Kristen Stewart says she’s only made “five really good films” throughout her career
The self aware queen plays the people's princess in Pablo Larraín’s forthcoming Spencer
Aux News Films
Ahead of the U.S. debut of her enthralling and Oscar-worthy performance as Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s biopic Spencer, Kristen Stewart is acknowledging the elephant in the room: her career hasn’t really been filled with critically acclaimed features, to say the least.
“It’s a total crapshoot,” Stewart says in a recent interview with The Sunday Times. “I’ve probably made five really good films, out of 45 or 50 films? Ones that I go, ‘Wow, that person made a top-to-bottom beautiful piece of work!’”
The 31-year-old actor rose to stardom in 2008 as Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga, starring opposite another actor who’s recently been gunning for a little more critical notoriety in their portfolio: Robert Pattinson.
After the international craze of Twilight, both actors spent some time in the independent film circuits, which is where some of Stewart’s favorites lie. In the Sunday Times interview, she says two of her favorites come from French director Olivier Assayas, including Personal Shopper and Clouds of Sils Maria.
Though she did not name any films in particular that stick out as complete duds, we know Charlie’s Angels is up there. Stewart says the worst acting experience comes when the film’s not only bad, but also no fun to film.
“The worst is when you’re in the middle of something and know that not only is it probably going to be a bad movie, but we’re all bracing until the end,” she explains.
Well, she only mentions two of her personal favorites, so here’s a gander at what other films should fill out the rest of her list:
1. Personal Shopper
2. Clouds of Sils Maria
3. Spencer
4. Adventureland
5. The Runaways
Plus, an honorable mention for William Eubank’s Underwater.
Alternatively the list could simply be:
1. Twilight
2. New Moon
3. Eclipse
4. Breaking Dawn: Part 1
5. Breaking Dawn: Part 2
The “Get Kristen Stewart Her Oscar” campaign starts now. Spencer premieres in the U.S. on November 5.
255 Comments
Personal Shopper, Clouds of Sils Maria, Adventureland, Into the Wild, Undertow.
Thank you for your submission, but I regret to inform you that Into the Wild is bad.
Killer soundtrack though.
True. Gotta give love to my man Ed.
I, an anonymous internet commenter, will allow you that concession, but if you come for Adventureland, just know there’s going to be a bloody battle.
Don’t change
Very bad.
Fun story, I worked with a guy who went to Emory with McCandless and his only commentary was that he was exactly the type of insufferable guy who would rail about materialism and go die of starvation just a few miles from civilization.
The fact that a cult developed around the guy is so awful. They had to move the bus where he died to keep dumb white kids from hurting themselves while attempting to make a pilgrimage there.
No doubt. The guy was a poster child for oblivious narcissism. I doubt he gave a second thought to how his parents paid for a $200,000 college education.
The part that really gets me in the film is how he treats his sister. I get that he’s angry at his parents over alleged abuse, but he completely ghosts her too.
I agree he was an idiot and shouldn’t be emulated, but I think his story needed to be told. We live so isolated from nature that many people (well, maybe not Australians) forget that nature can kill you if you don’t know what you’re doing.
The movie doesn’t really come off like a cautionary tale in my opinion though. If it did, there wouldn’t be so many people who find the story alluring.
He starved to death because of his own arrogance…what other way is there to read it besides cautionary and tragic?
His actual death certainly plays as tragic, but all of the moments leading up to it seem very appealing. The movie makes him seem like he’s reached some kind of enlightenment by rejecting society and doesn’t do enough to show how stupid and reckless everything else he does leading up to his death is. For example, there’s the scene were he is told that he needs a permit for rafting and he does it anyway. The movie plays this as a charming strike against needless bureaucracy, when in reality, someone could have died trying to rescue his dumb ass. The entire movie is framed to make him out to be a noble poet rather than the thoughtless jerk that he was. It’s filled with beautiful scenery and acoustic Rock. Dropping out of society and becoming a bum seems great as long as you don’t eat the wrong berries. And people keep following in his footsteps because of it.
I think you’re too limited by simplistic dichotomy. Someone can be a noble poet, a thoughtless jerk, an arrogant bum; appealing in some aspects, infantile in others, and both a cautionary and tragic tale for others. That’s interesting and rich, and he’s a fully-explored, three-dimensional character. Just because people misunderstand and emulate his adventures doesn’t make it a bad movie, it just makes for stupid viewers.
Sure. People have facets. But the movie leans way harder towards the noble aspects of McCandless’s character than the ignoble ones to the point that it becomes borderline hagiographic. It’s unfair to call the viewers stupid when they’re young and impressionable and they’re picking up the primary message that the movie is giving them. Propaganda works.
I find it hard to buy that the film is this “noble” version of his story when he dies from his own mistakes at the end. It can even be argued that what he did was unconscious suicide imo. And no, it’s not unfair to hold people accountable for what they do, especially adults who don’t stay to watch the end of the movie that they supposedly adore.
