OVP: Actress (2017)

OVP: Best Actress (2017)

The Nominees Were...

Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water

Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Margot Robbie, I, Tonya

Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird

Meryl Streep, The Post

My Thoughts: We are finishing off our acting trophies with the leading ladies of 2017.  Similar to Best Actor, four of the five women cited here were in Best Picture nominees, though unlike Best Actor, Margot Robbie's work in I, Tonya was definitely part of a Best Picture contender.  Though we had more than one real-life person in this lineup, only two biopics is actually pretty good for a category that increasingly cannot handle anyone that isn't part of a real-life story.  This is also, arguably, a category where the winner didn't age well less because of the content of the film, but more because she'd win just three years later.

We'll get the Frances McDormand of this category out-of-the-way, and I want to be forthright in saying-McDormand's the best part of Three Billboards, and I don't mean that as a backhanded compliment.  She's very good, end of statement.  The way that she plays a mother of a girl (a dead girl) whom she had a truly complicated relationship with in life, and finding that girl's killer is the only way that she'll ever find some sort of absolution with a relationship that she struggled to maintain in real life...it's good stuff.  McDormand is better in her other two winning roles, but this is stronger than Streep in The Iron Lady (which, to be fair, is also a very good performance even if its real-world connections make it harder to embrace), and it's certainly not Bergman in Orient Express.  In hindsight, knowing that Nomadland was around the corner, Oscar probably would've gone with someone else, but that's been my main lesson of the OVP-you should only consider the year at-hand.

Had McDormand lost, one assumes that it would've been a race between Sally Hawkins & Saoirse Ronan for the win, though Hawkins role in the Best Picture winner might've given her the advantage.  Playing a mute woman, she uses her expressive eyes and body language to communicate what her voice cannot.  This isn't Holly Hunter in The Piano, though.  Hawkins doesn't play Eliza consistently enough for my tastes.  The script, but also her own actions, feel like she is reacting always and it feels like both writer & actor are underestimating the strength of their character.  It's not bad, but it's not an Oscar-worthy turn.

Ronan, on the other hand, might be turning in her best work-to-date in Lady Bird, which totally upends the mannered loveliness we are used to from her in roles like Brooklyn.  Here she plays Lady Bird as a young woman, perhaps a great young woman, who cannot see beyond what's in front of her.  She's wise...for her age.  The way that Ronan rips through Lady Bird's emotions, eventually finding moments of tranquility that she'll remember into old age, but never modulating the rough teenage emotions here (there's never a knowing wink to the adults in the audience over how much Lady Bird will clearly treasure her mother by the time she turns thirty), is so smart & exact.  Ronan's accent work is flawless (there's no hint of Ireland in her vocal work), and her chemistry with every costar is perfect.

Like Ronan, Margot Robbie arguably hits her best performance-to-date with I, Tonya.  The tone of I, Tonya I found unfortunate (aren't we over the faux documentary aesthetic yet?) & I struggle with my real-world attitudes toward Harding (the film is too sympathetic to her, in my opinion), but neither of those things take away from Robbie's excellent work in the lead.  She finds depth in Harding that other actors might've ignored.  Look at the way that she can't understand why a poor girl in a trailer park's idea of glamour isn't glamorous enough against that exuded by Kristi Yamaguchi or Nancy Kerrigan.  I love that we see her frustration as the film continues, with her succeeding, but never enough, never in the way that her peers do.  It's thoughtful work from Robbie, and she makes the best parts of the film.

Meryl Streep's most recent acting nomination (if she's not cited in 2022, it'll be the longest Oscar drought of her career) for The Post is definitely a nice change-of-pace for the actress.  Ever since 2006, the woman who became famous for her precise realism in the 1980's has played increasingly cartoonish, exasperated characters onscreen, not always to the grand effect she achieved in movies like Silkwood or the Bridges of Madison County.  I don't quite think there's enough here for it to count alongside those pieces-of-work (there are times when Streep feels a bit lost in Katharine Graham's worldview), but she finds an aesthetic here of a hard-working, ambitious, talented, but also otherworldly wealthy (and occasionally unaware of it) newswoman that feels like it's the work of a character actress rather than a movie star, something late-stage Meryl has been reluctant to try.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have ten women nominated for these awards.  For Drama it was McDormand who took the prize against Hawkins, Streep, Jessica Chastain (Molly's Game), & Michelle Williams (All the Money in the World), while Comedy/Musical went to Ronan against Robbie, Judi Dench (Victoria & Abdul), Helen Mirren (The Leisure Seeker), & Emma Stone (Battle of the Sexes).  SAG skipped Streep but kept the rest of Oscar's lineup, putting Dench in instead while BAFTA also skipped Streep in favor of Annette Bening (Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool), with McDormand taking wins for both.  In terms of sixth place, I honestly have no idea.  It's clear Streep was vulnerable, but reading my notes at the time I favored Bening for the potential shock runner-up, given she was overdue at the time for a trophy (still is), a "build-the-momentum-for-a-win" nod might have made sense.  You could make an argument for Chastain, Dench, or Williams though and I wouldn't disagree.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: In a different universe, where Woody Allen's name on a movie wasn't considered a death knell for a film's awards chances, Kate Winslet would've returned to the Best Actress category for the first time in a decade.  Her work in Wonder Wheel is extraordinary, the best performance Allen has gotten out of an actor this century.

