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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.

Anderson’s latest follows a pair of pre-teens who decide to run away from their respective families. The trailer doesn’t offer much more than that, but we get plenty of stylistic flourishes, that uniquely Anderson way of framing his characters and familiar faces cast in unfamiliar roles.

When was the last time Edward Norton looked so lovable, or so lost?

Murray is on hand, of course, along with Frances McDormand, Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton and “Rushmore’s” Jason Schwartzman.

One’s affection for “Kingdom” might hinge on your reaction to Anderson’s past work. He’s clearly not mucking with his own formula, which is very good news – as long as this isn’t another “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.” Anderson’s 2004 bomb remains one of the punishing movie experiences in recent memory.

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.”

8. Spencer Tracy: He’s immensely likable on screen, but he’s not a great actor by any stretch of the imagination. Light comedy is his forte (watch the original “Father of the Bride” or “Adam’s Rib”), but he’s too stolid in heavy drama like “Bad Day at Black Rock.” He’s always Spencer Tracy, no matter what he’s in. That’s more a characteristic of older actors who were movie stars rather than actors (see John Wayne, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, etc.), but those actors are rarely listed among the best of all time. Tracy routinely is.

7. Katharine Hepburn: Overwrought, overhyped, and overblown. Hepburn is the same in virtually all of her films, save “The Rainmaker,” “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” and “On Golden Pond.” She tends to chew the scenery, and she never inhabits a part; she insists that the part inhabits her. Her films with Tracy are just as formulaic as Hope and Crosby (and no one ever called Hope and Crosby great actors). Many critics loved her because she wasn’t afraid to lose her femininity at the door, but that made her a hard actress to love onscreen.

6. Gregory Peck: Atticus Finch is supposed to have a Southern accent. Joseph Mengele is supposed to have a German accent. And characters are supposed to be different from each other. Philip Green in “Gentleman’s Agreement” is not supposed to be the same character as Joe Bradley in “Roman Holiday” or Captain Ahab in “Moby Dick.” Peck could not play pathos, could not play vulnerability, and could not play real anger. Like Tracy, the best word to describe him would be stolid.

5. Leonardo DiCaprio: He shows flashes of brilliance, then subsumes them in gigantic waves of mannerisms. When he burst onto the scene with “Titanic,” I thought he was going to be one of the great ones – for someone that age to turn in a performance that good in a movie that bad is worth noting. But watch him in “Gangs of New York,” and you find yourself laughing out loud at the notion that this whiny nobody is supposed to be the tough guy. Watch him in “The Man in the Iron Mask,” and he can’t even decide whether to pronounce Athos as “Aaathos” or “Aye-thos.” Watch him in “The Departed” – well, don’t bother to watch him in “The Departed.” Somebody has been whispering in his ear that great acting is about being showy. It isn’t. It’s about being subtle. We can only hope he heeds that warning before he ends up like Dustin Hoffman.

4. Bill Murray: Great in comedy (see “Tootsie” and “Groundhog Day”), laughably awful in everything else. He turned in what may be the single worst performance in the history of film in the remake of “The Razor’s Edge.” It is a wonder that the director of that film did not somehow mix up Murray and a block of wood during the shoot. It is unthinkable that he was nominated for an Academy Award for the most boring movie of all time, “Lost In Translation;” sitting around mumbling does not make for great acting. Here’s the thing about emotion on film; we should actually see it. I understand the idea of allowing things to simmer beneath the surface. But that doesn’t mean your performance style should invariably mirror a Tiki mask.

3. Tom Hanks: Bill Murray with a touch more emotion, Robin Williams with a touch less. Light comedy is fine (“Big”), everything else borders on the maudlin. “Castaway” is unintentionally hilarious (rent it and do bits on it), he’s a hole in the screen in “Saving Private Ryan,” and his performance in “Forrest Gump” is one-note. He’s not a bad actor, but he’s certainly not a great one. He is a great producer, though – for “Band of Brothers” alone, he should be enshrined among the best.

2. Meryl Streep: Undoubtedly I will be hung by my toenails for this pick. She is a marvel technically, but she’s always cold. I can’t think of a single film in which she has reached me emotionally. I always get the feeling while watching her movies that I’m watching a documentary about acting for a master class; I never get the feeling that her characters are real. On this one, I agree with Katharine Hepburn, who couldn’t stand Streep’s acting: “Click, click, click,” she once said, talking about the gears you can see turning inside Streep’s head.

