Right-o! How's this?
Tilda Swinton is a mediocre actress who hides behind superficial character work (elaborate costumes, make-up, prosthetics).
She's the new Johnny Depp.
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So basically Match-cut in general? Or the Corrie? Oh yey.
So my Hot Rod claim was not all that unpopular after all. So let's go with:
1. Batman Returns > Batman > The Dark Knight Rises > The Dark Knight > Batman Forever > Batman Begins > Batman and Robin
2. The Emperor's New Groove > Hercules > Beauty and the Beast > The Little Mermaid > The Lion King
3. This is the End > every Marvel movie ever made
Look at any of the mainstream stuff she does. She almost never appears as a straight-up, workaday 58 year old woman. Instead, it's Tilda playing a kung-fu master, complete with bald cap; Tilda masquerading as an old man; Tilda as dystopic bureaucrat, sporting buck teeth and coke-bottle glasses; Tilda in a dual role as psychotic CEO and her sister. When she gets attached to a project, I try to imagine what sort of "look-at-me" kooky bullshit she'll get up to.
The only time I've seen her an authentic human being is in "I am Love" and "We Need to Talk about Kevin." Mostly she's being playing human cartoons.
Just like Depp.
And also like him, I'm starting to wonder if she can act.
Maroon 5 dropped the ball this Super Bowl when they didn't sing I'm a Goofy Goober.
I think Jim Varney was a hell of an actor who could've done more varied work, and the best of the Ernest movies contain a delightful bargain-basement surreal ambition.
I will never resolve my feelings toward Kubrick's The Shining, which is an immaculately crafted suspense film, a disappointing adaptation of the novel that guts Wendy's character, and less likable as an artistic exercise now that I know how Kubrick basically terrorized his cast, especially Duvall, to get what he wanted. I can respect it distantly but find it exhausting to think about.
Tilda Swinton was very good in Michael Clayton without being super extravagant.
I grew up watching Varney in Ernest movies, so note biases accordingly, but he could successfully jump in and out of "characters" in his films. He also could project a childlike innocence / wounded quality at the drop of a hat, to the point where I never think it weird, even as an adult, that teens and kids will hang out with a grown-ass janitor for long stretches of time, which is a hard balance to achieve. In Ernest Goes to Jail, he pulls double-duty, playing his traditional goofy self while playing a murderous criminal who's a foil to the universe and constantly pointing out how stupid the lead Ernest character is, and the alter-ego plausible in its own context. I'm not saying he was the next Olivier, but he could hit notes that other actors couldn't hit and could've put those notes to some different kinds of "music" if he wanted to. But maybe he was happy to make what he was making.
Also, in Goes to Jail and Scared Stupid, the filmmakers, within their limited means, made some interesting style choices, with Goes to Jail dressing up its jail in a bizarre neon-noir garish color scheme filmed at Dutch angles... whenever Ernest was in jail. And Scared Stupid managed some interesting shadow/light in its most "suspenseful" moments. (Skip to 2:15 for the troll backlit, the film making good use of depth of frame.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFm6NQBMEh0
I loved those movies so much. I think Scared Stupid actually scared me.
And my favorite part of Goes to Jail was the escape scene.
I saw Scared Stupid in the theater, it definitely scared the shit out of me.
Not gonna lie. This is a kooky opinion. But I liked how you backed it up with lots of detail. It made for a good read.
PS: I know you have a horror blog & maybe "Ernest Goes to Jail" wouldn't fit there, but I hope you post these mini-essays somewhere on the broader indie web.
I have to revist the Ernest movies, but I recall liking most of them. The troll in Scared Stupid was really freaky.
The Golden Child is my favorite Eddie Murphy movie. He is hilarious in that one, and I love how goofy the whole movie is. Charles Dance turns into a demon for crying out loud.
2001: A Space Odyssey is boring.