Take Three: Season 1 Wrap

Craig here with a quick pre-Xmas wrap-up of season #1 of Take Three. If you have a very short memory, that'd be the Sunday Film Experience series which looked at three notable performances from a supporting or character actor's work. 

The Big Cs: Considine, Cartwright, Cheadle

Last week’s actor Paddy Considine was the last Take Three for a spell (it's seasonal shenanigans, then everything Oscar here at The Film Experience). We began all the way back in May with Veronica Cartwright. All 29 Take Threes have been a pleasure to write. I've often found new admiration for the actors featured. It's fascinating what a spot of research and a few rewatches can do: who knew that I’d come to realise how much of a Peter Lorre fan I was had I not written about a trio of his perfs.

I veered from the strict definition of what constitutes a character actor/actress whilst featuring Don Cheadle, Kim Basinger, Steve Buscemi and Miranda Richardson, but the division these days is often blurry. With actors who alternate between lead and support,  “the rule” was always, where possible, to write about supporting work. On this note, I always saw James Franco as a solid support actor, so I cheekily wedged him in before the likely Oscar nomination and the eventual leading man career.

Coolidge, Washington, Ritter

I was overjoyed to read the comments on Jennifer Coolidge  and discover others excited by her comedic allure. My love of a trio of choice ‘genre gals’, Radha Mitchell, Melissa George and Rosamund Pike, was more controversial but those contemporary character actresses have seen their unfair share of derision, hence the Take Three love. Amanda Plummer, Kerry Washington and Emily Watson were easy choices since their work has been consistently bold and interesting. Another sterling trio – Laurence Fishburne, Paul Schneider and Harry Dean Stanton – made my job a weekly delight.

I'm keen to look at more classic Hollywood actors next year but we covered the always-wonderful Thelma Ritter and sturdy-as-steel Sterling Hayden. Alan Arkin was a choice to bridge the character acting generation. On more contemporary choices like Anna Faris and David Warner I spent more time actually watching clips on YouTube than I did watching the films in their entirety. (Faris in The House Bunny – although it wasn't an actual "take" – and Warner in The Man with Two Brains are two not-so-guilty pleasures.)

Foster, Huston & Hayden

My personal favorite Takes? It  was so much fun to research and write about Dianne Wiest, Deborah Kara Unger, Terence Stamp, Grace Jones,  Ben Foster and Anjelica Huston, (who I enjoyed so much that I included an Anjelica Addendum over at my own blog, Dark Eye Socket).

Take Three will return in February with a new batch of beloved faces, less heralded players and surprise curveballs. Thanks for your ongoing participation with this series. The positive, constructive, curious and interesting comments from Nathaniel's loyal readership has kept this series going.

Lined up as possible candidates next season: Carol Kane, Grace Zabriskie, Emily Mortimer, Charles S. Dutton, Julie Walters and Gloria Grahame. Plus ??? Do please offer suggestions for Take Three  in the comments.
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Take Three: Paddy Considine

Craig here with the last in the current series of Take Three. Today: Paddy Considine

Take One: Dead-end England, twice

"Phil" in My Summer...

Colin Firth, Daniel Craig, Colin Farrell, Clive Owen. And so on. When I think of an actor who encapsulates exactly what is crucial, surprising and truly versatile about British male acting right now, none of the above quite pass muster, for me. Paddy Considine, on the other hand, hits the mark. His two roles for director Pawel Pawlikowski – kindly arcade manager Alfie in Last Resort (2001) and Jesus freak Phil in My Summer of Love (2004) – couldn’t be any different from one another, yet both cover all the above attributes. Watch the two films back to back and tell me Considine shouldn’t be up for every great role an actor of his range and calibre could be suggested for right now. Then ask me why he doesn’t have a shelf full of awards already. We can then all lobby hard for the gongs to be shovelled Paddy’s way more often.

Considine put the mental into fundamentalist in Summer where he plays an ex-con turned Christian zealot converting Yorkshire with a cross on a hilltop. Phil’s internal rage fires up in Considine’s eyes in every one of his scenes, pre-empting his true conversion, his relapse, later in the film.

Considine in Last Resort

In Resort he's all heart and a breath of fresh air, amiably easing the desperate isolation felt by Russian asylum seeker Dina Korzun and her son. (The look on Considine's face when he comes home to them with a takeaway is perfection.) Alfie’s sacrifices – his beating of Korzun’s “pimp”, his early hours assistance in their escape, his stolid, ongoing protection – were some of the most altruistic, selfless acts a character has committed in a film this last decade. Considine was electric in both films  – in small and grand ways. Both films, two contemporary takes on dead-end England, form a pair of genuinely indispensable gems.

"Mike" in Cinderella Man

Take Two: Working hard for Uncle Sam

Considine's name in a film's opening titles guarantees my immediate interest. Two US-set films that he added some strong support to, but which on the surface could have felt like paycheck gigs were were Cinderella Man (2005) and In America (2002). Cinderella Man was of course the Russell Crowe show, but tucked away lower on the cast list Paddy popped in for a few minor scenes, adding a chunk of flat-capped rakish charm as Crowe’s New Jersey friend and co-worker Mike Wilson. The East Staffordshire-raised Considine fit into Depression-era America well, and mastered the NJ accent to go with it. His scenes with Crowe are heartfelt and are demonstrative of the essentiality of the  character actors in propelling a film's drama forward.