1. Jack Nicholson: He sucks in everything. It’s that simple. Anyone who considers him a great actor ought to get his/her head examined. I understand that he’s a hero to the ‘60s generation because he did drugs and got murdered for psychedelic “freedom” in “Easy Rider.” That doesn’t excuse him for cursing film with his presence for the next forty years. He has no versatility whatsoever. He is always a cynical/menacing fellow with “reserves of depth” (unless he has no “reserves of depth”). He is the worst case of miscasting in movie history in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (McMurphy is supposed to be a huge red-headed Irishman, not a 5’10” counterculture weasel), a glaring problem in a film that is otherwise impeccably cast (Brad Dourif as Billy is one of the great overlooked performances in the annals of film). Nicholson over Peter Fonda in “1997″ is a cosmic injustice. He is boring, predictable, and what’s more, he’s pretentious and annoying. 12 Oscar nominations for this hack testifies to the idiocy of the Baby Boomer generation that made him famous.

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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.

At first, Felix thinks he can just show up at the town’s white and black churches with a wad of money and buy himself a perfect, custom-made service. The preachers tell him that he’s got to make personal peace with God rather than buying his passage into the Pearly Gates.

Yet Felix has never been ready to crack and admit just what happened on a long-ago night when his involvement in an illicit love triangle took on unintended yet deadly consequences. So he hires subtly slimy and fast-talking funeral parlor owner Frank Quinn (Murray) to create the service for him, and decides that the big event will be the perfect time for him to give the big reveal to everyone and fix his reputation before he dies.

There are plenty of twists and turns from there, but they’re handled in a realistic, matter-of-fact manner rather than the often-brash tones of most current American comedies. It also has a powerful message of redemption and forgiveness that is solidly rendered in the Christian tradition, showing Duvall’s still ready to stand by his faith just as strongly as he did in 1997’s “The Apostle,” which he wrote, directed and starred in.

Duvall is a marvel to watch, both when sporting a crazy-man beard while being a mean SOB in the first part of the film and as he slowly tries to become a nicer person while rekindling another old flame, played by Sissy Spacek.

Murray nearly steals the show, however, with his best role since the Wes Anderson classic “Rushmore” back in 1999. His classic rat-a-tat patter is as timeless as his ability to convey smugness with just a role of his eyes or a flick of his jaw. And Spacek makes a welcome return to the screen, settling nicely into her role as a Southern widow learning to trust and love again.

But perhaps the best part of “Get Low” is its authentic, period Appalachian-style score by Jan A.P. Kaczmarek (an Oscar-winner for “Finding Neverland”) and the luminous cinematography of David Boyd. Brought all together by a constantly fresh and inventive script by Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell and surprisingly assured direction by first-time feature director Aaron Schneider, “Get Low” could very well end up high on next year’s Oscar nomination lists.

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.

From that day forward until the the event, we learn just enough about Felix’ past to keep us on the hook until he tells why be became a hermit. Sissy Spacek plays a past love interest.

Braezeale: ”Folks, I’m tellin’ ya, this business of having your funeral before ya die beats sparkin’ in a buggy!”

All of that created story is believable except for one part. Felix wants Rev. Charlie Jackson (Bill Cobbs), a “colored” (the word used in the film) preacher who knows his secret, to officiate at his funeral.  Not only was the real Reverend Jackson white, the film’s depiction could never have happened.

Having lived in the Jim Crow South, I can tell you that the portrayal of a black preacher leading a white man’s funeral before almost ten-thousand whites (most of whom were likely Ku Klux Klan sympathizers if not members) in rural Tennessee in 1938 is simply a writer’s fantasy about the way he may wish race relations were then but weren’t. Segregation was the law, it was a law 99.99% agreed with and it was enforced. And while there were loving and respectful relationships between whites and non-whites in involvements that were typically too nuanced to explain here, they happened in private with an ever present recognition of each other’s unequal racial and class status.

The placement of whites and blacks on equal social footing during this time has been written into a number of period films. But the fact that error is in this particular film is a surprise given that Duvall attributed Get Low’s correct southern character and cadence to Alabama raised writer Charlie Mitchell.  At a Q&A following a special screening of Get Low, Duvall told me this was just another script until Mitchell re-wrote it to capture the southern idiom as only a southerner could. I asked him to define what Mitchell added that made this a southern story as opposed to one from, say, rural Michigan, and he pondered a bit. Finally, he said “It’s up there on the screen.” Then he reflected a bit more and started talking.

