Movie PPPoll: Best Acting Performances - Games

bobbyb5

Gender: Male
Location: New York

I like how this is turning out to be a good mixture of the obvious choices and the more personal choices. Or maybe I just THOUGHT they were personal choices. I never would have guessed that other people would pick people like David Thewlis or Brad Davis or Judith Anderson or John Hurt. I think it's great. And I can't believe how many movies you guys have seen. It's amazing. You've seen so many that I don't even know about.

CA Dreamin

Gender: Male
Location: LA

CryingGameDahlin wrote:

I guess for rules, there won't be many, film has to be at least 40 minutes and...yeah 5 up to 100 selections, any number but of course I prefer increments of 5 (easier to calculate) and yeah what the hay uncredited cameos are fine...

Since it does not say otherwise here, I made up my own rule. My list is not ranked. That's simply too much. Please make all 100 of these selections worth an even 50 points, or don't count my list at all. Hey, CGD, you said you wanted to make it easy to calculate (see the bold above). What can be easier to calculate than this? Wink

These are not numbered either (again because unranked). But you can trust me, there are 100. I'm not trying to sneak in 102 picks and hope you don't count how many there are. Count them yourself if you don't trust me.

My list is ordered by release date. I ran out of performances around 1999, so no post-2000 performances are on here. But whatever. Our lists are always too front-loaded with recent entries anyway.

Enough talking, here it is:

Buster Keaton, Sherlock Jr
Lon Chaney, The Unknown
Maria Falconetti, Passion of Joan of Arc
Emil Jannings, The Last Command
Louise Brooks, Diary of a Lost Girl
Charlie Chaplin, City Lights
Peter Lorre, M
Greta Garbo, Queen Christina
Claude Raines, The Invisible Man
Marlene Dietrich, The Scarlet Empress
Clark Gable, It Happened One Night
Victor McLaglen, The Informer
James Cagney, Angels with Dirty Faces
Jean Arthur, The Whole Town's Talking
Errol Flynn, The Adventures of Robin Hood
Orson Welles, Citizen Kane
Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca
Joan Fontaine, Suspicion
Dana Andrews, The Ox-Bow Incident
Barbara Stanwyck, Double Indemnity
Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce
Edward G. Robinson, Scarlet Street
Ingrid Bergman, Notorious
Lauren Bacall, The Big Sleep
James Stewart, It's a Wonderful Life
Deborah Kerr, Black Narcissus
Gene Tierny, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Olivia de Havilland, The Heiress
Van Heflin, Act of Violence
George Sanders, All About Eve
Gloria Swanson, Sunset Boulevard
Sam Jaffe, The Asphalt Jungle
Katherine Hepburn, The African Queen
Kirk Douglas, Ace in the Hole
Gary Cooper, High Noon
Sterling Hayden, The Killing
Lee J. Cobb, 12 Angry Men
Henry Fonda, The Tin Star
Andy Griffith, A Face in the Crowd
Alec Guiness, Bridge on the River Kwai
Burt Lancaster, Sweet Smell of Success
Elizabeth Taylor, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cary Grant, North by Northwest
Karlheinz Bohm, Peeping Tom
Jack Lemmon, The Apartment
Bette Davis, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane
Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove
Terence Stamp, The Collector
Anne Bancroft, The Graduate
Faye Dunaway, Bonnie and Clyde
Paul Newman, Cool Hand Luke
Sidney Poitier, In the Heat of the Night
Julie Christie, McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Robert Duvall, The Godfather
Tatum O'Neal, Paper Moon
Al Pacino, The Godfather Part II
Jodie Foster, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane
Robert Shaw, Jaws
Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Sissy Spacek, Carrie
Robert de Niro, Taxi Driver
Diane Keaton, Annie Hall
Dustin Hoffman, Kramer vs. Kramer
Jane Fonda, The China Syndrome
Marlon Brando, Apocalypse Now
John Gielgud, Arthur
Kurt Russell, Escape From New York
Kathleen Turner, Body Heat
Eddie Murphy, Beverly Hills Cop
Jeff Bridges, Starman
Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Terminator
Christopher Lloyd, Back to the Future
Whoopi Goldberg, The Color Purple
Judd Nelson, The Breakfast Club
Jeff Goldblum, The Fly
Glenn Close, Fatal Attraction
Wilem Dafoe, Platoon
Sean Connery, The Untouchables
Michael Douglas, Wall Street
Kevin Kline, A Fish Called Wanda
Michael Keaton, Beetlejuice
Alan Rickman, Die Hard
Meg Ryan, When Harry Met Sally
Sally Field, Soapdish
Joe Pesci, Goodfellas
Susan Sarandon, Thelma and Louise
Anthony Hopkins, Silence of the Lambs
Geena Davis, A League of Their Own
Ed Harris, Glengarry Glen Ross
Gene Hackman, Unforgiven
Winona Ryder, Reality Bites
Jeff Daniels, Dumb and Dumber
Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump
Brad Pitt, Se7en
Frances McDormand, Fargo
Robert Carlisle, Trainspotting
John Goodman, The Big Lebowski
Warren Beatty, Bulworth
Edward Norton, American History X
Julianne Moore, Magnolia