Oscar’s Choice: McDormand could not be denied all of 2017, and took the victory against Ronan & Hawkins.

My Choice: I'll do the reverse, giving Ronan's work the nod against silver medalist McDormand, though both are better than I think they get credit for in retrospect.  Third is Robbie, followed by Streep & then Hawkins.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Are you with Oscar & Frances, or do you want to join Team Lady Bird in my corner?  What's it going to take for Meryl Streep to get another Oscar nomination?  And who the hell was in sixth place here?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also in 2017: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2017

Past Best Actress Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019

OVP: Actress (2019)

OVP: Best Actress (2019)

The Nominees Were...

Cynthia Erivo, Harriet

Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story

Saoirse Ronan, Little Women

Charlize Theron, Bombshell

Renee Zellweger, Judy

My Thoughts: We will finish off our 2019 acting races with a trip to Best Actress, generally one of my favorite categories at the Oscars.  There has become something of a debate on social media about using the word "weak" to describe a field or year for acting, particularly actresses, and in some ways I get it.  No year, if you aren't creative, should you struggle to find five decent performances (though I'll be real-2020 Supporting Actor I had to get creative), and it does feel pejorative to refer to a complete year as "weak."  But if we're being honest, if there are going to be "strong" years for acting, you also need to have weak years, and in 2019, the lineup of performances that Oscar assembled was, well, weak.

You see that in the work of Renee Zellweger, mounting a comeback.  Zellweger is capable of a good performance (all of these women are-these are not "weak" actresses by any stretch), but her work in Judy never rises above looking like the starlet.  Zellweger uses her own voice (a risky move playing such an icon), and while I don't really care (mimicry is overrated in movies), she doesn't give us a proper sense of the starlet.  There's nothing in Zellweger's work that gives you the impression that the woman she's playing was once one of the most famous women in the world-no sense of entitlement, no sense of stature...her Judy Garland feels like an empty vessel, and Judy Garland was hardly an empty vessel.  The movie falters as a result.

Saoirse Ronan reunited here with her Lady Bird director Greta Gerwig, a smart choice since Ronan has never felt so at-home with material as she does with Lady Bird, but this is a deceptive bit of casting, and for my money, a mistake.  Jo March is a feminist icon, and certainly the easiest of Alcott's sisters to modernize, but Ronan's performance gets stuck in that modernization, never properly grounding the part.  This is in contrast to Florence Pugh, who gives so much depth to Amy that for the first time in anything I've ever seen from Ronan, I can honestly say she was upstaged, and found lacking.  Ronan delivers her fiery speeches with flare, but for a character that everyone insists is special, Ronan doesn't make her so by giving us enough depth.

About the only character who could get away without depth is someone who has spent most of her life trying to hide it, which is why Charlize Theron fares better than Ronan or Zellweger in Bombshell.  Playing Megyn Kelly, a character that most of the audience is going to dislike (for a variety of reasons) isn't easy...we want our characters to be like Jo March, not like Megyn Kelly, and the script (and Theron) play into that by making her difficult to root for.  This is a neat trick, and while Theron's work isn't always as strong as her costar Robbie, it's a trick that's nearly as impressive as the makeup job that Theron has been bedecked in.  Theron gives us an antihero worthy not of our praise, but at least of our consideration.

Scarlett Johansson gets an even harder task in Marriage Story.  Here she's playing a character that must remain free of judgment, and someone we're meant to understand before we know if we should root for her or not.  Johansson doesn't bring easy answers to Marriage Story-her Nicole is a woman who doesn't always know what she wants, but is aware of what she doesn't, and that's the key to her performance-Johansson isn't intimidated into making Nicole easy-to-define, and as a result we end up somewhat like Charlie-trying to pin down a woman who doesn't want to be pinned down.  It takes a disciplined performer who knows their script inside-and-out to do that without it becoming frustrating, and Johansson, sixteen years after finding the heart of a similarly wandering woman in Lost in Translation, finally finds an equal to that movie.