Paraphrasing, “It’s little things like the way Sissy Spacek plays the piano, the subtle spirituality of the subtext, the gentlemanly mannerisms, the vision in the woods of Felix’ lost love … That’s it.”  Directly quoting now:  “What makes this so hard to describe and grasp is that there are folks who live in New York who don’t know anything about what goes on West of the Hudson and look down on people out there in what they call ‘fly-over land.’  But you’ve got to give those people their due, they’ve got a sensibility and a touch that we can’t have America without.”

That southern touch is most evident, I believe,  in Duval’s The Apostle. It’s a story about a preacher on the lam from the law which Duvall wrote, starred in, directed and paid around 8 million for. He cast Billy Bob Thornton as the bad guy because, Duvall said, Thornton instinctively did small character things a southerner would do because that’s what he is.  Thornton, you may recall, is the racist who tries to destroy Duvall’s racially mixed church.  In that film, Duvall shows us the new South in which most whites have overcome their past prejudices and have evolved into that society Martin Luther King spoke about where character trumps skin color.

Much of the rest of the Q&A involved questions to Duvall about the problems with getting independent films done and acting methods. It took seven years for Get Low to get done because funds weren’t available. Duvall said he found it easier to get 150 million or more for a studio project than the 10 million  it cost to do this one. On acting, Spacek said one big reason she took her role in Get Low was to observe Duvall at his craft. “He’s seamless,” she cooed. “You don’t see the effort at all.”

“How much rehearsal do you do for a scene, Mr. Duvall?”
“Take one.”
How many takes do you like to do?”
“One.”
“What was your motivation for your wood chopping scenes?”
“Well, Mr. Strasberg, my motivation was to chop the damn wood!”

Seamless.

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. 

Johnny Depp is missing for his Captain Jack Sparrow character from the Pirates of the Caribbean films because he’s mildly amusing for about the first hour or so of this seemingly endless series but eventually makes me long to walk the plank off into the blessedly Depp-free depths of the briny. 

Leonardo Di Caprio is missing because he’s always terrible. I’m sure my passing him over will make him cry all the way to the supermodel bank.

And you film snobs out there are out of luck. This list completely ignores foreign language films – if you’re outraged at my glaring omission of Migbor Ombungliani’s shattering portrayal of Yegiv the Goatherd in the Albanian Dogme 95 epic The Thousand Meaningless Agonies of My Existence, you need to find yourself a different list.  And probably a girlfriend. 

Speaking of girls, there are not many here.  It just worked out that way, and I’m not sure why.  But this is a pure meritocracy.  If you want a quota system, you probably need to hit the Huffington Post.  Of course, on the HP, half the Top Ten would be performances from Brokeback Mountain with the rest of the slots spread out among the various dreary, America-hating, soldier-sliming, anti-war movies that have zipped through the theaters since 9/11 on the way to their final reward in the Blockbuster remainder bins (“At number seven, we have Ryan Phillip as the emotionally shattered, psychotic vet in Stop-Loss , followed by number six, some actor you never heard of as the emotionally shattered, psychotic vet in Redacted ….”).

So here are the top ten performances of the last 25 years, in order:

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10.  Denzel Washington – Training Day (2001):  Denzel Washington is so good because crooked LAPD cop Alonzo Harris is so damn bad – he’s like the Antichrist with a badge.  There’s an incredible smoothness to his performance, as if all the goodness of his previous characters was seamlessly turned 180 degrees.  It’s his comfort in the role that is so mesmerizing – there is nothing “actory” about his performance, though of course (minor spoiler) the character himself is pretending to be something he is not throughout the movie.  The way he talks, the way he moves, his ease in that sordid world – it is all so different from the Denzel Washington we’ve known before.  The movie itself is watchable, but kind of dopey.  But Washington?  You can’t look away.

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9.  R. Lee Ermey – Full Metal Jacket (1987):  Some may say that Ermey simply did in front of Stanley Kubrick’s camera what he had done for years as a real USMC drill instructor.  To some extent, that might be accurate, but remember that being a drill instructor is itself a kind of performance.  While the amazing barracks scene takes the Basic Training experience to the nth degree, there is a lot of truth to it, as I found out when I reported to Basic at Ft. Sill about a month after seeing this movie.  I vividly recall Drill Sergeant Whittlesey fulminating to our formation about our utter inability to meet even the lowest standards of competence when, in what was undoubtedly a flash of insanity, I turned my head slightly from the rigid position of attention and saw the other drill sergeants cracking up.  Ermey’s performance is dead-on and unforgettable, and not just to those of us who have experienced the delights of Basic Training firsthand.