In In America he has a more substantial part, as cash-strapped Irish immigrant family man and struggling actor Johnny Sullivan. Samantha Morton and Djimon Hounsou snagged the Oscar nods, but the Academy missed out on honouring his shrewd and thoughtful turn. The film took on extra emotional heft whenever Considine was solo on screen, whether sadly scouring the NY streets for acting work or staring manfully across the city. Only an actor who’s worked hard on his way up could make such moments plausibly memorable. Both stateside trips were integral roles that he owned from the periphery. Any film historian glancing back at Considine’s career may see both films, perhaps rightly, as serviceable CV stepping stones that helped gain him his respected position today.

Take Three: Avenging Angel of the North

Director Shane Meadows and Considine go way back. They met on a performing arts course at Staffordshire's Burton College and have successfully, but intermittently, worked together ever since. Outside of the two Pawlikowskis, Considine’s appearances in three Meadows films offer up his most invigorating performances so far. He had a small role in 1999’s A Room for Romeo Brass and was the first half of Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee in 2009, but between the two was his gruff, electrifying turn as Richard in Dead Man’s Shoes (2004), a Nottingham-based revenge thriller in the mould of Death Wish; Kill Bill on a council estate. He plays a troubled soul easily turned to wretched violence by the abuse doled out to his younger brother. (The exact plot details of which I’ll keep mum about, for fear of spoilers.) He’s a Travis Bickle up North – a terminating force in a trench coat and gas mask. Think Charles Bronson playing the disgruntled miner in My Bloody Valentine.

Close to the edge: Paddy wears Dead Man's Shoes

This is the kind of role usually relegated to a shadowy bit player, the killer loitering in the background of a shot in a horror flick, but Considine brings him front and centre; he’s the (anti)hero and the devil, depending on how you see him. Watch the way he laughingly bares teeth through a kind of half-smile; at any minute this will sour into a scary sneer. Meadows' camera focuses in on his face, catches it slowly twisting into despair as the film barrels onward. The actor is especially formidable in the acid-trip party-gone-wrong scene. He’s fascinating to watch... and frighteningly good.

Three more key films for the taking:  24 Hour Party People (2002), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980 (2009)

Take Three: Emily Watson

Craig here with Take Three. Today: Emily Watson

Take One: Upstairs 0 - Downstairs 1

The Academy often doubles up with their supporting ladies – i.e. Weaver and Cusack for Working Girl, Farmiga and Kendrick for Up in the Air, and so on. It was true also for 2001’s Gosford Park's Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith. I always thought a third should’ve been added. Watson delivered five-star service and, for me, the film’s best performance by a country (house) mile. She played Elsie, the knowing, spirited maid that doomed homeowner Sir William (Michael Gambon) liked to see doing plenty of overtime.

Among the film's interviewing mini-plots, Elsie’s narrative was an intriguing red herring, a side dish. But then Gosford Park wasn’t really about the murder as much as it was about class. Watson had plenty.

Watson in Gosford Park

Altman’s film was packed wall-to-wall with high-level thesping and hidden somewhere in the pack was Watson effortlessly showing everybody up. Mirren was great, Smith very good, but Watson's was the most likeable, instinctive and vibrant turn. In Gosford Park Watson proves adept at making familiar type seem fresh and altogether vital. She’s always believable on screen. Mirren’s emotional resolution was Gosford Park’s sad closer, but Watson sent the film off on a more optimistic note.

Take Two: Staring death in the face

We were all was vicariously looking out for Watson’s character Reba McClane in Red Dragon (2002). Given the circumstances, somebody needed to. Reba was the blind co-worker dubiously romanced by heavily-tattooed serial killer Francis Dolarhyde (Ralph Fiennes). Falling for the mentally-suspect mother’s boy was a mistake, sure, but appearances can be deceptive and Reba didn’t have the foresight. Their shared outsiderdom brought them together  but with one major difference: he was madder than a box of frogs, she wasn’t; he went around watching other people’s home videos, gluing folk to wheelchairs then setting them on fire and eating paintings, she didn’t.

Watson in Red Dragon

Watson was spot on in the role offering no concession to cliché, no unnecessary dwelling on the “disability” aspect, no life-affirming monologues. Instead she provides  solid, amiable character acting. Her final moments, wondering aloud to Edward Norton whether she “drew a freak”, are brief but minutely heartbreaking. Watson turned a shopworn character, twice mislabelled a victim, into a full-bodied person, coloring her in with nuanced detail. Reba wasn’t just a pitiable blind girl. She was refreshingly knowing, slightly cynical and  believably vulnerable in ways we don’t normally see.

Take Three: Hard times, clean hands

Grandiose, revisionist westerns made with lyrical verve, riper than thou character names and terse dialogue aren’t ten a penny these days, so it's best to relish them when they roll around. Ace Aussie oddity The Proposition (2005) was one of my films of 2006; Watson made my best actress list. Martha Stanley, the homely, nervy wife to Ray Winstone’s Captain was quietly electrifying. Here was a woman ill-adjusted to frontier lief, stuck in the (out)back of beyond in a godforsaken 1800s town built on violence. This delicate English flower wilted in the heat of the Australian desert. Emily's Martha gradually hardens to all that death and dust, but never accepts it. She’s one of writer Nick Cave’s best creations: like a doomed heroine in one of his murder ballads, but fleshed out and allowed to cautiously flourish.