Are you really under the impression that a person dying can’t be portrayed as noble? Wait until you hear about this Jesus Christ guy everyone is into. Personally, I thought McCandless was pretty insufferable and dumb in the movie, but I watched it at 40, not 17. I think you’re severely underestimating the effect that a movie can have on someone and ignoring the fact that someone dying young can make them seem even cooler. Especially when they’re portrayed as dying for their principles. It’s one thing for a teenager to worship someone like Cobain or Morrison or Hendrix who died because of their own choices but at least left behind some great art. McCandless didn’t even do anything useful for anyone.
Are you really still under the impression that it has to be either/or? If you think Jesus’s story was simply “noble”, you’re just bad at reading and understanding stories beyond surface level, or you’re selling something. Also, I’m not underestimating any human’s capability to emulate and imitate, good, bad, or indifferent. I’m fully aware of it and where it can lead if it’s the wrong path. There’s no defensible point here to made about “harm” or “responsibility” if we’re just discussing the merits of the movie itself as art. I get it, you thought he was dumb. We got there. Fair enough. But ironic, considering you brought your own flavor of propaganda to something you accuse of being just that.
I’m not sure what about my statements strike you as propaganda. Obviously, there’s no objective standard by which we can judge a piece of art. My personal opinion is that it’s a bad film. One of the reasons is because I didn’t find the main character to be likable. Another is that it makes a person into a hero who is not deserving of such treatment. A third is that by doing so, it’s inspired other people to make similarly stupid life choices. I have at no point argued that people can’t be multi-faceted. What I have instead argued is that the film Into the Wild, as a lot of films do, sanded down the rough edges and made Chris McCandless seem like someone he was not, a noble figure. While he was certainly not history’s greatest monster, there was nothing remotely noble or worthy of emulation about his bullshit transcendentalist quest to run away from life. The film pretty openly takes the opposing viewpoint. If that viewpoint wasn’t already put forth in the book about him, the film wouldn’t exist in the first place and if it somehow did, no one would watch it. If you disagree and think there was a noble facet to what he did, then I think you’re wrong and it’s as simple as that.
I originally responded to: “The movie doesn’t really come off like a cautionary tale in my opinion though. If it did, there wouldn’t be so many people who find the story alluring.”I really don’t care about your opinion on the film’s quality, I was more interested how someone would justify the second sentence with honest reasoning, but you basically proved my point when you brought up Jesus. The ultimate “tragically noble” character of all time is also the most alluring of all time, hands-down. That’s where the initial black-or-white dichotomy you rolled out failed your own standards of argument. That’s all. It’s not some Sean Penn “propaganda” that made McCandless an object of romanticisation, it’s literally just the prospect of an interesting early death. Jesus. Hendrix. Keats. Joplin. The list goes on…and it’s just fine to make movies about them.That’s not something you can honestly lay at the feet of a piece of art, regardless of how dumb you think the character is. Just my opinion, though.
only impressive if he called it beforehand
Into the Wild is not bad, actually think it’s quite powerful in many parts (especially scenes with Catherine Keener and Hal Holbrook).
Another underdiscussed K-Stew film: Still Alice. She didn’t have a huge role, but got strong mileage out of her quieter scenes with Julianne Moore.
Nailed it.
I’m sure film-for-film, Michael Caine’s got a similar ratio.
I bet Twilight paid for a pretty sweet house.
One can only hope.
This doesn’t surprise me at all; it’s always been fairly apparent that her real passion is indie scene and she just takes the occasional big-budget hollywood project for the paycheque so she can keep doing indie movies for basically nothing.
Happiest Season with her and Mackenzie Davis was fun, though Aubrey Plaza stole it so she might not want to acknowledge that, though her chemistry with Aubrey Plaza helped
Happiest Season was such a frustrating movie. Stewart was great in it, but IMO Davis’ character was irredeemably awful for what she put her girlfriend through. The film didn’t do the work necessary to make me believe that Stewart’s character would take her back. Definitely should’ve just ended up with Plaza’s character instead
One of my favorite things about Happiest Season is how high-stakes the central conflict is and how genuinely awful Davis’ behavior is. A lot of people have an insecure, thoughtless, and generally unpleasant version of themselves that comes out when they’re around family/childhood friends, and Stewart’s mix of hurt feelings and confusion give the movie a neat perspective. That said, the audience really does have to make a leap of faith that their relationship is worth it.
I get that Harper’s family brings out the worst in her. I respect that. The thing I can’t move past is that Harper basically holds Abby hostage within the movie’s premise. If the script had had Harper tell Abby what was up before they left for the trip, and Abby had made the active choice to go before it was too late for her to realistically make another choice, I would be fine. It would solve so much.
But instead, Abby can’t realistically make them turn back when Harper discloses the truth. She has no choice but to go ahead, and I think putting her in that position reflects irredeemably on Harper, at least in the context of the story. Obviously, the movie wants us to think ill of Harper so Dan Levy’s wonderful speech about judging people for their coming out stories can have its maximum impact on us. But that one narrative choice undercuts all of it for me. It’s so much cleaner if Dan Levy (and by extension the film) can point to Abby and say, “You knew the score, and you had a chance to opt out. Now that you’re here, you have to be supportive.”
