OVP: Actress (1999)

OVP: Best Actress (1999)

The Nominees Were...

Annette Bening, American Beauty

Janet McTeer, Tumbleweeds

Julianne Moore, The End of the Affair

Meryl Streep, Music of the Heart

Hilary Swank, Boys Don't Cry

My Thoughts: In our final 1999 acting race, we move into Best Actress.  Going back this far, it's fun to see where the actresses' careers went.  Two performers were on their first nominations here, and would only get nominated one more time (to date)-one won both, the other lost both.  We have two actresses who were in their prime at the time, having never won, and again-one of them went on to win a "career achievement" style statue, while the other has not won yet.  And in the middle of it all is the actress who basically defines the Academy Awards, one who was getting maybe her least interesting nomination, or at least her worst-regarded.

That actress is Meryl Streep.  This is such a strange role on-paper to get an Oscar nomination.  Originally intended for Madonna, and directed by horror icon Wes Craven, it's hardly the type of pitch that ends with an Oscar nomination, and let's be honest-if it was anyone other than Streep it surely wouldn't have.  The movie is too saccharine, frequently too reliant on familiar story beats.  I think Streep is better than that, but I also am not impressed by physicality; much was made about her ability to learn the violin to play in the movie, but that's musical talent-not necessarily acting.  Her accent work is acting, and impressive, but she can't really make this movie any good, and if you're in the Best Actress field...shouldn't you be able to do more than "better than the movie" when the movie is a snooze?

The same can be said for Tumbleweeds, a better film but one that I think kind of misses the mark in terms of the lead performance.  McTeer is such an open performer-there's a charm and sex appeal in her Mary Jo that makes it impossible for characters (and the audience) not to open up to her.  But I needed more from this performance-technical skill isn't all there is, we also want motive, and I do think McTeer has a sense of where this character is (metaphorically) going.  It's hard to know how much of this is the screenwriter's fault in writing such a specific character with no direction (in a road trip movie, no less), but it's definitely an issue for McTeer's work compared to some of these performers.

Look at someone like Hilary Swank, after all, who does have a sense of her performer in a movie that (while good) is pretty bleak.  Swank fills Brandon Teena with such humanity in the role.  I like that even some of Brandon's mistakes feel real, which is hard to do in a movie, and that's because Swank is giving  such hope to her character, trying to fill them with a sense of life after denying who they were for such a long time.  Swank fills the movie with more feeling than (if we're being honest) the script is giving her, and so this is rising above the movie, but it's a better movie than McTeer or Streep are using as their platform.

It's worth remembering this is Best Actress, not Best Picture (we give to the best performance, not to the performance in the movie I liked the best), but if we were focusing on the movie I like the best, it'd undoubtedly be American Beauty, and Bening is one of its best parts.  The best stuff in Bening's work here is that she plays her character as so guarded.  Watching this as an adult, and with a more modern lens, you can see that she's added a cautious feminism to a character that easily could be a harpy (that's largely how she's written).  Look at how she's largely moved beyond her husband, moved beyond her family even...she's a realtor so to invest in that metaphor, they were a starter home, she's ready for her dream home.  She understands the film's comedy, but more so she understands its tragedy, giving the movie's best(?) performance.

