Last Updated on July 26, 2021
Before we get to this week’s list, I owe my man Eric Walkuski an apology for not mentioning that the last Top 10 was his idea. Thanks bro!
And since I’m always looking to do as little work as possible, I’m gonna snag a concept that JoBlo’s own AwesomeZara sent my way. Miscasting. This is not the ordinary piss poor acting that genre fans know and love. We’re talking about a colossal miscalculation in how to fill a role.
Should be a fun discussion his week, since the behind the scenes disagreements are already significant. So sit back, take it all in, and then spit bullets on what you think I got right, wrong, and couldn’t care less about.
Julianne Moore is a fantastic actress and I applaud her determination to be naked on screen as much as possible, but casting her as Clarice Starling just flat out didn’t work. Clearly the producers felt that as long as they had Anthony Hopkins as Lecter they were golden, but I’d argue Jodie Foster’s Starling was just as unreplaceable. It created a movie that felt more like an homage to the series than a viable sequel. The relationship between Lecter and Clarice was fatally flawed the moment that Jodie Foster chose not to reprise the role, and the result is a wholly unsatisfying film.
I’m not sure that anyone could have been cast here to make this project work, but Vaughn’s extra pervy, extra scurvy take on Bates felt forced and uncomfortable. More like he was trying to run from Perkins performance, than create his own. Van Sant said that he did this so that no one else ever would. Perhaps the casting of Bates was specifically in support of that goal.
Tara Reid. Archeologist? Ha, ha, heh, heh, uh…wait, for real? Only in the world of Uwe Boll I guess. I do have to give credit for the fact that it’s hard to get casting this wrong in a movie so destined to fail no matter what, but they managed anyway. I have to move on, because spending any significant time thinking about this flick makes my eyes start to bleed.
I have to imagine that Chris Brown and Shawn Merriman think this is the greatest movie ever. After all, watching Nic Cage in fully unrestrained, eyes wide panic mode, beat up just about every woman on the island has to be a domestic abuser’s dream. For the rest of us, it was just further proof that Cage’s deal with the Devil for great acting talent ended sometime in 2005.
Please Night, stop giving yourself cameo’s in your movies. And if you can’t do that, please stop turning them into speaking roles. You’re an occasionally brilliant screenwriter and an awesome director, but as an actor you flat out suck. Your mere presence on screen drags the pacing down immediately. So please stop. If you care about your films at all – just stop.
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