Cynthia Erivo's entrance into cinema in Bad Times at the El Royale was so dynamic & distinctive that you'd be forgiven into thinking that Harriet was a deserved nomination...Erivo is going to deserve "Oscar nominee" pretty quickly in her career, why not get it over with?  But her work here isn't outstanding.  Saddled with a paint-by-numbers biopic where she's expected to do all of the heavy lifting, she doesn't give us enough insight into Tubman the woman before trying to instill in us Tubman the legend.  It's not a bad performance by any means, and it's the one saving grace in a middling movie, but it's not what we normally associate with Oscar-worthy, and the Academy should've held out for something more challenging from the actress.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have ten women nominated for these awards.  Best Actress in a Drama featured the entire Oscar lineup (as I've mentioned throughout the 2019 retrospective, not a creative year for AMPAS), with Zellweger winning, which means Musical/Comedy brought us five new names: Ana de Armas (Knives Out), Cate Blanchett (Where'd You Go Bernadette?), Beanie Feldstein (Booksmart), Emma Thompson (Late Night), and the victorious Awkafina (The Farewell).  SAG gave their trophy to Zellweger, though they skipped Ronan in favor of Lupita Nyong'o (Us), while BAFTA bumped Erivo for Jessie Buckley (Wild Rose), again going with Zellweger.  At the time it was Nyong'o who many (including me) thought might be the fifth place slot that eventually went to Theron, and I suspect she was in sixth place.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I'd keep my winner & otherwise start from scratch.  This would've been a different jolt of electricity if Oscar had nominated Nyong'o, who is working in a genre film but also has great vocal & body physicality that she brings to her work (which is usually Academy catnip).  Mary Kay Place's specific cadences in Diane are just as worthy as any character actor standing out for Oscar in recent years (and would've been a brilliant inclusion), and Alfre Woodard proves she's one of the best actresses in Hollywood with her haunted, intrinsic work in Clemency as a woman at the crossroads both professionally & personally.  Finally, as I mentioned in Supporting Actress, I considered Jennifer Lopez to be giving a lead performance in Hustlers, and I would've nominated her.  A+ movie star turns like this are hard to do, rare, and the kind of thing you can only do once.  It's a damn shame that Oscar didn't include her somewhere for what will probably be a career-best performance. 

Oscar’s Choice: There's a case to be made for either Johansson or Erivo getting this trophy, but for some reason no one questioned the idea that Renee Zellweger had earned a second Oscar sixteen years after she won her first, despite making almost no movies between the two.

My Choice: Johansson, without question-the only performer trying for an all-timer list.  I'd follow her with Theron, Ronan, Zellweger, & Erivo.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Are you siding with ScarJo over in my corner, or were you part of the collective thought process that honored Renee's Judy?  Why was it that Theron was able to topple Lupita given both are reliant on physical transformation?  And why do some character actors (like Jonathan Pryce) get their day-in-the-sun but others (like Mary Kay Place) are barely noticed?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also in 2019: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Animated Short, Live Action Short, Previously in 2019

Past Best Actress Contests: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

Ammonite (2020)

Film: Ammonite (2020)

Stars: Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Fiona Shaw, Gemma Jones, James McArdle, Alec Secareanu

Director: Francis Lee

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Three years after the fact, I still am haunted by the majesty of God's Own Country.  I saw the film in theaters with few expectations-it had two cute guys, likely making out, which generally was enough for me in 2017-but it was a brilliant piece of filmmaking.  I ended up citing all four leads for nominations at my personal awards that year, and put it on my list of the Best Pictures of the year.  It was dwarfed in most discussions by some of the other queer cinema of the year (specifically Call Me By Your Name), but Francis Lee's work is delicate & wonderful, particularly in the film's final, aching moments.  As a result, I was eager to see Ammonite not just because of my love of the leading ladies (both favorites), but more so because I wanted to see what Francis Lee does with another gay love story.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is based at least on real people, though it's not clear how much of these real people's lives are accurately depicted here.  Mary Anning (Winslet) is a paleontologist who lives in Southern England, collecting fossils along the seashore to sell to tourists.  As we discover from an incident with Roderick Murchison (McArdle), Mary was once a great discoverer of fossils, and at age 11 found a fossil that is now in the British Museum.  Roderick asks Mary to watch his wife Charlotte (Ronan), who is suffering from depression after the death of her child (it's not clear if the child died in infancy or childbirth), but she must stay as he goes on an expedition.  Mary nurses Charlotte back to health, and they start a love affair (despite it being the 1840's), one that poses a ticking clock challenge as eventually Charlotte must return to her husband.

I'm going to end the recap there because it's kind of where the writers do.  Ammonite is glacially-paced (which is not usually a problem for me-if there's a criticism I can look beyond it's a movie being too meditative).  However, it also doesn't know what to do with Ronan's Charlotte, and neither does the actress, and this is a problem because much of the film's final third rests with Charlotte.  Charlotte seems intent on the two spending their lives together, but in doing so reveals that she doesn't understand Mary at all.  Mary is a woman whose work comes first, and who must have her independence, and Charlotte offers her a gilded cage.  This would have been a good, if melancholy, ending, but it actually ends with Mary going to the British Museum to see her discovery, and Charlotte is there, smiling.  That's the ending-no hint as to what comes next, and because we don't really know Charlotte (and she doesn't understand Mary) we can't infer anything (this isn't Carol).

