Brian Cox is having a moment. Not only is he back as Logan Roy on Succession, and not only has Succession already been renewed for a fourth season, but Cox also has a memoir out, and it’s dishy. He talked about lots of famous people in an often catty and deliciously gossipy manner, plus he did me the favor of talking about Keanu Reeves.
Even Brian Cox, the only man on the planet willing to hate on Michael Caine, cannot withstand the charms of Keanu. About Keanu, he said that the immortal one is a “seeker” who has become “rather good over the years.”
So I want to thank Brian Cox for giving me this opportunity to talk about Keanu Reeves. And by talk about Keanu, I mean post pictures of Keanu. Has he become rather good over the years? Was he always rather good? No to both! He’s consistent, in that he’s inconsistent. These days, nobody can speak ill of Keanu or his acting, because we recognize that he is some sort of otherworldly beneficent creature sent to bring us a glimpse of a better world. But over the years?
Sometimes he was terrible, like in Much Ado About Nothing. And sometimes he was surprisingly great, like in Parenthood. Sometimes he ruined movies, like in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And then occasionally he held his own with people like Dennis Hopper, as in Speed. And sometimes, in very special movies like Point Break (the best movie ever made), he was BOTH terrible and brilliant, just like the film itself.
That’s the thing about Keanu–you never can tell whether he’s an artist or a block of wood. But who cares? He’s the nicest guy in Hollywood and he’s just as nice to look at.
Did you know that Keanu stars in a movie with Ana de Armas called Exposed? Well, now you do!
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But did you ALSO know that Keanu stars in a movie with Ana de Armas called Knock Knock? I did not know that, but look what happens in this film:
That appears to be a slumber party with Keanu, and so this movie has now been placed on my Must Watch ASAP list.
He also starred with Disgraced Aunt Becky herself, Lori Loughlin, in The Brotherhood of Justice, where his hair looked like this.
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Speed gets another mention, for no reason other than that it’s the film where I stopped being annoyed by what an idiot Keanu seemed to be and started admiring him for cutting his trademark floppy hair and revealing that he looked like this.
Also, the other characters in Speed spend the whole movie making fun of Keanu’s character for being an idiot–which instantly renders Keanu’s “dumb” persona purposeful, thereby removing all sense that he’s actually dumb.
Keanu gets around, playing all kinds of love interests. In The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, he was the self-described asshole opposite Robin Wright’s reformed wild child.
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In Something’s Gotta Give, he was the inappropriately young doctor opposite Diane Keaton’s older woman, and most of us were baffled why she would choose Jack Nicholson’s womanizing jerk over the soulful Dr. Keanu.
Has anyone besides me ever seen A Walk in the Clouds? Maybe not, but I’ve seen it roughly three million times, so I make up for the rest of you not knowing that WWII soldier/aspiring vintner/bad singer Keanu is the most romantic lead ever in this gorgeous film.
He was the rich kid slumming opposite River Phoenix’s street hustler in My Own Private Idaho, breaking our hearts along with Phoenix’s.
But Keanu’s best appearance as a love interest is in 2019’s Always Be My Maybe, where he randomly shows up playing himself–and himself is an overly emotive, self-involved, competitive lunatic. It’s hilarious, and even more so because we all know Keanu Reeves is actually none of those things.
Wait, what was I talking about? Brian Cox?
Anyway, go read all our Succession posts over at our Succession Show Spotlight!
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