Tuesday
Jun282011
John Malkovich signs "John Malkovich" on a photo of John Malkovich
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 9:00PM "Malkovich! Malkovich! Malkovich!"
John Malkovich was just honored at the Munich Film Festival in Germany with a "CineMerit Award" so herewith a very impromptu top 4 performances. I loved him in his Oscar nominated work in Places in the Heart (1984) back when I was a kid but I don't remember the movie at all so I left it out.
Nathaniel's "Best" Malkoviches
- Being John Malkovich (1999) -far and away his best. The Academy was insane not to nominate him.
- In the Line of Fire (1993)
- Burn After Reading (2008)
honorable mention: Dangerous Liaisons (1988) maybe he was a walking anachronism but I worship the movie, okay?
YOUR TURN!
tagged John Malkovich, Oscars (80s), Oscars (90s)
John Malkovich, Oscars (80s), Oscars (90s)
Reader Comments (17)
For someone I consider to be a very good actor, he hasn't been in a whole lot of great movies, has he?
I, too, am crazy for Dangerous Liaisons. All the acting attention went to the ladies, but what a perfect counterpoint Malkovich's performance provided. His feral sexiness, almost skirting unctuousness, perfumed the film. An anachronism -- no -- but most certainly a timeless masculine rawness.
Forgot to make my list.
1. Being John Malkovich
2. Ripley's Game
3. Of Mice And Men
4. Rounders
Being John Malkovich is by far his best and should absolutely have won him ther oscar. I hate 1999 so much Oscar-wise, that year had so many great movies and the Academy settled for so much mediocre stuff!
1. "Disgrace"
2. "Being John Malkovich"
3. "Burn After Reading"
Worst? Well... there's a few, but I'll go with "Colour Me Kubrick". Yikes.
He is always so bored, so cynical. I don't know if he has a very limited range or just doesn't challenge himself. He played the same role in The Sheltering Sky, Portrait of a Lady...
1 - Being John Malkovich
2 - Places in The Heart (such a beautiful and heart-warming performance, but the movie sucks)
3 - Dangerous Liaisons (he's a ham, but he really understands Valmont)
But he is still overrated.
Conrado -- it is indeed a blemish on their record. A huge unsightly blemish that will prompt WHAT WERE THEY THINKING for decades to come. I have a basic theory that when a year is too good cinematically speaking, the votes get split and the mediocre stuff triumphs. Oscar wise it's better to have a totally mediocre year and then sometimes they latch on to the one or two great things that did surface. Too many great things and the voters with taste can't rally round the new classics.
I hear he was pretty good in that jewel theif movie.
Agreed about 1999 Oscar-wise. How did Malkovich miss that once-in-a-lifetime nod? I have zero idea. His name is in the title, for fudge's sake! And Michael Caine in the end, Cruise lost for his best, Brad Pitt/Christopher Plummer/Wes Bentley/Chris Cooper all totally snubbed? Le UGH.
But yeah, Being John Malkovich is his best. A good second for me is Burn After Reading. He's so great with some really good comic material in general actually.
No love for Man in the Iron Mask? ;) I only bring that up because it was on the TV Guide Channel the other day.
Has there ever been another actor whose most famous role is a meta version of themselves? His fame from Being John Malkovich is such a strange situation.
Personally, I really enjoy Malkovich chewing the scenery as Teddy KGB in Rounders.
My mother is greatest film critic in the world. We were watching Dangerous Liaisons and throughout the film she asked 'John Malkovich is so ugly, why would Michelle Pfeiffer ever fall in love with him!'
The Sheltering Sky has a pretty good Malkovich performance imo
I got really excited when I saw your list because I temporarily confused Burn After Reading with Burn This and I thought they'd made a film of that play.
That was my first exposure to Malkovich, his performance in Burn This on Broadway in the mid-eighties. Or rather, my first exposure was the amazing commercials they ran of an extreme close up of him saying some of the dialogue. He was the sex!! And then I saw the play, sat in the very last row at the very top of the theater and the electricity of his performance was still palpable. It was a lot for a high school girl to take in, I'll say. Followed up a few years later with that sexy performance in the great Dangerous Liaisons (one of my all-time favorite movies) and I'm a fan for life.
Look at these nominees for Best Supporting Actor in 1999 -- Michael Clarke Duncan in "The Green Mile," Michael Caine in "Cider House Rules," even Haley Joel Osment in "The Sixth Sense." Why???
And they left off Malkovich, Christopher Plummer in "The Insider," and probably others I can't think of right now...
Now get Malkovich to sign "Malkovich" on that photo of Malkovich signing "Malkovich" on a photo of Malkovich!
Obviously BEING JOHN MALKOVICH takes my top spot... followed by BURN AFTER READING and DANGEROUS LIAISONS.
Brad Pitt was a co-lead in my book. So was Wes Bentley. And Haley Joel Osment.
My List:
Tom Cruise, Magnolia - winner
Sam Rockwell, The Green Mile (Michael Clarke Duncan WAS horrendous) - bronze
Meat Loaf, Fight Club - 5th
Stephen Root, Office Space (Milton Waddams) - silver
Gary Cole, Office Space (Lumbergh) - 4th
(sorry: Malkovich, Chris Cooper and Christopher Plummer get positions 6-8.)
My Lead Actor List:
Ed Norton, Fight Club
Brad Pitt, Fight Club
Jim Broadbent, Topsy-Turvy
Ron Livingston, Office Space
Kevin Spacey, American Beauty
(6-8: Matthew Broderick, Election, Russell Crowe, The Insider, Wes Bentley, American Beauty)
AND I WAS THERE!!!!!
I had the great privilege to be there at the Munich Film Festival both at the amazing John Malkovich's Q+A and at the award show with subsequent presentation of "Colour Me Kubrick" -- a strange, crazy little film carried by a hilarious Malkovich performance. He left when the film started but it was great that he came back at the end and thanked the audience for "having stayed".
Malkovich was extremely graceful, eloquent, funny and humble. He said it feels strange to be awarded for having been very lucky. In the Q+A he was very honest -- complaining about directors who just give instructions like "Can you do angrier?". I told him how brilliant I thought he was in "Disgrace", and he said that he didn't get along very well with the director -- first he was supposed to have an english school boy accent, and when he came to the set the first day he was told to have an African accent. When someone at the end asked him quite boldly about Bernie Madoff and what he would tell him, Malkovich answered deliberately: "I was so lucky to have a job where I just could go back to. His son attempted suicide, his wife is in prison, most of his family are -- money is money. For me, it's over." It was really an enlightening, mesmerizing hour to listen to one of the greatest actors of our time. One of my favorite things he said was: "You have to allow yourself to fail so miserably that you and your friends can laugh twenty years later about it."
Here are some clips of the Q+A (I'll upload the whole conversation I recorded when I find time):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rGsdgH0ChM
Here is his acceptance speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9VUMUAAy5Q
And you should really check out "Disgrace", I think it is one of his very best performances, really superb -- nuanced, eerie and gripping.