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Um, why is Annette Bening uninteresting? To me she's an extremely sexy and unique actress with a wonderful volatile personality that can be highly sympathetic or quite evil, or even bring off a mixture of both, like in her grotesquely conceived, awful role in American Beauty. But I haven't seen most of her films, because they sound like pap.

Randall Maysin wrote:Um, why is Annette Bening uninteresting? ... I haven't seen most of her films, because they sound like pap.

I think you answered your question. I wouldn't call her uninteresting, but rather a good actress who has appeared in a lot of middlebrow films and few great ones. But I am looking forward to 20th Century Women based on Beginners.

Well ... speaking for myself, I hadn't honestly given her much thought before I saw domino's comment. But I think he's right, because I can't think of any performance of hers that she didn't approach in more or less a standard, obvious way.

Now, I'll grant that there's a lot of hers I haven't seen, but American Beauty is a good case in point for me. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but my recollection is that she turned in a very obvious shrewish suburban caricature in that movie, and no real compassion for or insight into her character that wasn't on the page. It's easy to imagine just about anyone in that role without the movie changing a whole lot one way or the other.

But that's just me. And at any rate, "uninteresting" is better than "bad", so she has that going for her; at least she's not Helen Mirren.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Bening's beautifully modulated performance in The Kids Are All RIght, which was her most recent Oscar loss (to Natalie Portman), and a pretty narrow one considering that she had racked up a number of critics' awards that year in addition to winning the Golden Globe. Along with The Grifters, it may be my favorite of her roles and is a nice showcase for her humanity and emotional intelligence as an actor. Some of the films she's been in may be weak (like Being Julia) but I don't know that her performances can be faulted for that. (I'd even go so far as to defend her in American Beauty but I can see why for many people that one is beyond salvaging...)

Beautifully modulated (NSFW)

You're not going to sell me at least on anything through that flick.

Mileage may vary, I suppose. Her long dinner-table scene--in which she goes from happily, tipsily singing Joni Mitchell's "All I Want" to being overcome with dread when she realizes her partner has been cheating on her--is lovely.

AFI MOVIES OF THE YEAR
Arrival
Fences
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
La La Land
Manchester by the Sea
Moonlight
Silence
Sully
Zootopia

(Lion and Jackie were not eligible)

A Top 35? Did we just out paranoid-knight2008's identity?

domino harvey wrote:A Top 35? Did we just out paranoid-knight2008's identity?

not sure about the reference, but a top ten makes sense if you fifty or fewer films in a year, anything else really requires commensurately scaling the top list to fairly account for the volume of titles.

No, it doesn't. More than ten and you are just a narcissist who can't abide by a process of picking a set number of titles because people absolutely must know what your 31st favorite film of the year was. Also see how ludicrously long his introduction is-- I still like his Godard book (fighting words here) but this is second-hand embarrassing. And declaring in his linked review that Little Sister was going to change the world of cinema? No need to check, no such thing happened

He's referring to this top 191 list posted in a top 10 thread.

domino harvey wrote:No, it doesn't. More than ten and you are just a narcissist who can't abide by a process of picking a set number of titles because people absolutely must know what your 31st favorite film of the year was.

well no, ten is an arbitrary system, I'm fine with abiding by it, but I think it isn't a very useful set, particularly as the source number grows larger. There's also the films themselves to consider, listmaking is (from a certain point of view) a violent process of eliminating this movie or that movie from the arbitrary ten set for often capricious and transitory reasoning that may have very little to do with the merits of the films selected or rejected and more to do with how the list maker wants the entire set of films to appear.

In other words, making a list makes us all narcissists, not the length nor girth of said list.

That said, my OCD totally understands the irritation of not abiding by the standards, patterns and norms! I find a list of 27 more irritating than 35, or an unnumbered top ten more irritating than either!

A top 35 has a better chance than a top 10 of including some really interesting films that slipped past my radar, or perhaps some that I had heard of but hadn't considered seeing before. So for that reason alone, as a reader I appreciate the idea of some critics indulging in longer lists (even though, in this case, Brody's list didn't contain any such films for me).

Toni Erdmann has won the big 5at the European film Awards last night in Breslau (now, Wroclaw) : best film, director, actor, actress, and script.

https://www.europeanfilmacademy.org/New ... 5703c84ff1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wrocław hasn't been called "Breslau" for over seventy years.

Yes in Spanish Language (Breslavia) and German.

If we didn't think things were bad in the world, Aaron Taylor-Johnson was just nominated for a Golden Globe

As much as I loathed him in Godzilla, I actually think this nomination is well-deserved, because he is fantastically creepy in Nocturnal Animals.

2017 Golden Globe Awards
Mel Gibson best director

Very strange list. How does Tom Ford get nominated for director and screenplay, Aaron Taylor-Johnson get nominated for supporting actor (major categories not split into Drama and Musical/Comedy) and then Nocturnal Animals gets shut out of Best Picture and both lead acting spots? You'd think if you had a film with one of the five best directors of the year and one of the five best screenplays of the year, it'd crack the list of five best dramas of the year.

I guess having to return one of the two Tom Ford™ perfumes they received made them like it less

The guy made one of the very best movies of a strong year so I truly doubt that his name value had anything to do with these nominations, and if it did, the HFP fell ass-backwards into making a correct choice

No no Focus sent the HFP two Tom Ford brand perfumes, but they had to return one due to the gift's value going over the rules. They got to keep one, hence my jest.
BTW this must be the most ridiculous Best Actor- Comedy nominations ever