8) John Goodman
For me, John Goodman in any Coen brothers movie equals awesome, and John Goodman in any non-Coen brothers movie equals meh. That’s not to say I don’t care all that much for his supporting work in Flight or The Artist; it’s just that he doesn’t ever seem to get to really play around and show what he’s capable of unless it’s in one of the Coens’ oddball scenes. For some reason, they seem to just get each other, not unlike Samuel L. Jackson and Quentin Tarantino.
The peak of their collaboration, with respect to the wonderful Inside Llewyn Davis, is surely The Big Lebowski, which benefits from the manic rage of Goodman as Walter Sobchak, a superb counterweight to the laid back Dude that is Jeff Bridges. The relationship and contrast between the two might be best characterized, in fact, by the manner in which they use the word “fuck.” While Bridges is tremendous, Goodman’s performance is so deeply committed that lines like “Shut the fuck up, Donny,” “Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules?” and “This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass” become instant classics. I’m a late adopter of obsession over this movie.