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8.  Kevin Spacey – American Beauty (1999):  The Nineties were the Age of Spacey, with stunning showcases in Swimming with Sharks (1994), Seven (1995), The Usual Suspects (1995) and L.A. Confidential (1997).  However, his turn as suburban loser turned rebel Lester Burnham best captures the kind of calm, semi-smarmy, cynical detachment that Spacey does better than anyone else.  Through Spacey, you can feel Lester’s angst, understand his moral quandaries, and see him come out of the shell he retreated into rather than face the world.  It’s a great performance in a movie that is often frustrating in its treatment of military men as sexually-repressed sociopaths, such a hackneyed Hollywood cliché that the filmmakers should have been embarrassed to wheel it out again.  Spacey’s work actually makes it worth wading through that nonsense.     

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7.  Helen Mirren – The Queen (2006):  Mirren brought to life a living person, the Queen of England, a relic of an age when people actually considered the idea of “royalty” as something more than the joke it is.  The essential ridiculousness of the concept of a monarch aside, Mirren’s Elizabeth is a woman of values a half-century out of date, values that had allowed Britain to survive the Depression and the Blitz and to defeat the Axis.  But Mirren shows how the Queen had grown detached from her subjects, a people who have become vulgar, sentimental and maudlin in an age of celebrity and who choose to idolize a feel-good empty vessel like Lady Diana over a monarch who symbolizes a mature, strong and faithful nation.  Watching this pampered but smart, tough but cunning woman deal with the changes (mostly for the worse) in her country before the backdrop of the death of “the People’s Princess” is riveting.  The Queen is a great film about a formerly great people and their descent into juvenile mawkishness (their awesome warriors excepted), and its impact largely comes from Mirren’s staggering achievement in the lead role.

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6.  Val Kilmer – Tombstone (1993):  I have no idea what “I’m your huckleberry” is supposed to mean, but I do know that Val Kilmer was incredible as the tubercular sawbones Doc Holiday in this retelling of the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral tale. It’s no one note performance – you can see he’s sometimes scared even behind the smartass, ironic demeanor, but that dose of reality (compounded by the toll he shows his vices and his consumption taking upon him) only makes the character come more alive.  Mention Tombstone to anyone and the first thing you’ll hear is the name “Val Kilmer.”  That says it all.

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5.  Meryl Streep – The Devil Wears Prada (2006):  Yeah, I saw this movie about ladies in the fashion industry and, dammit, I liked it.  They’ll probably take back my Airborne wings and break my cavalry saber for admitting it.  But you gotta give credit where credit is due, and Streep deserves it.  Her Miranda Priestly is best known for overbearing arrogance, but that’s only a part of her character.  Streep actually lets us peer inside and see her humanity, to understand why she demands excellence, and to see the price she pays for holding herself to her own exacting standards.  The movie wimps out a bit by not forcing the heroine to really confront and deal with the choices the Miranda character faced – things just sort of work out for the heroine deus ex machina-style thanks to an unconvincing, off-screen intervention by Miranda herself.  But while the movie finds an easy way out, Streep’s performance takes the character down a hard road and turns a caricature into a character.

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4.  Steve Coogan – 24 Hour Party People (2002):  This is probably the “smallest” of the pictures on the list, but it’s one of the best.  Coogan plays the real-life British music impresario Tony Wilson, who discovered and championed bands like Joy Division in the late-70s and 80s.  Coogan takes the role and runs with it, totally inhabiting the character in an often surreal portrayal that captures all the excitement, excess and exhilaration of the times.  Beyond the fascinating story (especially the first half involving Joy Division) and the incredible music (buy the soundtrack now), Coogan’s performance sticks with you as a real, larger-than-life character made both human and more than human by an incredible actor.

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3.  Sharon Stone – Casino (1995):  Stone got a bad rap for Basic Instinct (1992), where her cervix seemed to overshadow what really was a great femme fatale turn in a really good, really pulpy film noir classic.  In her heyday in the ’90s, Stone was actually Hollywood’s only real movie star, in the way actresses used to be stars.  She was talented and beautiful, but distinctive too – she had that intangible something that put her on a plane above her peers.  In Casino, as De Niro’s harpy of a wife Ginger, she uses that glamour to show why De Niro’s character would fall for – and keep being drawn back to – a woman who redefines the term “bad news.”  It is a relentless, heartfelt, devastating performance that makes you care (a little bit) for her as she meets the fate she has earned even as you let out a sigh of relief knowing she won’t be back to wreak more havoc. 

