You haven't seen L.A. Confidential?? Bro! That's one of the best flicks of the last 20 years. A host of actors were robbed of best-supporting actor nominations. Besides Spacey, Guy Pearce is superb, and it just may be the best acting job Russell Crowe has cranked out yet. He is incendiary. Chewing up the screen may be a cliché, but Crowe chews it up and spits it out. Give yourself a treat and rent that sucker. If you can, watch it on as good a TV as you can find. You won't be disappointed.
No, somehow I haven't, although I've read about him. A strange dude! Thanks for the reminder... I'll go pick up Black Dahlia. Isn't that the first of the LA Quartet?
As with any actor, Kevin Spacey has been in his share of bad movies. But he's been in more than the average amount of good movies, especially ones where his acting stood out as superb. Here is the list... Besides the obvious already mentioned ones (The Usual Suspects, L.A. Confidential, American Beauty), another of his highly underrated roles, imo, is in Seven. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find another actor who could have played that role as perfectly as he did - regardless of his relatively limited screen time in the movie. Heck, imo, the new Superman would have been a mediocre movie at best without him (and Parker Posey) - the guy who played Superman was, frankly, void of any character, Kate Bosworth didn't really strike me as a good Lois Lane and the story line was pretty weak (and highly cheesy at times - the end of the airplane scene). There are undoubtedly better actors out there, but Spacey certainly has some skillz, yo!
Everyone I know who's seen it, loved it. If it hadn't been for that juggernaut known as Titanic, L.A. Confidential would've been a shoo-in for Best Picture that year. Kim Basinger won an Oscar for that movie for God's sake, so you know it was a special film. About the only problem I have with L.A. Confidential is how a certain character survives at the end when all signs seemed to indicate his/her demise.
