(1978) ***1/2Anthony Hopkins mesmerizes as a shy but unstable magician whose ventriloquist partner Fats takes on an increasingly central and increasingly unwholesome role in his life.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Salem's Lot 1979 and Salem's Lot 2024
Happy Halloween everybody! Julie's working late and the boy doesn't have school tomorrow so he's heading to one of those crazy f...
-
(2007) * First of all let me say that as far as I could tell there are absolutely no dead teenagers in this entire film. Every year just ...
5 comments:
The movie creeped the shit out of me as a kid. That is the ugliest dummy, I've always hated them and it's all because of this film.
I love Anthony Hopkins!
This is an interesting example of a cinematic phenomenon known as "booze" wherein an actor loses decades of his/her career because of substance abuse.
Anthony Hopkins famously dried out in 1990-91. Its his transition from Desperate Hours, which is an awful Michael Cimino thriller in which Hopkins gives his usual blurry, mumbly 1980s performance, to his next movie, which was what? Oh yeah, something called The Silence of the Lambs. I remember hearing at the time that "Hopkins stopped drinking" and that we were seeing the results. It made sense, because, you know, where was this guy? He's great!
Anyway Magic is my favorite example of Hopkins' "booze period." It's an interesting idea and it's got some really nice touches, but Hopkins just can't really hold the movie together because he's just a big drunk.
Interesting that so many British theater/movie actors fall into this tradition, but most are more "high functioning" than Hopkins (for example, Oliver Reed or Peter O'Toole.) Actually, I take it back, because both those dudes are suffering from a serious case of the same career problems. (Oliver Reed once said, "I do not live in the sober world.") See something like Gladiator and you realize how great Oliver Reed is and how incredible a career he (presumably) could have had.
Anyway Hopkins dried up and the result was the last twenty years of his career, in which he got all the roles that he never got during the previous twenty years.
Interesting info Jordan, I guess I really never thought about him that way.
I saw the very end of this movie randomly on cable once so I've never gone back to check it out.
Other than those couple of minutes, I've never seen any pre-Lambs Hopkins.
Post a Comment