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great actor - terrible shows/movies

Charlie Sheen turned Platoon, Wall Street, Eight Men Out and Major League into Courage Mountain, Navy SEALS, Men at Work and The Rookie. He had a box office rebound with the Hot Shots movies and The Three Musketeers, but then followed that with The Chase, Major League II, Terminal Velocity, Money Talks, Shadow Conspiracy (and The Arrival got completely lost in the shuffle) and then ended up in a string of straight-to-video titles, which are obvious when you look at them because "Charles Sheen" is the headline name.
 
The entire cast of Boston Legal is brilliant. The show is awful. Just exists to be a liberal soapbox. If you're gonna make a law show, at least get the law right once a year.
 
Cuba Gooding Jr - deservedly wins an Oscar for Jerry Maguire, then proceeds to make nothing but bad movies for the next 12 years.

Bingo. I had always wondered about this myself.

I don't know. His performance in Jerry Maguire was impressive at the time. But since then he's given the same performance in a lot of other movies. He just doesn't have a lot of range as an actor.
 
I notice this more in TV than movies (I just assume even the best actors need to take bad popcorn roles just to pay the bills).

Stargate
is full of actors who are much better than the scripts they are given, notably Ben Browder, Chris Judge, Claudia Black, Connor Trinneer, Mitch Pileggi and Robert Picardo.
 
Nicolas Cage makes lots of shitty movies.

Yeah but they are usually pretty good entertainment.

The trifecta of The Rock, Con Air and Face/Off kicks ass.

True, but that was 10 years ago. Now look at the trifecta of The Wicker Man, Ghost Rider and Next.. He's wildly inconsistent nowadays. He'll do good things that aren't hits like The Weatherman and Lord of War and mediocre things that are hits like the National Treasure movies. And now he's got Bangkok Dangerous which looks not so good.

Let's talk about Jason Statham. This guy is a action movie star. He'll do some good films like The Bank Job, The Transporter films and The Italian Job but mostly he does stinkers. Crank, Revolver, War, a Uwe Boll film and now a Paul W.S. Anderson remake of Death Race 2000. Guy needs a better agent or something.

Ryan Reynolds is a guy who's a good actor who makes good movies that fail to be B.O. hits. He made Van Wilder funnier than it had any right to be. Waiting... and Just Friends are hilarious. He proved he can do action in Smokin' Aces and was the best thing about Blade Trinity. This year he proved he can balance serious acting with comedy in both Chaos Theory and one of my favorite movies of the year, Definitely, Maybe. None of these films were a major hit and he's due to be launched to Matt Damon/Mark Wahlberg levels of fame. He has good buzz on the upcoming Fireflies in the Garden with Julia Roberts and Willem Dafoe.
 
Cuba Gooding Jr - deservedly wins an Oscar for Jerry Maguire, then proceeds to make nothing but bad movies for the next 12 years.

Bingo. I had always wondered about this myself.

Yeah, and i was actually talking to someone about that the other day. I remember last seeing him in As Good as it Gets, and then nothing after that. And actually i just checked IMDB and it seems that was 10 years ago and i haven't seen anything he was in since then. My kids watched Snow Dogs and loved it, but i never caught it.
 
I saw this lame Cuba Gooding jr. movie on Showtime the other night. One scene had him having sex with Helen Mirren and right in the middle of the act he takes a gun out from under a blanket and shoots her in the head. Dude needs a new agent.
 
Michael Biehn. Has he been in anything worth watching since The Rock? The guy deserves his own show or movie series based on his acting til then alone, instead he disappeared off the radar completely. What happened?

Oh, and in my opinion, the best movies Eddie Murphy ever appeared in were Delirious and Raw. I wonder if he'll ever go back to stand-up comedy instead of cranking out lame movies one after the other.
 
Neal McDonough. He was mind-blowingly brilliant as David McNorris in the short-lived "Boomtown." He was even memorable as the creepy sidekick in Minority Report.

But his last few projects? Walking Tall, I Know Who Killed Me, The Hitcher, Timeline......BLEH!
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You forgot 88 Minutes, quite possibly the worst movie ever made! (I swear, if Al Pacino hadn't been in that movie, no studio in the world would have allowed it to see the light of day ever. It would have been buried next to that Fantastic Four movie that Roger Corman made. It's just that awful.)

