Rogerebert.com Round-Up of 2015’s Best Performances
Posted on December 30, 2015 at 8:00 am
A living legend. A lonely shopgirl. A scientist. A spy. Several assassins. The best performances of 2015 came from various corners of the world, from actors who we expect to see in features like this to ones we had never heard of before 2015. Watching a new crop of young actors rise in some of the year’s best films (and click here for our top ten) can be invigorating, and seeing performers who we thought may have given their last great performance deliver the best work of their career can be breathtaking.
Debbie Reynolds’ New Book: Make ‘Em Laugh: Short-Term Memories of Longtime Friends
Posted on December 27, 2015 at 3:50 pm
Debbie Reynolds can be described with the term used for one of her most memorable characters, Molly Brown. Indeed, her previous memoir is called Unsinkable. On screen, she has appeared in classic films like “Singin’ in the Rain” (when she was still a teenager), “Tammy,” “How the West was Won,” “The Pleasure of His Company,” “The Singing Nun,” and “Mother.” While most often remembered for musicals and comedies, her work in “The Catered Affair” and “The Rat Race” show that she is a gifted dramatic actress as well.
Her new book is Make ‘Em Laugh: Short-Term Memories of Longtime Friends, she tells stories about her friends and colleagues from the golden era of Hollywood, including Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis, Phyllis Diller, Gary Cooper, Judy Garland, and Bob Hope.
“Make ’Em Laugh” recounts — sometimes gleefully, sometimes mournfully — Reynolds’s experiences in and outside the movies, using many items from her archives, scrapbooks and diaries. The book also offers candid shots of “America’s Sweetheart” with the likes of state dignitaries and even circus animals to gauge and eulogize the changing tides of Hollywood and the studio system.
I’ve been a big fan of Will Poulter since he played a young filmmaker in the delightful Son of Rambow, and it has been a lot of fun to watch him grow up — and grow as an actor — in We’re the Millers, The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Maze Runner. In his new film, he co-stars with Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, and Domhnall Gleeson in a fact-based story set in the brutal world of the early American frontier. He appeared in a Washington D.C. theater for a Q&A with me following a screening of the film and the next day we had a chance to talk about making the film in the Canadian wilderness and working with a Brooklyn-based accent coach to play the real-life frontiersman Jim Bridger.
In “Son of Rambow” you played a young boy who was determined to make his own “Rambo” film. Were you really interested in filmmaking back then?
Yes, it was always very interesting, of course performance in general, but as a kid I used to sit in front of the TV, probably a dangerously short distance away and watch black and white movies and cowboy films. Western upon Western upon Western. And that’s kind of how I initially got into it and then like a lot of kids I had this sort of classic upbringing on Disney movies and then I kind of progressed from there. I watched kind of everything and anything and when it came to performing at school I had the same ethos, I just wanted to be part of just as much as possible and sort of copied whatever I could.
What did you learn from this film about the kind of men you were playing, those early American trappers?
I learned that those guys were incredibly tough. Those conditions were very, very inhospitable and not to be taken lightly. The fact that they would survive through the harshest of winters all for the sake of that trade was kind of amazing to me. I mean really, really bewildering and certainly humbling when you look at what I do for living. So besides experiencing newfound temperatures I grew a great appreciation for the outdoors as well. I am very much a city boy and I really don’t get out into the countryside or the wilderness that much at all. There have been a lot of comments about how hard the conditions were but each of us was lucky to be working in such a beautiful part of the world as well, I mean it really was stunning.
Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography is stunning with the greatest depth of focus I have ever seen. And he and director Alejandro González Iñárritu insisted on filming only with available light, no artificial lighting of any kind. How did that affect you as an actor?
It was sort of a return to the filming approach of old, this kind of lost art now in a way these days, and we did rely solely on natural elements and didn’t use electricity to light the scenes and we shot all on location. That just improved for us I think the sense of realism, there was no need to suspend disbelief and there was less to act. When we were cold we were cold and when we were tired we were tired and when we were struck by the beauty of the scenery around us we were genuinely struck by the beauty of the scenery around us. There was no need to fake any of that and I think the authenticity of the experience does translate and I think it makes for much more wholesome and ultimately affecting experience of watching the film.
