list-o-mania
from the cluttered wishing to be categorized brain of Nathaniel R
Compiled in February 2006 using a complex mathematical formula [snort] involving number of films, clarity of obsession, quality of work, and other *undefinables* (such as previous films, awards show appearances, publicity, tv, & stage work) that influence me even though the list is meant to be about 2000 through 2005 only for more on the workings of this list -check out the introduction
Actors
of the "Aughts" 5-1 (The Top Five. Bravo!) |
previously 10-6
What a long strange trip it's been: seeing Johnny Depp get to where his fans always knew he was going. I'm not sure why it took mass audiences thirteen years to embrace him. For over a decade the mainstream thought him "cool" but refused to actually buy tickets to the hipness on display. For his part Depp let us in on his comic gift as far back as Cry Baby (1990). That same year he displayed his fearless go-for-broke creativity as Edward Scissorhands. For the next thirteen years he just kept right on showing both of those things. But it wasn't until he made one of cinema's greatest modern entrances on a sinking ship in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003, FB Gold Medal) that worldwide audiences finally embraced him for the movie star he'd always been. Not that they had much of a choice. For not only was his "Jack Sparrow" an instantly indelible character, it was also an unassailably great performance, the rarest kind of artistic achievement --the kind that shatters all traditional obstacles to its immediate acceptance. The public and the critics and the Oscars simultaneously embraced and went gaga for a fully comedic and silly role, forgetting that they're supposed to discount comedic inspiration as popcorn fluff... forgetting that only tears and disabilities and biopic mimicry are supposed to prompt abundant accolades and cries of "genius!"
The rest of Depp's performances this decade pale in comparison. But to be fair, most performances do. (If you ask me it's the best lead actor work of the decade.) Still, there are other highlights: he's a hoot dolled up in cheap prison drag in Before Night Falls (2000, FB gold medal cameo) his opium daze in From Hell (2001) has a tiny kick --he's hardly to blame if the film never knows how to capitalize on it, and finally his voice work for preferred auteur Tim Burton yielded great nervous charm in Corpse Bride (2005, review) If Depp is a little dull or unremarkable in Chocolat (2000) and Blow (2001) well... I find it's easier to blame the filmmakers than Johnny. If there's one consistent nagging problem in his career it's this: directors don't seem to know how much to reign him (answer: not too much --if too much he's dull i.e. Finding Neverland, 2004) and how much to let him roam free (answer: a lot --unless the rest of the film is also gonzo in which case reel him in i.e. Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, 2005)
In short when the films are bad (which they seem to be as often as not) or when Johnny is not so good... it's not his fault! What !?! You think I'd betray him? I've been cheering him on for sixteen years. I'm not about to stop now.
I sometimes feel like Tony Leung Chiu Wai was conjured up just to entrance me. He's a perfect and elaborate illusion. Perhaps the hazy hypnotic effect of watching him or thinking about his work stems from the way director Wong Kar Wai uses him, so dreamily, as muse in each film. I know it has something to do with the way that cinematographer Christopher Doyle has iconized him in shot after shot in the very same films. Wong Kar Wai's filmography is like an impossibly beautiful and sensuous feast. Tony Leung Chiu Wai is always the main course. Like most American moviegoers these films were my first taste of Asia's greatest movie star.
To add to the dreaminess, the actor just keeps getting better. As if those 90s films (Happy Together, Chungking Express, etc...) weren't blissful enough, the fifth Wong & Leung duet, In the Mood for Love, became a new pinnacle for both. It brought them an even larger international following not to mention a Cannes best actor prize. In the film Leung played the dreaming lovelorn writer Mr. Chow. The sequel, last year's visionary 2046, jumped forward in time. The character is still haunted by the love of his life Mrs. Chan (Played in In the Mood for Love by Leung's frequent co-star Maggie Cheung --actress list #16) but now Leung's character does his own haunting, leaving a string of wrecked beauties behind him. He's never willing to fully love any of them. The warmth of the character has been presumably drained away by that true love lost.
Even in lesser films (i.e. any not directed by Wong Kar-Wai), this actor is still to be savored. In Infernal Affairs (released in America in 2004) he's terrific as a psychologically tormented man leading a double life. Martin Scorsese is currently remaking the film with either DiCaprio (#31)or Damon (#17) given the daunting task of following Hong Kong's greatest in the role. Tony won his second Golden Horse and his sixth (!) of seven Hong Kong Film Awards for the role. Most recently outside of 2046, international audiences could swoon over his reteaming with Maggie Cheung in the operatic Hero. Though he's mostly known for drama he's also man enough to lampoon his own dreamy heartthrob persona in comedies --he did just that, confidently and without much actorly fuss, in Love Me Love My Money (2001).