My stock answer to this question is always Samuel L Jackson. Did one good movie in the shape of Pulp Fiction, and apparently decided that was enough for one career. He appeared in xXx for crying out loud!

Hey! xXx was awesome!:cool:

And I thought that Jackson also delivered good performances in Deep Blue Sea & Jurassic Park.

Nicolas Cage makes lots of shitty movies.

Yeah but they are usually pretty good entertainment.

The trifecta of The Rock, Con Air and Face/Off kicks ass.

True, but that was 10 years ago. Now look at the trifecta of The Wicker Man, Ghost Rider and Next.

Yeah, Ghost Rider & Next were terrible movies but in both cases Cage's quirky performances saved them from being completely unwatchable.

Let's talk about Jason Statham. This guy is a action movie star. He'll do some good films like The Bank Job, The Transporter films and The Italian Job but mostly he does stinkers. Crank, Revolver, War, a Uwe Boll film and now a Paul W.S. Anderson remake of Death Race 2000. Guy needs a better agent or something.

He's shown amazingly skilled acting chops in The Bank Job & London. Now he just needs to be able to differentiate between good braindead action movies and crappy braindead action movies.

[Ryan Reynolds] was the best thing about Blade Trinity.

Sort of a chicken & the egg thing but I almost wonder if Blade Trinity wouldn't have been a better movie if Reynolds hadn't been in it. I mean, I totally agree that Reynolds was the best thing about the movie. But I got the sense that the major reason why Wesley Snipes was phoning in his performance was because he was mad that he felt like Reynolds was upstaging him. (Of course, perhaps he was just mad that he was stuck in a pointless sequel that didn't have anything further to say about his character.)
 
Don't forget Samuel L Jackson's role in Coming to America!

He was the robber at the burger resturant!
 
Michael Rosenbaum in Smallville. And his choice of movies in between seasons (Kickin It Old Skool) isn't exactly resume-building to leave a show to pursue other things. Especially when it's an easy paycheck to doing the same thing over and over again on Smallville. Plus he can slum it and still look like the best actor by far on the show.

I suppose as long as he's realistic about what he wants to do post-Smallville, i.e. supporting roles in movies or another TV show, he should be alright.
 
I enjoyed Christopher Walken and John Travolta in Hairspray. Then again, I loved Hairspray and love musicals!
 
have to say will smith he was good in men in black and wild west. but he seems to be going from crap to crap or at the very least medicore films. the last one i've seen him in i am legend was crap verp slow (well to me anyways).
 
have to say will smith he was good in men in black and wild west. but he seems to be going from crap to crap or at the very least medicore films. the last one i've seen him in i am legend was crap verp slow (well to me anyways).

You listed his worst film as an example of when he was good and one of his best acting roles as example of how he's gone to crap? :guffaw:

Will Smith is still the biggest box-office draw in Hollywood. Hancock had problems but I Am Legend was a critical and commercial success. He was on screen alone for most of the film and it worked. Before I Am Legend, he got an Oscar nod.

Sorry to say I question your tastes if you found Wild Wild West enjoyable and I Am Legend crap. :lol:
 
have to say will smith he was good in men in black and wild west. but he seems to be going from crap to crap or at the very least medicore films. the last one i've seen him in i am legend was crap verp slow (well to me anyways).

You listed his worst film as an example of when he was good and one of his best acting roles as example of how he's gone to crap? :guffaw:

Will Smith is still the biggest box-office draw in Hollywood. Hancock had problems but I Am Legend was a critical and commercial success. He was on screen alone for most of the film and it worked. Before I Am Legend, he got an Oscar nod.

Sorry to say I question your tastes if you found Wild Wild West enjoyable and I Am Legend crap. :lol:

X2, although I have not (yet) seen I Am Legend. I was greatly disappointed that Will Smith played the lead in The Wild Wild West. He was outstanding in The Pursuit of Happyness.
 
There's just never any love for Sean Bean. He has such brief parts in anything and everything. My fiance calls him a 'glorified extra'
 
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