Courtesy Kimberly French/TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION
You have said that your character, based on the real-life Jim Bridger, is interesting because he is just coming of age as a man. As I watched it, I thought your character was in many ways the most important because he was the only one who was still trying to decide what his moral code was, and he was watching everyone else to learn what he did and did not want to become.
He is yet to configure his kind of moral compass. I think it’s perhaps quite naïve and kind of a young mindset to assume the right thing, the absolute right thing can be done at all times. What these men around him have learned is that in this scenario in the wilderness it isn’t as simple as right and wrong and actually what you can be driven to do from a moral perspective, what feels innately right has to be reconfigured and redesigned for this context. It’s pretty unrealistic I think to assume that everyone can have a proper burial and we can carry a severely injured man until he passes away gently by natural causes, I think there are tough decisions that require a certain steeliness and a certain mettle that Bridger just doesn’t have yet. He’s having to make decisions and act in situations he’s just not equipped for at that age.”
Did you discuss the moral continuum issues with the rest of the cast?
There were certainly opportunities for discussion. One of the really gratifying things about being on this film set is regardless of how ambitious this was and the truly groundbreaking way that it was shot, regardless of all of the technical and highly ambitious camera work going on around us, we still had a opportunity to make the relationship between the characters and the interchange of dialogue and the emotional message of each scene, the focus. That’s testament to Alejandro as director. So we were all given the opportunity to discuss those things and ensure that we had what we needed to give the performance he wanted to give.
So we did discuss that and we quickly established our relationships with one another. I think we built some great foundations for that in just the friendships we developed off set and then from there we were able to chop and change things accordingly. Even if it wasn’t necessarily recognized or was clear, I think Bridger would have liked to have seen himself as sort of an understudy to Glass and Glass was pretty much a role model for him, his respect for nature, his kind of heightened awareness of the fact that the land was ultimately the natives’ and of native culture, all of this was something that I think Bridger probably aspired to build into his own life. I think it’s recorded that Bridger himself had a relationship with a native woman and had several children so that kind of continuity creates a connection to Glass. And he was a father. Bridger himself didn’t really have much of a father particularly out there in the wilderness. The group of trappers really does become your family. He joined the trapper community when he was 16 years old after his mother passed so it stands to reason that he saw these guys as family figures.
What was the most difficult day of filming?
I think being submerged underwater was a pretty tough day personally. I think for a lot of us it was when we actually stopped filming one day because of a snow blizzard. The camera froze but no humans froze which was good. And I think once the camera freezes up then it is kind of a license for everybody on set to head inside and call it a day. That was a tough day and that meant coming back and reshooting the scene where I am scratching the design into the canteen.
You had a very contemporary urban American accent in “We’re the Millers,” but this one was very different, an Early American from Virginia. Was that difficult?
I worked very closely with an accent coach Michael Howard who was kind of the accent expert for all of us and was on hand. One of the challenges obviously with doing an accent from a time period early in history is that there aren’t recordings. You would never really get the opportunity to hear exactly what you were shooting for. So I guess we sort of hoped we were in the ballpark of what one would imagine to be a early Virginia or in Leo’s case, early Philadelphia for or in Tom’s case, early Texas. But it was surprising to find out how many of the words sounded similar to English.
The filmmaking here was so natural and authentic. How did that compare to the Narnia film, which had so much CGI?
I enjoy the fact that without CGI there is less to invent. The acting challenge is a lot more manageable. The most challenging thing I think I have done in relation to CGI and interacting with CGI was probably fighting a mouse on a ship; that was pretty challenging. A sword fight on a ship with a mouse is pretty tough. But then again I think as actors I think we get excited by the opportunity to stretch ourselves and use our imagination so sometimes CGI is great. I think there is a real art in what Andy Serkis does certainly and even though perhaps I enjoy doing movies with less CGI I would like to experience working on the opposite end of the spectrum and then do something that’s almost entirely CGI. I would love to do some motion capture work just to be able to challenge myself.