We'll finish with Julianne Moore's turn in The End of the Affair, that time in her career where she was regularly playing cloistered women in period movies.  The movie is very much my speed (I love me a doomed romance), but it doesn't really know how to explore its topic, particularly its sexuality (for a movie that's quite carnal in its approach, all of the sex is limited to the first fifteen minutes).  Moore is unable to get beyond this (and neither is Fiennes, which makes you confident it's the writers doing this given they're two of our best actors), giving us a finite scope into Sarah, never really discovering her balance in the picture.  It's worth noting for Moore in 1999 that this was almost certainly a cumulative award (she was also doing noted work in four other movies-Cookie's Fortune, Magnolia, An Ideal Husband, & A Map of the World), but we have a strict OVP rule where we only judge the film in front of us, not the collective works that might've contributed to a nomination, and in this case, that just doesn't cut it.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes give us both Musical/Comedy and Drama, so we have ten names to start with.  Drama went with Swank, besting Bening, Moore, Streep, & Sigourney Weaver (A Map of the World), while McTeer took the comedy prize, topping Julianne Moore (An Ideal Husband), Julia Roberts (Notting Hill), Sharon Stone (The Muse...and yes is the Sharon Stone luxury watch scandal at the Globes), and Reese Witherspoon (Election).  The SAG Awards went with the exact same lineup as Oscar, with Bening winning, while BAFTA also picked Bening, though she beat Moore (End of the Affair), Emily Watson (Angela's Ashes), & Linda Bassett (East is East) for the nomination.  In sixth here, I think we're looking at either Weaver or Witherspoon.  Weaver is more in the Academy's wheelhouse (sturdy performance in a stiff issues picture from a former favorite), while Witherspoon got an actual nomination for her film (Election was up for writing).  I think Weaver makes more sense, especially given she hadn't been nominated in a decade at the time & Witherspoon's picture was a bit edgy for Oscar, but I could believe either.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Oscar is quite populist, but does have a snobby streak when it comes to genre pictures, and that includes romantic-comedies.  We have talked very little about Notting Hill, a film that has its faults, but I love so wholeheartedly I don't really care, and the thing I'm most confident in is Julia Roberts' pitch-perfect Hollywood actress.  She's playing a version of herself, but it's so filled with heart, hope, and prickliness from being bruised constantly that if it is herself...you just want to root for her harder. A year before she won the Oscar, I would've had this as a lead-up to Erin Brockovich.

Oscar’s Choice: In what was a coin flip race at the time (I think some people have rewritten this to not be as close as it was), Swank won over Bening, costing the latter her best shot at an Academy Award to date.

My Choice: Those are the two names to consider, and while I partially want to give it to Bening (she has yet to win an OVP and only has one guaranteed nomination left), OVP rules say I can't take outside factors into account, and Swank is slightly better.  Behind these two, I would go (in order): McTeer, Moore, and then Streep.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Are you sticking with Oscar & I for Hilary Swank, or do you prefer one of the other ladies of the category?  Do you feel it's okay to acknowledge that Moore almost certainly got this nomination for five films instead of one...and how many other performances like that have happened through the years and are now lost to lack of historical context?  And was it Witherspoon or Weaver that nearly missed this race?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also in 1999: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously, in 1999

Past Best Actress Contests: 1931-32, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

OVP: Actress (2002)

OVP: Best Actress (2002)

The Nominees Were...

Salma Hayek, Frida

Nicole Kidman, The Hours

Diane Lane, Unfaithful

Julianne Moore, Far from Heaven

Renee Zellweger, Chicago

My Thoughts: I've said repeatedly in the 2002 lineups that these are some of the best acting quintets that Oscar has assembled this century, and that holds true for Best Actress.  It wasn't just that 2002 was a good year for movies...Oscar had strong taste this year, and it came out in a variety of ways.  That being said, as you're going to notice in the precursors, Best Actress was kind of playing with the answer key for the nominations.  These five women totally dominated the awards season, and it was not a surprise at all when they were announced as the official ambassadors to the Kodak in early 2003.

At this point, Julianne Moore's acting in Far from Heaven is talked about in the way that cinephiles discuss Brando in On the Waterfront or Jane Fonda in Klute...it's so celebrated that it's hard to grasp that there was once a time that it was new.  The real genius in Moore's work (cause she is, true to reputation, wonderful) is that she's so fully-commited to this style of acting.  There are a lot of easy moments in Far from Heaven where she could break, where she could bust the ode to Douglas Sirk that Todd Haynes is crafting, and instead give herself a gigantic Oscar moment, but she doesn't.  That's what makes it so special, and keeps the film glued together even as others around her are faltering from her idealization.

Nicole Kidman's Oscar win has not aged well for reasons that are alien to me, because this might be my favorite performance of hers, confirmed by a recent rewatch of the movie.  In a movie as strong as The Hours, it's hard to single out a favorite and yet it's always Kidman's Virginia Woolf for this watcher.  I think it's the way that she's both (literally & figuratively) in charge of the story, bringing each new character in like a gleeful, sadistic narrator.  There's also the way that she embodies someone who is fed up with what's easy.  She knows that her old life is dangerous, and this new time in the country is where her health might recover, where she can last forever...but all she wants is to live.  "Richmond is death" is spit out like a bullet, her speaking aloud the truth that she knows every day but no one around her seems to understand.  I love her work here.

