Director Wes Anderson puts a stamp on his films unlike any other director. Sometimes all you need to see is a single frame, or just an appearance by Bill Murray, to know it’s a movie from the man who gave us “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.”

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“Moonrise Kingdom,” Anderson’s first live-action film since the disappointing “The Darjeeling Limite,” five years ago, gathers a typically eclectic cast to tell a story that, well, it’s pretty hard to suss it all out.

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So, because you all enjoyed that list so much, and because I apparently have a death wish, it’s time for another: The Top 10 Most Overrated Actors/Actresses of All Time.

Unlike last time, I will claim that these are objective facts, not subjective opinions, so that all my critics may have full liberty to attack me (To those same critics who claimed last time that I phrased my opinions in an “objective” manner, this is called being facetious. That means I’m kidding. Also, seriously? That was your criticism?).

Here are my criteria: are they considered great actors/actresses? If not, they can’t make the list (sorry, Rob Schneider). Are they actually great actors? If so, they can’t make the list (sorry, Laurence Olivier). Only those who are considered great actors but are not, in fact, great actors can make this list. Even then, I’m not claiming that these are bad actors unless I explicitly say that I am.

So, here we go. In the words of Han Solo, I’ve got a bad feeling about this …

10. George Clooney: Not a great actor. Not a good actor. Not really an actor. If you’ve ever seen a movie with Clooney where you didn’t say to yourself, “Hey, I’m watching George Clooney” every thirty seconds or so, you haven’t seen a George Clooney movie. You’re mixing him up with Kate Winslet. He’s a D actor. Dull in “Michael Clayton.” Dreary in “Up In The Air.” Dreadful in “Syriana.” Dismal in “Batman and Robin.” He’s not a low-rent Cary Grant. He’s an affordable-housing Robert Wagner.

9. Dustin Hoffman: He turned in some tremendous performances in his early days (most notably “Papillon,” “Kramer vs. Kramer,” and “Tootsie”), then became a caricature of himself. He has not done anything worthwhile since “Tootsie,” in fact. Even in his better performances, he is a bit too mannered for my taste, perhaps an effect of his method acting. Laurence Olivier thought the same thing. When they were working on “Marathon Man” together, Hoffman showed up on set after having not slept for several days in order to get “in character.” Olivier took one look at him and said, “Dear boy, it’s called acting.” (more…)

It’s hard to really notice eccentric people in a modern city the size of Los Angeles, where millions upon millions of residents tend to blur together as they rush past each other in their cars. But in rural America, the town oddballs still stand out, whether they’re lovably kooky, or – as is the case in the richly textured and highly entertaining new film “Get Low” – they’re seemingly antisocial recluses with an array of bad social skills.

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Starring Robert Duvall in one of his best and most colorful performances, as Appalachian hermit Felix “Bush” Brazeale, “Get Low” is a character-based dramedy that knows when to mine the comic gold to be had in exchanges between Duvall and his co-star Bill Murray, and when to pull back and allow a powerful yet quiet and deeply human story grab hold of viewers. Based on an improbable yet true Depression-era story, it follows Felix as he embarks on a highly unusual quest: to pay for his own funeral in advance, but not actually be dead in it.

Rather, Felix wants to be alive and watching what others say about him. There’s been a thousand legends created about him throughout the lonely decades of his life, but only some of them are true. The problem is, some of the worst tales may be the most accurate ones. (more…)

Tales of the whimmydiddle’s mysteries aside, one of the most stupefying stories I can recall from my childhood in the North Carolina – Tennessee mountains was about a Volunteer State man who held a 1938 funeral for himself before he died so he could hear what people had to say about him.  More than 8,000 attended, including a man who lived next door to my grandmother. He said he went because he and the others there got to participate in a lottery for the man’s land when he did pass on, which was 5 years later.  That man was “Uncle” Felix “Bush” Breazeale — shown [below the fold] sitting in front of his own coffin — and it’s that episode of his real life story that Get Low (as in get buried) is about.

The rest of Get Low tracks elements of the real story and uses some of the real names, but it introduces fictionalized backgrounds and situations to flesh out compelling characters.  In the film, Felix Bush (Robert Duvall) has lived alone in a cabin in the woods for 40 years.

