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Celluloid Giants


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(I swiped this from another LFC Forum, but since I wrote it anyway, they can fuck off)

 

What are you favourite characters in film? What performance has had you pinned to your seat? Which actor's creation is most memorable to you?

 

Here's a starter for 10 (contains spoilers. Very many of them. In fact, it's pretty much a synpopsis of trhe entire film, although I don't mention exactly which chracters die, and when. Hang on, no, I do that too, I think. Anyway: LOTS OF SPOILERS)

 

William Munny in "Unforgiven" (Clint Eastwood).

 

The role he was born to play, and Eastwood knew it, too, sitting on the part until he felt he was old enough to play it properly.

 

The story of a very, very bad person who has grown out of (or too old for) a life of murder, and left behind killing to marry, raise a family, love his kids. So far, so what.

 

Except Munny is, as we see early on, a fucking terrible farmer. And his wife is dead. And he's dirt-poor. So when he's offered a chance to earn some cash by taking a bounty offered by some small-town whores who want revenge on the man who cut up their friend, he reluctantly accepts; a broken-down old man who can't even shoot a pistol straight anymore.

 

What's interesting is that we slowly come to understand that "the bad guy" (Hackman) is a person who is ostensibly trying to bring some kind of justice and order to a violent frontier town. Keeping undesirables out, and using whatever methods worked at the time. And our "heroes" are all brutal killers. There are no black/ white hats here.

 

And as the film progresses, it becomes clear that Munny is almost resigned to unleashing whatever it is he's spent years trying to lock away inside himself. And it's only in the short, but apocalyptic firefight at the end that we see what Munny is: no broken-down old man, not just a bounty-hunter, or even cold-blooded murderer, more like an Angel Of Death.

 

After shooting dead the defenceless owner of the "shithole" bar ("He should have armed hisself") we get this exchange:

 

Daggett: You'd be William Munny out of Missouri; killer of women and children

 

Munny: That's right. I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawls at one time or another

 

After killing everyone in the bar ("Any man don't wanna get killed... better clear on out the back"), and also executing Daggett, Munny then emerges into a night-time storm that almost seems created by Munny himself, with one final, terrible threat to the whole town:

 

"All right now, I'm comin' out. Any man I see out there, I'm gonna kill him. Any sumbitch takes a shot at me, I'm not only gonna kill him, but I'm gonna kill his wife. All his friends. Burn his damn house down. "

 

I think what I love about Eastwood's performance is that at the start we're worried about him, and sure he's riding into a catastrophe.

 

And then it becomes clear that we should be worried for everyone else, because Munny *is* the catastrophe; a man who has seemingly been put on the Earth for one reason: to kill other people

 

And the shocking, horrific banality of the atrocities he's committed as they slip out during the film; innocent men shot in the face for reasons he can't recall (or don't exist); men scared that he'll kill them out of 'meanness'

 

Forget the Terminator. Munny is the most terrible, and terrifying killing machine in film history. No bogeyman. No ghost, or spook, could be as scary.

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amelie-drops-something.jpg

 

Audrey Tatu-Amelie

 

An absolutely mesmeric piece of cinema, along with all of Jeunet's film. I'm obsessed with cinema and the like of Goddard, Heneke, Von Trier and Aronofsky all make challenging cinema, but none of them touch the imagination of Jeunet. It's a completely unique film which will stand the test of time and will, quite rightly, be seen as an all time classic of the art form.

 

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRU9ZsfMQ05PtM89HiQHvBAf8BL8MW6b9H7_Vt--2oOY0Bc2o6S

 

Possibly my favourite film of all time. The ability of Lynch to create the claustrophobic nightmarish hinter world is unsurpassed. There are about five lines of dialogue in the whole film and Henry, our protagonist, exists between a dream and reality landscape which leaves you disorientated and bemused, but never quite sure which is which. A perfect film from start to finish, shooting, dialogue, score and atmosphere.

Edited by brucespanner
bad engrish
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Guest Slim(fast)Shady

Am very basic when it comes to films,don't really want to think too much...pure escapism but a quick reply to this thread...

 

Robert Patrick as T1000 in Terminator 2 was ace

 

Terence Stamp in Superman II quality

 

Robert Shaw in Jaws superb

 

Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters worth a mention

 

Harrison Ford in Star Wars was cool

 

Leonardo de Caprio in The Aviator was good too

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Darth Vader - bit of an obvious one

 

I just fucking love a well thought out baddy, someone who really makes you writhe in your seat.

 

Vader scared the fucking shite out of me as a child, as did the Emporer.

 

Dick Jones & Clarence Bottinger in Robocop were a right pair of dirty villan bastards - loved them

 

Bitches Leave

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Also loved the plot device of the writer in Unforgiven. The way he provided the juxtaposition between Hollywood's glamorisation of the Wild West & the reality portrayed by the other characters. Eastwood's final goodbye to Westerns saying "well, you may have cheered me on playing all these characters but here's what they were really like." With that film he managed to achieve what Coppola attempted but failed to do with Michael Corleone in Godfather III

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Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. I would say that he is the most terrible, and terrifying killing machine in film history, William Mundy would get a cattle gun in the head.

 

Jack Nicholson in most things, particularly as Jack in The Shining

 

Al Pacino as Tony Montana in Scarface

 

Pesci in Goodfellas

 

Brando in Apoclypse Now

 

Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper in that scene in True Romance were superb.

 

Can Hal in A Space Odessey count?

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Robert De Niro as Johnny Boy in Mean Streets. It may not be his most celebrated role, but I just love his pent up, immature rage.

 

Gene Hackman as Harry Caul in The Conversation. Just a brilliant, brilliant film, and he portrays Caul's awkwardness in anything other than his work perfectly.

 

Equally as good as 'Popeye' Doyle in The French Connection films too.

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Vincent Cassel in Mésrine

 

imdb - Mesrine

 

If ever a man were born to play a role, it's Vincent Cassel in Mesrine; He's threatened a performance of this magnitude and completeness for years. Not that he's done a bad film (well, Black Swan aside) but for me this is the apotheosis of French cinema; big, clever, stylish with a big fuck-you attitude at it's heart. I'll put my hand on heart and say his performance is every inch the equal of Pacino in The Godfather. If not even a smidge better.

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