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2.  Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight (2008):  Even the conventional wisdom gets it right once in a while.  Since just about everyone on Earth has seen it, there’s no real reason to talk about why it’s such an incredible performance.  Ledger got a lot of praise for Brokeback Mountain (2005), but his performance there was just a collection of scowls, tics and mumbles that constitute nothing more than what Hollywood thinks real gay cowboys are like.  As with the movie itself, most of the acclaim was simply wishful thinking – they loved the subject so they had to praise the portrayals.  There’s no wishful thinking here – this was acting far beyond what some comic book movie had any right to incorporate.  And it makes the loss of Ledger to the scourge of drugs that much more of a waste. 

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1.  Ralph Fiennes – Schindler’s List (1993):  This is the most terrifying portrait of pure evil ever put on the screen, made all the more horrifying by a performance that shows how a real-life normal man consciously chose to immerse himself in darkness and luxuriated in it, who willingly paid a terrible price in exchange for becoming, for a time, a dark god with the power of life and death.  Fiennes earned a Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the real war criminal Amon Goeth, but this was truly the lead role.  Goeth was the Nazi commander of a forced labor camp that he turned into a private kingdom subject only to his cruel and sick whims.  In scenes like where Goeth uses a high powered rifle to amuse himself by picking off victims from the porch of his mansion, Fiennes shows us a cultured, intelligent man who makes a deliberate decision to embrace evil.  He shows us that the potential for evil lurks inside all of us just as Oskar Schindler’s example teaches that the potential for good exists there too.  What is so powerful is how Fiennes shows that Goeth chose to experience the transitory joy of wickedness knowing it would lead to his death.  It is a performance that will leave you shaken.

And here are some honorable mentions:  Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction (1987), Bill Murray in Groundhog Day (1993), and Tommy Lee Jones as Sam Gerard in The Fugitive (1993) were all memorable.  Robert De Niro was great as the taciturn criminal in Heat (1995) (Al Pacino also deserves a shout-out for his ferocious and highly entertaining scenery chewing, but I would not call it “good” acting).  As great as Anthony Hopkins was as Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs (1991), Brian Cox was even better in a smaller role as the cannibalistic convict in 1986’s Manhunter.  The less said about the sequel Hannibal (2001) the better, though it also featured Ray Liotta.  Liotta gets a nod for Goodfellas, as do Bobby De Niro and Joe Pesci (and for that matter, those last two should also be mentioned regarding the aforementioned Casino). 

And to further rile the members of Team Snooty, let’s not forget Alan Rickman in Die Hard (1988).  Yeah, artistes, I went there.

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.

As the two warm hearts of the story, Karen Allen and Alfre Woodard never get lost in the madness swirling around them. But…

…of course, the highlight of Scrooged was also the highlight of all of 1988: An epic cameo with The Mighty Lee Majors. 

And now for a bit of trivia: Did you know that watching David Johansen  aka: Buster Poindexter play the role of  Scrooged’s Ghost Of Christmas Past caused a grown man to attempt suicide by jumping out a window?

Johansen got his start in the early 1970s as the lead singer for the glam-rock band The New York Dolls. Great band, but after only a few years, drugs and ego caused a bitter break up and afterwards the bass player, Arthur “Killer” Kane, was the least successful in making a comeback. So resentful was he at his own failure and the success of the others that Johansen yukking it up in a major motion picture was seemingly the last straw and out the window “Killer” went.  

Kane survived and this hitting of bottom eventually led him to become a Mormon. In 2004, almost thirty years after their break up, the band reunited for a successful reunion concert and made peace with one another. Just a few months later Kane would died of leukemia.

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.

His first triumph, made on a shoestring budget and a scant few weeks of shooting time, was a little picture called Rocky (1976). He had no money, no stars, no amazing effects, and yet Avildsen used camera, music, and editing to craft scenes of immense power and impact. Has there ever been a film, before or since, that ends on a more rousing wave of uplift? That takes such pains to create identification and empathy with its wide array of characters? That more patiently or expertly builds up to its cataclysmic swell of emotion? That has the guts and sense of timing to fade to black at the exact peak, frustrating our desire to know what happens next even as it leaves us too blissful to care?

Rocky did all of that and much more, and despite its fight scenes now looking like slow-mo hokum compared to the MMA-style mayhem that now rules on TV, it remains the most memorable and effective boxing film ever made. That’s really saying something, given the immense amount of solid competition the genre boasts.

