Sentences with phrase «surprisingly effective performance»

There's something a little depressing about watching a talented actor like Jose Ferrer (who, near the start of his career, worked with filmmakers like Otto Preminger and John Huston) slog his way through junk like Zoltan... Hound of Dracula, and though he does deliver a surprisingly effective performance, it's just not enough to disguise the movie's many, many deficiencies.

Finally, overblown director Tony Scott (Days of Thunder, Beverly Hills Cop II) hits the right notes with a crackling script by Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs), and a surprisingly effective performance by Christian Slater, all of whom I usually dislike.

Though there's not much in Poolhall Junkies we haven't seen many times before, the film manages to remain mostly entertaining due mostly to some surprisingly effective performances and a brisk pace.

Not exact matches

Sign spinning has morphed from curbside oddity to performance art — and a surprisingly effective way for a startup to grab attention.

At a running time of close to two hours, School for Scoundrels is clearly much longer than it has any right to be - although, that being said, there's little doubt that the film remains consistently watchable thanks to Todd Phillips and Scot Armstrong's surprisingly clever screenplay and the uniformly effective performances.

This consistency of theme, combined with a fairly effective road movie and a nice central performance from Pitt make it a surprisingly great thriller, and well worth checking out.

Testimony has one great dramatic center, some bravura Steadycam sequences, effective newsreel - styled black and white cinematography, and a greater diversity of music to offset a weak script, clumsy montages, and surprisingly banal performances from supporting players (except Ronald Pickup, who also played Nietzsche in Wagner).

But The Butterfly Effect is such an effective, gripping time - traveling thriller, not even Kutcher could ruin it (he gives a surprisingly decent performance, anyway).

The most effective storylines are buoyed by terrific performances and / or chemistry: the appealing Anderson and Stewart work surprisingly well together in the Meredith / Trent strand, and the luminous Jolie compensates for Phillippe's adequate but fairly colorless work in the Joan / Keenan story.