That being said, Winslet is so good you might not care.  Winslet, an actress of great verve, whose earth goddess routine doesn't feel well-suited for a sullen, bitter woman who clearly loves deeply, but not in ways that can make her connect to others.  Yet here she is, bringing decades of pain, dismissal, and hope to the role.  There are no big moments where she lashes out, the actress never takes the easy way with her character & a tear-stained breakdown, but it's all there.  The boredom with her life, the way that she adapts to routine, the genuine pleasure she gets from the work, and the possibility of Charlotte-it's all there in Winslet's mannerisms, voice, & eyes.  I'm someone who has been subscribing a lot to late-career Winslet (I adored her work in Steve Jobs and thought she was even better in Wonder Wheel, giving Woody Allen perhaps his final great performance), so I'm not surprised or laying on "best in decades" praise here (Wonder Wheel remains her best work since Eternal Sunshine), but she continues to be one of our finest working actresses, and this is another master class from an (under-appreciated?) actress.

OVP: Little Women (2019)

Film: Little Women (2019)
Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothee Chalamet, Meryl Streep
Director: Greta Gerwig
Oscar History: 6 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Actress-Saoirse Ronan, Supporting Actress-Florence Pugh, Costume Design*, Score, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Confession time-I've never read Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.  Another, weirder confession-I've never seen any of the onscreen iterations of the film.  Not the one with Kate Hepburn.  Not the one with June Allyson.  Not even the one with Winona Ryder.  Somehow, despite all being "OVP" (we'll get to them all eventually), I'd never seen this story onscreen until I saw Greta Gerwig's recent iteration.  This also presents something of a challenge, because while I know enough about the story to be dangerous (weirdly due to that one Friends episode where Joey & Rachel read this book and The Shining), I don't know it by heart, and based on some of the reviews I've read, Gerwig's film takes a lot of different directions that aren't typical for interpretations of Alcott's story.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is not told in the traditional more linear fashion that past versions (and the novel) were told.  Instead, it jumps straight to the middle, and we get an array of flashbacks into the lives of the four March sisters.  We see Amy (Pugh) already in Paris with Aunt March (Streep), trying to pursue Laurie (Chalamet) after he's just been rejected by her sister Jo (Ronan), who is off trying to become a successful writer.  Meanwhile, Meg (Watson) is back home struggling to find a way to make ends meet with her poor husband, and we soon learn that she once had the opportunity to have a far wealthier end to her story.  And of course there's sweet, piano-playing Beth (Scanlen) off in the corner getting deathly sick.  Told back-and-forth, the film gives us backgrounds about these young women, as well as an indication of where they're going.

As I'm not familiar with the story, I was, while not confused, a bit perplexed.  Gerwig's film is clearly meant to be a companion piece to someone who is already a fan of this tale, not simply a "stand alone" story as if it's treated as such, it's kind of messy.  The film is charming, no doubt, and has enough of the original tale to make sense, but it has less impact when you are halfway to realizing Amy will marry Laurie and not Jo since that's the opening scenes for those characters, or that you have a strong indication that Beth is about to die from the film's beginning.  I am a firm believer that you shouldn't have to read the book to understand and enjoy the movie (they need to exist on different plains), so I am going to fault Gerwig's film a bit here even though others will claim this is totally acceptable.  As it is, the film is good, but it's not great, and that's because it feels kind of jumbled and without enough narrative stakes for the audience as written.

That said, she assembled an amazing cast and a slew of actors that likely saw Lady Bird and were willing to sign up for anything that Gerwig was willing to do after that.  Chalamet is sexy & spoiled as Laurie, but one has to assume that this is a character that feels pretty dismissible for fans of earlier iterations of the picture as you can't really root for such a man.  He re-teams here with his Lady Bird costar Saoirse Ronan, who plays Jo as an ardent feminist, someone who is more concerned to be what she said she's always wanted to be than, as the film progresses, who she might secretly wish to be.  The scene toward the end where she realizes that she might have made it work with Laurie is devastating, but I don't think Ronan does enough groundwork to make the rest of her character stick.  This is in contrast to Florence Pugh, who kind of steals the picture from the cavalcade of Oscar nominees as Amy.  She gives a character that could be easily discarded a verve and passion that you wouldn't expect, and along with Midsommar, shows that she's an actress that has arrived in 2019.

OVP: Actress (2015)

OVP: Best Actress (2015)

The Nominees Were...

Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

My Thoughts: Despite some people's protestations, there are good years and bad years for films.  This is particularly true when you look at field-after-field of nominees from a given year for the Academy Awards.  The Best Actress race of 2015, however, is a really good year, and just staggeringly better than Best Actor, to the point where I wonder if this might be the biggest gap in quality ever amassed between the two fields.  Case in point, the least of these five nominees would place at least second in the men's field, and the remaining four would knock my Best Actor choice (Michael Fassbender, see links below for that race and a whole host of other 2015 contests) out of the field.  This might not be the best field of actresses Oscar ever assembled, but it's (in my opinion) the best field of performances we have yet to profile in this series after nearly a decade of write-ups, beating even 2010's Best Actress.

We'll start with, therefore, the woman who actually managed to win in such a field, Brie Larson.  Larson's work in Room is the type of performance that would win in most Oscar seasons.  Robbed of vanity for the first half, she has remarkable chemistry with young actor Jacob Tremblay, essential since they're the only two people they've seen other than a violent kidnapper in years.  Larson's best parts of her performance, though, come in the back-half of the movie, when she encounters the perverse celebrity of a kidnapping victim (the scene with the television interview, made necessary by her legal & medical bills, is unflinchingly hard to watch), and has conversations with her mother (played by Joan Allen) that she's been bottling up for years, not able to express them to anyone as she tried to create a world for her son.  It's a towering achievement, and a worthwhile winner in such a field.

On the opposite end of the "Oscar newcomer" list is Charlotte Rampling, 43 years Larson's senior but also enjoying her first nomination in 2015.  Rampling's work in 45 Years is (I'm trying really hard to avoid hyperbole but failing here) one of the truly great acting creations of this young cinematic century.  The way that she unfolds a thoughtful woman who never really pondered the beginnings of her relationship is stupendous, as is the way you can tell what she is thinking from the slightest of shifts in her gaze or the rearranging of her hands.  It's a soft, subtle performance, one filled with mystery (what will she do with her life?), but Rampling plays all of her cards.  One of the finest actors of her generation, she is that rare person to get an "old age" nomination for the best performance in their career.

We continue on this list of "best she's ever been" with Cate Blanchett, someone whose two decades of fame affords her lots of competition for that title.  But Carol (and Carol) is Blanchett firing on all cylinders.  The line readings, the way that she seems to be saying goodbye to the love-of-her-life from the moment they meet, is magical.  Carol is a romance with a ticking clock, but it's the rare one where the leading actress clearly knows that there will eventually be an ultimatum, because she's been there before.  Blanchett brings a layered calm to her Carol, knowing that she must speak in code not only for her own safety but also because she doesn't want to scare Therese away.  The scenes with Chandler & Paulson, where she lets some of her guard down and you see what's real and what's just there to entrance is brilliant.  It's the sort of role that potentially no actress of her era (or any era) could have played so well, and Blanchett never scenery-chews in order to steal a scene.  Flawless.

Saoirse Ronan is probably not giving her career-best work here (I'd give that nod to Lady Bird two years later in her young career), but that shouldn't be confused with her not giving a truly seismic piece-of-work in Brooklyn.  Given an introverted character still inclined to study the world, her Eilis is the rare character study at the center of an epic.  The way that she falls in love, first with Tony & then with Jim, is pure joy.  Perhaps the best scene of the movie, and one that only works because of what Ronan has done before, is when Eilis is confronted by her nosy neighbor over her marriage to an Italian-American even though she's been seen with the local Irish boy.  The way she states that she's proud of her husband, but leaves a shred of doubt in her voice (that perhaps, given the chance, she might just pick Jim to stay in the country she loves), is devastating and a tour-de-force of acting.