badseed

Gender: Male
Age: 35
Location: FL

StreetSpirit wrote:

Since it does not say otherwise here, I made up my own rule. My list is not ranked. That's simply too much. Please make all 100 of these selections worth an even 50 points, or don't count my list at all. Hey, CGD, you said you wanted to make it easy to calculate (see the bold above). What can be easier to calculate than this? Wink

These are not numbered either (again because unranked). But you can trust me, there are 100. I'm not trying to sneak in 102 picks and hope you don't count how many there are. Count them yourself if you don't trust me.

My list is ordered by release date. I ran out of performances around 1999, so no post-2000 performances are on here. But whatever. Our lists are always too front-loaded with recent entries anyway.

Enough talking, here it is:

Buster Keaton, Sherlock Jr
Lon Chaney, The Unknown
Maria Falconetti, Passion of Joan of Arc
Emil Jannings, The Last Command
Louise Brooks, Diary of a Lost Girl
Charlie Chaplin, City Lights
Peter Lorre, M
Greta Garbo, Queen Christina
Claude Raines, The Invisible Man
Marlene Dietrich, The Scarlet Empress
Clark Gable, It Happened One Night
Victor McLaglen, The Informer
James Cagney, Angels with Dirty Faces
Jean Arthur, The Whole Town's Talking
Errol Flynn, The Adventures of Robin Hood
Orson Welles, Citizen Kane
Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca
Joan Fontaine, Suspicion
Dana Andrews, The Ox-Bow Incident
Barbara Stanwyck, Double Indemnity
Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce
Edward G. Robinson, Scarlet Street
Ingrid Bergman, Notorious
Lauren Bacall, The Big Sleep
James Stewart, It's a Wonderful Life
Deborah Kerr, Black Narcissus
Gene Tierny, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Olivia de Havilland, The Heiress
Van Heflin, Act of Violence
George Sanders, All About Eve
Gloria Swanson, Sunset Boulevard
Sam Jaffe, The Asphalt Jungle
Katherine Hepburn, The African Queen
Kirk Douglas, Ace in the Hole
Gary Cooper, High Noon
Sterling Hayden, The Killing
Lee J. Cobb, 12 Angry Men
Henry Fonda, The Tin Star
Andy Griffith, A Face in the Crowd
Alec Guiness, Bridge on the River Kwai
Burt Lancaster, Sweet Smell of Success
Elizabeth Taylor, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cary Grant, North by Northwest
Karlheinz Bohm, Peeping Tom
Jack Lemmon, The Apartment
Bette Davis, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane
Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove
Terence Stamp, The Collector
Anne Bancroft, The Graduate
Faye Dunaway, Bonnie and Clyde
Paul Newman, Cool Hand Luke
Sidney Poitier, In the Heat of the Night
Julie Christie, McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Robert Duvall, The Godfather
Tatum O'Neal, Paper Moon
Al Pacino, The Godfather Part II
Jodie Foster, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane
Robert Shaw, Jaws
Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Sissy Spacek, Carrie
Robert de Niro, Taxi Driver
Diane Keaton, Annie Hall
Dustin Hoffman, Kramer vs. Kramer
Jane Fonda, The China Syndrome
Marlon Brando, Apocalypse Now
John Gielgud, Arthur
Kurt Russell, Escape From New York
Kathleen Turner, Body Heat
Eddie Murphy, Beverly Hills Cop
Jeff Bridges, Starman
Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Terminator
Christopher Lloyd, Back to the Future
Whoopi Goldberg, The Color Purple
Judd Nelson, The Breakfast Club
Jeff Goldblum, The Fly
Glenn Close, Fatal Attraction
Wilem Dafoe, Platoon
Sean Connery, The Untouchables
Michael Douglas, Wall Street
Kevin Kline, A Fish Called Wanda
Michael Keaton, Beetlejuice
Alan Rickman, Die Hard
Meg Ryan, When Harry Met Sally
Sally Field, Soapdish
Joe Pesci, Goodfellas
Susan Sarandon, Thelma and Louise
Anthony Hopkins, Silence of the Lambs
Geena Davis, A League of Their Own
Ed Harris, Glengarry Glen Ross
Gene Hackman, Unforgiven
Winona Ryder, Reality Bites
Jeff Daniels, Dumb and Dumber
Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump
Brad Pitt, Se7en
Frances McDormand, Fargo
Robert Carlisle, Trainspotting
John Goodman, The Big Lebowski
Warren Beatty, Bulworth
Edward Norton, American History X
Julianne Moore, Magnolia