My armchair rewrite of the film is that the one dude who was hung up on Harper should’ve come to Abby after she stormed out. Just a brief second of him saying to her, “I feel better now that I know I never had a chance. She really is that incredible, don’t let her go.” That vote of confidence from someone who’s known Harper her entire life was all I needed the movie to give me to persuade me that Abby should give her another chance.
I found it groundbreaking, in that it proved that even films featuring LGBT characters can be mediocre. It eases the pressure for each new film to be important. Clea Duvall approached this project seemingly with the goal of making something that would barely pass muster on Hallmark, and she succeeded.
that movie would have been great if it was 1995. or heck, even 2003.
5. The RunawaysI saw this in theatres with a friend of mine. Halfway through the movie, she leans over to me and says, “Is this based on a real band, or is it fictional?” In her defence, she was born in 1989, but still!I rewatched Panic Room not too long ago; does anyone else remember some critics being weird and acting like it was a “twist” that Kristen Stewart’s character was a girl** or that it was somehow profound and challenging gender norms because she rode a scooter and bounced a basketball? On the other hand, I did listen to the director’s commentary and David Fincher talked about how another girl had been cast and eventually dropped, partly due to how “irritatingly feminine” he found her (that girl was Hayden Panettiere). Fincher had many lovely things to say about Stewart, though he predicted that she would never be the type of actress to be involved in paparazzi drama or get cheap tabloid coverage on the E! Network… but who could’ve seen Twilight coming?Plus, an honorable mention for William Eubank’s UnderwaterUnderwater rules, it’s the second-best 90-minute “there are scary things in the water” horror movie I’ve seen in recent memory (the best is Crawl). You gotta pay the T.J. Miller tax, but into every life a little rain must fall.**Granted, I’m someone who did pause Fatal Attraction to google if the kid was a boy or a girl, but come on, look at that haircut!
Panic Room would be my pick for some of the five, but I haven’t seen The Runaways.
It’s bad. And I’m a rock ‘n roll guy who is usually inclined to like rock ‘n roll movies, even though they are usually pretty cookie-cutter. This one couldn’t even manage watchable.
It was a shit show. And that’s coming from a huge fan of Lita Ford, Joan Jett, and The Runaways. Shit got seriously sugarcoated for Joan’s benefit. Lita Ford said Joan’s manager came to her and offered her $1,500 for the rights to her story for the movie. She told him to Fuck Off. On top of all of that, it just sucked. Kristen Stewart, being, well Kristen Stewart with her non-acting ability of just staring blanky at things. To the squeaky voiced Lita Ford. Scout Taylor played her well, but, the fucking voice.
If you want to see a real movie about The Runaways, check out Edgeplay. It’s a documentary by one of the bassplayers. And surprise! Joan refused to be in it and they couldn’t use any of The Runaways songs where Joan sang or was listed as a writer. So, Suzi Quatro opened up her catalogue and let them have free reign to use her songs. But it’s true to Joan Jett form of being an asshole about all things Runaways for the past 45 years.
Yep. I’m a fan. You should’ve had to work hard to get me not to like it.
I’ve hear of Edgeplay but have not tracked it down yet.
it’s on youtube, hurrah!
i was prepared to be disappointed by the runaways and it still exceeded my expectations of disappointment.
It’s not great by any means, and I could never fully buy in because Dakota Fanning was too big a star and I could never see her as anyone BUT Dakota Fanning, but KStew absolutely fucking KILLS in it to the point that I forgot I wasn’t looking at Joan Jett most of the time.
I’ll bet Panic Room was not fun to make. Fincher gets good results, but I think he pushes people over the edge. And I bet Jared Leto just makes everyone listen to Thirty Seconds to Mars between takes.
Better than sending them rat carcasses and used condoms. But just barely.
I abhor Fincher’s insane process. 50, 100, 200 takes. It’s emotionally abusive is what it is, and I have yet to see a performance in one of his films that justified this approach.
The only performance worth watching in a Fincher movie is the color grading.
Maybe he’s just such a terrible director of actors that the first forty takes are terrible, and the process is justified merely by finally achieving a serviceable take.
Which I could see that. Personally I’m not very adept with actors either when I must direct them, which is why I spend time prepping with them, giving them the resources they need to build up the performance, and then rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. When the time comes for me to shoot, if I don’t have it in four, five takes, I haven’t done my job.
If you haven’t got it in 5 takes, you don’t know how to get what you’re looking for.
Could definitely see Leto trying to sell Dwight Yoakum on the band
My god I would fucking pay to watch Yoakam just sit there staring at Leto while the latter spouted whatever bullshit nonsense he thought made his band sound cool.
I don’t know, I’m willing to bet Dwight Yoakam wouldn’t have put up with that shit.
Yeah, if Fincher weren’t so hard on his actors his movies would be rapey, overheated pulp instead of rapey, dour pulp. Dude wears the hell out that casual Friday ensemble, though.
Leto’s cornrows were his idea, so you already know the vibe on set.
Panic Room would be my pick for some of the five, but I haven’t seen The Runaways.I liked Panic Room, but even when I first saw it int the theater, I thought it was a bad movie, well directed. In the hands of another director, it would have probably been totally forgettable.
Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper were two movies that made me reassess my opinion of Stewart. I enjoyed both films.
Agreed on both accounts.
Those quotes make Fincher sound like a real piece of crap, huh
You gotta let a Fincher finch, yo!
and “Finch” in this case means “talk crap about young female actors and rate whether paparazzi will want to fuck them in the future”? Yeah, I guess realistically I can’t stop him.
I felt bad for Panettiere; like, you’re talking about an 11-year-old!
Coincidentally I noticed just last night that Underwater was on HBO Max, so I finally watched the first half or so. Great so far, and I love that it doesn’t dither about and waste time (to this point, anyway). Gave us the start of the disaster almost immediately.
Why the fuck is David Fincher commenting on a child actor’s likelihood of paparazzi coverage? That’s gross.
I think he was trying to pay her a compliment vis-à-vis being a serious actor (the comments were prefaced by praise of her professionalism and acting ability), but as is typical, he couldn’t do it without putting women against each other, so it became “She won’t be like those other actresses, who end up as tabloid fodder.”
Maybe it’s just my shitty eyes but I had so much trouble with Underwater. It was a cool premise and it was satisfying to see that happen to Miller but everything was so muddy. Yeah it took place 5 miles under the sea but did it have to be so dark? /s
Man, who’s the rat bastard who stuck the Requiem for a Dream song under an ad for a damn kid’s movie?
That Requiem music was in every other trailer put out between 2000 and 2005. From Lord of the Rings to Zathura. I hope Clint Mansell got a nice mansion out of it.
He did. You can see Beaver Patrol mansion from the A34 near Northampton.
Glad someone else remembered this movie.Not a “good” movie but a solid and entertaining kid’s movie. Which is rare, as too often sitting through a kid’s movie as a parent is like hammering nails into your teeth…
Reprogram!
I only recently found out that this was a spin-off sequel to Jumanji. My mind was blown.
Zathura is great. It got John Favreau his Iron Man gig.
Yes! Finally someone post this. Underated movie ever
Yes! Finally someone post this. Underated movie ever
Damn you, Gabrielle, you beat me to the “That’s right, the five Twilight movies” joke.
One Twilight Movie could swallow the sea.
Another had an iron neck.
The Third Twilight Movie could stretch and stretch and stretch its legs
The Forth could not be burned and the Fifth Twilight movie could hold its breath indefinitely.
Oh holy SHIT that’s sending me on a nostalgia trip. A problematic one, now, too!
Bravo!👏👏👏👏👏You win the interwebbies! Everyone else, thanks for playing, come back tomorrow
It must feel pretty demoralizing when you can tell the movie you’re acting will sucks. But do bad actors know they suck?
Mark Wahlberg doesn’t seem to know
Even though I’m glad her and Pattinson’s careers managed to survive Twilight, I didn’t care for how they acted like they were too cool for it.
I agree with that. It seemed like they were unappreciative (for lack of a better word) for the doors those roles could/would open up for them. But in hindsight, I wonder if they were playing the long game – meaning, they acted that way about their big franchise to create opportunities in smaller, indie films they both seem to like.
I think they were just young and terrified that it was all they would ever be known for. Because yeah, you’d think they would able to enjoy the enthusiasm the movies created among their fans.
Everyone is too cool for it.
on one hand i sort of appreciated their candor (as someone who wasn’t a fan of the thing), and as long as they show up and do their job who am i to say they aren’t allowed to be ‘over it’.on the other hand i think they each made like 100 million dollars for those last two twilight movies so you’d think they could step it up a little.on another, third hard i also loved how despondent pattinson looked in his dc fandome video.
I don’t know how well the “show up and do their job” criterion applies here because Stewart in particular was known for doing a bad job of acting in those movies, and now we know she has the talent to do better.
I think it was less that they were too cool for it and more that they were fucking terrified of their own fans.
Panic Room is pretty clearly a better movie than either Adventureland or The Runaways, no?
Yes. And I enjoyed them all in different ways! But yes.
Am I the only one that enjoyed American Ultra?Yes? Ok…
also the most tolerable Jesse Eisenberg performance
I think the most tolerable Eisenberg performance is Adventureland, which the article author correctly put on the list of Stewart’s 5 good movies.
Definitely.
He’s good in Roger Dodger, Squid and the Whale and honestly, I like Cursed.
Stewart seems to have that effect on him.
Hey, don’t insult evil Michael Cera like that.
Also the most tolerable Topher Grace performance.
I honestly don’t think I’ve seen a movie with Jesse Eisenberg in it – but I really loved his episode of Conan O’Brien needs a friend. So that made me like him. He’s a very down to Earth, normal guy.
well I’ve enjoyed Conan for 30 years so perhaps I’ll give that a listen
Based on the trailer and reviews I thought it would a goofy slapstick action movie, but the first few minutes are a weird depressing hellscape and my wife made me turn it off.
I didn’t terribly like the overall story, but the vibe between Eisenberg and Stewart was good.
I liked it fine. The action managed to be over directed but also kind of generic, but Stewart was really fun.