Watson in The Proposition

Even though Martha was on the periphery of all the manly action, Hillcoat’s camera is still attentive to her. Through Watson’s beautifully underplayed performance we are granted access to her inner thoughts. When she overhears of her husband’s betrayal (concerning the flogging of a man believed to have raped and murdered her only friend), we not only witness her utter disbelief in cutaway, but the scene itself ends on her exhausted yet defiant stride out of her isolated house. Her blue-brown dress is at elegant odds to the expansive, harsh desert terrain she heads towards.

Watson in the bath

Watson's performance is a set of emotive actions finely woven together. Watch the way she inspects her water-withered hands in the bath as she talks of her grief, the way her deathly dream virtually obliterates her own waking perception of events, how her brittle defiance turns to resigned revulsion during the flogging scene and, in the brutal climax, her frozen terror. The reality of how hard a slog life was for Martha is etched all over Emily's face.

Three more key films for the taking:  Breaking the Waves (1995), Hilary & Jackie (1998), Punchdrunk Love (2002)

Take Three: Terence Stamp

Craig here with Take Three. Today: Terence Stamp

Terence Stamp photographed by Terence Donovan, 1967

Take One: A family of Stamp collectors

Announced only as "The Stranger", Stamp waltzed into the home and lives of Teorema’s (Theorem/1968) wealthy Italian family like a bolt from the blue: in turn he sexed them all up good and proper, irrespective of gender, or even order, then left them reeling and the audience flummoxed. Everyone – on screen and off – was seduced by this perplexing guest. He left us all gagging for more. It was that naughty old Pier Paolo Pasolini’s fault. He dashed off his own personal spectator theory with the zestiest, most carefree and open abandon. Stamp’s stranger, most folk presume, is a Christ figure, a sexy Jesus substitute in the shape of a ‘60s heartthrob. The controversy of the film was aroused by this contentious quirk more than the frank and playful sexuality on display. PPP knew how to push buttons and he detonated a social-religious-cinematic bomb with his casting of Stamp in such a role.

On Stamp duty: Terence in Teorema

Teorema is a remarkable film – and Stamp is remarkable in it. He barely opens his mouth and still manages to bedazzle everyone and anyone in his sight line; he binds them all with the spell of his eyes and his crotch. (Seriously, Teorema must be the only film in which there’s a crotch shot every five minutes that isn’t a porno.) Each family member in turn glares at Stamp’s trouser lump prior to being whipped into a frothy frenzy and succumbing to his silently sexy ways. (He even attentively listens to post-sex confessions.) They are seduced, relinquished of their former burdens and transform in their own ways - they explode from their bourgeois closets. Yup, he bonks the family so much, and is so good at it, that each one forgets who they were: promiscuity, artistic endeavour, feverish catatonia and the immediate rejection of clothing are the by-products of his studly sexings. In fact, he bonks the family maid (Laura Betti) so much that she levitates. Now that’s liberation. As far as strange, Christly, wraith-like enigmas go, Terence Stamp’s not too shabby.

Stamp: sex god and foot rest (those are his own feet)

Take Two: Everyone look busy - Zod's coming!

Could you all please kneel...

Although Stamp cropped up as insolent insurrectionist General Zod in Richard Donner’s original Superman, it wasn’t until Superman II (1980) that he got to properly chow down on the scenery... before incinerating it with his special red-laser-eye effects. Zod’s gradual rise to unfathomable evil worked a treat for Stamp second time around. He looked miserably miffed stood on trial - and lorded over by a fat and fright-wigged Marlon Brando - as some ever-revolving space-aged hula-hoop kept his fury at bay. He looked downright pissed off squashed wafer thin inside a giant, flat, crystal rhombus, wedged between Sarah Douglas and Jack O’Halloran as Ursa and Non. (Maybe he was so pissed off because they together looked like a failed experimental theatre troupe flung into space.) You can imagine how unimaginably livid he must have been once he set foot on earth, ready to make Superman’s life a super nightmare. Well, he was more smug than angry: check Zod out, walking on water simply because he could. On top of that, he could finger a fake president at ten paces. The guy's got skills. 

For the love of Zod, at least look at what you're reducing to smithereens!

Stamp’s Zod was second-to-none - quite literally. As the head of cinema’s most loved evil alien triptych he led from the front. Indeed, he liked to stand in front of massive, well-placed billboards and frown in close-up as often as possible, before flying headlong into fleeing extras – that’s a sign of real villainous brass. You can keep your small-screen bald teen Lex Luthor and the lazy Kevin Spacey retread. Give me a Godlike Zod - someone who plays it weird with a beard. Terence stamped the role, his role, with a singularly daft yet unmatchable class. Rumour has it that Zod is to be the main baddie in Zack Snyder’s upcoming reboot. I hope that someone clever presses redial and gets Stamp back on board: he's the only actor who can pull off neatly-trimmed facial hair and a jump-suit and still be scary. On top of that he mastered the three vital prerequisites for comic-book villainy: wig work, wire work and superhuman fireworks.