But as other directors began ineptly looting and mimicking Avildsen’s style and innovations, it looked as if everything that made Rocky great would quickly become so cliché as to make a repeat impossible. We all know that sinking feeling when we begin perceiving the clunky wheels of the typical “Hollywood sports plot” turning — that excruciatingly slow crawl towards the utterly predictable final showdown, where the very last seconds of a contest are shamelessly milked until the hero finally hits the last shot/punch/goal/basket. Even the Rocky sequels couldn’t escape these pitfalls, and it would be hard to blame an audience for glumly concluding that Avildsen’s 1976 artistic triumph had spoiled the sports movie for all time.

So who would have guessed that, eight years later, Avildsen would essentially pull off the same trick again? How on earth did he once again make a Rocky-style plot arc work, without the end result becoming a pale pastiche?

He achieved this feat in large part by turning everything we remember from Rocky on its head. Ralph Macchio’s Daniel Larusso is played not as a thickheaded lummox, but as a fast-thinking, bone-skinny teen whose nasal Jersey whine sounds more like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer than Sylvester Stallone. He’s neither a down-and-out fighter with his best years behind him, nor is he looking to “go the limit” to prove something profound to himself. He’s just a kid at the very beginning of his adult life, who for most of the film limits his ambition to simply not getting beat up. Similarly, Elizabeth Shue’s Ali Mills is light years away from Talia Shire’s Adrian Pennino: rich instead of poor, charming rather than an ugly duckling, sociable not shy. And Pat Morita’s unforgettable Mr. Miyagi isn’t washed up or pathetically ambitious like Burgess Meredith’s Mickey Goldmill — he’s the very epitome of contentment and balance and wisdom.

Rocky achieved its verisimilitude with generous dollops of grime, rust, blood and profanity, whereas The Karate Kid is notable for its relative wholesomeness (note how Elizabeth Shue even wears a one-piece swimsuit to the beach instead of the obligatory teen-movie bikini). The music marks yet another telling departure. Rocky’s iconic score, by Bill Conti, was a mix of 1970s funk, heroic brass, and a choir acting as a Greek chorus, all combined into a sonic brew that still ranks as one of the most recognizable and rousing in film history. For The Karate Kid, Conti was once again brought in as the composer. But this time, in between pop songs like Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer,” he chose a light mix of delicate strings, only occasionally allowing them to burst forth into full orchestral splendor. For the training montage, Conti completely eschews Rocky’s reliance on trumpeting brass and instead opts for the lonely skirling of Gheorghe Zamfir’s pan flute, creating a more spiritual and intimate vibe.

Avildsen’s camera, for its part, is probing and observant, often making excellent use of telephoto lenses to highlight what would otherwise be a missed reaction or expression. He achieves true poetry in the training scenes: on the beach among the circling cranes, on the lake amidst glittering golden waters, and even in the fights and strategies that pulse through the climactic tournament. He also warred with the studio when necessary to protect certain crucial scenes, such as the one where a drunken Miyagi reveals his service in WWII to Daniel. That one adds a whole new layer of depth to what was already a touching and authentic relationship, and yet the studio wanted it cut, deeming it superfluous.

On top of all that, the excellent screenplay by Robert Mark Kamen (who distinguished himself more recently by penning the immensely satisfying kidnap flick Taken) consistently leads Avildsen down novel paths. The teen villains of the story (portrayed by, among others, Steve McQueen’s son Chad and Elizabeth Shue’s brother Andrew) are refreshingly human, at times even gaining our sympathy. Unlike the usual faceless, gormless teens in Hollywood fare, this group is delineated exceedingly well, and remain recognizable as individuals even when hiding behind Ray Harryhausen-esque skeleton makeup in a genuinely chilling night scene. Kamen fleshed out his bad guys so well that the Cobra Kais, led outside the dojo by actor William Zabka’s smirking blond-haired bad boy Johnny Lawrence, now have a sizable fan following among Karate Kid aficionados. One admirer even made a clever YouTube re-edit of the final fight so that Johnny wins:

Meanwhile, a band called No More Kings has made a song about the redemption of Johnny called “Sweep the Leg,” with a fun “Karate Kid continuation” music video written and directed by Zabka himself:

In interviews, Zabka has expressed pleasant surprise that The Karate Kid remains so alive in the popular culture, calling it a “sacred film” and noting that there are even Cobra Kai bowling teams out there. It’s enough to convince me that The Karate Kid II should have been all about Miyagi reforming the Cobra Kais, slowly rehabilitating them into good guys.