Oh no, you are certainly not. I found it terribly entertaining.
Found one!Yeah, I really liked this but it definitely flew under the radar. Jesse Rosenberg and Kristen Stewart have such good chemistry (see Adventureland). Somehow she makes him seem likeable.And Walton Goggins doing his best Joker impersonation is pure entertainment!
nah that was a blast. total hidden gem.
I liked it, not fantastic by any means, but fun.Though knowing it’s Max Landis behind the writing wheel makes it feel icky if I ever go back to watch it again (which is funny because knowing Max Landis was behind the writing wheel made it feel fun the first time I watched it, how views change lol).
I actually quite enjoyed it. I know it was kinda panned, but I enjoyed the whole experience.
I know Max Landis sucks but that is a super fun 😙💨 movie
I logged into Kinja for the first time in almost two years to represent my love of American Ultra. Max Landis is the worst kind of tool, but that film is a ton of fun.
Scrawler!
It was entertaining and I dug it far more than I expected to. I don’t know what I was expecting, actually. Its a weird little movie to pin down.
To be fair, you’re probably one of the only ones who watched it.
I liked it, but I have a weakness for those movies where someone unlocks hidden badass powers (see also: Limitless). It’s not really a great movie, though, as Topher Grace’s character carries the idiot ball throughout the entire movie. (He could have taken out Jesse Eisenberg’s character pretty easily with one sniper very early in the movie, but instead throws wave after wave of his almost-as-good-but-not-really assassins at Jesse because… who knows.) The scene at the end was nice, it was like the beginning of a movie that I would have rather seen.
I’ve never seen the Twilight pix— but K Stewart is absolutely riveting as an actor. She’s got that kinetic energy that leaps from her body thru the screen. She acts with her whole body with a twitchy electricity; it reminds me of Diane Keaton, actually. Always interested to see what she’s doing next. Also— Happiest Season was a terrific Rom-com. But The Clouds of Sils Maria is a fukn masterpiece.
She’s fucking brilliant and, yeah, electrifying. Personal Shopper is her best performance – and her best film, one of the most quietly terrifying ghost stories ever put on screen. But its power depends a lot on her portrayal of that character, and the mixture of fear and longing and uncertainty that she transmits at every moment. But I also think of that moment in The Runaways when she’s working out “Cherry Bomb” in the studio with Kim Fowley. It’s kind of a hackneyed beat, but you believe it, because she sells it. And she sells it because she has the rare ability to make thought/discovery interesting to watch. To communicate a complex and unresolved inner life.Oh, and Adventureland is a masterpiece.
The very last scene, last lines of dialogue in Adventureland…possibly my favorite “Boy Gets Girl” moment in any movie. Like this explosion of chemistry and daydream and romance all in one moment.
Couldn’t agree more.
Michael Shannon is the only thing that made runaways even palatable. Adventure land is completely forgettable, but if I had to pick a stand out performance it’d be Martin Star not her
Clouds of Sils Maria is a terrific movie, and I’d like to watch it again sometime. But I’m a sap, and when Happiest Season ended I had to fight the temptation to go back to the beginning and watch it over.
I wish I could be captivated by her work, but when I see her on camera, she always seems like she’d rather be anywhere else, which takes me out of the film. I never got the impression she enjoys what she does, at least, not when watching her on camera.
I think her too cool for school public persona leeches over into the way she presents on camera, so I always start out vaguely annoyed when she turns up. That does seem to be changing, and may have previously been a combination of trying to distance herself from Twilight and general youth/immaturity. Pattenson has become one of my favorite actors. I finally caught up with Good Time and holy shit was he straight amazing.
It is sort of weird how she does the ironic detachment thing, eh? But I guess maybe that’s what draws me in. Like Walken’s weird speech pattern or Bette Davis’s cigarette. LOL
Yeah it’s like she puts on her “acting face” and calls it a day. It’s hard to see her characters as anything other than Kristen Stewart acting. I mean, that’s kind of all you need to be a movie start, but definitely not someone I would consider a master of the craft.
This is exactly how I feel about it too, and I’ve read/heard this sentiment before.
Honestly if you saw her or Pattinson in those movies, you would assume they would never act in a movie again. They are terrible(their acting and the movies in general). But its clear that they took the money and clout from them and actually became good actors.
I mean, she was already a known quantity from Panic Room. Her first movie was an AM Homes Adaptation directed by Rose Troche. Then she did that kids’ movie Julianne Moore’s husband directed and some more hollywood stuff because she was in In the Land of Women with Adam Brody and by then she was like 16 and gorgeous, but she’d mostly been cast as like sullen gothy tomboys before that, so playing Bella was an unusual choice…and then she was friggin awful in those movies. They are more the outlier, apart from that she has now had the career I expected when she did Panic Room.
Everyone, I’m worried that all this talk about how awful Stewart and Pattinson were in the Twilight saga is making us forget how awful and charisma-deficient Taylor Lautner was, too.
yea but Pattinson was already Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter. Lautner was nobody and to nobody he has returned
Dude, he was Shark Boy…
but he was so good as Shark Boy
In fairness, Lautner has paid the proper price for his awfulness by never being heard from again.