You can all get up now, he's gone.

Take Three: The Lady is a Stamp

“What are you telling me? This is an ABBA turd?”

Why Stamp was hesitant to take on the role of fifty-something transsexual Bernadette Basinger in Stephan Elliot’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), when he could deliver choice, juicy nuggets of dialogue like the above, is a mystery. It was a bold, atypical choice that I’m glad he said yes to. There were many other lines that sounded drily exquisite either rolled, or spat, out of Stamp’s mouth. Many were repeatable, some relatable, all were quotable – whether you’re an adventurous queen on a silver-stiletto-topped bus leaving a billowing molten fabric trail in its wake or not. Stamp was Priscilla’s conductress extraordinaire.

Transvision Stamp: three lady lizards on tour are thee

When I first watched Priscilla (I’ve thrice returned to it – all largely Stamp-induced viewings) the initial thing that struck me about his performance was how ladylike, how refined, he was. I mean this in the right way. A familiar, iconic actor known more often than not for playing dashing, virile swaggerers, Stamp had all the poise and decorum of an experienced woman having already lived two lifetimes only halfway through just the one. Throughout the film’s duration the congenial allure of the character never waned or faltered. It was incisive acting; he gave a very clever performance. And funny. It was in how Bernadette tilted her head, how she sat down, the choice of both age-correct and -incorrect clothing - and the way she wore them on stage and off; and it was chiefly in the staunch determination perceptible in her droll, weary voice when she was on verge of jacking it all in. Thank god for Bob and Alice Springs. But the unladylike moments of combative scuffle, with single-minded dunderheads down under, tickled just as much: “Now listen here you mullet. Why don’t you just light your tampon and blow your box apart, because it’s the only bang you’re ever gonna get sweetheart!” Charming. Ten-nil to Bernadette.

Three more key films for the taking:  The Collector (1965), Alien Nation (1988), The Limey (1999)

Take Three: Melissa George

Craig here with Take Three. Today: Melissa George

Take One: This is the Girl

She was indeed the girl. But which girl? Camilla Rhodes? Just another nameless blond wannabe actress lip-syncing for her life? A slinky id to further lead Betty down Hollywood’s hellish rabbit hole - or take Diane for a five-dollar fool? She embodied what Betty/Diane always wanted; she represented what killed Betty/Diane. Of course she was Melissa George making the fake fifties pretty by miming her way through Linda Scott’s ‘I’ve Told Every Little Star’. The camera catches her pouts, puckers and pretend act up close and personal. She's the girl in a glossy 10x8; a haunting headshot in your face. One thing’s for sure: we’ll never know what, why or indeed who Camilla was. That’s the big unanswered anomaly of David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001). 

But it was that kiss that did it. A while back I briefly mentioned the screen bitchery of it all, but the nails dug in further than that. However amazing Laura Haring (the recipient of the kiss) and Naomi Watts (the recipient of the tease) were as co-leads, George defined Mulholland Dr.’s raunchy raison d'être. You can lead a girl to Hollywood, but you can’t make her a star, the film painfully posited. Someone like Camilla always gets there first. She embodied the poisonous allure of envy in one lipstick smear; that scorching make-up mark was the hurtful hot spot out of which revenge was born. George’s Camilla was the key player in Betty’s downfall. We should hate her for this, but something about her face, her pouty glance a split second after that kiss, inspires fascination. She’s pure wickedness. She was definitely the girl.

It ended with a kiss: Melissa George kills with a kiss in Mulholland Dr.

Take Two: George of the genre jungle

There’s much to be said for a stint of hard work. I’d never bemoan an actor their adulation just for being an overnight sensation, but the hard grafters, those willing to take ongoing employment to remain on the radar, often deserve extra kudos in my book. George has never been one to sniff at a hearty genre role. After the mini Mulholland break she took on a spate of roles, mostly horrors and thrillers, which many an actress in her shoes may have dispatched to their out tray with much haste. But the following quintet of genre titles from the '00s mid-section contained some of George's best work: The Amityville Horror (2005), Derailed (2005), Turistas/Paradise Lost (2006), wΔz and 30 Days of Night (both 2007).

George does genre: ambushing Amityville (left); 30 days of fright (right)

One could say the above flicks are as derivative as they come, and maybe they'd be right, but isn’t that partly the name of the genre game? Many of today’s established acting favourites started with a trek down generic lane. George is paying her dues and adding much characterful determination to these work-a-day projects (and has often been the best thing about them). She was good as the worrisome wife with a demonically-possessed husband in Amityville; and as Clive Owen’s cuckolded Mrs. in Derailed. Admittedly the dreadlocked hair she sported in Turistas was a mistake, but her spirited turn wasn’t. In wΔz she was the only cast member who looked like she knew what she was doing, and walked off with her own, and indeed everyone else’s, acting honours. And her forthright, no-nonsense approach to all things vampiric in 30 Days of Night impressed me greatly. These "guilty" pleasures, added to her sterling turn in Take Three’s film below, make her the number one genre gal of choice.