What is next for you?
I just finished a film called War Machine with Brad Pitt and was directed by David Michôd and that was an amazing, amazing opportunity. I was lucky enough to play a Marine and represent the Marine Corps which was one of the biggest honors I have ever had. It was a challenge, though. I mean this was a long shoot. It was tough but I feel like after “The Revenant,” I was better prepared for it than I was had I not done “The Revenant.” 2008 Afghanistan shot in Abu Dhabi so the opposite end of the thermometer this time. And we all did boot camp, the toughest five days of my life I think, but I got incredibly close with the guys who I did it with. There were twelve of us in the platoon and we got incredibly close from the experience. I think we recognize that we were just experiencing a drop in the ocean of what Marines actually go through and even just a small taste of the work that they put in and what they go through to become Marines brought us so close so I can’t even imagine if we were going to do the full-fledged and maximum training available, I can’t even imagine how closely would have got or how painful it would have been.
Where You’ve Seen Them Before: the Cast of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”
Posted on December 18, 2015 at 3:20 pm
Of course we all know Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), and Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca). But do some of the other cast members of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” look familiar? Here’s where you’ve seen them.
Daisy Ridley plays Rey. Here you can get a very quick glimpse of her in “Mr. Selfridge” (beige hat with green floral trim) which was broadcast in the US on PBS.
John Boyega plays Finn. He starred in the sci-fi/horror comedy “Attack the Block.”
Adam Driver plays Klyo Ren. He appears in “Girls” and earlier this year we saw him in “While We’re Young.”
Lupita Nyong’o plays Maz Kanata. She won an Oscar for her breakthrough role as Patsey in “!2 Years a Slave.”
Andy Serkis (Snoke) is the master of motion capture performance. You have not exactly seen him but you have witnessed his performances as Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings,” Caesar in “Planet of the Apes,” and Ulysses Klaue in “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” Here’s a rare look at him appearing as himself, with Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo in “13 Going on 30.”
Domhnall Gleeson plays General Hux. He appeared with Oscar Isaac in “Ex Machina” earlier this year and starred in “About Time.” He’s also in “The Revenant” with Leonardo DiCaprio, opening December 25, 2015.
Oscar Isaac plays Poe Dameron, appearing with his “Ex Machina” co-star Domhnall Gleeson and his “Inside Llewyn Davis” co-star Adam Driver.
“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” star Oscar Isaac played Joseph in The Nativity Story and I have been a huge fan ever since. Here’s the interview I did with him back in 2006.
Copyright New Line 2006Oscar Isaac plays Joseph in the respectful new retelling of “The Nativity Story,” opposite “Whale Rider’s” Oscar-nominated Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary. Isaac is a 2005 graduate of Juilliard with an impressively wide range of performances already. He plays a Russian gangster in the forthcoming “PU-239” and will be in Stephen Soderbergh’s “Guerilla” and has appeared on “Law and Order,” a musical version of “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” and in the title role of “Macbeth.”
He spoke to me about appearing as a man everyone knows, but no one knows well: Joseph, husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the man who brought her to Bethlehem. We spoke on November 8, 2006, in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington DC.
You had a very international cast and crew. How was that a help and were there any ways it made the project more challenging?
We agreed we would have one united “middle eastern-ish” accent for all of us. It was a lot of fun because I was the only American in the cast, so the others were constantly berating me with questions.
You were working opposite a very talented actress, but someone who was very young and did not have the benefit of your level of training. How did you find a way to work together?
She’s so naturally gifted, she is so natural, such a deep soul, so in touch with that, that it was easy to work with her. She had to ride a donkey for eight hours at a time with heavy robes and the fake plastic belly, and she always had a great sense of humor about it. I tend to be very serious and deep into the character. She’s remarkable, she has an old soul, very present for the performance but ready to laugh as soon as it’s done.