I just had to look if Julianne Moore was married to Jon Favreau
no she’s married to the friendlicker (at least that’s how I can’t help but see his name) or maybe they divorced, it’s hwood after all. (checks) they’re still together, those crazy kids
Wow— I had forgotten she was in Panic Room. Jodie Foster is another actor she reminds me of. Foster radiates intelligence– a Hepburn Know-it-all-ism. But K Stew has her sense of physical fierceness.
for Jodie Foster, Panic Room and Flightplan were when we were into serious “okay wtf did they do to off her husband this time?” territory lolYeah, I try not to hold Twilight, and how awful she was in it, and that whole thing of her homewrecking with that Snow White director thing against K-Stew, she has also used her powers for good. Charlie’s Angels probably sounded really good on paper…wait I mean in concept because apparently it was already dead by the time it made it to a script :0 What would I like to see her do next? Actually, because he was good with Pattinson, although I would prefer Cronenberg reunite with Sarah Gadon for his comeback I also wouldn’t mind seeing if they w——HAHAHAaa he has already cast her in it!
She is terrible in the first Twilight – as is Pattinson – but that is likely a mix of awful script and not-great direction – her and Pattison both act like there’s a massive sewage leak in the school, grimacing in a “I am smelling an overwhelming amount of poo and I don’t know where it is coming from” way.She does a decent enough job in New Moon – for the five minutes of that movie that is actually good – and through the rest she’s doing the best she can with awful material but I don’t think that any actor could do a decent job with that role.
for the five minutes of that movie that is actually goodI’m sure I’ve seen New Moon more than once just from Twilight-obsessed friends and family watching it while I’ve been around, but the only thing I remember from it is the scene of the bad CGI wolves chasing Rachelle Lefèvre through the woods, and that’s mostly because of Thom Yorke’s “Hearing Damage”.
There is a bit where she is helping wolf boy fix a motorbike where I was like “this has potential” but then it got dumb again immediately.
No one would describe Stewart’s Twilight performance as “kinetic energy that leaps from her body through the screen”, she’s basically catatonic—especially in the first movie, which I re-watched recently. But it is actually a good performance for what the character conceived by the book demands. She’s an introverted fish out of water (moved from the city to a small town against her wishes), who then falls for the enigmatic hot guy, and quickly has her heart broken by the enigmatic hot guy. She plays heartbreak-induced catatonia very convincingly, and it’s well handled by the editing, it’s just not very compelling to watch. It’s kind of a necessary down-beat in a romantic arc that would, in any other teen romance, have set-up a euphoric up-beat. Except in this movie, because it’s book one of four, there’s never an up-beat, and the down-beat drags on and on and on.
I’ll never know. I just have zero interest in Twilight. I haven’t been a teenage girl for many years now. Lol.
I’ve been in the room when Mrs. F. binges these movies every few months. There’s nothing riveting about them. Best avoided to keep your positive thoughts about her.
Lol she’s valium incarnate
Yeah, I don’t see that, in fact quite the opposite.
She usually looks like she just got hit in the head with a baseball bat and is a little concussed.
I know she is fine cognitively, but something about her acting makes it seem like she isn’t.
I’ve also never seen Twilight. But what I have seen of both Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison is quality performances. My friends (who at this point are mostly in their 30s) always push back when I praise either one of them… and frankly, I’m not sure most of them have seen Twilight, either. It’s funny (and unfortunate) how a general impression communicated through pop culture can dominate a person’s reputation, even with people unfamiliar with their work…. maybe especially with people unfamiliar with their work.
I don’t know why people give her so much grief. She is a great actor. I always believe her when she’s on screen, and she conveys subtle emotional damage for her characters better than most.
The monotone drudgery of her performance in the Twilight movies aren’t very great but Pattinson is also monotone drudgery in that movie and he’s a fantastic thespian as well (and I have Underwater on in the background right now and Tenet just before that). I think they were putting something in the water on set.
It really annoys me that she gets a bad rap from people who
don’t actually watch her in good things and like to make lame-ass jokes
from 10 years ago.She’s really good!
lol
Wow, I don’t think we’ve been watching the same Kristen Stewart movies. While I don’t believe she’s a bad actress, I get a “I’d rather be doing literally anything else” vibe from her in every role. That works sometimes, Adventureland comes to mind.
Having not seen any of her good films, but having seen Twilight (I was drunk! It was with Rifftrax!), that is such a contrast with her there where she (and to be fair, everyone) is just a static dead fish.
Perusing her filmography, it seems that the only KStew movie I’ve seen is Jumper, and I don’t remember a thing about it. So I will not be commenting in this thread.
So I will not be commenting in this thread. ಠ_ಠ
Glare all you like. You can’t make me comment in this thread. I won’t do it.
Curse your silence, Madptarmigan!
You go, bird!
i’m gonna follow your lead and not reply.
Never mind replying–I’m not even going to read this comment.
Reading? I’m not even turning my PC on to log into the AV Club.
Wait, you have electricity? Lookit Fancypants over here!