Take Three: Three-point turn

Arguably George gave her best performance to date as the mysterious, bedraggled and refreshingly unlikely main protagonist trapped aboard an abandoned phantom ship with six other bewildered souls in 2009’s time-warping mystery-thriller Triangle. (Imagine Donnie Darko committing a few Timecrimes whilst adrift on Hitchcock’s Lifeboat.) George's character, young single mum Jess, is desperate to get back on dry land - and within a stable time zone - to take care of her son – or to maybe clear up a few secret matters that she, and writer-director Christopher Smith, have been carefully withholding from us. George was better in this solid scary offering than many of her direct contemporaries have been in their last few higher-profile "legit" films. But there's little awards buzz around George as yet, though there should be. She's that good - and in wonderfully unexpected ways.

Jess' fear and exhaustion, which gradually and convincingly turns to forceful resourcefulness, is vividly conveyed by George through some highly tricky, elaborate scenes. Like the narrative, she never falters for a moment; her performance keeps the film afloat, and makes its often daft yet exciting twisty turns work well. In the film's final stretch she’s better than ever, and displays immense skill and depth during several rug-pull moments. It's these scenes that should convince anyone just how good she truly is. It’s a committed, bolshy turn from an exciting actress. I'd gladly watch George navigate her way through Triangle on a loop. Over and over and over...

Mel G shoots first, asks questions later (literally) in Triangle

Take Three: Harry Dean Stanton

Craig here with this week's Take Three. Today: Harry Dean Stanton

Take One: One of the Lynch mob

Stanton has been on regular staff rotation for four David Lynch flicks. (Four-and-a-half, if you include TV oddity Hotel Room.) From 1990 to 2006 Stanton provided characteristic screen goodness for a quartet of Lynch's most enduring works. Chronologically he’s contributed to: Wild at Heart (1990), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), The Straight Story (1999) and Inland Empire (2006). He was great as, respectively: disorderly PI Johnnie Farragut tailing lovers-on-the-lam Sailor & Lula; Carl Rodd, irritable and dishevelled proprietor of the Fat Trout trailer park; frowzy front porch frowner Lyle Straight, estranged brother to lawnmower man Alvin; and Freddie Howard, dilapidated Hollywood has-been, both on-set and off-guard.

“I’ve already gone places” HDS laments his lot in Fire Walk with Me

They are sad-sack characters, all. Apart from Wild at Heart – his most substantial role for Lynch – he has little more than one big scene in each film. But he makes his singular moments count. His Lynch mob doesn’t vary wildly, and they’re all vividly ragged extensions of the HDS persona. I could watch him yap like a hyena in bed, as he does in Wild at Heart, and be eternally happy; I could listen to his dog anecdote from Inland Empire ten times and still manage a smirk; I could watch, and watch again, his eyes well up with tears out of trance-like regret over either the arrival of an old crone (Fire Walk with Me) or the arrival of an estranged brother (The Straight Story) and be more and more moved each time. What is it with Stanton’s Lynch figments that swerve the fatty showmanship of so much character acting and zero in on the uncanny emotion of life in minute ways? Every auteur could do with five minutes of Stanton’s blue collar characterisation in every one their best films.

"Oh Marietta Honey." HDS laments his lot some more in Wild at Heart

Take Two: x2 from 1979

Stanton’s been making films consistently for the last 54 years; it’s rare one goes by in which he’s not adding fine support somewhere or other. (Apart from 2008, Stanton has made films every year since his uncredited debut in Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man in 1956.) The early ‘70s saw him hit his stride, and 1979 saw him find his very own career groove. The two, key films he made in ‘79 were: Alien and Wise Blood. (He also made The Rose that year, and very good he was in it too.)

That's not Jonesy the cat! HDS is about to experience some Alien intervention

His Brett in Ridley Scott’s Alien was perhaps one of his most fondly recalled roles.

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Take Three: Kim Basinger

Craig here with Take Three. Today: Kim Basinger

Bay•sing•er

I think it’s time again to give Kim Basinger (remember, it's Bay-singer, not Bah-sinjahr, folks) some major credit. The lady's due. She’s gone from supporting eighties female through a love-hate (but Oscar-nabbing) nineties to her current career bloom as a character actress of some depth. Ms Basinger has always quietly impressed me. Here are three reasons why.

Take One: She loooovves purple.

Basinger’s career was birthed alongside the eighties. Feisty ladies in adventurous circumstances were her trade back then. Although through either slip-ups or fate she was often eclipsed by her male co-stars. In Never Say Never Again, The Man Who Loved Women, The Natural, Fool for Love, 9½ Weeks, No Mercy, Blind Date and Nadine she played second-fiddle female to, respectively, Connery, Reynolds, Redford, Shepard, Rourke, Gere, Willis and Bridges. These regulars of male-patterned eighties flicks manned the screen up to prematurely musty proportions, almost disguising Basinger’s versatile verbal retorts, bright mode of re-routing the drama her way and a daffy manner with a throwaway comic moment. She selflessly supported the fellas, but shone when it mattered.

With Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), she was the lone notable lady on set, and her Vicki Vale was more than mere distraction. Having to both glam-up the air around Michael Keaton’s dour-mouthed dark knight and de-glam the air around Nicholson’s garishly impish Joker was task enough. I've not read or heard of much credit being directed Basinger’s way for Batman, but in retrospect she’s to be cheered as a forceful female presence who cajoled Jack the Joker out of his randy advances. Outside of Michelle Pfeiffer’s ace feline-fatale in its first sequel, Basinger is still the only interesting lady in the Bat universe.

