Bright WallDark Room February 2. The Grace of Keanu Reeves by Angelica Jade Bastin Balder and Dash. February 9, 2. 01. Recent OSTs. Fallout Nevada Soundtrack Remastered by Nobodys Nail Machine Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Soundtrack Complete by Carter Burwell. Download free full unlimited movies There are millions of movies, videos and TV shows you can download direct to your PC. From Action, Horror, Adventure, Children. James Bond 007 Kolekcija March 21, 2012, 420 pm Download AMERICAN PIE Complete 8 Amerika pita Kolekcija April 30, 2012, 914 am Download Zvjezdane staze. Links to movie scripts, screenplays, transcripts, and excerpts from classic movies to current flicks to future films. Torrentz will always love you. Farewell. 20032016 Torrentz. Print Page. Tweet. The February issue of online magazine Bright WallDark Room is called The Unloved, and is focused on making a case for a handful of unloved and overlooked movies. In addition to this excerpted essay from Angelica Jade Bastin about Keanu Reeves, this months issue also has pieces on Elizabethtown, The Hobbit trilogy, Afternoon Delight, Bellflower, The Sweetest Thing, Detention, and The Man Who Knew Too Little. The illustration above is by Brianna Ashby. You can read previous excerpts from the magazine here. To subscribe to Bright WallDark Room, or purchase a copy of their current issue, go here. Advertisement. I. Transfixing Stillness. Keanu Reeves missed his calling as a silent film actor. Critics and viewers alike refer to him as stiff, shallow, fake, always playing himself. Home of Warner Bros. Download Arthur Christmas Movie Tumblr. Movies, TV Shows and Video Games including Harry Potter, DC Comics and more Directed by Richard Linklater. With Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Rory Cochrane. An undercover cop in a nottoodistant future becomes involved with. These opinions have been repeated enough that theyre treated like fact. But this critique misses something. Keanus power lies not in transformation or the ability to wrap his mouth around clever word play. No, Keanu is at his most powerful when film is at its most elemental. Like Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, and the greatest of silent actors, Keanu has immense screen presence and a keen understanding of communicating story through physicality, albeit with a very modern inflection. A simple glance or curled lip can unfurl lengthy character history or upend expectations. But this isnt the commonly held image of Keanu as an actor. Hes been steadily working since the mid 1. Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure 1. Through a variety of high profile blockbusters, low key dramas, and interested misfires in period pieces, Keanu is still stuck in the amber of our first impression we dont treat him with the seriousness he deserves. At best, Keanu is regarded as a guilty pleasure. At worst, hes seen as a truly bad actor of little worth. No matter where you fall, you likely believe he isnt worthy of critical study or even much respect for his craft. But this imageof odd blankness, affability but dim wit, worth only found in action filmsignores how purely cinematic his acting style is. For Keanu, acting isnt a mode of transformation but a state of being. He transmutes story into flesh. In the biography Furious Love, Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger recount Richard Burtons bafflement, acting alongside Elizabeth Taylor in the splendidly overwrought Cleopatra 1. Shes just not doing anything, he complained to Joseph L. Mankiewicz. But the director pulled him aside and showed him footage that took his breath away. Burton, Kashner and Schoenberger explain, was struck by Elizabeths absolute stillness, and learned from her how to tone down the theatrical performances for the cameras cool eye. Advertisement. Ive often wondered if Keanus costars ever think the same thing, since he has a similar transfixing stillness. Bret Easton Ellis once noted that Keanu has a stillness, an awkwardness even, that is unusually empathetic. He is always hypnotic to watch. When you watch him opposite actors with more pronounced ticslike Robert Downey Jr. A Scanner DarklyReeves almost seems like hes doing nothing. But still, your eyes gravitate toward him. Because of Keanus style, the gap between his good and bad performances is a chasm. There is no middle ground for him which perhaps explains some peoples distaste for his work. Keanus failed performances are those that push him toward a theatricality against his natural instincts. They also tend to be the kind of roles actors use to challenge or prove themselvesdifficult accents, lush period pieces, reliance on verbal dexterity. The most damning performance in his career is that of Jonathan Harker, the fianc to the legendary vampires object of obsession in Francis Ford Coppolas fever dream take on Bram Stokers Dracula. If you ever come across a list of the top acting miscasts, Keanus performance in the film is likely on it. The critical reaction to his role is so poor it has its own subsection on the films Wikipedia page. Its hard to figure out which review is the most damning. Total Film writes dismissively that you can visibly see Keanu attempting to not end every one of his lines with dude. Entertainment Weekly said he appeared out of his depth. Ask. Men was especially vicious, writing, Its one thing to cast Keanu Reeves as an esteemed British lawyer, but its quite another to ask him to act alongside Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins. They ran circles around the poor Canuck, exposing his lack of range, shoddy accent, and abysmal instincts for all to see. Yes, in DraculaKeanu is overburdened by the period costumes, lost in the details of each frame as if he were another illusion, appearing as though hes wandered onto the wrong set. This isnt because hes out of his depth. Its because hes fighting against his natural instincts as an actor. The harsh criticism of Keanus performance in Dracula seeks to dismiss his career as a whole. But Keanu wouldnt have such a long running, successful career without fulfilling a cultural need or tapping into something primal that draws our attention. II. The Crossroads of Virile and Vulnerable. One critical consistency between Keanus virulent pans and more beloved roles think of the tender hearted hustler in 1. My Own Private Idaho is the common refrain that Keanu always just plays himself. The harsh ring of just implies a lack of craft and worth as an actor. The statement also assumes we truly know the personalities of stars. We can rattle off details of Keanus tragedies during the 1. The act of thinking we know a star as high profile as Keanu isnt novel, especially in the age of never ending press cycles and paparazzi. Whats more fascinating, though, is what the playing himself criticism says about Keanu as an actor. Advertisement. Critics and audiences alike have a warped view of the history of acting, as if true cinematic acting began with the deification of Marlon Brando, followed by the 1. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Each of these actors pronouncedly transform themselves from role to role. They take on various accents with panache, layer on idiosyncrasies, whittle their bodies down or bulk themselves up. A character is a costume to put on and never take off until the last camera rolls. It isnt a coincidence that Jake Gyllenhaal and Matthew Mc. Conaugheys recent renaissances and newfound respect both involved dramatic weight loss. Keanu is one of the few high profile modern actors to not go for willful physical transformation or uglify himself for gravitas. If youre not transforming as an actor, there is a belief that youre doing something wrong. This line of thinking harkens back to the idea that we must suffer for our art. But Keanu is more powerful than actors who rely on physical transformation as shorthand for depth, because he taps into something much more primal and elusive the truth. The first time we see Keanu as FBI Agent Johnny Utah in the beloved surfer crime drama Point Break 1. It takes a moment to recognize the shotgun that sits in his lap. His hair slick. His tight black shirt and jeans clinging to his impressive body. The camera holds close to his lips as he unfurls a piece of gum and puts it into his mouth, and then we see a sequence of him blasting through a gun course at Quantico. This introduction gives rise to the kind of action star Keanu grows into, much different than his 1. Their emotional landscapes werent as developed as their biceps. The opening of Point Breakillustrates how Keanus relationship with the camera informs his onscreen masculinity. He carries himself with a supple vulnerability, at times even a passivity, that seems at odds with the expectations for an action star. Ive found myself attracted to Keanus presence because of the way he marries typically masculine and feminine qualities.