Renee Zellweger, not Moore, was Kidman's biggest rival for the Oscar, and this is a good performance from Zellweger in the brief time where she was one of the most exciting actresses in Hollywood (Tinseltown, not entirely sure what to do with a woman who was so good at a type of screwball comedy that had basically died by 2002, put her in dramas with diminishing results).  I think there's a fine line between "Roxie isn't a good singer" and Zellweger playing her (as Zellweger is not as good of a singer as, say, Catherine Zeta-Jones or Queen Latifah is), and it doesn't quite work for me with Gere, but that's really quibbling over the lobster...this is an excellent movie experience, and she's so good at pulling off Roxie's naked ambition (fame above all).

Unlike the first three women, Diane Lane does not get the benefit of being in a good movie...she's in, in fact, the worst movie of the five (also, it should be noted, opposite Richard Gere).  But Lane is sensational within this terrible picture.  She plays Connie as a complete woman, one that is difficult to pigeonhole even though it's our gut instinct to do so when given the cliche of a beautiful woman in a loveless marriage having an affair (an onscreen cliche if there ever was one).  She clearly feels alive in her affair, but understands that while her old life isn't something that she values, she knows that the handsome, easy life she's leaving for this man is of value, and can't part with it.  This is complicated, smart acting, and I'm so glad that Lane, who has yet to be nominated again in the years since, got her sole citation for such a terrific part.

All of this leads to Salma Hayek, an actress of talent & a celebrity who seems genuinely interesting (I love her in interviews), but who cannot make Frida work.  This was clearly a passion project for the likable Hayek, so I feel bad ragging on her too harshly, but this performance cannot compare to the four women with whom she's sharing this field.  She seems to simplify the complicated Frida too much, relying on Julie Taymor's visual hints about the artist rather than placing her own mark on Kahlo, and it shows nothing of the iconic Frida that the world would fall in love with in death.  There's not enough there.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have ten women nominated for these awards.  For Drama we nearly went verbatim what Oscar said, only subbing out Zellweger for Meryl Streep (The Hours) with Kidman winning, while Zellweger won Comedy/Musical against Maggie Gyllenhaal (Secretary), Goldie Hawn (The Banger Sisters), Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), and Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago).  SAG went with Oscar's lineup exactly, but gave the statue to Zellweger and BAFTA gave theirs to Kidman, skipping both Lane & Moore in favor of Streep and Halle Berry (Monster's Ball, which she'd won for the year before-that used to happen with BAFTA back in the day before awards season became so lock-step).  In terms of sixth, it's Streep, and I'm not hearing any arguments here-one of the few times it was clear that Meryl just missed an Oscar nomination.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Meryl deserved an inclusion here.  It's hard to be angry about it.  Streep was nominated for Adaptation in Best Supporting Actress, Hayek would never be nominated again & is an affable star...who cares, right?...even Meryl probably was fine with it turning out this way.  But if we're basing this solely on what everyone put forward, there's no debate-Streep deserved that nomination.

Oscar’s Choice: A tight race between Zellweger & Kidman led to the latter getting it (they had both been nominated the year before & both had lost).  Zellweger would help eliminate Nicole as competition the following year by starring with her, and getting the Oscar in the process.

My Choice: This is going to maybe shock some of my friends, but I'm going with Kidman, just barely over Moore.  This is one of those cases where an unreal connection with a performance makes it impossible for me to deny.  Lane, Zellweger, and then Hayek follow.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  I know that we aren't all in agreement here even if Oscar & I are happy, so who do you want to give your love toward?  Is there another performance that Diane Lane or Salma Hayek should've been considered for other than these movies (Lonesome Dove wasn't eligible, and therefore doesn't count)?  And is this the only time that Meryl has ever been in sixth place?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also in 2002: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2002

Past Best Actress Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

OVP: Supporting Actress (2002)

OVP: Best Supporting Actress (2002)

The Nominees Were...

Kathy Bates, About Schmidt

Julianne Moore, The Hours

Queen Latifah, Chicago

Meryl Streep, Adaptation

Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago

My Thoughts: I frequently talk, both one-on-one and in Twitter threads, with other Oscar fans about various Oscar races, and 2002's Supporting Actress race is generally considered to be one of the "best" lineups for this category, certainly of this century.  This feels pretty accurate looking at it from the outset.  Some of these women are giving the best performances of their film careers, but even those that aren't are giving work that stands up well 20 years after the fact to scrutiny.  This year also stands apart as the first time for 15 years (it would be broken in 2017) that two actors from the same movie were nominated in the same category, something that used to be quite commonplace but now reads as an artifact of another era.

Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2002 was inarguably at the peak of her star power.  Having just come into public consciousness four years earlier in Mask of Zorro, she seemed to know her stardom would be brief (in the decades since, she is better known for being part of one of Hollywood's most enduring power couples than her movie roles), and she chose this year to give the performance of a lifetime, ensuring she'd have an Oscar to match Michael's.  It's hard to argue with it.  Though you can claim category fraud, that's pretty much the only thing you could go for and I honestly don't buy it-her being a backgrounded character is kind of the point, so I'm not knocking a star off for that.  Zeta-Jones nails every scene in this movie, stealing it wholesale from her costars, and landing Chicago's three best musical numbers ("All That Jazz," "Cell Block Tango," and "I Can't Do It Alone") with the tenacity of an orca hunting a seal.  There's no notes-this is one of the best musical performances in film history.

It's difficult to try to get nominated for the movie against a legendary performance, but Queen Latifah does at least get her musical number & makes an impression.  "When You're Good to Mama" landed her this nomination wholesale.  While Latifah has always been a winning presence onscreen (one of those singers who so seamlessly went into film you sometimes forget that music is where she got her start), most of what she does in this movie is fun rather than great acting.  But her musical number kind of sells everything you need to know about Matron Mama Morton & she juicily indulges every one of Kander & Ebb's saucy lines ("she deserves a lot of tat, for what she's got to give").  This isn't a nomination I'll repeat on my My Ballot, but it's one that I don't remotely care that Oscar gave out, particularly given it was the only citation she'd ever receive from AMPAS.

Kathy Bates, in a similar fashion, is more fun than great acting here.  Bates is one of the best character actors of her generation, frequently taking on the place of someone like a Thelma Ritter or Maggie Smith before her, and she knows what she's expected to bring to her hippie mama in this is a sense of bawdy comic relief, and that's what she does.  This isn't her best work, and I think much of this nomination came from a lack of vanity, as Bates famously did a full frontal nude scene in a hot tub at the age of 54, but like Latifah, she understands the assignment and does what the script is asking her to do...it's just not asking a lot.

The same cannot be said for Meryl Streep, who gives one of the best performances of her long career in Adaptation.  While Streep has been strong since this (particularly in Julie & Julia, The Devil Wears Prada, and The Post), this might be the last time we saw her as a great dramatic actor, free of a lot of the "look, I'm Meryl!" posturing that would creep into some of her later work.  Susan Orlean is a complicated part, and she doesn't shy away from the grandeur of a writer who is good (but maybe not quite as good as she should be), and has a specific type of erudite attitude toward the world that I love.  In Streep's hands, she's the queen of a very small kingdom, and she's encountering a place she didn't know before in Adaptation-it's complicated, meticulous stuff, and really well-done.

Julianne Moore, like Streep, was giving two sensational performances in 2002.  Unlike Zeta-Jones, I cannot pretend that Moore isn't clearcut category fraud here.  It's being done nobly (Academy rules dictate she can't be nominated for both films, a rule I ignore when I craft my personal ballots), but I knock down a star as The Hours is a three-lead film.  That said, this is a great performance, and one that folds perfectly in with Streep & Kidman's versions of the same story.  Moore is the woman trapped in a world that Virginia Woolf understood well-a housewife trying to find something more.  There's something so breathtaking in the dawning realization of what she needs to do as the day progresses, what she'd need to do to escape the doldrums of her life...that killer monologue at the end where she admits she regrets nothing is Moore doing what few other actors of her generation could pull off (and is why she's one of the best).

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes put Zeta-Jones in lead instead of supporting, giving them room to give the trophy to Meryl atop Bates, Latifah, Cameron Diaz (Gangs of New York), and Susan Sarandon (Igby Goes Down).  SAG went all-in on Chicago, awarding Zeta-Jones and citing Latifah, Bates, Moore, & Michelle Pfeiffer (White Oleander), while BAFTA also gave their trophy to Zeta-Jones and kept Oscar's lineup largely intact, just skipping Bates in favor of Toni Collette (About a Boy).  Similar to Supporting Actor, I think this is a close contest for fifth place.  I'm inclined to think it is Michelle Pfeiffer, who was still in the throes of "she'll win eventually" sorts of stardom, though that never came to pass, though Patricia Clarkson had serious buzz for Far from Heaven and might've gotten in a year earlier than she actually did if Oscar had pushed Moore or Zeta-Jones into lead.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I would've included Clarkson for sure.  Clarkson is also a noted character actor and a great one, but her Oscar nomination being for Pieces of April is an indictment of bad taste on AMPAS's part (kind of like Stanley Tucci's Oscar nod being for one of his worst performances).  Her turn in Far from Heaven as the casually-bigoted best friend whose loyalty only goes so far is really good stuff, and fits the motif perfectly-this is when she should've gotten her career nod if she was getting one.