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Take Three: David Warner

Craig here with Take Three.

Today: David Warner

Heads, brains and faces, skewed or distorted, are the prominent concerns with today’s Take Three supporting actor David Warner: the lopping off, the removal of, and the obsessively creepy staring, respectively, are what it's all about. In The Omen, From Beyond the Grave and The Man with Two Brains Warner thrilled us in a delightful and devious manner. He's an ideal actor for Halloween season.


Take One: I'm starting with the Man in the Mirror

Double-dealing, in particular, was the name of the game in ‘The Gate Crasher’, the first segment of Kevin Connor’s 1973 Amicus portmanteau film From Beyond the Grave. Warner was Edward Charlton, who surely lived to regret the snagging of an ancient, dubiously prescient mirror from shopkeeper Peter Cushing at a cut-price cost. Warner plays Charlton as cocky and belligerent one minute, and fearfully seized up the next. He germanely conveys the icky terror of Charlton’s unique-antique situation. His slight and consistent facial twitches betraying his discomfort. You can practically feel the (assumed) beads of sweat snaking down his back whenever the séance-induced, Ripper-like spirit appears on "the other side". He’s the best filmic embodiment of why séances can be bad luck for all concerned.

Warner ensures that Charlton’s inherent nature is suspect; he takes duplicity and makes it his bitch. But really he was ultimately an unlucky chancer who simply picked the wrong shopkeep to fleece. All that’s left dangling at the end – the question suspiciously hanging over the film’s cycle of reflection-based entrapment – is: who did Charlton con next? Reproductions, replacements...ah, they can cost dearly.

The moral of the story: don’t be a selfish git. Or, to put it another way: never, ever mess with a Yorkshire-accented Peter Cushing.

Take Two:  Dial 666 for Warner

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Take Three: Anna Faris

Craig here with Take Three.

Today: Anna Faris

Take One: Even cowgirls get the blues

I’m always up for a spot of Brokeback love. I know there's been plenty of attention around these parts in the past but let’s divert the love that-a-way. Let’s ride sidesaddle and gallop slightly away from Jake ‘n’ Heath. And Michelle 'n' Anne. And Ang. Hey, look, it’s Anna Faris as Lashawn Malone in Brokeback Mountain (2005).

I’d just seen Faris in Just Friends when barely a week later (January 2006) Brokeback was released here in the UK. The complete contrast between Faris in the two films caught me off guard. She pops up ninety-minutes in during a couples’ C&W night-out scene with Jake Gyllenhaal & Anne Hathaway.  She “talks a blue streak” without much pause for breath – and in doing so fills the gap where a homoerotic attraction is becoming increasingly apparent between Jack Twist and Lashawn’s husband Randall (David Harbour). Jack and Lashawn dance; she continues to chatter. A new scene comes and goes with Lashawn entering and chattering her way gaily through it.

It’s a minuscule part but one that actively enhances the film. And Faris, with a touch of cowgirl glamour creates a world for Lashawn that is surely real and would be utterly believable if we were to follow her story instead of Lureen’s and Alma’s. The other Brokeback wives have their moments of realisation and breakdown; Lashawn, being a passing, peripheral character, doesn’t get hers (Randall is another “confused” cowpoke). But, thanks to the key manner in which Faris makes palpable the glimmers of anxiety in Lashawn’s gasbagging, we know she’ll suffer as Lureen and Alma do.

Take Two: Coppola load of this casting coup

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Take Three: Deborah Kara Unger

Craig with this week's Take Three

Today: Deborah Kara Unger

Take One: (Fear) X marks the...Game

‘A lone man searching for answers to a troubling mystery – assisted by a mysterious and wilfully tricksy woman – whilst on the run from a seemingly shadowy organisation’. This could well describe, in loose terms, the basic plot of two higher profile Unger films: The Game (1997) and, to a lesser extent, Fear X (2003). Both feature Unger as everyday femme fatales. She’s mysterious and ordinary at the same time: unheimlich with a handbag. Both characters – waitress Christine in the former, housewife Kate in the latter – are channelled via Unger’s almost otherworldly ability to remain glacially poised on demand.

Two-player game: Unger desperately tries to ignore Douglas in The Game

In The Game – straight after Crash playing another strange woman for another strange David (Fincher) – she accompanied Michael Douglas on his mad dash around town – helping him find out whether his life was in danger or just a load of game play. Unger’s made to look rather dowdy in the role: a waitress who’s somehow caught up in “the Game”. Her look may be Ken Loach Kafka, but in the crepuscular light of Harris Savides’ astonishing photography she beams an insidious smile for the baffled Douglas that hits the mark time and again: so does her remarkably involving yet closed-book performance. She’s so good that many of the film’s surprising narrative twists are due to just how good she can bluff. And she bluffs good. Game over for her competition.