In so many ways, Avildsen’s 1984 film is courageous in the way it deviates from the instantly recognizable Rocky formula. How strong must the pressure have been on Avildsen to make the easy, safe choices, mimicking his earlier masterpiece in every detail? His resistance to those impulses does him credit, and hence to dismiss The Karate Kid as a mere Rocky clone is to do it an injustice.

But if there is one overriding secret to the success of The Karate Kid, it is the transcendent performance of Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi. In 1984, most Americans still conceived of the East, at least in cinematic terms, as a mystical wonderland of Kung-Fu magic and swordplay. Hong Kong directors like Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Ringo Lam were only beginning to create the explosion of masterful, modernized pictures that would eventually change the entire way the world looked at Asians on film. It’s hard to remember how utterly fresh a character like Mr. Miyagi was to 1984 audiences, completely unexposed as they were to the renaissance happening in Hong Kong. Fully fleshed out, with a compelling backstory and potent motivations, he was written as charmingly colloquial and disheveled, a character who could consistently shatter the stereotype of the “magic Asian” to raucously humorous effect.

Almost always in American cinema — to this day — Asian protagonists are depicted as cardboard caricatures at best and laughingstocks at worst. Avildsen rejected the initial front-runner for the part of Miyagi — the great Japanese actor Toshirô Mifune — and instead bet his entire film on the talents of a thoroughly Americanized stand-up comedian, one who in his salad days used to bill himself in comedy clubs as “the Hip Nip.” Comedians have a strangely robust record of shining in good dramatic roles — think Robin Williams, Bill Murray, Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks, Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, et al. — and they often manage to strike a solid balance between laughs and drama. Morita did exactly that in The Karate Kid: affecting just the right Japanese accent, leavening his character’s power and seriousness with just enough comedy, and always figuring out ways to make you laugh with Miyagi instead of at him.

If you haven’t seen The Karate Kid in awhile, you’re in for a treat — Mr. Miyagi was no fluke, he remains one of the most winning characters in the history of cinema. It was the role of a lifetime for Morita, who garnered a well-deserved Oscar nomination (as it happened, he lost that year to Haing S. Ngor in The Killing Fields, who himself became the first Asian to win an acting Oscar). Any number of others would have played Miyagi as either an embarrassing joke or an irremediably grim Samurai grandmaster. But in his every glare, mannerism, and pose, Morita elevates the character into a veritable Gandalf. Look closely at the scene when he bows gravely to a shocked Daniel (who has just discovered that his hated chores were actually important lessons), or when towards the end he smacks his hands together with such orchestra-enhanced thunder that the audience jumps. In those moments The Karate Kid — so often seen as an also-ran and afterthought to Rocky — breaks away from that film’s orbit and soars free all on its own.

So Avildsen pulled it off not once, but twice — I still can’t believe it. And if he never makes another great movie, he can still sit back and rest easy, secure in the knowledge that two of the very best fight pictures ever made have his name on them. That he did both of them on such low budgets should give hope to conservative filmmakers who assume liberal Hollywood will never give them a chance. There is nothing in The Karate Kid that couldn’t be accomplished on a micro-budget — all you would need is the gumption to dream up the script.

But will anyone take on the challenge, as Avildsen did those many years ago? Only time will tell. Until then: wax on, wax off. . . wax on, wax off. . . .

–

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.

The Marines I know seem to prefer Jack Webb in the more realistic The DI, but I am partial to Warren Oates as the “Big Toe” of a platoon of Army foul-ups in Stripes.  This is one great performance – as Sergeant First Class Hulka, Oates is both hilarious and moving.  You can see how this veteran NCO (his character wears the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, meaning he had seen action) truly cares about teaching his men to survive, and you kind of sympathize with him when Bill Murray’s smart-assery pushes him into slugging our hero in the gut.  Hulka’s contemptuous rejoinder to “Psycho” – “Lighten up, Francis” – is classic, as is his inventory of baffled expressions while watching the antics of his recruits.  I remember getting some of those looks myself from Drill Sergeant Whittlesey. 

And do not forget Louis Gossett, Jr. as another Devil Dog making Naval officer candidates earn the right to receive his salute in An Officer and a Gentleman. My only objection to this movie is that it made Squid School look a lot more fun than Fort Benning’s Army Officer Candidate School, but then I didn’t look like Richard Gere.

The tough sergeant turning a band of screw-ups into a well-oiled fighting machine is classic Hollywood.  The archetype is Marine Sergeant Stryker in The Sands of Iwo Jima, in which John Wayne supposedly utters the quintessential NCO aphorism “Life is tough.  It’s tougher if you’re stupid.”  But even if the Duke actually never says those words in the film, he should have, and generations of NCOs have shared that particular insight with their soldiers. 

