Movie choices by actors/directors that surprised you

for me it was mark wahlberg doing transformers...i mean why would you do that ? he has lot of very good awards movies earlier but for some reason he chose to be in this ?

Most of Wahlberg's career tends towards fairly simple action/thriller/comedy movies whereas award-worthy films like The Departed or Boogie Nights are the outliers. I'm not surprised that the executive producer of Entourage would work with Michael Bay.

Well I suppose Tom Cruise doing The Mummy was a bit of a surprise.

speaking of tom cruise..why aren't we getting more movies like jerry maguire or collateral..it almost feels like despite his action star status tom cruise used to get those prestige movies when young..now since he is old..he is just relegated to action movies with his pet directors.

It is a curious thing. I think you can notice the change in Cruise's career trajectory happening around the mid-2000s and the time of the infamous couch-jumping (which allegedly had an impact of M:I-III's box office) so I do wonder if they are related. Also, the problem is that his most recent attempt at doing a prestige movie was...American Made.

i think the career trajectory of tom cruise is very interesting. I can think of multiple reasons
1) Auteur directors(except quenitn tarantino) are averse to controversy. They don't want to cast actors who are considered crazy by general public. So I think that prevented tom cruise from being the go to guy for directors like steven spielberg or michael mann or PTA. Because casting tom cruise significantly reduces oscar chances for the movie.
2) His box office appeal is huge overseas and we all know overseas audience like action movies with huge explosions. His prestige movies had huge box office in US as well...but that all came crashing down because of couch jumping and change of movie going audience generation. Current younger generation are more into Nolan , tarantino and scorsese types of movies or superheroes. They are not into semi-camp tom cruise action vehicles of 90s or early 2000s.
3) His prestige movie box office draw is not strong. Its mostly expectations. Audience expect to see action movies when going into a tom cruise movie and if you dont get that it can either disappoint audience or its that kind of audience who come to see tom cruise movie.
4) But its fascinating to see directors like PTA or others rather wait and struggle for getting finance by casting some smaller stars rather than cast tom cruise.

That's without getting into any Scientology-related conspiracies.

thats the crazy stuff

Speaking of "The Mummy," I was surprised by Brendan Fraser appearing as an Indiana Jones type in the 1999 version. The relatively sedate Robin Williams in "Dead Poets Society" was a surprise for me because I hadn't seen him in "Moscow on the Hudson." I don't want to name a few others because they involve actors playing the surprise villains.

he fit very well into the movie...he is the perfect fit for the kind of movie they were trying to make...thats one of my very early movies

Oh, yeah, I loved him in it. But it was a surprise to me because he had done mostly comedies and played characters who were a bit nerdy, which I also liked.

Remarkably similar thread!

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nope you are wrong...it is neither remarkable nor similar. Movie choice and performance are completely different things.

Ah ok.

They just ran Postcards From the Edge on one of the moviie channels. Never saw it before, so I was looking forward to enjoying it. But I couldn't figure out what in that film was making me an uncomfortable viewer. I think it was Meryl Streep. I know she is a highly respected actress, not averse to taking on character and/or challenging roles, but I just don't think she has the flair for comedy. Not in this film anyway; where perhaps someone like Bette Midler or Goldie Hawn could have pulled it off. I think the role called for an actress who could show a character with a mix of willful immaturity, but she still would have a breezy sense of humor and a sympathetic vulnerability, plus a rock and roll gutsiness. She didn't capture it for me. And in the end, when she has her musical moment of triumph, singing as if she's a full throttle blues singer like Bonnie Raitt, ( whom I adore as a singer btw) all I could do was cringe and think, Sorry Meryl, you're no Bonnie Raiit.

Maybe there were problems others may have found with the script, the dialog, plot or other actors, ( and maybe a lot of people liked the movie a lot; which I didn't) but I think Meryl was miscast in this one, and it put a damper on the entire movie for me.

I watched it for Meryl and was bitterly disappointed. And that's not the first time I've thought she can't to comedy. Yes to serious miscast. It flopped, didn't it?

Yup. Flopped and dropped like a lead balloon.

Deadpool is my choice. Its awesome movie. Rating it 10/10.