Oscar’s Choice: Given Chicago's misses in the evening and the fact that we had well-started the "give Meryl a third Oscar campaign" (which really had its origins in 1995), I think Zeta-Jones was probably a closer victory than you'd think in retrospect.  But she still took it.

My Choice: Like I said, I'm not counting Zeta-Jones as category fraud even if you could totally make the case (which I did at the time) that she's a lead.  As a result, there's no qualms here-she gets an easy victory.  Category fraud will affect silver though, which I'm giving to Streep atop Moore, even if my adoration of the latter's performance might be slightly higher.  Bates and then Latifah finish off the category.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Does anyone dare defy Velma Kelly in this lineup, and if so, with whom?  Do you think of Zeta-Jones or Moore as supporting as lead (be honest!)?  And was it Clarkson or Pfeiffer that was the sixth place option for us?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2002: Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2002

Past Best Supporting Actress Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

Gloria Bell (2019)

Film: Gloria Bell (2019)
Stars: Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Michael Cera, Brad Garrett, Holland Taylor, Caren Pistorius
Director: Sebastian Lelio
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I need to make a confession-I've never seen the original Gloria starring Paulina Garcia.  This is the sort of film that I normally would see, as it's certainly a film of import, but its lack of an Oscar citation combined with year-end glut was enough for me to miss it, and I don't know that I'll necessarily get to it in the near-or-far future, since we've already profiled the 2013 Oscar race.  But I'm aware this is a problem, and something that's very curious as most of the people who will seriously consider a film like Gloria Bell, in theaters now and starring Julianne Moore in the role that Garcia originated with great kudos, will have that as an instructor and comparison.  More importantly, considering what I've read about this film, they'll have it as a blueprint of what it's going to look like, as supposedly Lelio, who directed both versions, copies scenes from that film almost shot-for-shot.  Still, as this is new to me, I must tell you I left impressed, particularly with Moore, and think that such a role may be worth revisiting and reexamining every few years as it's a great part for actresses who feel underemployed.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Gloria Bell (Moore), a divorced mother-of-two who seems to genuinely enjoy her life.  She reads, has good friends, does yoga and dances, and has a job that, while mundane, she's good at and isn't what feeds her identity.  You instantly realize in the confidence we see Gloria undertake at the beginning of the film that she's a different sort of heroine-this is not someone who was lost without a man, but is instead someone who just wants romantic love in her life.  Enter Arnold (Turturro), who is a middle-aged man who probably does need romantic love in his life, and is much more recently divorced, with his daughters financially dependent on him in a way that neither of her children are.  We see their complicated love story, with Arnold seeming a good fit on paper but perhaps too immature and too unable to change to make it work with Gloria, but we also see Gloria willing to make sacrifices to see if this relationship is possible, understanding that as we get older we need to look past some of the faults in a romantic partner.

The movie's best asset is its "no villains, no heroes" policy, even with Gloria.  In literally any other film, one that had originated in the United States, Turturro would either be a massive catch or a complete jackass villain.  He's neither of those things, and is very capable of being both.  I loved that-we see why Gloria wants to be with him, why she's still willing to give him a second chance after he humiliates her at a party for her son (in front of her ex-husband, played by Garrett), but why she must ultimately cast her net elsewhere.  People have complained about Moore being too attractive for the role, which feels a bit ridiculous-love is difficult as you age, even if you look like Julianne Moore, and I think you can understand the joys of her life while still understanding how complicated it is to be single and in your fifties, particularly with dating and with societal expectations.

As a result, we get a really fresh movie here, which is odd to say about a movie that has existed for six years now, but Gloria clearly hasn't spawned enough knockoffs, movies that feature complicated women-of-a-certain-age and just watch them exist.  It's revealing, and gives Moore her best role since Still Alice.  I won't say I loved it the way that some people did six years ago, but this is a very good movie, and it's proof that if you focus the camera on a talented actress with a strong director, you don't need to stay within a formula to make a fascinating picture.

