Tag: Ben Mendelsohn

Ten Actors Who Are Perfect For a Quentin Tarantino Film

by Frank Mengarelli, posted in Film Review, Top Ten

Many of us love Quentin Tarantino films for a multitude of reasons; the story, his use of popular music, his dialogue, and especially his casting.  He resurrected the careers of John Travolta, Pam Grier, Robert Forster, Jamie Foxx, David Carradine and introduced Michael Fassebender, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, and Uma Thurman into the mainstream of cinema.  Along the way he has also brilliantly used Kurt Russell, Michael Parks, Michael Keaton, Robert De Niro, Michael Madsen, and many other great actors that have given some of their best performances in a Tarantino film.  There are so many actors that Tarantino should work with, so making a list of just ten is nearly impossible.  But this is my dream list.  Some are more realistic than others.

 

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Jaqueline Bisset

                Most recently, Bisset gave a show-stopping performance in Abel Ferrara’s WELCOME TO NEW YORK.  Not only was it great to see her work with such compelling material, but it was also incredible to see her work with Abel Ferrara, a director that’s transgressive works wouldn’t normally attract an actress of that clout and cinematic reputation.  She gives a fierce performance in the film, and I could only imagine what she would be capable of in a Tarantino film.

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Russell Crowe

                Russell Crowe is in prime career transition.  His days of the young, muscular cinematic asskicker are long gone.  He’s currently floating between the mentor, the heavy, and the middle-aged leading man.  His performance in THE NICE GUYS is one of his best in recent memory, and his turn in LES MISERABLE is one of the most underrated performances within the last ten years.  He’s more than suited to headline or sidestep back into a Max Cherry-esque role.

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Daniel Day- Lewis

                It’s widely noted that one of the only roles that Day-Lewis has ever sought out was the role of Vincent Vega in PULP FICTION.  First of all, I can’t imagine what DDL would have done with that role, and secondly, I can’t imagine Tarantino, hot off his indie hit of RESERVOIR DOGS telling the studio and DDL no, I’m going with John Travolta.  Day-Lewis can take a role, even in some of his more mediocre films, and knock that role out of the park.  He’s showy when he needs to be, and knows when to reign in a performance to make it so slight and subtle.  Imagine what he could do with the colorfulness of Tarantino’s dialogue.

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Jane Fonda

                Whatever is left of cinematic royalty, it’s Jane Fonda.  Throughout the years, she has continued to stay relevant in both film and not television with Netflix’s GRACE AND FRANKIE.  Recently, she gave a briefly pulverizing performance in Paolo Sorrentino’s YOUTH.  Casing Fonda would not only be a callback to some her earlier performances, but she would also bring an air of golden movie star cache that we rarely see on film anymore.

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Harrison Ford

               Let’s face it, Harrison Ford is one of the biggest movie stars of all time.  He is Han Solo, Indiana Jones, Rick Deckard, Jack Ryan – yet for the past twenty years or so, he hasn’t been as compelling as he used to be.  Yet, his return as Han Solo in THE FORCE AWAKENS is one of the best things he’s ever done.  The return was phenomenal, thrilling, and heartfelt.  His performance was organic, and there wasn’t one moment in the film where it felt as if he were phoning in the performance.  Ford has had quite the ride as a movie star, and his persona would go a hell of a long way inside of a Tarantino film.

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Mel Gibson

                If there is any actor at this moment in time who is due to make a cinematic resurrection, it is Mel Gibson.  His most recent leading turn in BLOOD FATHER shows, without a doubt, that his screen presence is still an unstoppable force to be reckoned with.  His smaller roles in MACHETE KILLS and THE EXPENDABLES 3 further prove that he and Tarantino are a perfect match.  Regardless of how outlandish or low key that theoretical role would be, Gibson would absolutely kill it.

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Stephen Lang

                Stephen Lang is much like Daniel Day-Lewis.  He’s a cinematic chameleon.  Decade after decade the guy has disappeared into so many memorable roles in so many memorable films.  Most recently, Lang has taken a career transition as a muscular badass in James Cameron’s AVATAR and this year his gives a tour de force performance in Fede Alvarez’s DON’T BREATHE.  He owns Michael Mann’s PUBLIC ENEMIES, outshining both Johnny Depp and Christian Bale.  Mann knew exactly what he was doing casting Lang, bringing in a skilled actor to bring the film to an absolute stop during the final moments of his epic gangster saga.  The merging of Tarantino and Lang is a cinematic match made in heaven.

