By Rebecca Pahle | Lists | September 22, 2017 |
By Rebecca Pahle | Lists | September 22, 2017 |
We’ve written about good performances in bad movies before, but thankfully (or less-than-thankfully), it’s a well that doesn’t really run dry.
Stanley Tucci in Transformers: Age of Extinction
Lee Pace in The Hobbit trilogy
Michael Sheen in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
*Bella and Edward find out that the Evil Vampires are coming for their Uncanny Valley Satan Baby
*The good vampire clan maxes out their frequent flyer miles to bring a whole bunch of bloodsuckers out to Washington.
*A fight happens
*Except it doesn’t, really
*The end
I’d be slightly impressed at the sheer balls Lionsgate must have had to make a movie with no plot if I weren’t busy being bewildered by the whole thing. (Let’s not get into the fact that it made over $800 million.) Practically this movie’s sole saving grace—and I say practically, because YOU NICKNAMED MY DAUGHTER AFTER THE LOCH NESS MONSTER?!?!?!?—is Michael Sheen as Aro, the leader of the no, fuck it, you don’t care. Sheen infuses every second of his far-too-brief screentime with an energy that can best be described as “unhinged.” You’ve all seen the laugh, above. In a movie filled with otherwise talented actors sleepwalking through their performances, Sheen is the only person who knows what the fuck movie he’s in, or at least should be in. (Rami Malek and Lee Pace are also mildly entertaining, though I would have enjoyed them more if I weren’t busy cringing and averting my eyes every time Noel Fisher was on-screen.) And why wouldn’t Sheen be the standout? He served his time in the Underworld franchise. He knows that nobody’s watching a movie where vampires fight werewolves for the nuanced performances. If you’re not bringing balls to the wall insanity, you’re doing it wrong. Even when he’s in the background, he’s pulling faces like this:
(I tried to find a shot where Robert Pattinson’s eyes weren’t half-closed, but there wasn’t one.)
Alan Rickman, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Eva Green in 300: Rise of an Empire
Billy Zane, Titanic
As you may guess, the clean-shaven Rebecca is in the latter camp. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are both incredibly talented, charismatic actors, and they’re not bad here, but nor are their fairly by-the-book performances able to distract from the fact that Jack and Rose don’t even go here. The only fictional character I didn’t want to yank offscreen with one of those vaudeville hooks so I could focus on the real-life events of the Titanic’s sinking was Billy Zane as Rose’s snobby, vain fiancé Cal. James Cameron doesn’t really give a shit about working with actors (“I made Titanic because I wanted to dive to a shipwreck, not because I particularly wanted to make the movie“… yeah, we know), and Zane took advantage of the lack of supervision to go full cartoon villain. Too bad the rest of his career hasn’t really worked out.
Tilda Swinton, Constantine
That only makes the comparison between him and the movie’s best actor—Tilda Swinton, playing the angel Gabriel—all the more stark. Swinton spends every second of their shared screentime stomping all over her beleaguered co-star, and despite only being in three scenes, she’s the movie’s biggest takeaway by far. Tilda Swinton as an androgynous angel who turns out to be insane? Yes, please. The end of the movie leaves Gabriel in a pretty terrible place—their plans to bring about the Apocalypse foiled, their wings burned off, condemned by God to live a human life. Gabriel’s response, at this point, to their inability to goad Constantine into taking revenge honestly counts among the top ten line readings in all of cinema history, ever. Skip to 1:10. “You could have shot me, John!”
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