During those years, the townfolk’s imaginations have concocted all sorts of stories about him. He killed two men in a fist fight one says he heard. Another says Felix knows the devil and has unholy powers — a claim I heard several times myself about people who lived far back in the Appalachian woods  where they practiced granny magic with mountain herbs and Witch Hazel. The Smokey Mountain mists do excite imaginations. But when Felix learns a friend from long ago has died, he goes to see sardonic funeral director Frank Quinn (Bill Murray — who delivers his lines so well it’s hard to hear over the audience laughter) and his associate Buddy (Lucas Black) with a wad of cash to buy himself a funeral party. (more…)

A great performance sticks with you long after you’ve scraped the theater floor-gum off your Keds.  But too often, professional drama geeks and mainstream media critics will bestow their blessing on freaky, idiosyncratic performances that hew to the party line *(cough) Heath Ledger (cough) Brokeback Mountain (cough)*, leaving the rest of us to scratch our collective heads.  If that was good, we wonder, how bad do you have to be to be bad?

What follows is a list of the Top 10 performances of the last quarter century.  It focuses on lead roles, or at least substantial ones – no cameos, thank you.  Interestingly, there are no straight comic performances here, and many of the roles are villains.  And it is also focused on movies people have actually heard of. 

So, this is not an exhaustive list – it overlooks plenty of great performances.  But it is my list and based on my criteria alone – and I’m sure I’ll hear about my myriad defects of insight, taste, breeding and general mental competence in the comments.  For example, Daniel Day Lewis is missing because I decided not to invest three hours into There Will Be Blood (2007) since after seeing the “I drink your milkshake!” clip I just can’t take it seriously.  (more…)

Scrooged (1988) has the exact opposite problem of our 25th greatest Christmas film, White Christmas. Whereas the Bing Crosby musical ties a couple hours of mediocrity into the kind of perfect holiday-bow finale that leaves you wanting more, Scrooged is cursed with one of the worst third acts in cinema history; a horrible, wretched, awful televised confession that not only leaves a nasty aftertaste but might be guilty of setting a cheap cinematic trend second only to the shaky-cam — especially in romantic comedies – the horrible, wretched, awful, third-act public confession we see utilized time and again to lazily wrap things up.

The rest of Bill Murray’s modern (well, 80’s) spin on Dickens’ classic “A Christmas Carol” is absolutely terrific. Taking the story into the world of entertainment for a Network-esque skewering of television is inspired and so is the perfect casting of Murray as the Scrooge character. Murray’s good in both type of roles, but I much prefer when he’s the straight man reacting to the zaniness around him as opposed to creating it (Caddyshack being the ultimate exception).

You drop an understated comedic genius like Murray into a wild story that allows him to be constantly caught off guard by marvelous characters and character actors like Carol Kane, Buster Poindexter (David Johansen), Jamie Farr, Bobcat Goldthwait, Brian Doyle-Murray, Michael J. Pollard, Buddy Hackett, Robert Goulet and a very funny and memorable Robert Mitchum as Murray’s slightly addled boss, and it’s hard to go wrong. (more…)

Looking back at The Karate Kid (1984), which turned twenty-five years old this week, a thought keeps recurring.

Wow. . . Avildsen made it work twice.

John G. Avildsen is, in some ways, a director of little distinction when compared with well-known marquee names like Spielberg, Scorsese, Nolan, and Tarantino. The vast majority of his movies are utterly forgotten by the average filmgoer — indeed, he’s been nominated for Worst Director at The Razzies three times. And yet, like Victor Fleming decades earlier with his twin successes The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind (both 1939 — read a great recent article on Fleming here), Avildsen has twice punched way above his weight, netting himself an Oscar for Best Director and giving birth to some of the most memorable moments in motion picture history. (more…)

I just cannot get behind this Star Trek rebirth.  The whole thing is just so unrealistic.  Not the warp speed or phasers or beaming about the universe – those are at least remotely plausible.  I am talking about the fact that the starship Enterprise is composed entirely of officers and yet it still seems to function.  Where are the non-commissioned officers (NCO), the petty officers and sergeants who actually make any military organization run?  No, I can suspend disbelief over Klingons and tribbles, and I actively support the notion of green alien hotties.  But the idea of a functioning military unit without sergeants is just a wormhole too far.

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Hollywood movies often focus on the commanders, the captains and colonels, but they have also managed to highlight some great sergeants as well.  When you are picking out DVDs for next weekend, remember that May 16th is Armed Forces Day and consider a few selections that show the sergeant in all his gruff and grumbling glory. 

If you have never experienced the joy of going through basic training and do not plan to, your first stop should be Full Metal Jacket, with R. Lee Ermey’s legendary portrayal of a Marine drill instructor who must have missed out on the block of instruction on sensitivity.  I saw this in the theater about a week before I reported to Basic.  That was a poor idea. (more…)