The month of April has had no shortage of pretty good movies in a season that’ll hopefully lead to some more pretty good movies. But right now, there are two fascinating films in theaters in the form of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
Both films are, in their own ways, really dang good, and you should see them if you haven’t. But what really links them together is how meta they are about their respective leads and the careers they’ve had up to this point. Underneath all the multiversal madness and googly eyes, Everything Everywhere is a reminder of how great Michelle Yeoh is (and always has been), the kind of role that lets her be incredibly funny and dramatic while kicking all sorts of ass. Unbearable Weight serves as a reminder that Nicholas Cage has a unique, strange energy that lets him fill a niche in Hollywood that not every actor is able to. Some may think his career in recent years has been inconsistent, but Unbearable Weight argues that Cage should be celebrated because of all of those roles, not despite them.
There are plenty of older actors (read: in their 50s and up) that are doing great work these days, and several of them have been able to have some fun and take on roles you wouldn’t entirely expect from them, like Denzel Washington in Book of Eli or Ethan Hawke in this summer’s The Black Phone. But for many of them, they haven’t yet gotten the chance to headline a film that exists to celebrate their storied careers. Beyond Yeoh and Cage, the biggest examples of this trend are arguably Keanu Reeves (via John Wick and Matrix Resurrections) and Tom Cruise (Mission Impossible). For this week’s Open Channel, we want to know what actor you think could carry a film that’s basically a monument to their talent the way that Everything and Unbearable are for their respective actors. Let us know some actors you have in mind in the comments below.
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