I love this actor. If this has all been a dream, please don't wake me up.
As you have hopefully gleaned (if you haven't read the intro) these rankings for both men and women, are personal ones. The countdowns are not meant to reflect who the industry or the public or critics collectively would name as the top 100 (the names AND the rankings would be different for each of those lists) but the 200 people who stand out for this writer. These are the two hundred men and women who made a thousand hours spent in front of a screen memorable, worthwhile, illuminating, and enjoyable. And re: the latter adjective there's no topping McGregor. He rises up jubilantly. He's my least analytic or cynical choice for the top ten. I don't care if this sounds cheesy or sentimental but Ewan makes me feel and smile.
Some actors we relate to as identity surrogates. We want to be them or see the story through their eyes. In the case of McGregor I find I'm always the other characters. I'm always with him. In the 90s when he first came to fame I was rooming with him in a conspiratorial way, painting words on his body, rocking out like a lustful fanboy at his concerts, or killing time and brain cells with him in illegal ways (just like his co-stars in Shallow Grave, Pillowbook, Velvet Goldmine, and Trainspotting) On this last: he's the only actor for whom I would dive into a toilet bowl. But, excuse me, we're not here to talk about the 1990s. I'm only sharing this to set up the quintessential film in my personal history with Ewan McGregor: Moulin Rouge! (Many FB Awards) The apotheosis for me is probably the "Elephant Love Medley" scene. Like Nicole Kidman's 'Satine' I usually start out trying to resist him (my critical/cynical self usually in control). As he keeps battering away at my defenses with his unique spark, humor, and openheartedness (both as character and actor), I eventually start to cave. I resist, I complain, I explain all the reasons why not. But before long I am totally his.
Though Moulin Rouge! is far and away his most important work and his most skillful audience seduction it's not his only performance this decade. I don't have much to say about his Black Hawk Down (2001) cameo or his Big Fish (2003) turn but I was glad to be watching him at any rate. I don't want to get bogged down in my myriad problems with the new Star Wars films (1999-2005) or overstate the case but there are small moments when his Alec McGuinness impersonation is a refreshing oasis in an otherwise unfathomably vast desert of bad acting. In Down with Love (2003) he is humorously in tune with the movies smart retro-hokey spirit as 'man's man' "Catcher Block." This type of light touch comedy, is very difficult to pull off ...one misstep and you've thrown off the tone but he does it superbly. For the dark side of Ewan, which was more obviously on display in the 90s, there's the undervalued Young Adam in which he and Tilda Swinton (actress list #20) have a wonderfully sustained, difficult, and erotic power struggle as actors. Plus there's always those brilliant shadings in Moulin Rouge! McGregor doesn't shy away from the uglier parts of Christian's psyche, the insufferability, recklessness, and temper... it's just that you don't notice these things at first because you're too smitten. Just like Satine. You knew I'd come back to Moulin Rouge! didn't you? I'm always coming back to it.
Foreign film stars have it rough in the American movie market. Even those with unarguable magnetism can sometimes come up against the brick wall of the mainstream aversion to subtitles (the mainstream's loss, obviously). If people don't see their movies foreign-language stars can't leverage their wattage for international success and Hollywood paydays (if indeed that's what they're after). Those with an undeniable gift can sometimes find a moment in the sun with media profiles and Oscar buzz related to one special role but rarely do they manage to sustain public interest in their careers. In fact, most of those precious few movie stars with international fame and multi-country fanbases are aging having come to fame in the 60s when prestige fare for moviegoers and Oscar meant auteur driven foreign-language film rather than American indies. But currently there's reason to imagine that the long terrible drought of future Deneuves, Ullmans, and Depardieus could end with one expressive and memorable young Mexican, Gael Garcia Bernal, is leading the way.
