I also feel that Hardy is officially in the God tier.
They're are many older actors up there (Daniel Day-Lewis, Gary Oldman, blah blah, you guys know the greats) but what about the younger cats?
My son. I feel like we speak the same language.
No lie, I was just talking about him the other day
chillbroswaggin
.
Ever since
Bronson, I've been calling for Hardy to be cast in anything that sounds good by every great director. I felt like it's criminal to have him in a movie that isn't great, cuz you don't waste that.
Lawless...
Tinker...
TDKR He'll be the best part of your movie if you let him. And he's always gonna bring it even if everything around him don't. LeBron status.
It's just hard to hype him up when his filmog ain't great and the main things you can point to are
Bronson...a tough movie to recommend to most people, and an MMA movie. People just know him as Bane with that wack *** Sean Connery/T-Pain voice or as the kinda funny dude from
Inception.
There's so much more there than any of the other younger dudes. He's arresting, but it's never in a screaming look at me way like a Sean Penn. He has Brad Pitt's watchability, but then Bale's intensity and DDL's complete personal baggage and mannerism replacing superpower. There's so much nuance and different choices in his roles, but you never catch him acting like you do with Leo. You never feel like you're watching him make actor decisions. He'll have you convinced that somehow, this is just the real him, even though you know better.
And I think we talked Nic Cage a little while back. Dude is a great actor when he wants to be, but at the same time he's gone full Pacino. Ain't no dambs left to not give. And ain't a paycheck he couldn't pass up. The white Sam Jackson now. But just like Sam, people act like that's reason to say he ain't got it, but then with Sam you look at
Django and that's obviously not the case.
Franco...he ain't it.
He's funny, but he shouldn'ta got nominated for
127 Hours. He's an alright character actor, but it's always just shades of the same character and what you call dead behind the eyes, I call it a constant attitude of being over the character he's playing.
Then on the flip, you have Gosling who's always down for the cause. But
Place Beyond the Pines was when I realized he's kinda trapped in himself. He always brings this certain thing to his roles, and then the production, script and the director's choices gotta bring the rest for him to not just repeat himself. Not that he needs a crutch to get over or connect or anything. But we've seen the Ryan Gosling character even if it comes in different shaped boxes with different colored flair.
And people always try to **** on Denzel by saying that he always plays the same character. When really I think he's gotten kinda lazy and complacent. Not in his script choice, but in his acting choices. He's got that bit of Bruce Willis in him, where he's got his favorite punches, that he's comfortable throwing, cuz he knows they'll always connect. He doesn't reach or get caught acting. And once you've got an iconic voice and iconic manners like that, you give the people what they want. But every single time he breaks out of that, you get performances like
Flight and
American Gangster. It's like he's waiting for the material.
Leo though, doesn't. He takes such wildly different challenging roles. But Leo...deep down...is always pretty much Leo. He's like Gosling, but with a lot more ambition. He'll never do a bad job, but you can catch him acting. You can just sit back and watch him make decisions. I couldn't focus on his performance in
Blood Diamond, cuz the whole movie you can practically hear him think the choices he makes in every scene. And it's funny you mention Will Smith, cuz I always thought, there's no reason he couldn't kinda be doing what Leo or Brad have done, if he just went for prestige over box office. I mean his Ali reminds me of how Leo'll be in movies sometimes.
But I kinda agree with anyone saying Leo's one of the best of his generation. Cuz of the American actors around his age...who else is there? And everyone grew up with him. And even if he's not a full chameleon, how well he's done taking so many ambitious lefthanded projects on has count for something. I mean he's better than Pitt.
And Christian Bale...he's always been, to me, the answer to...what if Tom Cruise went for the prestige instead of the box office. He's definitely one of the greatest actors right now, but he needs that body transformation stuff and elaborate disguises. He really does. And it's his intensity that drives his acting. I don't even know if I'm really knockin him down a peg or raising Cruise up, but I feel like you can see all the prepwork he did in his performances in a way you don't have time to stop and think about with Hardy. Except...yeah
The Fighter was on another level.
Maybe it's just too much Batman muddied the waters for me. But I just think of Joaquin in
The Master and that is a guy who transformed his body, but almost immediately shows you that that's gonna be the least magnetic thing about his performance.
Joaquin disappears completely and makes you forget there was another person who isn't anything like this in there before. But...and it's a weird but. I can't stand his regular performances. And I can't think of another actor like that. You give him
The Master or
Gladiator and he's lapping everyone. You give him
We Own the Night and
Ladder 49 and he'll make Wahlberg look like DeNiro. I don't get it. It's like he can't be normal people. And it's not just the scripts or movies are good enough. It's that outside of
Gladiator, you would never think there was anything more to dude at all from any mainstream movie he's done. It doesn't feel like he's slumming, it feels like he barely even should've been cast in those roles.
And yeah, then there's Fassbender who, unlike Hardy, has made all the right moves ever since he blew up a few years ago.
This Means War
And after them, it
is light as all hell. Except...Javier Bardem. He's a ******* beast. There isn't anything he can't do. The same guy from
The Sea Inside was Anton Chigurh. And then
Biutiful cemeneted it for me, that it wasn't just him falling into a couple perfect situations. He maybe doesn't have that casual watchability that a Leo or Gosling has, but when you give him room, he'll savage everything around him. He's Spanish Christian Bale to me.
And I almost wanna throw Matt Damon's name into the ring, cuz that's a guy who made a lot of interesting choices that almost all backfired in the last few years. But when he's all the way in it and the material and filmmaking's there...he's just about Bale level imo. Yeah they're different actors, cuz Bale's got this intense desperation that he brings, where Damon's got a more delicate, approachable quality. But both connect and disappear the same to me. Bale just picks much better roles.
I gave up on hollywood ever figuring out what to do with Chiwetel Ejiofor a long time ago. Back when
Redbelt came out.
And it's kinda wrong not to at least mention Phillip Seymour Hoffman, one time.
But I don't really see anyone else coming. Maybe Oscar Isaac. Maybe Gosling can bring something new. I'm holding out hope that Michael B. Jordan can keep growing. And one day Idris. One ******* day.