Which brings us, finally, to Jennifer Lawrence.  Lawrence got a lot of ire from me that year (and a lot from a lot of people in the wake of this nomination...worth noting she hasn't been back since) considering that there were better performances to cite that year rather than a 25-year-old getting her fourth Oscar citation.  However, her work in Joy is good, it's just not up to the level of any of these other women (or Lawrence's past nominations).  The scenes with Bradley Cooper are splendid, and I loved the ways that Lawrence hinted at the eventual magnetism that Joy Mangano would bring to her TV personality.  The script is more at fault than Lawrence, giving us a host of one-dimensional side characters and a meandering plot that should just be focusing on Joy's rise, not the inherent need to continually take her down.  But Lawrence is good, and this performance is better than you remember.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Golden Globes of course split their nominations between Drama and Comedy/Musical, but even with that split we still are missing one of the eventual nominees (Rampling). Larson took on the Drama field, besting Blanchett, Ronan, and Oscar's Supporting Actress nominees Rooney Mara (Carol) and Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl), while Lawrence took the Comedy/Musical over Melissa McCarthy (Spy), Amy Schumer (Trainwreck), Maggie Smith (The Lady in the Van), and Lily Tomlin (Grandma).  SAG took a weird tactic with a rich year by putting Helen Mirren (Woman in Gold) and Sarah Silverman (I Smile Back) for bad movies alongside Blanchett, Ronan, & the victorious Larson, while BAFTA also went with Larson, but substituted out Ramplin & Lawrence in favor of Smith & Vikander.  All-things-said, unless Alicia Vikander's The Danish Girl was in sixth place, my money is that it was Smith, who was at the height of Downton fever at the time, had just had massive hits with the Marigold Hotels, and normally gets in when she's a contender.  In 2014 or 2016, she almost certainly would have gotten her seventh nomination.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Perhaps no year is better to illustrate the "snub" problem than 2015's Best Actress field.  Every year magazines will proclaim a field of "snubs" which are really just actors that were floated as potential nominees, rather than finding people you'd put in in place of someone else.  Melissa McCarthy, Alicia Vikander (Testament of Youth) & Blythe Danner (I'll See You in My Dreams) are definitely worthy of an Oscar nomination, but as they aren't better than these performances save Lawrence, I couldn't include them since I'd have to put in Juliette Binoche (Clouds of Sils Maria) as an aging, mourning actress in a complicated relationship with her assistant in the Top 5.

Oscar’s Choice: Larson won easily.  Second place probably would've been Ronan considering Lawrence & Blanchett had recently won (and Rampling's political comments had made giving her the trophy at the time impossible), but no one was beating Brie Larson.

My Choice: I have to go with Rampling, giving possibly the best performance of the decade.  Blanchett follows, with Larson, Ronan, & Lawrence at the back (but there are no losers here).

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Are you with me on Team Rampling or are you staggered I didn't follow the crowd with Brie Larson?  Despite being good work, anyone actually want to defend Lawrence's nomination being one of the year's five best?  And if not, who would you throw in her place?  Sound off in the comments!

Also in 2015: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Documentary Short, Live Action Short, Animated Short, Previously in 2015

Past Best Actress Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

OVP: Mary Queen of Scots (2018)

Film: Mary Queen of Scots (2018)
Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie, Jack Lowden, Joe Alwyn, David Tennant, Guy Pearce
Director: Josie Rourke
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Costume Design, Makeup & Hairstyling)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars


Compared to Vice, pretty much anything would be considered a step-up, so Mary has the advantage of being paired with one of the more unpleasant movies I watched in 2018, and by comparison it's considerably better.  For starters, I didn't leave this movie seething with rage, both at the protagonists and at the director for have no perspective on the main characters.  But just because it's sitting alongside something as bad as Vice doesn't make Mary Queen of Scots worth saving.  A stronger effort, but a pretty generic one that has been told a thousand times, and not even two of the most promising young actresses working today can save it from being anything other than disposable.

(You really need a spoiler alert here?) The film focuses mostly on the early life of Queen Mary (Ronan), from her time returning to Scotland after her husband died in France, to eventual rebellions against her rule and her being imprisoned by her cousin Elizabeth (Robbie), who would eventually have her executed for treason.  In a year brimming with category fraud, you'll be forgiven for assuming that Robbie is a co-lead before viewing it, but this really is more Mary's story than Elizabeth's, which is something of a change-of-pace for this (cinematically very well trod) tale.  The film follows Mary as she struggles with her all-male counsel, her complicated marriage to Lord Henry Darnley (Lowden), and how she eventually is out-maneuvered by the noblemen who steal her baby and make her abdicate the throne.

The film has very little in the way of character understanding, which is a shame as this is a pretty good cast.  Mary, as played by Ronan, gives a number of truly fine speeches, but we don't get to know much about her other than a 21st century-type of feminism that feels historically inaccurate in the context of the film.  Look at the way that Ronan seems so understanding of her friend's homosexuality, or how Elizabeth's entire existence is predicated on a decision of "whether to marry or not to marry."  These are the writers striving for a more modern-telling of the story, but in the process they sacrifice a lot of realism without much reward.  One could argue the most interesting character in the film is Lord Darnley, himself a valid claimant to the English throne, one could argue just as valid as the one that Mary held though that's little explored here (they both gained their claim to the English throne through their grandmother Margaret Tudor, who was the eldest daughter of King Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth's paternal aunt), and is played in the film as gay.  I liked the way that Lowden gave him a sense of pathetic entitlement, but the writers don't seem to have much to say about anyone other than the queens, and as a result he's lost, as is Joe Alwyn's Robert Dudley (yet another 2018 role where Alwyn's unnatural beauty is the main asset he's allowed on the screen).  The movie as a result meanders and plods, leading up to the only thing worth mentioning: the meeting of the two queens.

