Another list of the greatest performances.

 So, apparently the folks at Total Film Magazine stole my idea, and compiled a list of the 150 greatest performances ever.

I find it interesting that they also came up with the number 150.

Total Film is a British movie magazine, and this publication and its U.K. counterpart Empire Magazine are both great magazines. They are fun to read, and the writers are simply people who love movies, not snotty film critics who only like artsy-fartsy foreign movies, or like the people at Premiere magazine, who are little more than paid shills for the movie studios. These are just a bunch of guys who love movies, and, like me, are more into the big special-effects movies (at least the good ones) and genre movies. The magazine definitely is geared toward guys, though. (One of their lists is the 69 greatest movie sex scenes.)

This was an interesting list, to say the least. Their knowledge of movies is obviously a lot more broad than mine, and there were a lot of performances from older movies on the list which I either need to see or have no desire to see. First of all, here are the performances that were on my list, and their rank on the TF list.

Robert Shaw, Jaws (150)

Christian Bale, American Psycho (148)

Eddie Murphy, Bowfinger (136)

Morgan Freeman, The Shawshank Redemption (134)

Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast (128)

Ellen Burstyn, Requiem for a Dream (115)

Uma Thurman, Kill Bill (103)

Daniel Craig, Casino Royale (98)

Paul Giamatti, Sideways (96)

Reese Witherspoon, Election (92)

Tom Hanks, Cast Away (91)

Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove (80)

Edward Norton, American History X (72)

Frances McDormand, Fargo (71)

Kathy Bates, Misery (65)

Nicolas Cage, Leaving Las Vegas (61)

Brad Pitt, Fight Club (59)!!!!

Johnny Depp, Edward Scissorhands (55)

Leonardo DiCaprio, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (53)

Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs (48)

Sigourney Weaver, Aliens (47)

Samuel L. Jackson, Pulp Fiction (45)

Malcolm McDowell, A Clockwork Orange (41)

Joe Pesci, Goodfellas (37) - it says in this article that Pesci retired from acting... I can’t blame him after “8 Heads in a Duffel Bag.”

Peter Finch, Network (36)

Hilary Swank, Boys Don’t Cry (16)

Al Pacino, The Godfather Part II (4)

Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will be Blood (3)

28 performances in common! Not too shabby.

Their greatest performance of all time was Nicholson in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” I have only seen parts of this movie, and that’s why it wasn’t on my list.

There were also several very daring and creative picks I have to give them credit for, like Christopher Guest in “This Is Spinal Tap” (These go to 11!), John Cusack in “Grosse Point Blank” (which I should have put on the list), Sly Stallone for “Rocky,” (ditto), Steve McQueen, the epitome of coolness in “The Great Escape,” (He was on my list for “The Sand Pebbles”), Winona Ryder in the cult classic “Heathers,” Mark Wahlberg as Dirk Diggler in “Boogie Nights,” Harrison Ford as Han Solo in “Star Wars” (A performance he is supposedly ashamed of), Schwarzenegger as the title role in “The Terminator,” Matthew Broderick in “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off,” Steve Martin in “The Man With Two Brains,” and of course, the Brits can’t leave out Sean Connery as James Bond in “Goldfinger,” the quintessential 007 movie. Finally, you know these people know what they are talking about, because Jeff Bridges as The Dude in “The Big Lebowski” earns a spot on the list.

Kudos for putting Daniel Day-Lewis at #3 for “There Will be Blood.” He really was that good.

It looks like each actor can only appear on the list once... I guess that’s why Brando isn’t listed for “The Godfather.” Instead, they recognized him for “On the Waterfront.”

Overall, I think it's a very good list with a wide variety of dates and genres. No list is perfect though... There are a few I disagree with like Kim Basinger in “L.A. Confidential” (was she even acting?) James Spader in “Crash” (the 1996 movie) which was a sick, twisted and downright awful movie. And Ellen Burstyn’s performance in “Requiem for a Dream” was way too low at #115. I would put it in my top five. And out of all of Russell Crowe’s great performances, they recognize the horrendously overrated “Gladiator?!”

Finally, where the hell is Gordon Gekko, the greatest movie character of all time?