That is preposterous. While I'm 100% against altering our tried and true points system (and of all people shocked a veteran of these polls like you is for it) I also don't feel like the list shouldn't be included for not being ranked either. If it's that hard, just let someone rank them for you. It's a really good list, although it seems you must have been going down some kind of chronological list of films and picking stuff as you go. No 21st century performances is strange. If you can find the time, I would use this method to properly rank them: basically you still gotta rank them, but do it by decade. Then take a look at all your decade lists and pick from the top. It's a lot easier to rank stuff if you break it down a certain way. Then when compiling you are only choosing your favorite between 8 choices each time instead of being confused by mass overload of quality.

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

PurpleHazel wrote:

OP hasn't said, but he posted the poll on Aug. 31, so I assume you have at least two weeks.

Thank you, Ill keep that in mind
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PurpleHazel

StreetSpirit wrote:

My list is not ranked. That's simply too much. Please make all 100 of these selections worth an even 50 points

Looks like you submitted lists for the Best Actors and Actresses Poll. Why don't you rank your performance list in the same order as your actor lists, except in the case a performance's actor isn't on those lists. You could alternate Actor and Actress lists to keep it balanced gender-wise:

1. Barbara Stanwyck (Double Indemnity)
2. Jack Lemmon (The Apartment)
3. Faye Dunaway (Bonnie and Clyde)

And so on....

The number of instances when a performance's actor isn't on one of the Actor lists is probably fairly small, and ranking them shouldn't be that hard.

CA Dreamin

Gender: Male
Location: LA

badseed wrote:

I'm 100% against altering our tried and true points system...

PurpleHazel wrote:

Why don't you rank your performance list in the same order as your actor lists...

Relax, guys. badseed, I'm not suggesting we change the system to 'all selections are equal.' You all can keep your ranked lists and have them given points accordingly. I'm only suggesting that for this poll, my idea is merely an option since the host didn't say otherwise. Besides, what is so bad about all selections being equal? It's just an alternate way for lists to be scored (and I love these performances more or less the same). Sight and Sound conducts their polls via this method.

PurpleHazel

You already have a ranked list of actresses with your favorite performances by them in the Actors and Actresses poll. Why not just add performances to the ranked Actors list, taken from your Performances list, add the performances from your Performance list that aren't on the two actors' lists and -- voila! -- you have a ranked Performances list with only a little work.

You basically have two-thirds of a ranked Performances list all ready to go, why not just finish it?

You could also just submit a shorter ranked list.

A completely unranked list defeats at least half the point of submitting one.

The Sight & Sound contributor lists are only 10 films long and they had 846 contributors in 2012, so it's on a radically different scale and obviously wouldn't work here.

AwaitingAndrew

Gender: Male

I've edited this list for much longer than anyone could possibly need to spend on this so I'm quitting and posting my entry.

1. Robin Williams - Good Will Hunting
2. Jim Carrey - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Michael Clarke Duncan - The Green Mile
4. Will Smith - The Pursuit Of Happyness
5. Robin Williams - Dead Poets Society
6. James Stewart - It's A Wonderful Life
7. Kevin Spacey - American Beauty
8. Robert De Niro - Awakenings
9. Nick Nolte - Warrior
10. Marlon Brando - On The Waterfront

11. Tom Hanks - The Green Mile
12. James Stewart - Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
13. Robert De Niro - Taxi Driver
14. Morgan Freeman - The Shawshank Redemption
15. Tom Hanks - Forrest Gump
16. Liam Neeson - Schindler's List
17. James Stewart - Vertigo
18. Tom Hanks - Captain Phillips
19. Ken Watanabe - The Last Samurai
20. J.K. Simmons - Whiplash