Xtreme emotion: Unger as the mysterious Kate in Fear X

For Nicolas Winding Refn’s under praised and indecipherably austere Fear X Unger’s first seen as a slowly-developing face on a mysterious roll of film John Turturro discovers in his investigation of his wife’s murder. Unger later turns up to dubiously, and remotely, guide him through a red-halled labyrinth of disquieting wrongness. Fear X is entirely perplexing: the three times I’ve seen it have almost given me a bald patch where I’ve scratched my noggin over its twisty-turny plot tumbles. One thing I do know is that Unger gives a great, albeit scary and resolutely nonliteral, turn. I never knew quite where I was when she was on screen. But with Fear X that's a good thing.

Take Two: Runnin' up that (Silent) Hill, with no problem...

I’m clearly constantly drawn toward actresses who consistently alternate “proper” films with genre flicks. Or even videogame adaptations: I lavished no small adoration upon Rosamund Pike for Doom (yes, Doom) a month or so ago, and brought on the love for killer croc-of-shit flick Rogue for Radha Mitchell’s Take Three earlier still. Mitchell heads up Silent Hill (2006) but supporting actress du jour Unger backs her up twice as nice: first in wanton old crone mode; second as a dubiously immoral flame-haired mother. They’re both the same person: Dahlia Gillespie, bum mum extraordinaire. (Ranked 42nd on the top 47 list of the most diabolical video game villains ever, apparently.) Both walk the foggy dimension of hell that is Silent Hill. But due to the freakish, otherworldly and, to be quite honest, downright confusing (well, it is for me, who only has a surface, barely-working knowledge of the game world) gubbins-and-doin’s in the titular town of terror we only find that out later.

CroneUnger pointing the way (to hell, probably) in Silent Hill

That’s after CroneUnger has indirectly summoned up a host of charred children, contortionists in condoms and some folded-over-backwards bloke who’s in dire need of some kind of medical assistance (all strangely well-choreographed). To be exact it’s right when she’s usurped by the mini-pyramid-headed guy who likes to rip people’s skin off outside churches. But no matter. FlamyhairUnger appears in flashbacks that look like a Ken Russell film gone wrong (and filmed in the kind of wobbly, scratchy Super-8 that only try-hard horror movies achieve). We’re told FlamyhairUnger did bad things and paid for her sins by having to dress in rags and play an old crone early on in the film. Social services would be on to her if they could only find the damn place; even the main character stumbles upon it by accident – as did many disgruntled cinema-goers, no doubt. But despite all the dank kerfuffle, and many misgivings, I quite liked Silent Hill. It’s one of only a few ‘00s horrors where the women do all the work, Unger especially: whether flamy-hairy or old ‘n’ croney.

Speaking of Croney...

Take Three: Crash, bang, trollop?

For reasons only known only to himself, David Cronenberg visually correlates Deborah Kara Unger’s streamlined body to that of a light aircraft in the opening moments of Crash (1996). He was goading us, titillating us with the curvature of her curves to enhance, in his own way, the sex + cars = sexycars argument intrinsic to J.G. Ballard’s controversial novel. He’s a crafty one, that Croney. But he did have a point. Unger was the icy icon of audience identification for all the saucy flesh-meets-metal shenanigans on offer in Crash. She was the film’s unofficial figurehead: first onscreen, last woman standing. Well, lying: she’s last seen getting bleeped from behind by James Spader on a grassy verge after he shunts her silver Miata into a ditch. In between all this rumpy-bumper action she added a singularly sinuous and spiky class to Croney’s pole position polemic.

Roadside or bedside, Unger doesn't care – she's always 'up for it' in Crash

Was she not the perfect Catherine Ballard though? If a smart Holly Hunter was a surprise choice for Helen, and Rosanna Arquette a delightfully grungy cyborg-amputee, then Unger – with her felid looks and near-continuous pout – was the appropriately cold slinky vixen; a modern wife lusting after the mod cons in not quite the intended way. (After all, Unger descends from a nuclear disposal specialist mother and a gynaecologist father – how Cronenbergian is that?) She delivers her deliberately ill-paced, spaced-out dialogue with the slow relish of a particularly somnambulant Stepford wife. She does it brilliantly; gets it spot on. It’s purely in keeping with the overall ridiculous, distant tone of the book, film and overall idea of preferring to fuck something that has four wheels and doesn’t speak.

The result of Unger always being 'up for it' in Crash

Whether she’s standing on her condo balcony dreaming of a three-way by the freeway, opting for extra bodywork mid-carwash, or simply getting bonked against a balustrade, Unger distills sex sex sex in Crash in a curiously frosty, frolicsome and, arguably, forward-thinking manner. Would any other contemporary actress have dared to reveal so much whilst giving away so little? Good on ya, Debs.

Three more key films for the taking: Keys to Tulsa (1996), The Hurricane (1999), Thirteen (2003)

Take Three: Laurence Fishburne

Craig here with Take Three

Today: Laurence Fishburne

Take One: Security vans and alien lands

It’s a cheeky sidestep this week. More of a Take Six – although still in three bite-size chunks. For starters, there’s two roles in a couple of nifty, no-fuss genre hits that he contributed supporting turns to recently: Armored (2009) and Predators (2010), both directed by Nimród Antal. In the former he was one of six average Joes – disgruntled security guards feeling the blue collar recessionary bite – hedging their bets on a massive, self-devised and of course ill-thought-out stolen loot payout. Fishburne was Baines, the brawny, aggressive one to whom nobody gave any truck. Along with Matt Dillon, Jean Reno and Fred Ward he lent Armored a hefty dose of gruff gravitas. He got to exercise his infectiously throaty laugh, shoot people willy-nilly and royally show up many of the other supporting actors (Skeet Ulrich I'm looking at you) without too much in the way of visible strain.