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Ben Mendelsohn

                I can’t think of many current actors who has been in so many great films in such a short time span.  KILLING THEM SOFTLY, THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES, ANIMAL KINGDOM, SLOW WEST, and his next two films are polar opposites: UNA based off of the transgressive and acclaimed Broadway play, BLACKBIRD and ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY where he is cast as the evil Imperial Director Orson Krenick, the man in charge of the Empire’s military.  A lot of Tarantino’s work is cast in moral ambiguity, and there isn’t anyone better at playing that, than Ben Mendelsohn.

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Vince Vaughn

                Thankfully, Vince Vaughn has successfully shaken off his prolific comedic career and has heavily vested himself back into dramatic works.  The amazing second season of TRUE DETECTIVE reset Vaughn’s path as an actor.  His next film is Mel Gibson’s long anticipated World War II film, HACKSAW RIDGE where Vaughn plays a rough and tough commanding officer.  After that, Vaughn is going to be in BONE TOMAHAWK director S. Craig Zahler’s  BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99 that sounds as dark and gruesome as BONE TOMAHAWK did.  Vaughn, who can play both humor and drama would be an excellent mesh with Tarantino’s words and look of his films.

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Sigourney Weaver

                Whether she’s killing aliens or emotionally breaking Kevin Kline, or romancing Bill Murray; Weaver has always had a unique and powerful presence on screen.  Her work is always solid, regardless of the end result of whatever project she is working on.  She belongs to the same class of actresses like Pam Grier, Daryl Hannah, and Jennifer Jason Leigh – those actors who had at one point were A list actors due to not only their sex appeal, but also their carefully crafted performances.  Whether she’d be a femme fatal, or a badass hero – she would fit perfectly into Tarantino film.

Slow West: A Review by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

  
Slow West clocks in briskly under 90 minutes, which is usually unheard of for a western. You can stamp out any thoughts of it being rushed or too slight of a flick though, because it’s exactly what it needs to be every step of the way. It’s a beautifully scored, tightly plotted and boldly characterized (the key ingredient in the genre, if you ask me) mix that saunters along like a mule of the plains, before kicking up the dust for a bloody, atmospheric finale that leaves you stunned and breathing hard. Westerns are often ambitious, lofty affairs and can get quite moody and too densely packed for their own good. Not this baby. It breezes by like a summer wind, with just enough violence, character development and aching catharsis to billow out its chipper narrative during the brief stay we are treated to. Kodi Smit McPhee plays a young Scottish lad who is a tad out of his depths in the American west, searching for a girl (Caren Pistorius) who had to flee the country with her father (The Hound himself, Rory McCann). McPhee is naive to the dangers of this new territory, and nearly finds himself at the receiving end of a bullet before being saved by a roaming outlaw (Michael Fassbender) who takes him under his wing with much gruff and huff along the way. Reluctance is doled out along with sympathy on Fassbender’s part as he shields the boy from a dangerous bounty hunter and former employer of his, played by a wonderfully greasy Ben Mendelsohn, perpetually shrouded in acrid cigar smoke and snuggled up in one epic and fabulous fur pelt. These three wayward misfits gravitate towards the obligatory final shoot out, which takes place in the girl’s hideaway house on the picturesque pretty plains. Impressive is an understatement for this sequence: yellow grass sways, a hailstorm of bullets punctuate the horizon and the mournful tones of Jed Kurzel’s lonely score, grim fates are earned in a gorgeous set piece that resembles something like Wes Anderson making an Oater. Everything before and winds up to this sequence, and the payoff is superb. If I’ve made it sound dark or off putting, think again. It’s all crafted with the utmost light and poetic buoyancy, a lilting sadness to the violence that hits home but never batters you. The performances echo this as well, Fassbender a world weary, affable and altogether dangerous man, Mendelsohn slithering about with a dry silver tongue and an itchy trigger finger, and a fish out of water McPhee stuck in between. The visual palette is quite something to see, accented by the music perfectly. I’m beyond anxious to see what first time director John Maclean comes up with for us for his next ride, for he’s knocked it out of the ranch with this one. Ho for the West. 

Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly: A Review by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

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What can I really say about Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly. Well, my bosses named our site after it, and judging by our ongoing excellent taste in film (hehe), the namesake of our moniker should be a masterpiece. It is a masterpiece, a slow burning, truly clever crime yarn that slightly deconstructs the genre, sets it’s story at a pivitol time in American history, and has some of the most hard hitting, intimate scenes of violence I’ve seen on film. Dominik takes his sweet damn time getting to know these characters before any bloodshed occurs, and when it does, it’s a visceral affront to the senses, pulveruzing us with a very un-cinematic, realistic and entirely ugly vision of violence. Ray Liotta plays Markie, an illegal gambling official who once robbed one of his own games, subsequently boasting about it like a chump. When another of his outfits is knocked off by two scrappy losers (Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot Mcnairy) logic dictates that it must be him playing games again, and his superiors send a merry troupe of thugs to find him. The matter is overseen by Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) a slick, sophisticated killer who prefers to ‘kill them softly’, in other words, from a distance and with little pleading or fuss. He is employed by “” (an awesome Richard Jenkins), a businessman sort who isn’t above haggling for the price of a killer’s contract down to the very last dime. You see, the film is set during the 2008 financial crisis, and Dominik takes every opportunity he can to fill his frames with debris, dereliction and strife. Even in a world of criminals the blow to the economy is felt, and they too must adjust accordingly. Cogan brings in outsider Mickey (James Gandolfini), an aging wash up who spends more time swearing , boozing and whoring up a storm than he does getting any work done. Gandolfini ingeniously sends up his capable Tony Soprano character with this bizarro world rendition on the Italian hoodlum, a fat, lazy layabout with bitter shades of the threatening figure he must once of been. Before all this happens, though, we are treated to extended interludes spent with Mendelsohn and Mcnairy, and they both knock it out of the park with their shambling, sweaty, reprehensible presence. Mendelsohn is endlessly watchable, muttering his slovenly dialogue through a curtain of heroin and sleaze. Watch for a tiny, super random cameo from Sam Shepherd as a thug who hassles Liotta. There’s a beatdown sequence, and you’ll know when it comes, that pushes the limits to extremes. Every punch is felt like a meteor landing, leaving the victim and the viewer aghast. Dominik never throws gimmicks into his work here. Every scene is insistently unique, and the real hero is pacing. The film moves in fits, starts and eruptions with long flatlines in between, until our instinctual knowledge of a narrative truly is lost to the story, with no idea what will happen next. Genius.  

Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond The Pines: A Review by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

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Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond The Pines is so ambitious in reaching for its themes, it almost seems godlike in its depictions of paternal archetypes. Even gods fall though, and this is a film that grandly shows us the flaws in two very different fathers, how those qualities and the actions they generate can cause damaging rifts for their offspring and those around them years later. Cianfrance seems intent on tackling difficult subject matters with each new film he makes, spiraling systematically into the heart of human behaviour, and mine for the answers to questions which mean so much to him. Mental illness and love were areas he explored prior to this, and now he takes on fatherhood, fateful missteps included. The film is separated into two distinct and very different episodes. We begin somewhere in the 1980’s with Luke Crash (Ryan Gosling) an adrenaline junkie motocross daredevil who is all about little talk, lots of impulse and low rationality. He’s drawn along by a petty criminal (Ben Mendelsohn, superb) on a series of increasingly risky bank robberies, with notions of providing for his wife (Eva Mendes) and infant child. He takes it too far though, and tragedy strikes with the arrival of Avery (Bradley Cooper), a gung ho young police officer who suddenly finds himself in the hot seat after being branded a hero cop. The film then makes a jarring leap in both time and tone to present day. Avery is now a political candidate with powerful friends and some nasty secrets that gave him his position. He has a son (Emory Cohen) who’s on a rocky road of difficult behaviour, estranged and distant from him. Fate steps in and places Luke’s own son (Dane DeHaan) in the mix for a very volatile and prophetic outcome that brings the big picture into full circle. My favourite part of the film is the first segment, particularly the interaction between Mendelsohn and Gosling, and their dynamic. It’s so organic and unforced, everything happening with the cadence and pace that I recognize in my own life. That’s realism. It’s moody, ponderous and has an atmosphere thicker than most films dream of. It’s somewhat strangled by the abrupt change halfway through, but it’s simply one door in the narrative leading into a new room, and is neccesary once I thought about it more. What the film has to day about fathers and sons isn’t your garden variety family drama message. There’s a near Shakespearian darkness to it, the cloak of inevitability laid down by a few lightning quick moments in one’s life that arch out through the years and affect ones children in ways that were never contemplated in that one split second it took to act. Rough stuff, but endlessly fascinating. Ray Liotta does his patented corrupt dick head cop thing nicely, Rose Byrne quietly plays Cooper’s wife, and look out for Bruce Greenwood and Harris Yulin as well. After the titanic undertaking he has striven for here, I can’t wait to see what Cianfrance has in store for us next. Powerful stuff.