21. Kate Winslet - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
22. Matthew McConaughey - Interstellar
23. Kim Novak - Vertigo
24. Tom Hardy - Warrior
25. Henry Fonda - 12 Angry Men
26. Jacob Tremblay - Room
27. Gary Oldman - Darkest Hour
28. Leonardo DiCaprio - The Aviator
29. Amy Adams - Arrival
30. Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight

31. Brie Larson - Room
32. Charles Chaplin - The Great Dictator
33. Sylvester Stallone - Rocky
34. Annette Bening - American Beauty
35. Dustin Hoffman - The Graduate
36. Barbara Stanwyck - Double Indemnity
37. Gary Oldman - True Romance
38. Andrew Garfield - Hacksaw Ridge
39. Natalie Portman - Jackie
40. Humphrey Bogart - Casablanca

41. Celia Johnson - Brief Encounter
42. Kurt Russell - Miracle
43. Jake Gyllenhaal - Brokeback Mountain
44. Henry Thomas - E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
45. Katharine Hepburn - On Golden Pond
46. Paul Newman - Road to Perdition
47. Audrey Hepburn - Wait Until Dark
48. Leonardo DiCaprio - Revolutionary Road
49. James Dean - Rebel Without A Cause
50. Hugh Jackman - Prisoners

51. Jack Lemmon - The Apartment
52. Tim Robbins - The Shawshank Redemption
53. Casey Affleck - Manchester By The Sea
54. Christian Bale - American Psycho
55. Ray Milland - The Lost Week-end
56. Leonardo DiCaprio - Catch Me If You Can
57. Benedict Cumberbatch - The Imitation Game
58. Harrison Ford - Raiders Of The Lost Ark
59. Gary Oldman - Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban
60. Barbara Stanwyck - The Lady Eve

61. Joaquin Phoenix - Her
62. Cary Grant - North By Northwest
63. Jack Nicholson - As Good As It Gets
64. Paul Newman - Cool Hand Luke
65. James Stewart - Rear Window
66. Henry Fonda - On Golden Pond
67. Ingrid Bergman - Casablanca
68. Humphrey Bogart - In A Lonely Place
69. Jake Gyllenhaal - Prisoners
70. Gene Wilder - Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory

71. Dustin Hoffman - Rain Man
72. Logan Lerman - The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
73. Gary Oldman - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
74. Djimon Hounsou - Blood Diamond
75. James Stewart - The Shop Around The Corner
76. Matt Damon - Good Will Hunting
77. Ginger Rogers - Vivacious Lady
78. Robin Williams - Awakenings
79. Kate Winslet - Revolutionary Road
80. Frank Sinatra - The Man With The Golden Arm

81. Katharine Hepburn - The Philadelphia Story
82. Tom Cruise - Rain Man
83. Emma Stone - La La Land
84. Grace Kelly - Rear Window
85. Jim Carrey - The Truman Show
86. Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook
87. Rosalind Russell - His Girl Friday
88. Michael Fassbender - Shame
89. Saoirse Ronan - Lady Bird
90. Jack Nicholson - The Shining

91. Gary Oldman - Leon: The Professional
92. Robin Williams - One Hour Photo
93. Michelle Williams - Blue Valentine
94. Cary Grant - Holiday
95. Elizabeth Taylor - Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
96. Anna Karina - Vivre Sa Vie
97. Bill Murray - Groundhog Day
98. Anthony Perkins - Psycho
99. Jodie Foster - Contact
100. Irene Dunne - The Awful Truth

Also this thread seems to have died, hopefully bumping it back to the top of the Games forum for now with my post will encourage more lists.

PurpleHazel

Well-rounded list. Like all the screwball comedy perfs you included. May have to add J.K. Simmons to mine.

AwaitingAndrew wrote:

I've edited this list for much longer than anyone could possibly need to spend on this so I'm quitting and posting my entry.

I spent a long time on my list too, since I'd never made an acting list before. And like you, at a certain point, I drew a line and just posted it.

Quote:

Also this thread seems to have died, hopefully bumping it back to the top of the Games forum for now with my post will encourage more lists.

Hopefully, AfterHours -- and CryingGameDahlin -- will post a list.

Hayden

AH. Gotta get on this. Completely missed it. Give me a day or so.
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