Not KStew related, but as a big fan of the Jumper novels, that movie is a fucking travesty in every way and I blame it at least to some degree for the actual good Jumper thing, the Youtube Premium show Impulse, not lasting longer than it did.
Also she has a 3 seconds part at the very end of it. Probably would have been a key character in a sequel that never happened.
She’s literally in the last two minutes of the movie so I don’t think you can actually call that a KStew movie.
Adventureland wasn’t a bad film per se, but at the time I think it was marketed as being a real silly, slapsticky Apatow-ish kind of comedy, but it turned out to be way less funny and not quite as introspective as it would have you believe.
I enjoyed her in Charlie’s Angels. For that matter, I enjoyed most of that movie–it was really dumb, but in a fun, entertaining way.
I feel like you have to qualify that statement – did you enjoy the movie KS was in, or the one that everyone else was in?
They cannot be distinguished, because the other people were often reacting to her (and I enjoyed Naomi Scott’s performance, too).
I suspect that K-Stew was in a different movie from the rest of the Charlie’s Angels cast from how much fun she was having vs everyone else.
Panic Room is one to really be proud of.
5, huh.
Into the Wild erasure!
Most actors would be lucky to star in five really good films.
All time champion John Cazale.A five in a row film run that likely will never be topped.
Are you being serious? Someone is else mentioned John Cazale and him batting 5 for 5 and I wouldn’t call that luck, but talent. Stewart is lucky she has got to work with some really great directors, just sucks and those directors took a gamble on her because she has the screen presence of a disabled scarecrow
Those Olivier Assayas films are both belting, I’m glad she rates them, too.For what it’s worth, Michael Madsen reckons he’s only been in something like five good films, and he’s decades older/
Adventureland was awful.
You’re just mad you never won a big ass panda
You are.
I like your name. I used to have a username that started with Jiz… so whenever I see your name I sometimes momentarily think it’s me.
I wouldn’t go that far.I wouldn’t NOT go partway.It’s overestimated.
you guys forgot Catch That Kid
It makes for a very good headline but “very good film” is setting the bar high. For example, Panic Room and Zathura aren’t in the list, and they’re both very decent films. Considering that we can’t have any conversation about her anywhere on the internet without anyone asking to “please explain her because they just don’t get her”, her career has been quite consistent. It’s doubly impressive considering she’s been an out gay woman for a big chunk of it.
Is she? I thought she was bi?
She is. I meant gay in the large sense of the word.
This article is missing Panic Room. Also, I have absolutely no memory of a 2019 Charlie’s Angels.
Very big marketing campaign, very little impact, very short theatrical run.
And then a global pandemic to push out memories of things that are…. not important.
It was on Amazon last year for no extra charge, I caught it there.
No clue about her movies. All I know is I just clicked on a notification in my profile and it actually correctly took me to the linked comment.HOLY SHIT is Kinja actually fixed less broken now?
Quick, respond to any replies you get before it breaks becomes more broken again!
HOLY.FUCKING.
SHIT.
The tyranny of lowered expectations.
it’s not completely redeemed in that i can’t just go to my comment history and click on old comments i made and go to them. also literally nobody will ever read this comment
This is extremely exciting! For real??
For now at least.
I’m not getting “like”(is that what they’re called in this format?) notifications, but the comment reply did indeed take me here! How exciting.
Is this true? Could it be?
Yeah, I think they fixed notification links. But profile comments are still mostly missing links to their relevant articles, & you still can’t load past the first 4 replies in Pending mode, & they stopped giving notifications for upvotes.
Kinja is still not great at getting you to greyed comments (test it on me), but hurrah for their one teensy success.
Yeah, it wouldn’t let me link to you directly though it has for other greyed users so who the fuck knows. I actually was able to see and reply to you right now because for whatever reason, your greyed comment showed up above another comment that I had clicked a link to. Lucky you, lol.
Looks like Kinja is still wonky with Pending comments. I was able to link to your comment and approve/reply, but there are other people in the “greys” that it won’t let me link to their reply and thus I can’t see them (sorry to those folks!).
They made a change on Kinja that made things slightly better instead of worse? Are we in topsy-turvy land? Is this a sign of the end? Are dogs and cats going to start living together?
I noticed it last weekend!!!!!!!!!!But it doesn’t seem to be working this morning.
Panic Room erasure
She was pretty good in that Totino’s Pizza Roll film.
Was the twist that she did not end up with diarrhea?
Oh no, there was a twist, & that wasn’t it.
I watched all of them together when SNL posted them to YouTube, and I was surprised at how well they worked as both a joke on the genre and the genre itself—I thought the horror film version (I think that was the one with Larry David) was genuinely unnerving, and with the Stewart one, I found myself saying, “Wait…this is SNL, it’s a pizza roll commercial, and this is as genuinely erotic as the indie/foreign self-realization movies it’s based on.”Don’t know who came up with the skits, don’t know what they were thinking, but SNL can do some really bizarrely effective stuff when they do acting and not just joke-telling.
The Runaways is a great movie. She and Dakota Fanning act their asses off.