4 Mini Reviews

As I'm working through all of the films I haven't touched on in the past few months, struggling to catch up with my film reviews, I'm going to do something I'm generally loathe to do: do a mini review of the pictures.  I don't like doing this, in part because while this is a generally low-traffic blog for me it's the closest thing I get to a time capsule of my thoughts on a specific picture and what things stuck out to me as soon as I watched it rather than distant memories where so-often you're reliant upon what others called out as important about the film afterwards than what you, yourself liked at the time.  However, these have been distant enough that I won't have that cache, none were nominated for an Oscar so I won't be referencing these films again for the OVP, and due simply to time (I need to get some of these reviews out of my draft folder), we'll be doing four short mini reviews.  If any of these are ones you want to discuss more thoroughly or get my expanded thoughts, I'm happy to discuss in the comments.

(Some Spoilers ahead for Stronger, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Wonderstruck, and Last Flag Flying-read only the paragraphs where you've seen the films if you have a spoiler allergy)

Stronger (dir. David Gordon Green)

The story of a man whose legs were blown off after the Boston Marathon is shocking in the way that it avoids overly sentimentalizing its main character Jeff Bauman (played by Jake Gyllenhaal in yet another superb performance).  I went into this picture reluctantly, assuming it would be your general true-life story that deserves kudos to the actual person, but which comes across as drivel in the film, but Gyllenhaal plays Bauman as a real person, struggling with the concept of being a hero for basically being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and who must admit feelings he has even if he's someone that doesn't have any sort of comfort admitting feelings.  Hats off to both he and the two women in his life, his girlfriend Tatiana Maslany and his mother Miranda Richardson, who find a strong, independent dynamic for their work.  The film's story is too-cliched and hugs the many sentimental traps that it avoided the first half when we get to the ending, but by-and-large this is one of the better "unlikely real-life hero" stories I've seen in a while. (Ranking: 3/5 stars)

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

I left Dogtooth disgusted and confused.  I left The Lobster confused but getting where this was headed.  Sacred Deer seems to combine the two pictures.  While it's hard to imagine something as disturbing as Dogtooth, I can't deny this is a really nasty movie.  The film follows Colin Farrell, who has essentially been cursed by a terrifying Barry Koeghan after accidentally killing his father, and as a result Farrell's family (including wife Nicole Kidman) are slowly dying.  As punishment from Koeghan's character, Farrell must choose one of his family members to die, or else they all will.  The film is quite literal, even though at first you're meant not to trust Koeghan's character.  This picture is probably one that works best in comparison to Lanthimos's other flicks, knowing that he'll soon hit his near-perfect stride with The Favourite, and realizing that this is him trying out adventures that sometimes work, sometimes don't (the film struggles with its pacing once you realize the curse is real), but it's still a wild, creepy ride. (Ranking: 3/5 stars)

Wonderstruck (dir. Todd Haynes)

Todd Haynes' films are a hodgepodge for me, where I always respect them, but I don't ever love them (except for Carol).  Wonderstruck, his first film since the Blanchett-Mara duet, is back to "respect but don't love," but there's still a lot to admire here.  The film has a terrific central performance by Millicent Simmonds as a young deaf girl who is trying to find her brother in the Museum of Natural History in New York City (Julianne Moore plays her as an adult).  Told concurrently is a tale about a young man fifty years later who has just lost his mother (Michelle Williams) and is also trying to run away in the Museum of Natural History.  Beautifully shot by Edward Lachman, there are some wonderfully-felt scenes where we explore the Natural History Museum and the Queens Museum (I love museums-this was catnip for me), though the film's ending is a bit of a letdown, and it felt too cold for a movie that is trying to be warm.  Still, worth your time. (Ranking: 3/5 stars)

Last Flag Flying (dir. Richard Linklater)

Our final film for today is Richard Linklater's latest (at least for a few more weeks): Last Flag Flying.  Starring Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, & Laurence Fishburne as a trio of former war buddies who are on a trek to bury Carell's son where he wanted to be buried (and not in Arlington), this is a road trip by way of Linklater, so you know there's more below-the-surface that he's hoping will come out through his script and plotting.  Linklater's been on a roll lately (Before Midnight, Boyhood, and Everybody Wants Some! all made my Top 5 of the year), but this was a misfire.  Cranston overcompensates as an actor, and Carell under-emotes, and while there's a lot of meat about politics, aging, death, and friendship in Linklater's script, it doesn't gel.  Here's to hoping that Cate Blanchett gets him back into his groove. (Ranking: 2/5 stars)

OVP: Actress (2014)

OVP: Best Actress (2014)

The Nominees Were...

Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night
Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild

My Thoughts: Like it or not, 2014 is going to be one of those years in this category, much like 1975, 1994, and 2005, where we always raise an eyebrow over the nominations.  I'm not saying that the nominees here are bad (they're better than any of those three, and in the case of one actress, she's doing career-best and decade-best work), but this was a weak-sauce year if you look past the nominations.  The Academy was struggling to come up with contenders, and did that thing they usually do in such a circumstance-went to the foreign language well, honoring an actress with her second foreign-language nomination (only the second woman ever to accomplish such a thing).  Because she was the shock of the acting nominations that morning (I recall gasps), we'll start out with one Marion Cotillard.

Cotillard is arguably the greatest actress working right now, give or take some Blanchetts and Chastains.  Every film feels like an event, something to be celebrated and treasured because we all know streaks like this rarely last.  Two Days, One Night is a strange situation for me here because we've come to expect so much from Marion Cotillard that the performance feels very good, but not the "career-best" that so many were trumpeting.  Her naturalism is impressive, and I love the uncomfortable and occasionally dislikable ways that she treats her Sandra, but the film itself is so much structure, rarely working in some of the more emotional scenes, especially as Sandra is dealing with her mental illness on-top of her quest to win back her job.  This cuts a little bit into Cotillard's work, and I feel like (while she's better here than her first bout with Oscar), AMPAS keeps missing the boat on her most impressive work, particularly something like Rust & Bone which has emerged in my memory as a favorite.

While Cotillard was the surprise inclusion here, the dominant force of the Best Actress race in 2014 was surely Julianne Moore.  Becoming only the second woman ever to win this category while in her 50's, the longtime celebrated actress made her impression as Alice, a brilliant woman dealing with Alzheimer's much earlier than your average person.  Moore is a woman who knows the inner ticks and clicks of a character, and you find that in Alice, particularly the conversations, plans, and mechanisms that she has with herself.  Moore herself is hampered by relatively weak costars (save Kristen Stewart), as she risks, particularly in her scenes with Baldwin, overacting, but as a general rule this is fine stuff, and she truly comes alive toward the middle when she no longer has control over her decisions, but is emotionally aware enough that something is wrong.  It's a staggering performance in a not particularly great film, which is always difficult to judge, but while it's also not career-best stuff (it's worth noting, of course, that the entire point of the OVP is to not judge based on other films in ones career but simply the five performances that Oscar put in front of me and nothing else), it's still very strong work from Moore.  There are select scenes of the film that you find yourself rooting for the character, which is always a feat for an actress this famous to transform into that person on screen.

The same could be said for Reese Witherspoon, whose Cheryl Strayed is a truly unique and splendid creation.  Witherspoon hasn't been this strong since at least Tracy Flick fifteen years previously, possibly ever.  While most films of this nature (that is, in nature) usually show a man struggling with his own personal demons but not being willing to admit that the nature is a metaphor, Witherspoon's film largely drops that metaphor (save the fox scene) and we get simply someone doing something she doesn't understand because she doesn't understand her life.  Witherspoon gets a true gamut of emotions to deal with: grief, lust, shame, revenge, hate, and occasionally even love, but what she most has to deal with and which struck a chord with me ferociously (this is easily my favorite movie of these five pictures) was the way that loneliness sets in as you get older when you either don't follow the traditional spouse/children path or when you do, but you feel empty inside for doing it.  Reese creates something magical on that trail, giving herself wholly over to the character-no vanity, no need to prove herself an actress, but just an authentic, grand gesture of a movie.  Since she's a movie star we don't see it examined as closely, but were this a new actress or in a foreign language (or, let's face it, a man), it would have been hailed as a landmark.  Considering how many terrible movies she's made since her last Best Actress nomination, this is a big way to say "I'm back."