Fishburne: Armored van man

Commanding, seasoned actors such as Fishburne may be seen by some to be slumming it in genre quickies like this, but he gives it as good as he always does. It’s decent work – teamwork not dream work – and Fishburne does plenty of heavy lifting, raising it head and shoulders above likeminded flicks. Likewise with Predators. Here he’s Noland, a bedraggled and paranoid ex-assault soldier hiding in the belly of an abandoned alien ship. So he’s literally slumming it here. He scavenges for food. He mumbles something indecipherably questionable over his shoulder to an imaginary friend (or perhaps his agent just off-camera) to the general bafflement of lead Adrien Brody, head of Predators' all-new grunt bunch. Then he leads the not-so-merry lot through twisty tunnels into a sneaky trap. Noland’s outlook was never good, but Fishburne by turns allows him a cool entrance (deceptively dressed as he is as a rogue predator) and a gleeful hint of disturbed menace – both things that another, less talented, actor may well have skimped on. Fishburne elevates these two recent genre treats nicely.

Fishburne (left) and imaginary friend (right) looking fed up in Predators

Take Two: The Matrix Reassessed (just not very thoroughly)

I don’t think I’ve ever written a word about any of the three The Matrix films ('Riginal, Reloaded, Revolutions -1999-2003) before. Any cursory dip into their vastly all-encompassing waters, muddied with plenty of techno/psycho-babble, simply confuses me and I run for the hills. The worlds-within-worlds, meaning-within-meaning slant to the films whooshes over my head fast as a bullet; my comprehension of them slower than bullet time. I saw all three purely for the nifty fight scenes and the spaceships with tentacles. Its “legacy” or its “symbology” I can leave, thanks muchly. That’s why my favourite bits usually featured Fishburne kicking Keanu Reeves in the face. Or vice versa. Or even when he fired two guns simultaneously whilst standing on top of a speeding special effect.

Fishburne as Morpheus kickin' ass in The Matrix: Revolutions.
Or is it Reloaded?

He was Morpheus, and although he wasn’t entirely free of spouting mystical, daft, brain-twisting nothings during some parts of the films ("Welcome to the desert of the real" – "The pill you took is part of a trace program. It's designed to disrupt your input/output carrier signal."), he also made for a no-nonsense alt-world figurehead for much of his screentime – spouting impractical, daft, meaningless nothings ("Switch! Apoc!"), which I could relate to far more readily. He’s indeed the most watchable and entertaining presence in the three films (closely followed by Hugo Weaving’s Mr. Smith).

Fishburne as Morpheus kickin' ass in The Matrix (original).
Or is it him taunting Keanu off set?

Seeing him strut his stuff, dressed in obligatory Matrix cast member uniform of black leather and impossibly cool shades, was worth the combined three films' ticket prices alone. His career may forever be entwined with that of the Matrix phenomenon, but when you have an actor effortlessly delivering thespian goods – and more importantly, making us believe that the words Mjolnir and Nebuchadnezzar actually mean something – in a film series with more convoluted loose ends than a particularly tricky mathematical equation, you know it's a job done well. Who cares what colour pill to take – as long as it’s Fishburne shaped.

Take Three: An unlIKEable role

Fishburne’s best lead role was in What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993), for which he bagged his only Oscar nod. As Ike Turner, the whacked out, drugged-up singer who puts Angela Bassett’s Tina through the spousal abuse ringer, Fishburne essayed one vividly memorable role. Fishburne's deeply unlikeable Ike was played with such stern conviction, that he was more than just the flipside of fun in Brian Gibson’s acclaimed biopic. The (famous) man who beat and tormented Tina Turner was surely a complicated role to play (Fishburne allegedly turned down the role five times; only saying yes after Bassett signed on), but he ensured his Ike was a resolutely watchable character.

Fishburne can do mean and moody with ease. His impressive physicality and screen allure (and, here, confident vocal inflections – Fishburne also sang Ike’s songs in the film) surely assisted in his playing someone so monstrously pre-rendered. But he also managed to make human the troubled, abusive aspects of Ike’s character; there are times when you truly feel for him, despite the violence, which is solely down to Fishburne’s sincere, unshowy and very giving performance.

One of the defining images from Tina: What's Love Got to Do with It

Fishburne and Bassett were a fantastic acting duo; their torturous scenes with hysterically hollered dialogue and intricately performed physical choreography still contain as much hard-to-watch power as they did seventeen years ago. Watching Fishburne flesh out the subtle differences between the fun, earlier days and the tumultuous events later – from living the chart-riding high life to that quietly creepy kiss he plants on Bassett’s cheek during a sombre performance – is compulsive viewing. What’s Oscar got to do with it? Fishburne’s performance itself is proof enough of his onscreen greatness.

Three more key films for the taking: Apocalypse Now (1979), Deep Cover (1992), Akeelah and the Bee (2006)