Right up there is Clint Eastwood as another jarhead in Heartbreak Ridge.  It’s a good action flick, but what was particularly interesting is how he developed his nerdy lieutenant into a tough, confident leader who ends up saving the platoon.  But not all sergeants get to work with top notch officers.  In the miniseries Band of Brothers, Donnie Wahlberg does a great job as Easy Company’s First Sergeant Carwood Lipton, who was faced with protecting his men from a cowardly commander.  He does, but suffers a terrible fate – he receives a battlefield commission and becomes a mere lieutenant.  As Colonial Marine Gunnery Sergeant Apone in the fantastic Aliens, Al Matthews not only contends with an incompetent platoon leader, but flesh eating space bugs and Bill Paxton’s loudmouth Private Hudson.  “Game over, man!  Game over!”

The definition of an NCO is someone who makes things happen – whether or not strictly within the bounds of the regulations.  Don Rickles embraces this as the entrepreneurial and sharp-tongued supply sergeant Crap Game in Kelly’s Heroes.  Steve Martin played another NCO who didn’t let little things like rules get in the way in Sgt. Bilko.  James Caan, as real-life WWII Staff Sergeant Eddie Dohun, rescues his critically wounded officer from the battlefield and takes him to an aid station in A Bridge Too Far.  When the doctor refuses to look at what seems to be a hopeless case, SSG Dohun did what any good sergeant would do and improvised – by sticking his cocked .45 in the surgeon’s face.  The wounded officer lived.

Behind every good officer are literally dozens of great NCOs.  Even Lee Marvin could not have handled The Dirty Dozen without Richard Jaeckel’s Sergeant Bowren.  In Crimson Tide, the feuding officers vie for the support of the Master Chief Petty Officer, the “Chief of the Boat.”  Tom Hanks may have been the commander, but the heart of his company was Sergeant Horvath (Tom Sizemore) in Saving Private Ryan.

That is not just a Hollywood cliché – that is real life.  In fact, some of the best portrayals of NCOs in the movies have simply been the telling of the true stories of what they really did.  Black Hawk Down accurately shows modern urban combat as a confusing and deadly amalgamation of separate firefights involving small units led by young sergeants.  Josh Hartnett does a good job as a Ranger squad leader trying to keep his men alive, while Eric Bana and William Fichtner are Delta sergeants who take the fight right to the enemy. 

But the portrayals that best show the reality of the American NCO are that of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Johnny Strong as Delta Force Master Sergeants Gary Gordon and Randall Shugart.  As the movie shows, when one of the Blackhawk choppers went down, they repeatedly requested permission to fast rope in to protect the injured crew knowing it would mean near certain death.  Finally getting permission, they set up a perimeter and fought until overrun, littering the streets with the bodies of Somali militiamen and saving one member of the crew.  They earned the Medal of Honor, but I suspect that if we could ask them both would say that they were simply doing what NCOs do and nothing more.

Sam Elliot played another real-life hero, Command Sergeant Major Basil Plumley, in We Were Soldiers. As the movie shows, most enlisted troopers in the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, and the wise officers as well, treated CSM Plumley with an awe verging on terror.  But when the battalion was surrounded by a division of North Vietnamese at Ia Drang, CSM Plumley stayed cool, keeping morale strong in the face of what should have been a massacre.  In the film, and in reality, these cavalrymen fought a massively superior force to a standstill.

Though I am a former cavalry commander, my favorite NCO portrayal is of an infantry sergeant in the British Army.  Zulu depicts the true story of the legendary near-last stand of a company of Welsh soldiers at Rourke’s Drift in South Africa.  The tiny band held their ground against a brave and deadly enemy force forty times their size.  As Colour-Sergeant Bourne, Nigel Greene is the ultimate NCO.  From keeping up standards in battle – “Button your tunic!” – to advocating for his exhausted men to facing down an iklwa-wielding Zulu warrior with his bayonet, Colour-Sergeant Bourne was the backbone of the company. 

Sergeants truly are the backbone of the Army and of the other services.  Right now, a young buck sergeant is leading his Marine fire team through the mountains of Afghanistan, a platoon sergeant is prepping a cavalry patrol through the streets of Kosovo, and a command sergeant major in Iraq is double checking his troops before another convoy mission.  These men and women are the heart of our military.  Take a moment to think about them as you pop in a movie and sit back and relax next weekend, safe and secure.  And raise a beer to them.  I will.