Great Actors in Good, Bad, and Rarely Seen Films
Here are five films made by great directors or with great actors that you may have missed, and sometimes with good reason. At times, these films either have good moments, or are so awkward and painful, that they’re almost good or worth watching on the plane perhaps.
- Rock the Kasbah (2015)
A truly bad Bill Murray film, made by the great Barry Levinson, with Bruce Willis as a mercenary, and Zooey Deschanel happy to make a quick escape from Afghanistan. Murray wears diapers, sings an extended version of Smoke on the Water to tribal leaders in Kabul, and shares a proud papa moment with Kate Hudson as the cliché, prostitute with the heart of gold. But because it is Bill Murray, and even if you don’t think he is the greatest, as claimed in this article published by CNN or “The World’s Finest Actor” as described by Robert Schnakenberg book, he is infinitely watchable.
2. Love with the Proper Stranger (1963)
Steve McQueen. Natalie Wood. Yes. It’s full of clichéd dialogue Italian American style, but in some ways it’s more progressive about sex, love, and the challenge of intimacy, than 2007’s Juno or Knocked Up.
This classic Reds meets Meet the Fockers won the Razzie award for worst director, and was also nominated for worst screenplay and film. While it stands the test of time, and is still truly terrible, it does seem like Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman are having fun making the film.
My theory is that Owen Wilson and Amy Poehler went to writer-director Matthew Weiner (Mad Men) and told him they were tired of playing likable roles, being in fun movies, and really wanted to play unsympathetic characters in a difficult movie that would not be considered entertainment. And so he indulged them with this film that includes the creepiest plotlines ever, involving a yoga-loving widow of an elderly rich man, his mentally ill son, a womanizing weatherman, and a woman desperate to have a child. The reason to see this film is only as a reminder that truly brilliant and talented people can come together and create a project that does not work at all on any level, humor, drama, emotional appeal or plot line. It will make you feel much better about your own creative pursuits and more patient when something you create kind of sucks.
5. Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
Given that there was a sequel and a short-lived television show, most may have have seen or heard of it. While A.O. Scott described it as my generation’s Big Chill (yes, he really wrote that in The New York Times), to me, the humor comes less from the meta-jokes based on John Hughes films, Chevy Chase and John Cusack, as the physical humor and pratfalls.