Here, we are gifted a pretty rare treat-a truly great scene in a film that is otherwise mediocre.  Ronan & Robbie, only sharing the screen for a few minutes, make the most of it with truly splendid line delivery and a well-choreographed walk through a series of sheets.  In a better film, this would have been truly spellbinding and legendary-two sometimes sisters, sometimes rivals who nonetheless respect the other for being the only person who understands their strife, finally speaking unfiltered without fear of retribution, perhaps for the only time in their lives.  Both actresses nail the scene, and if Robbie gets an unlikely Oscar nomination for this picture (as she did with the SAG Awards), this is easily her clip.  Unfortunately, it just stands out like a sore thumb as too-good-for-the-movie, which is otherwise generic and a blip on both actress's trajectories.

On Chesil Beach (2018)

Film: On Chesil Beach (2018)

Stars: Saoire Ronan, Billy Howle, Emily Watson, Anne-Marie Duff

Director: Dominic Cooke

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

One of my biggest pet peeves when people talk about movies is when they state "but it's not loyal to the book."  This always feels like an absurd claim, and is usually leveled, at, say, adaptations of particularly popular authors like JRR Tolkien or Dan Brown, because people have long loved what was on the page and want to see their version of events come to life.  This can't work, though, cinematically, as books and films are two different beasts, one allowed to look inward and the other required to have some outward vision.  This would certainly need to be true of On Chesil Beach, a breathtaking but short novella that is largely conversational between two people on the night of their wedding, awaiting the pressures of their honeymoon.  The thing is, though, that this was a major test of my maxim "the book and the movie don't have to be different" as On Chesil Beach is quite possibly my favorite book.  Ever.  I read it every single year, oftentimes finishing it on a beach in the morning as it's terrible romantic and therefore it's going to be difficult for me to unbiased in both directions for this movie.  However, I want to give it a shot as I caught the film last night and am still feeling it in my gut.

(Spoilers Ahead) Like the book, the film is thin on plot and requires a great deal of feeling.  It revolves around Edward (Howle), a young man who aspires to be a writer of history books, who is desperately in love with a young woman named Florence (Ronan) who is quite "prim" and full of great love for her string quartet, for which she has great aspirations.  The film follows as Florence is deeply-frightened to lose her virginity to Edward, who is eager to have sex with his new wife and consummate the marriage.  The film starts with two waiters sniggering at the young couple, knowing what is about to happen between the two, and continually flashes back to the initial lives and meetings of these two, which is where most of the fleshing out of the film happens from the book, as this is of less consequence in the novel, since so much of McEwan's book revolves around Edward's internal thoughts.

The movie's biggest problem is in these flashbacks, as they aren't particularly necessary.  It's impossible for me not to compare the film to the book I've read so many times, but one of the exquisite, jewel-like creations of the story is the way that Florence and Edward feel anonymous, characters that feel so interchangeable with our own circumstances.  Giving them specific back stories doesn't always work.  I tolerated Florence's scene with her sister being shocked by the sex manual (while probably unnecessary, it at least underlined points crucial to the plot), but the scene with Florence's father and Edward playing tennis felt a bit much, and doesn't have the subtlety that the novel allows (in the book, it's lightly implied that Florence may have been molested by her father, though it's so light that you might not catch it at first or it might just be reading into things...in the movie, it's much more heavily implied and therefore makes her sexual reluctance seem to come from a different place, one the director/screenwriter don't explore other than a silent scene flash).  The stories about Edward's complicated relationship with his frequently nude (and mentally damaged) mother (Duff) also make the story seem more specific, ignoring that it would be natural (regardless of hangups with their parents) for two young people just before the Sexual Revolution to struggle with intimacy.  This doesn't work in the movie, and makes the story feel rather trite and conventional.

The titular scene is still marvelous, as it is in the novel, and the best part of the movie.  On Chesil Beach, where both of their lives changed forever, they state things they are too immature to communicate, with Florence proposing an open marriage, assuming that her sexual desire will never grow, and Edward, unable to see that her proposal comes from fear and not a lack of love, rejects the offer.  Howle and Ronan are wonderful in this scene, she filled with hopeful reservation and he with boorish immaturity.  The film slides poorly into the final pages of the novel, where McEwan departs from the book quite a bit, giving Florence a much happier ending than Edward, which doesn't work at all on the screen, and changes the message of the movie.  In the book, Edward and Florence never fall in love again, their lives lived out quietly.  What makes McEwan's work so magical is that, though it's short, he devotes 80% of the novel to that one night, because it's the most important of either of their lives.  He shows that in a fit of youth, they both altered their best chance of happiness forever, and pride & misunderstanding caused them to live lives that were always a bit hollow, absent of their soulmate.  In the movie, however, Florence gets largely what she wants, and clearly eventually gives in to sexual desire (having multiple children), while Edward lives a life of loss.  This changes the message of the movie, putting the onus of fault entirely on Edward, and not on a society that made them both have repressed feelings of sexuality.  Were it not for the book, the film would probably be "fine" and not a "disappointment" because I know how effective the ending could be (I cry every time in those last few pages and am usually unable to speak for hours after McEwan's brisk prose capture me so, and in the theater I shed not a single tear even though it's clearly supposed to be sad).  I get why McEwan did it (having one last moment between Florence & Edward is conventional if expected cinema), but it changes the message of what we've just seen, and makes it less cerebral and interesting.  On Chesil Beach, the movie, their paths changed, one for the better and the other for the worse, but in the novel, their existence altered, permanently, and less for the better and for the worse, but more in giving up the unknown.  That's a more powerful message, and McEwan loses that in the translation to the big-screen.