Underwater also rules.
i am sad this movie seems mostly forgotten; i really loved it.
Fun fact from the director’s commentary: they told T.J. Miller to treat the toy bunny like it was real because they were going to add a CGI bunny in post, so that’s why he’s being such a weirdo with it.
TIL! i’ve been wanting to re-watch it lately, so i’ll have to pay extra attention to that; i think i remember the Moon Pie more than the bunny, but maybe i thought it was just TJ Miller being weird as he does, and not for a particular reason.
Did he have one line of dialogue that wasn’t a joke? It was so annoying and what happened to him was deeply satisfying.
It does. We haven’t had a lot of underwater monster movies lately, but they used to be all the rage in the late 1980s/early 1990s, partly inspired by The Abyss (although it itself really wasn’t one). Leviathan, Deepstar Six, The Evil Below, The Rift, etc.
Are we supposed to argue with her?
I know folks like to snark on her, but Adventureland was great and I thought she was really good in it.
Yeah I can come up with exactly 5 good movies that I’ve seen Stewart in:1. Certain Women (this movie is broken up into 3 segments, and the 3rd and final one with Stewart is the best one. Though it’s more her co-star in this one, Lily Gladstone, that really steals the show)2. Adventureland3. Clouds of Sils Maria4. Personal Shopper5. Panic Room
No mention of “Into the Wild”? I loved that film and she was great in it.
I liked Personal Shopper and Adventureland. Honestly those are really the only two movies I’ve seen her in so she’s 2 for 2 in my book.
The Happiest Season erasure in this article….I feel sick…
She’s doing herself down here.
My five for her are probably…1. Adventureland
2. Into the Wild
3. Personal Shopper
4. Catch That Kid
5. Clouds of Sils Maria
I never saw the Twilight movies, but I DID see Snow White and the Huntsman, and I have a hard time seeing something with her in it after that. What an odd production overall.
I couldn’t suspend my disbelief that Charlize Theron would be jealous of Stewart’s beauty. Or anyone else’s beauty.
May I suggest Mila Kunis?
I haven’t seen the film…and I don’t know why, it seems up my alley. However, from the trailer it seemed to be ‘inner beauty’ and people were drawn to Snow White because of that…
I thought she was terrible in Twighlight and never believed she (or Pattinson) would amount to much of anything. But at this point I’m totally willing to accept they were playing the characters accurately and faithfully as written and directed. I’m also happy they’re helping cement the “Daniel Radcliffe” model of making a fuck-ton of money as young/child actors in a lucrative franchise, getting set for life, and then focusing most of the rest of their career doing cool/interesting shit.
Having seen Personal Shopper, I think she’s overcounting her total.
I watched “Adventureland” the other day. Not that great. Stewart sleepwalks through it, just like nearly every other movie I’ve seen her in. I’m guessing this is one of the movies she couldn’t wait to end filming.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in a movie, but she was a terrific SNL guest.
My vote is for the former list rather than the latter. I would also add Panic Room.
Whenever I see Stewart on camera, I think of when Rifftrax did Twilight, and kept riffing “Line?” when she appeared on screen and looked utterly lost.
Team Moustache Dad!Also, make sure you’re armed with your staring fly.
No love for Zathura?
Meanwhile: She’s never made one.
I would hope ‘Into the Wild’ would be on the list because I personally love that movie, but I admittedly have no clue how the rest of the world views that movie, if the rest of the world has even thought about it at all in the last decade.
the film was well received on release and having by chance rewatched it last week it still holds up – the soundtrack and vignettes with side characters being the strongest points. i think the usual internet revisionism has seen its standing fall, between emile hirschs behaviour and a general cynicism towards white male protagonist/messiah complex fare. i watched it first as a mid 20s malewith a distrust of capitalism but i could still recognise at the time dude was engaging in some poor choices and i had no desire to pilgrimage to magic bus. still enjoyed the movie.
Into the Wild is a banger.
Welcome to the Rileys?
Though it was a small part, I really liked her in Into the Wild. She really sold me on that performance.
Plus, an honorable mention for William Eubank’s Underwater.If T.J. Miller’s character had died in the first five minutes, this would be the best movie of 2020.
And I know it wasn’t a big part, but I thought Stewart was great in Into the Wild.
Is she going for the Nicole Kidman vampire look?
Personally, five seems high. But I recognize that the difference between good and very good is 100% subjective.
Um… Zathura? Anyone?
Are you sure Kristen would call Charlie’s Angels a dud as far as no fun to film? Is there something I missed during the promotion of that movie because she and her costars seemed to be having a blast together.
She was the best part of Charlie’s Angels. Looks like she was having a ball.
Never seen any of the Twilight movies but she was great in Adventureland.
Adventureland is what really made me fall in love with her. One of the best soundtracks ever, too. K-Stew is an exceptionally talented actress.
There are two kinds of people – those that think “only 5 really good films” is a low number, and those that think it’s a high number.
2.5 okay movies maybe. I will say I did believe her performance in panic room as a diabetic child slowing approaching a coma. She looked sickly and used her wooden style of acting to really sell the whole role.