Bernal first came to wide attention in the Oscar nominated Amores Perros (2000) which was a major arthouse success and a record breaker at the Mexican box-office. While the coiled rage of Bernal's performance was mesmerizing (FB honorable mention) the media attention was mostly focused on the films writer/director Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu. But if any actor intuitively --or accidentally who knows?-- benefited from surfing their "momentum" this decade it was Bernal. He followed this international success with an even bigger hit, more records broken in Mexico, in the Oscar nominated Y Tu Mama Tambien (2002) and then with another big hit (though far less satisfying qualitatively speaking) in another Oscar nominee The Crime of Father Amaro a tedious soap opera which he nearly rescued with one long liquid-eyed closeup at film's end. And then in 2004 a double whammy: an iconic young Che Guevera in the Oscar winning The Motorcycle Diaries and the centerpiece object of desire and deceit in Pedro Almodovar's brilliantly twisty "fag noir" Bad Education (FB nominations.)Success after success after success, financially and artistically. He rarely stars in English language pictures and people actually know who he is! All of this at twenty-seven years of age. If Gael Garcia Bernal continues to hone his already superb instincts for brave projects and roles which push his talent, one can only imagine how many more records he will break and how many more great filmmakers will come calling to utilize his gift. How high does this star have yet to rise?
I'm going against the grain of public opinion here. My apologies to Shakespeare but unlike the rest of the blogosphere 'I come not to bury Jude but to praise him.' It feels bizarre to be on the defensive in regards to one of the world's best actors but in order to see the quality of Jude Law's cinematic contribution you really have to ignore the tabloids. If one can, even for only a moment, ignore the din created by that messy Sadie Frost divorce, the paparazzi captured nude sunbathing, the baby rushed to the hospital with ecstacy tablets, the nanny poking scandal, the on-off relationship with Sienna Miller (whew) one is certain to see a glorious actor. If you're not blinded by the beauty. And people are. If he were a little uglier people would realize he's as good an actor as, say, Russell Crowe or Phillip Seymour Hoffman [I use these names as "ideas" of what is commonly referred to as good acting ... and only for that reason are they cited -N.]
The problem begins in December of 1999 when The Talented Mr Ripley opens and the world gets its first glimpse of Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf. The actor shoots to stardom as a result and the role, you see, becomes fused to the media's image of the actor: rich, amoral, heartless, with an ugly superiority complex. It matters little to me if any of these characterizations are true. What I care about is what's onscreen. And apparently it matters even less to the actor himself. For unlike his mindblowingly beautiful female counterparts, with one exception, he doesn't "de-glam" for respect and statues. This man just keeps taking roles that spin from his beauty.
The Oscar nominated breakthrough was followed by a flop war movie Enemy at the Gates (2000) but soon he was drawing attention to his looks again with a witty and memorable character creation in "Gigolo Joe" a male android built for... well, you know, in Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence [FB Nomination, supporting actor]. Another indelible character followed, "The Reporter" in Sam Mendes Road to Perdition (2002), which is the only uglification Jude attempted. And then, apart from arguably the music, he proved the one true thing of grace in Anthony Minghella's tonally inconsistent and overlong Cold Mountain. He was a heartbreaking wonder as a doomed,haunted war deserter (Oscar and FB nominations).
And then came 2004...
The backlash began. Contrary to popular belief, Jude Law did not star in every fourth film made this decade. You can blame scheduling oddities on that short succession of time in 2004 in which Jude Law seemed to be in every film showing and in every trailer showing before them to boot. He was everywhere: voicing Lemony Snicket, trying his hand at sci-fi with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, doing a cameo as another screen idol Errol Flynn in The Aviator. And, unfortunately, given the brewing audience and media perception, returning to that callow beauty pool which had spawned his signature role with three films. First he was recreating Michael Caine's starmaking Alfie, an ill-advised endeavor however good Jude was in it (and I maintain that he was very good indeed). Then he was ripping up and stomping on the hearts of Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman in Closer while losing all his scenes to the other actors (both sure ways to lose the audiences favor). Unfortunately for the actor it was too much all at once with too little by the way of success. But I still love Jude Law. 2004 is but one busy but troubled year within a very impressive career.
And there's one more thing: That same year he also found time to give an absurdly undervalued performance in the comic wonder I Heart Huckabees [FB Gold Medal]. It's one of those rare films that is many tones at once and still always feels of a piece. His character's existential crisis "How Am I Not Myself?" was exquisitely played. Jude spun it as only a truly fine actor could, in several directions at once. The question could be a mantra for any lost souls in the audience. It could also be a perfect mantra for an actor of great range who is too closely associated with his signature role.
The Complete List for The Films of 2000-2005
100 -91 / 90-81 / 80-71/ 70-61 / 60-51 / 50-41
40-31 / 30-21 / 20-11 / 10-6 / 5-1
