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The actor plays an American mortician caught in the middle of the conflict, trying to help a group of young women (including some prostitutes) escape the Japanese onslaught.
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Unfortunately, Bale was in the other movie, a strained attempt at spectacle by House of Flying Daggers director Zhang Yimou. If you only see one film about the 1937 Nanking Massacre, make it Lu Chuan’s harrowing City of Life and Death, which depicts that atrocity in apocalyptically bleak terms. (In at least one instance, Bale’s greatness easily outshines the project’s.) Not all of his choices have been winners, but there’s very little that’s pitiful or ridiculous on this list.
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What follows is our rundown of his 37 films, with our rankings geared toward his work, not necessarily the quality of the movie itself. In honor American Psycho’s twentieth anniversary, we’ve decided to revisit the actor’s career. Sometimes, Bale overdoes his all-or-nothing demeanor, but he can bring complexity and humanity to iconic superheroes and smiling psychopaths. And yet, the two projects that rank in the top spots on our list of his best performances are surprisingly modulated, even muted affairs. At his worst, well, you have moments like his infamous 2009 freakout on Terminator Salvation cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, when his profanity-laden tirade was captured on audio and quickly went viral. At his best, the 46-year-old Oscar winner gives performances that feel bone-deep, his characters shedding parts of their souls as they struggle with demons they can’t control. And then other moments where you go, ‘I love it! There’s all that crap that goes with it. And it feels like anything but art it feels as far from art as you could ever get. And he has a prickly love-hate relationship with his craft, once saying, “There are moments of real sort of hatred of it and thinking that it’s the most pitiful, funny, ridiculous profession that you could ever pick. That rare child actor to evolve into an indomitable leading man, Bale is notoriously dismissive of celebrity. Everything he does seem to be performed with maximum intensity and a minimum of vanity, most notably for the many times he’s either gained or lost a lot of weight for various roles over the years. There’s a no-bullshit quality to Christian Bale’s persona - both onscreen and off - that’s been the hallmark of actor’s actors since Marlon Brando. Douglas Montgomery's Laurie certainly lacked boyishness, too.Photo-Illustration: Vulture, Sony Pictures Releasing, Warner Bros, Lionsgate Films and Paramount Pictures Amy, supposed to be 12, was played by a 23-year-old Joan Bennett, secretly pregnant at the time. Though Hepburn fits the part perfectly, the rest of the movie's casting may seem odd to our present-day perspective. The movie was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, and won the latter. In addition to putting Hepburn on the map, the first "talkie" version of Little Women was a critical and box office hit. Little Women was only Hepburn's fourth movie credit, though she'd go on to win the first of her four Oscars (for Morning Glory) the following year, in 1934. Like Jo, Hepburn would also become an icon for independent women. Katharine Hepburn's performance as Jo, serious and yet somehow bursting with joie de vivre, solidified her as a movie star.
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You could say that watching George Cukor's 1933 Little Women is a lot like watching a star be born. Let's take a tour through Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy in all their possible variations. That said, 2019's Little Women is not the first to make bold choices. More than any other version before it, Gerwig's film leans into the discussion of money and economic independence that's woven into the subtext of Alcott's novel. The latest-and most groundbreaking-version was written and directed by Greta Gerwig ( Lady Bird). Within the past two years alone, Little Women has been adapted for the screen three times.
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Many musical adaptations remain legendary, but impossible to watch, like the 1955 London musical A Girl Call Jo, the 1964 off-Broadway musical Jo, or CBS's 1958 TV musical starring The Brady Brunch's Florence Henderson as Meg March.īut fear not, Little Women fans: There are plenty of adaptations that haven't disappeared. According to The New Yorker, between 19, there were 48 radio dramatizations of Little Women. Some adaptations are lost forever, like a 1917 British silent film, three TV movies in the '40s, and a six-part BBC mini-series made in 1950 (the ones made in 1958, 1970, and 2017 remain). Since the novel was first published in 1868, the classic coming-of-age story about the four March sisters in Civil War-era Concord, MA has been adapted countless times. Louisa May Alcott probably didn't expect to start a media empire when she wrote Little Women.
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