is enthralling for his ability to circumvent cliche, building on the natural chemistry with Williams until every silent glance and subtle shrug entails something deeper -- an endless amount of variations within a constantly fluid relationship.
When Cianfrance cuts backward in time, Gosling brings a eager yearning to Dean as a younger man, full of vim and vigor but still aware of the harsh realities of everyday life. While Dean and Cindy meet by chance, every ounce of their relationship, both the good, the bad, and the ugly, feels dynamic, real, and fated, a momentary window into a relationship that can’t hit the reset button. The film’s overall power (gleaned from plenty of individual stunning moments) is a testament to the careful precision of Gosling’s movement and pitch. The sequence in the Future Room is especially devastating on a personal level, a greatest (or worst) hits collection of compromise, hope, dedication, and finally disintegration. Compare this heartbreaking valley with the glorious high of Dean serenading Cindy on a sidewalk stoop, “singing stupid” for a woman he can’t keep his eyes off, and the magnitude of Gosling’s performance becomes clear. Blue Valentine ends with Dean walking down the street away from Cindy, his daughter, and the life he wants so badly to sustain. As the fireworks of July 4th celebrations rip through the space, we are left with an iconic image of an actor taking it to the next level, and a fascinating and tormented character who can’t bare to look back. It's just too painful." - Glenn Heath Jr.
"Forget for a minute the success or failure of the "is it real or is it a stunt?" controversy at the core of Joaquin Phoenix's faux documentary I'm Still Here. Forget too the pouty dismissal the film mostly received by a lazy critical and entertainment journalism establishment that didn't take kindly to being one of the objects of the joke. Focus instead on Phoenix's risky, envelope-pushing, career-threatening yet wholly convincing performance as ostensibly himself, a promising young actor turned bloated, self-absorbed celebrity prepared to throw everything away for a vanity career as a rap act.
Consider too that this wasn't just a performance in the context of a 90-minute film. It was a nearly year-long bit of ballsy performance art in which Phoenix basically put his acting/celebrity career on hold to make a massive public ass of himself everywhere from a stage in Miami to the bright lights of The Late Show with David Letterman. Almost universally overlooked and misunderstood, it was not only the performance of 2010, it was possibly the performance of an actor's lifetime.
Even if you strip away the meat of the excoriating celebrity culture satire that is I'm Still Here (and why would you unless it hits too close to home?), you're left with a pretty brilliant comic performance worthy of This Is Spinal Tap or Waiting for Guffman. What's more, the comedy comes at the expense of Phoenix the actor who, even when you know it's a put on, isn't allowed the cover of an obviously invented comic character. What more can you ask from a guy?
But I'm Still Here isn't just a lark. There's a sting to it and it's due entirely to Phoenix who seizes the humanity in his character early on in the film. The resulting performance is shot through with a pathos that grounds it and keeps it from being an act of simple buffoonery. There's a genuine feeling of truth to the opening scene where an exhausted and depressed looking Phoenix laments his weariness at playing "Joaquin Phoenix." It's tempting to believe that, however much of this screen persona may be invented, this emptiness at least is shared by the real man.
Joaquin Phoenix, your masterpiece may have been greeted with a shrug by critics and audiences who have now moved on to the daily antics of Charlie Sheen, but you, sir, are a mountaintop water drop." - Craig Kennedy
"You’d be easily forgiven if you didn’t make an immediate connection between Niels Arestrup the grizzled veteran and the fresh-faced pretty boy featured in Chantal Akerman’s 1974 classic I, You, He, She or the many other French films where Arestrup used his youthful good looks to his advantage. Jacques Audiard has twice now employed the weathered face and cold eyes of Arestrup’s present appearance to personify heartless, dangerous men with zero moral standing. In The Beat My Heart Skipped, he played a drunken, cowardly, deadbeat nightmare of a father who convinces his son (Romain Duris) to help him collect on his debts and gets him mixed up in an underworld that doesn’t give friendly introductions. In A Prophet, Arestrup reappears as Cesar Luciani, the ruthless Corsican prison boss that takes the film’s lead Malik on as his young protégé. Both roles earned the veteran actor a Cesar, the equivalent of an Academy Award in his home country.
Simply put, Cesar Luciani is a man you don’t question, you don’t talk back to and you certainly don’t fuck with. When he tells Malik that he must kill a man in his cellblock or he will kill Malik, there isn’t a single moment of doubt that his fate has been decided. Cesar is a man of confidence, a prison lifer who still has ties to the outside world and acts as if his imprisonment is just an irritating handicap to conducting business. He carries himself with a masculine swagger that clears lanes as he walks the prison’s halls despite his Napoleon-like stature. He is a cruel man that has learned to do anything necessary to get results. The film’s brutal portrayal of life inside this cement box is so visceral that it can be difficult to watch. There were scenes, at least one involving Cesar, that I had to briefly look away from. But it is precisely these kinds of scenes that buy Audiard so much credibility with viewers, especially when his actors so fully inhabit their characters that you would have no trouble believing they’d spent a good portion of their lives locked within the confines of this prison.
As the film tracks Malik’s unlikely rise and Cesar’s inevitable fall there is always a palpable sense of danger. Cesar’s menacing looks never let you relax and there's the omnipresent fear that Malik may make that one crucial mistake that pushes him into a violent conclusion; there is, then, a moment of slight satisfaction when an utterly defeated Cesar sitts in the grey square, surrounded by snow and ice, completely alone. There are no words necessary, Arestrup’s face tells you everything you need to know about a man being forced to face the consuming emptiness that will haunt the remainder of his life. Niels Arestrup has grown into that rare breed of actor who is so compelling you would pay good money just to watch him sit and smoke a cigarette or read a book. I know I would." - Bryan Whitefield
"It’s difficult to capture exactly what’s so special about up-and-comer Michael Fassbender and indie vet Mark Ruffalo in Fish Tank and The Kids Are All Right, respectively. Both performances, each a supporting turn, act as a narrative and sexual catalyst, pushing their movies (and central female leads) into moral and interpersonal disillusion. Both performances also exist in similarly flawed films, each hampered by schematic screenplays. Yet it’s the former who remains mostly unscathed, managing to elude simplistic arcs and easy answers in favor of a certain level of intrigue and mystery.In Fish Tank, Fassbender plays one of Mom’s (Kierston Wareing) new lovers, and who comes to have a complex relationship with Mia, (Katie Jarvis) our lead. There’s a subtle, appealing body language to Fassbender’s performance, oozing sexuality and confidence, but gentle in motion and speech. The turn is perhaps so elusive as to eschew description in itself, but it’s with no doubt a beseeching, agreeable turn suffused with empathy and cozy compassion, always surprising and a appropriately warm welcome for this commanding presence." - Charles Lyons
Excellent write-up on Ryan Gosling.
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