Director Catherine Hardwicke has shown as a director a real feeling for the point of view of teenagers. How was that a factor in telling this story?
I found out she was the director, I said “Really, that’s an interesting choice,” but I realized it is completely logical because she’s always done stories about adolescents going through intense periods and these are the most famous adolescents in history going through the most intense experience in history. She is great at cutting through stuff and getting to the heart of it, she’d take Keisha off to the side and when she came back she’d be more intense and focused. Catherine relates very well to adolescents and their perspective on what is happening to them.
How was your classical training helpful in developing this character? Did you focus more on research or on motivation?
Both. I do a mixture of inside-out and outside-in when I prepare for a role. In this case, the hands were very important to me. I thought about Joseph — he lives in the first century. The Jewish people at that time identified with two things most, the faith and their ties to the land. The key is in the hands. The script talks about his calloused hands. I worked with a technical advisor for a month with authentic tools of the period. I made the staff, the olive press, the walls of the house and I got the real calluses, making him a flesh and blood person, not a walking icon.
How do you take a character who is in some ways so well known and in others so little known and make him both a distinctive character and an archetype?
Joseph is going to be an archetype; the work has been done for you. But he is human. It’s not that he doesn’t feel fear, jealousy, betrayal, and doubt. The one word that describes him in the Bible is “righteous.” His actions are righteous. Courage is not being fearless but working through the fear. Joseph decided not to stone Mary or divorce her publicly, even though that was his right and that was the law. Being righteous in that case does not mean following the law; it means love and humility and faith. He’s in love with Mary and he believes in her. Where does it come from — that selfless, humble, love? The most amazing act of humility is the essence of the story, how God made himself flesh in the most humble of ways with the most humble people. Jesus was not born to kings or to wealthy people but to Mary and Joseph, poor but righteous.
How did the setting help you understand the characters?
When we were filming the scene out in the wilderness, when we were traveling to Bethlehem, starving, down to the last piece of bread, and I feel my bread to the camel — I wish there had been a camera behind me so people could see what I was seeing, the sun was setting, the moon rising at the same time. It was so stirring. For Joseph in that scene, the sign he asks for doesn’t come, but for me, for Oscar, the sign was there.
Who are some of your influences? What were the performances that led you to want to become an actor?
Pacino in “Dog Day Afternoon.” For any film I do, I watch it. I watch it once a month for homework; it taught me as much as Julliard did. I love “Midnight Cowboy,” “Taxi Driver,” incredible performances. I want to add to the medium the way they do. I loved Ryan Gosling in “Half Nelson”– so egoless, so into it, so all about the craft, Daniel Day Lewis in anything, a kind of inarticulation.
How does this movie appeal to believers who will want to see their own vision of the story and those who are not as familiar and approach it as a narrative rather than as worship?
It doesn’t follow one gospel. It incorporates a fuller, dramatic vision. For both believers and those who come for the story, the message of humility and love is an important reminder that it’s not about bombast and pride. God he has brought down the rich and exalted the humble and the poor. It is a huge epic adventure with this little intimate love story about these two people, and how they really become a family. This is a story of the Jewish people, we have to let people understand that, so it was critical to get the customs right, get the words right, get the prayers right. That’s why the message is so great; it is about humility and exalting the humble and those that react in love.
. On screen, she has appeared in classic films like “Singin’ in the Rain” (when she was still a teenager), “Tammy,” “How the West was Won,” “The Pleasure of His Company,” “The Singing Nun,” and “Mother.” While most often remembered for musicals and comedies, her work in “The Catered Affair” and “The Rat Race” show that she is a gifted dramatic actress as well.
, she tells stories about her friends and colleagues from the golden era of Hollywood, including Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis, Phyllis Diller, Gary Cooper, Judy Garland, and Bob Hope.
and I have been a huge fan ever since. Here’s the interview I did with him back in 2006. 