Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula is gloriously excessive: practical effects, operatic sets, Gary Oldman chewing through centuries of heartbreak, and Anthony Hopkins apparently having the time of his life. Then Keanu Reeves arrives sounding like an American tourist trying out an English accent after two pints. His Jonathan Harker is stiff where the movie is delirious, and every line delivery seems to fight the atmosphere Coppola worked so hard to build. Thankfully, the film is gorgeous enough to survive him. | © American Zoetrope
Hugh Grant could probably generate romantic chemistry with a parking ticket, which makes his oddly flat pairing with Andie MacDowell even more noticeable. Carrie is supposed to be the woman capable of derailing Charles’ entire emotional life, yet MacDowell plays her with such cool detachment that the obsession occasionally feels like something the screenplay simply ordered him to have. The supporting cast is warm, messy and instantly lovable; the central romance, unfortunately, is often the least convincing relationship in the movie. | © Working Title Films
Daniel Day-Lewis is operating on such an absurd level in Gangs of New York that standing beside him was never going to be easy. Cameron Diaz has the additional problem of playing Jenny Everdeane with an accent that comes and goes whenever it pleases. She brings plenty of movie-star charisma, but rarely feels like someone who actually belongs in Scorsese’s filthy, violent Five Points. In a film obsessed with making old New York feel tangible, Diaz can look strangely transported in from another century. | © Miramax Films
Ryan Reynolds later perfected the sarcastic superhero routine with Deadpool, but Hal Jordan exposes what happens when that personality is dropped into the wrong machine. He delivers the jokes, flashes the grin and looks perfectly comfortable playing the cocky pilot, yet almost none of it develops into a memorable hero. To be fair, the screenplay and weightless digital spectacle do him no favors whatsoever. Reynolds did not single-handedly wreck Green Lantern, but he never finds the character underneath all that glowing green mythology either. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Luc Besson spends an enormous amount of energy making every corner of Valerian explode with color, creatures and wonderfully strange sci-fi ideas. Cara Delevingne’s Laureline should be the sharp personality keeping all that spectacle grounded, but her performance rarely supplies enough bite to compete with the scenery. Worse, her romantic chemistry with Dane DeHaan is practically theoretical. The universe around them feels enormous, weird and alive; its two leads often resemble coworkers who have been reluctantly paired for a team-building exercise. | © EuropaCorp
Putting Kristen Stewart opposite Charlize Theron was always going to create a dangerous contrast. Theron plays Ravenna like she intends to personally devour the production, while Stewart goes inward, relying on the quiet intensity that works far better in smaller dramas. The problem arrives when Snow White has to become an inspirational warrior capable of rallying an army. Suddenly, understatement is no longer enough. The costumes, monsters and battle speeches keep getting bigger, while the heroine at the center of them somehow seems to be shrinking. | © Roth Films
From Hell practically sweats soot. Johnny Depp wanders through Victorian London half-haunted, Ian Holm brings real menace, and the Hughes brothers make Whitechapel look like somewhere sunlight simply gave up visiting. Heather Graham’s Mary Kelly never quite inhabits the same world. Between the shaky accent and a performance that feels noticeably more contemporary than everything surrounding it, she remains strangely pristine inside such an ugly story. The emotional center of the film needed grit; Graham frequently feels like she just arrived on set. | © 20th Century Fox
Zendaya has the difficult job of turning Chani into both Paul’s emotional anchor and the person most suspicious of the myth forming around him. She handles the anger well, but the performance can become locked into the same skeptical stare once Paul’s transformation accelerates. With Javier Bardem, Rebecca Ferguson and Austin Butler attacking their roles from wildly different directions, Chani sometimes feels unusually restrained beside them. The character is crucial to the film’s warning about Paul; the delivery occasionally makes that warning feel more repetitive than devastating. | © Legendary Pictures
Tom Holland is immensely likable in Uncharted, which almost disguises how little he resembles the Nathan Drake that made the games work. Drake should carry himself like a charming disaster who has spent years being punched, betrayed and dropped from ancient architecture. Holland instead brings youthful eagerness and superhero-level cleanliness to the role. He can handle the stunts and jokes just fine, but that worn-in rogue quality never arrives. This Nathan Drake looks less like a veteran treasure hunter and more like he won the internship. | © Columbia Pictures
Ryan Reynolds already spends Deadpool firing off insults faster than the movie can reload, so adding another relentlessly sarcastic character was always going to test the audience’s tolerance. T.J. Miller gets some genuinely funny moments as Weasel, but he also has scenes where the improvised snark starts feeling like leftovers from a particularly aggressive open-mic night. The movie’s strongest jokes usually have purpose, whether mocking superhero conventions or Wade himself. Miller occasionally seems satisfied simply keeping the sarcasm running until somebody yells cut. | © 20th Century Fox
Foxxy Cleopatra looks exactly right for an Austin Powers movie: huge hair, fabulous costumes and enough attitude to make every entrance feel like its own music video. Comedy proves trickier. Mike Myers operates at such an aggressively ridiculous frequency that anyone playing things even slightly straight risks disappearing beside him, and Beyoncé often does. She has undeniable presence, but she delivers several jokes like a pop superstar visiting a comedy rather than an actor living inside one. Whenever the music starts, unsurprisingly, everything suddenly clicks. | © New Line Cinema
William Brandt is a perfectly competent character trapped inside a movie where competence looks boring next to Tom Cruise dangling from the Burj Khalifa. Jeremy Renner plays him with the grim efficiency the role requires, but Ghost Protocol comes alive through reckless momentum, Simon Pegg’s nervous humor and Cruise treating basic workplace safety as a personal insult. Brandt keeps slowing that rhythm down for exposition and guilt. Renner certainly is not bad; he is simply the least exciting passenger aboard one of the franchise’s most exhilarating rides. | © Paramount Pictures
Jared Leto’s Joker seems constructed entirely from things someone thought would look cool in a trailer. Chrome teeth, tattoos, nightclub lighting, extravagant coats: the character arrives prepackaged as an icon before earning a single memorable moment. Leto pushes every gesture and laugh toward maximum intensity, but the performance produces surprisingly little genuine menace. Suicide Squad has far larger problems than its Joker, yet his scenes embody the movie’s worst instinct perfectly: endless visual noise desperately insisting that something exciting must be happening. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Everyone in The Last Duel appears to have arrived from medieval France except Ben Affleck, who seems to have wandered over from the kingdom’s hottest nightclub. His bleached hair, amused sneer and wonderfully sleazy delivery turn Count Pierre into an entertainingly modern-feeling aristocrat. Whether that works depends heavily on your tolerance for tonal whiplash. Jodie Comer and Adam Driver are digging into something brutal and psychologically ugly, while Affleck occasionally appears one goblet of wine away from introducing the next contestant on Love Island: Normandy. | © 20th Century Studios
James Franco gets the nominal human lead in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but Andy Serkis steals the movie without technically putting his own face on screen. That comparison is brutal for Franco. His Will Rodman should provide the emotional bridge between Caesar and humanity, yet the performance stays oddly distant even as the story becomes increasingly personal. Serkis gives Caesar curiosity, rage, affection and heartbreak; Franco often responds with the same sleepy seriousness. Eventually, you stop wondering which side the movie wants you to care about. | © 20th Century Fox
A great movie can survive a lot: studio interference, bad CGI, even a questionable ending. What is harder to ignore is the one performance that feels completely out of step with everything around it. These actors did not necessarily sink their films, but they came dangerously close to becoming the thing everyone remembers for the wrong reason.
