Essential Dustin Hoffman...
Submitted by jgandcag on Tue, 02/19/2002 - 12:32
Tags:
- Ten Best
- 1. Tootsie
- 2. The Graduate
- 3. Midnight Cowboy
- 4. Lenny
- 5. All The Presdients Men
- 6. Little Big Man
- 7. Pappilon
- 8. Marathon Man
- 9. Straw Dogs
- 10. Wag the Dog
- Honorable Mentions
- 1. Sleepers
- 2. Dick Tracy
- 3. Kramer vs. Kramer
- 4. Hero
- 5. Family Business
- Danger List
- 1. Mad City
- 2. Ishtar
- 3. Rain Man
Author Comments:
Dustin Hoffman is often considered one of our greatest actors and I usually do not agree with that assessment. I thought I should investigate. Tootsie is one of the best performances of the past 25 years and there are amny other fine performances. I stil think he is somewhat overrated but I at least have a better understanding of why.
This is my tenth entry into a collection of lists I plan on doing for some of my favorite actors and actresses. Top Ten is self explanatory. Honorable Mention is my sneaky way to get some other good movies mentioned and Danger List is ones to avoid. As always discussion is encouraged. I am only commenting on Films I have seen
Cloned From:
RAIN MAN on the Danger List, that's interesting. Would you care to present your gripes against this one?
I have been waiting for someone to notice this movie sacrilege. The problem I had with this movie was the slickness with no substance. I never felt like the script was anything but an excuse for a Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman performance. Cruise got to play his usual oily charmer who will be redeemed and I never believed Hoffman was anything other than an actor playing a role. Ultimately I did not care about either of them and that is mortal sin in a movie like this one.
Okay, I can respect these reasons. "Oily charmer" captures many of TC's performances - perhaps the most notable exception was his role in BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, wouldn't you agree? And playing a character with some sort of mental disability seems to be one of the most difficult challenges an actor can face: he/she either nails it or you just don't buy it. Hoffman's autistic didn't distract me too much, but one such performance that did make me cringe was Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump - enjoyable movie, but too often Forrest became an actor pretending to be intellectually challenged. In a movie I saw recently, THE SCORE, Edward Norton played a crook pretending to be intellectually challenged and played both 'characters' very well.