Michael Gambon was among the finest British stage actors of his generation, with a National Theatre career under Olivier, and The Singing Detective on television is his greatest performance, playing a writer with severe psoriasis hallucinating a noir.
He took over Dumbledore after Richard Harris’s death and played the character considerably more physically.
Gosford Park, The Cook the Thief His Wife and Her Lover, and Layer Cake fill out the film work. He appeared as a Top Gear guest driver and was banned from a corner after nearly rolling the car.
Darci ShawJudy (2019) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Renee Zellweger won Best Actress for a technically accomplished transformation inside a film that exists to contain it, covering Judy Garland's five-week London run five months before her death.
Colin FirthThe King's Speech (2010) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A well-made two-hander about a man with a stammer and the unqualified Australian who treated him, which beat The Social Network for Best Picture and Best Director…
Al PacinoThe Insider (1999) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Michael Mann made a two-and-a-half-hour thriller about a man giving a television interview, in which the entire plot is legal procedure and corporate liability, and it is one…
Annette BeningOpen Range (2003) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Costner directed a slow, patient Western about two cattlemen who decide to kill a rancher, and then staged the best gunfight in the genre's last forty years. It…
Anjelica HustonThe Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Anderson's least loved film and his saddest. A failing documentarian on a converted research vessel, hunting a shark that may not exist, and the…
Alan BatesRobert Altman's 2001 English country house mystery with substantial class commentary. Julian Fellowes screenplay foreshadows Downton.
Christina RicciSleepy Hollow is Tim Burton's 1999 American gothic horror film loosely adapting Washington Irving's 1820 short story. The Burton directorial approach combines sustained gothic atmospheric content with effective horror execution that the director's earlier comedic productions had not consistently delivered.
Colm MeaneyMatthew Vaughn's directorial debut. Daniel Craig's career-defining performance that secured him the James Bond role.
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