Speaking of relative ingenues, we have Felicity Jones who has been at the outer rings of AMPAS with films like Like Crazy and The Invisible Woman in recent years, but generally I've left those pictures underwhelmed.  Her onscreen beauty (those green eyes are ridiculous) is not to be challenged, and I'm rather intoxicated by her inflection, but her acting ability-ehh.  She always seems to underplay her role, and in particular what the part calls for-she's staid when she should be vivacious, and blase about her romantic entanglements, leaving too much inside without emoting in other ways (or letting the script do that for her).  For the first thirty minutes or so of The Theory of Everything she escapes that, and we get a glimmer of what casting directors clearly have wanted us to see-she's vivacious, and has genuine chemistry with Eddie Redmayne, but as the film progresses to sadder territory, she keeps everything on the inside, giving us an English stiff upper lip but no sense of what's going on inside.  Some may say this is naturalism, as surely Jane Hawking wasn't a particularly expressive person with her feelings, but in a movie that is so reliant on her to be an audience surrogate, it feels lacking, and makes me wonder if I'll ever truly get on-board with a Jones performance.

In the final slot we have the one film that everyone saw of this bunch.  Gone Girl, the only $100 million hit domestically, was a major talking point and a book everyone needed to bring to the beach, and it kept its secrets relatively close to the vest.  Rosamund Pike had a few extremely difficult tasks in the movie, and not just because Amazing Amy has such a specific place in literary minds everywhere.  She has to find a way to make her both believably sane at one point and also a nutcase (but a nutcase with a believable enough case against her husband to not alienate her completely from the audience).  In many ways she borrows from Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs-you find her daunting and occasionally vile, but you can't look away, and you get why people fall for her trick as she's too fascinating to ignore.  The "cool girl" monologue, that fantastic opening narration when her big reveal hits, and the way that you see her deep frustration whenever one of her decisions or plans doesn't happen the way that she hoped-it's all incredible fun.  I know that for some Pike's performance, particularly her deep-throated delivery, wasn't to their liking or imagination, but I was a huge fan.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Golden Globes started off the uniform train with Best Actress in a Drama, where Cotillard was skipped for Jennifer Aniston (Cake), but the rest of this lineup held, as did Julianne Moore as the victor.  That left a surprisingly weird lineup in Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical of Emily Blunt (Into the Woods-makes sense, even if it's kind of default), Helen Mirren (The Hundred-Foot Journey-they do tend to have a thing for her), Julianne Moore (Maps to the Stars-did this film ever actually get released or was it just randomly on DVD one day?), and Quvenzhane Wallis (Annie-all right, I'm out of ideas here).  It's no wonder Amy Adams pulled it off for Big Eyes-it was the only one remotely looking at an Oscar nomination, even if it's about as funny as a root canal.  SAG smartly stuck to the Best Drama race lineup entirely, favoring Moore for the win while BAFTA couldn't quite bring itself to honor Aniston in the Cotillard spot, instead picking Amy Adams, while giving their trophy to Julianne Moore.  It's quite obvious that Aniston or Adams was the sixth place finisher, and while I predicted Aniston at the time (it being a more traditional drama), I was honestly flummoxed, and that's probably why Cotillard was able to make it in-it was likely a weak, close race for fifth that had enough room for someone with a fervent first-place fanbase.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I know that it's popular to bag on her, but I actually really liked what Jennifer Aniston did in Cake (Amy Adams in Big Eyes-not so much), and was genuinely bummed that in a year like 2014 they didn't decide to give her one of those random rom-com queen nominations for a very watchable performance (even if the film doesn't live up to that adjective).  Even better than Aniston, though, was Scarlett Johansson's other-worldly work in Under the Skin, a performance that showed the great promise she had early on not in Lost in Translation, but Girl with the Pearl Earring.  An alien, difficult piece-of-work that hopefully will develop something of a cult following as the year's progress.

Oscar’s Choice: I think sometime early in the 2014 awards season the public randomly realized that Julianne Moore didn't have an Oscar and they all thought she did, so that needed to be rectified immediately.  It's questionable who would have won had she not been in contention (much like 2009's Supporting Actress race, I wonder if it would have been Adams or Aniston in sixth place gaining a Sandra Bullock-style run or a "six nominations without a win is long enough" plea), but Moore clearly was an overwhelming favorite.

My Choice: Witherspoon, no question.  This is my second favorite performance of this decade, and an absolute triumph from start to finish.  Following her would be Pike, Moore, Cotillard, and Jones in a distant fifth.

And now it's your turn-are you on Team Reese with me or are you clutching the pearls over me skipping out on Julianne Moore?  I've seen most of her work, but is there a Felicity Jones performance that will make me a convert?  And I'd love an impassioned plea over whether it was Aniston or Adams that was the true sixth place finisher in 2014.  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2014: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Documentary Short, Live Action Short, Animated Short, Previously in 2014

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