Underrated or under appreciated performances

Sheen - Platoon
Liotta - Goodfellows
Ruffalo - You Can Count on Me

Others?

 

A lot of performances by Jeff Bridges

He got the Oscars for other movies, but my favorite Sean Penn performance is probably Carlito's Way (a great performance by Pacino too), and also Fast Times. Too bad he has little sense of humor in real life.

Denzel's excellent performance in Philadelphia got kind of overshadowed by Tom Hanks.

Comedic performances get underrated. At least the Golden Globes has an award for performances in a comedy/musical, unlike the Academy. Comedy is obviously very hard to do with getting the delivery, timing, expressions down to make it as funny as possible. Eddie Murphy playing all those different roles in Coming to America and The Nutty Professor. He had to pay two extremely different characters in The Nutty Professor in addition to the ones he played at the dinner table.

 

Bridges is great

 

Whoever played quint in jaws

 

Robert Shaw

 

word. Robert Shaw was stellar!

Sean Connery in the first two Bond Films.

Denzel and Gene Hackman in Crimson Tide

Woody Harrelson in Indecent Proposal

Tim Hiddleson and Anthony Hopkins in Thor. (Tom Hiddleson is an EXCELLENT actor...it's only because it was a comic book film that the performance was ignored)

 

Tom Cruise is an underrated actor IMO. He's just relegated to being a pretty boy action star who's a little crazy in real life....but the boy can act!

 

Ray Winstone in "Sexy Beast" and just about anything else he's been in. He can be a terrifying monster one minute and a sympathetic sad sack the next, without missing a beat.

 

Leonardo DiCaprio in Man in the Iron Mask.

 

The guy in Full Monty was really good. Forget his name.

 

Dude buddy who played Two-face in The Dark Knight

 

Already mentioned it in the other thread, but I'll say it again:

Kevin Bacon in The Murder in The First.

Other underrated performances:

Tim Roth in Hoodlum

Larenz Tate in Menace II Society

Samuel L in The Sunset Limited

Tommy L Jones in The Sunset Limited

Alec Baldwin in The Juror

Chazz Palminteri in A Bronx Tale

Denzel in Mo Better Blues

Christian Bale in The Prestige

Gyllenhaall in Nightcrawler: The fact that he wasn't nominated for Best Actor this year is a travesty.

Dustin Hoffman in Mad City

Robin Williams in One Hour Photo

Chris Waltz in Water For Elephants

 

Only movie Tom Cruise is underrated in is Collateral Damage. Easily one of his best performances.

 

I don't know if anybody else will get this reference, but every time I see this movie mentioned, I think of "The Rural Juror"


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John Goodman - Big Lebowski
Alec Baldwin - The Cooler

 

Good one. He's an excellent villain in that movie.

 

Tom Cruise is good at his job, tbf. He's always pretty solid and he usually picks non-shite films

 

Sean Penn in Carlito's Way?

 

Add Gene Hackman in The Poseidon Adventure to the underrated list.

 

Ed Harris in Glengarry.

Harris' performance is overlooked because Lemon and Pacino were both brilliant. Harris' performance fell short of theirs, but it was still excellent.

 

Richard Dreyfuss for Close Encounters of The Third Kind in 1977 critics were divided about his performance on this film. Some stated he was chewing the scenery with his overacting, while others called it a great performance which gave the special effects extravaganza its much needed touch of humanity and emotion. When Dreyfuss won the Best Actor Oscar for The Goodbye Girl many film critics lamented that he was awarded for the wrong film, an obvious snub at Steven Spielberg who was nominated as director, but his film was ignored.

 

He's a solid actor. Excellent in Collateral and Born on the Fourth of July. He had to play someone going thru several phases in his life in Born on the Fourth and did it well.

 

I think Cruise is an average actor... I don't find him believable in anything... He's always ACTING

 

Yes, Yes, Yes... A thousand times Yes

 

Christopher Walken in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead

 

Nicolas Cage in Adaptation
Adam Sandler in Reign Over me

 

Platoon won best picture and Liottas performance pretty much made Goodfellas what it is I don't think either really qualify as underrated.

 

He is talking about the actor's performances: the films were awarded/praised, but those actors performances were ignored. Like DiCaprio in Titanic which got 12 Academy awards nominations (won 11), but Leo was snubbed as a Best Actor nominee.

 

Fair nuff, I thought sheen DID get high praise for Platoon, turns out he didnt get any nominations. That said I dont personally think he deserved it, performance wasnt that great. Liotta in Goodfellas was really good, though he blows in every other movie Ive seen him in.

Never made it through Titanic so cant really comment on Dicraprio. I like him in his eccentric roles more than titanic type role for sure though.

 

Dicaprio is an excellent actor. If it wasn't for him going up against people playing gay or aids roles he'd have had an oscar by now.