Bright Wall/Dark Room February 2. The Grace of Keanu Reeves" by Angelica Jade Bastién Balder and Dash. February 9, 2. 01. Print Page. Tweet. The February issue of online magazine Bright Wall/Dark 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 Bastién about Keanu Reeves, this month's 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 Wall/Dark 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.

These opinions have been repeated enough that they’re treated like fact. But this critique misses something. Keanu’s 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 isn’t the commonly held image of Keanu as an actor. He’s been steadily working since the mid- 1.

Bill and Ted’s 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 don’t treat him with the seriousness he deserves. At best, Keanu is regarded as a guilty pleasure. At worst, he’s seen as a truly bad actor of little worth. No matter where you fall, you likely believe he isn’t worthy of critical study or even much respect for his craft. But this image—of odd blankness, affability but dim wit, worth only found in action films—ignores how purely cinematic his acting style is. For Keanu, acting isn’t 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 Burton’s bafflement, acting alongside Elizabeth Taylor in the splendidly overwrought "Cleopatra" (1. She’s 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 Elizabeth’s absolute stillness,” and learned from her “how to tone down the theatrical performances for the camera’s cool eye.” Advertisement.

• Directed by Richard Linklater. With Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Rory Cochrane. An undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with.
• Philip K. Dick, Writer: Blade Runner. Philip Kindred Dick was born in Chicago in December 1928, along with a twin sister, Jane. Jane died less than eight weeks later.

"The Variable Man" (1952), The Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick, v.1: The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1987) Doctor Labyrinth, like most people who.

©2017. Designed for WatchCartoonOnline.CoM - Watch Anime Online. The February issue of online magazine Bright Wall/Dark Room is called "The Unloved," and is focused on making a case for a handful of unloved and overlooked movies.

You can watch cartoon movies online for free with proper English translation. The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride In part 2, the story focuses on the Simba’s relationship with his daughter Kiara. Kiara makes friend with Kovu who is descendant of.

I’ve often wondered if Keanu’s 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 tics—like Robert Downey Jr. A Scanner Darkly"—Reeves almost seems like he’s doing nothing. But still, your eyes gravitate toward him. Because of Keanu’s style, the gap between his good and bad performances is a chasm.

There is no middle ground for him (which perhaps explains some people’s distaste for his work). Keanu’s 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 themselves—difficult accents, lush period pieces, reliance on verbal dexterity. The most damning performance in his career is that of Jonathan Harker, the fiancé to the legendary vampire’s object of obsession in Francis Ford Coppola’s fever dream take on Bram Stoker’s "Dracula." If you ever come across a list of the top acting miscasts, Keanu’s performance in the film is likely on it. The critical reaction to his role is so poor it has its own subsection on the film’s Wikipedia page.

It’s hard to figure out which review is the most damning. Total Film writes dismissively that “[y]ou 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, “It’s one thing to cast Keanu Reeves as an esteemed British lawyer, but it’s 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 "Dracula"Keanu is overburdened by the period costumes, lost in the details of each frame as if he were another illusion, appearing as though he’s wandered onto the wrong set. This isn’t because he’s out of his depth. It’s because he’s fighting against his natural instincts as an actor.

The harsh criticism of Keanu’s performance in Dracula seeks to dismiss his career as a whole. Watch It Came From Hollywood Online Metacritic. But Keanu wouldn’t 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 Keanu’s 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 Keanu’s tragedies during the 1.

The act of thinking we know a star as high- profile as Keanu isn’t novel, especially in the age of never ending press cycles and paparazzi. What’s 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 isn’t a coincidence that Jake Gyllenhaal and Matthew Mc. Conaughey’s 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 you’re not “transforming” as an actor, there is a belief that you’re 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.