John's Top 10 of 2017

The Globes, Oscars, and pretty much every critic on the internet has weighed in with their Top 10 list of the year, and I figure it is time for me to do the same.  Yesterday I went through the Worst of the Year, and I can't leave you there for long, so let's dive into 2017 one last time.  I will admit up-front that this is arguably one of the least years I remember from the past ten years (the last time I only had six 5-star movies was 2006), but that doesn't mean it doesn't have some notable gems, particularly the below ten films (listed alphabetically, because why rank when I implore you to see all ten, and with more in-depth reviews linked for all of them, so go peruse):

Beach Rats (dir. Eliza Hittman)

In a year where queer cinema was hitting most of the biggest home runs, this is one that could have easily slipped past my radar.  However, with a spectacular debut from Harris Dickinson & a chilling look inside of a closet that won't open, Eliza Hittman shares an uncomfortable story that is beautifully lensed and impossible to shake.

The Big Sick (dir. Michael Showalter)

The romantic comedy is never actually dead, but it feels like it's in constant need of resuscitation.  This film did it not with a compelling leading lady, but instead two incredibly fun performances from Ray Romano & Holly Hunter as a worn married couple who are trying to cope with their daughter's ex-boyfriend being pushed into their lives.  Please give Kumail Nanijiani another movie, ASAP, but perhaps more importantly-give Romano & Hunter a TV series, as this chemistry should be bottled.

Call Me by Your Name (dir. Luca Guadagnino)

I've seen it twice, and it'll be thrice this week.  A beautiful, haunting movie that just unfolds with the confidence of a classic from its opening scenes, its central romance is forbidden, felt, and dead sexy.  Chalamet, between this and Lady Bird, is a discovery of seismic proportions.  One of those movies I know I'll be watching every year.

Coco (dir. Lee Unkrich)

It holds up on second viewing, and that's about as high of a compliment as I can give a picture I loved so fully.  Charmed with bouncy original music and a gorgeous palette of pink, tangerine, and violet, it also has plenty of heart and is proof that when they aren't churning out mindless sequels, Pixar is still the best game in town.

Dunkirk (dir. Christopher Nolan)

An anonymous, but never emotionless, look at war first-hand.  Astoundingly directed by Christopher Nolan (arguably his most ambitious task to-date), we see war on land, air, and sea in a cast of characters that share little of themselves but instead work as blank canvasses, representing in their stead the millions of men that have come before-and-since.  A triumph.

The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker)

At once a sprawling documentary and an intimate drama, this film feels so raw and authentic you'll be forgiven for assuming that leads Bria Vinaite and Brooklynn Prince weren't just discovered in the shadow of Orlando.  Combined with a soulful, introverted turn from Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project is an honest look at poverty through the wonderful lens of a child.

God's Own Country (dir. Francis Lee)

Yes, it borrows from Brokeback, but the best films often feel possible because of what came before them.  And surely God's Own Country strikes its own path with its troubled leads, and the revelation of Josh O'Connor's Johnny discovering love, and more importantly, intimacy, for the first time in his life.

Jane (dir. Brett Morgen)

Special effects are fine and all, but perhaps nothing was more shocking this year onscreen than the magic of Brett Morgen's time machine documentary, which takes Dr. Jane Goodall back decades with a gold-hued camera as we discover her love of chimpanzees first-hand.  Few documentaries have been so jaw-dropping, and so devoted to their subject.

Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig)

Actors-turned-directors' first efforts can occasionally feel like a waste of time, indulgent affairs for people whose editors are afraid of pissing off the movie star.  Thankfully Greta Gerwig had no such issues, creating a semi-autobiographical look at the world of mothers-and-daughters, grounded by great work from Saoirse Ronan & Laurie Metcalf.

Personal Shopper (dir. Olivier Assayas)

Part grief drama, part ghost story, all fascinating.  Olivier Assayas's devotion to actresses, and finding the small mountains that his lead characters can experience in the oddest of times, is on full-display as Stewart's Maureen deals with the death of her brother, and possibly his hanging-on as she attempts to move on in every capacity of her life.