a bit underwhelming, it's because this wasn't so much a year for men. This was a fantastic year for women, so much so that it it's become difficult to place final decisions on those two Oscar races. I've had several favorites throughout the past few months, and I think I've finally got my choices nailed down for both categories. Many are saying that this was a year of newly discovered actresses, which I believe to be a bit of an overstatement. Maybe it's because I had already discovered Chloe Moretz in last year's (500) Days of Summer, not to belittle her efforts this year. I'm hesitant to say she's the next Dakota Fanning, because I hate Dakota Fanning. Nevertheless, her disturbing dark and controversial performances in Kick-Ass and Let Me In have certainly made a name for her.One of the greater acting showcases this year was The Fighter, which obviously contained the jaw-dropping performance from Christian Bale, but there were also the smaller gems from the film. Amy Adams is probably the most underrated of the group, because she gives a very tough, sexy, and somewhat skanky performance as Mickey's girlfriend Charlene. She gives something a logical compass for the film when Mickey's delusional family comes to misdirect him. Probably the most overrated performance is from
Melissa Leo, who I admit gave a fantastic performance as the cancer faced mother of Mickey's family, and the person who really controls all the moves of her blessed white-trash children. However, she's not really given too much of a chance to shine, and her character's purpose is a bit too similar to Bale's character, and it edges on lunacy at times. She's an amazing actress, but this just isn't her time.This is probably the most daring praise I'll give an actress this year, I was extremely impressed with Tina Fey's voice work on the film Megamind. She joins the ranks of other actors who emotionally transcended the animated genre, most notably Ellen Degeneres in 2003's Finding Nemo. Tina Fey's vocal expression brings a lot of the charm and sexiness to the character of Roxanne Ritchi. Rounding out the actresses who didn't quite make the cut for me is Rooney Mara who had merely two or three scenes in this year's greatest success story, The Social Network, but one of them happens to be the best standalone scene in the film. Her work as Erica Albright, the soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend of Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg, is surprisingly passionate and gives a feminist edge to the predominantly male driven film. The top ten actresses of the year after the jump!
Speaking of minor roles achieving something
spectacular, Alison Pill definitely isn't amongst the familiar names this year, and that's because she plays a minor role in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. She plays Kim Pine, the bad-ass ginger drummer for Scott's band Sex Bob-Omb as well as one of his exes. She's one of the great scene-stealers of the film, delivering sassy contemptuous one-liners that deprecate the idiotic main character. She manages to cause gut-busting hilarity with just a wide-eyed glance. She's definitely an actress in need of more attention. Another actress in need of more attention is Olivia Williams who played the stone-faced wife of former Prime Minister Adam Lang in Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer. Probably the most used word this piece, sexiness, is once again appropriate to describe Williams' insidiously attractive performance.The next three young actresses really proved themselves this year, starting with Mia Wasikowska. I wish that her best performance had been her breakthrough performance, but unfortunately, Tim Burton got to her first for his disjointed and vile portrait of Alice in Wonderland. I'm still going to say that Wasikowska's first performance was in The Kids Are All Right, because that's the role that she should be more remembered for. Joni is such a fantastic and relatable character, and I was surprised by how easily I could empathize with her. She's more than simply defined by the situation going on around her. Joni is a sexual repressed person, not by force of anyone else, but by force of herself. She's afraid of her own sexuality because
she is so afraid of being like her mothers, eventually putting it to the test by snogging the hell out of a boy she knows at a party, and leaving emotionally muted and disappointed. It's an absolutely breathtaking movie moment that you could easily just look over.Another star-making performance this year came from Emma Stone as she took the lead role in the high school comedy Easy A. We've seen here take some supporting roles in the past, but she really proved herself capable of carrying a film on her shoulders in this one. She's got such a likable high school reject attitude about her, and she's the most charismatic performer of this year. The actress who I have a more personal adoration for is Emma Watson, who has played the role of Hermione Granger for the past decade, most recently in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. All of the core actors have made drastic improvements in this installment, but the film truly belong to Watson. She has a significant emotional arc to carry with her, that being the persecution against Mudbloods, the exit of the boy she's grown further attracted to over the years, and the charm she places to wipe her parents' memories. She easily sacrifices the most this time around, she holds the family together and protects them best in times of need, but all that bravery is just a facade for the fragile and heartbroken soul she truly is.
Many have called Jennifer Lawrence a discovery this year with her performance in Winter's Bone, but she's done some considerable work already. All the same, Lawrence gives an challenging performance as a girl facing the pressures of raising a family on her own, the disturbing disappearance and death of her father, and the day to day yearnings for a normal life. It's a lot of pressure to put on a 17 year old with no parental support whatsoever. Speaking of parents, Annette Bening, in what was almost my favorite female performance of the year until December 24th, did a truly stunning and emotional job conveying the lesbian breadwinner of the family in
The Kids Are All Right. She's more than a little bit controlling, as would be any protective mother, but her loyalty and heart never wavers despite the horrible things that are done behind her back.Marion Cotillard, arguably the most beautiful woman in existence, gave one of the most multifaceted performance this year in what is actually three different roles in Inception. There's the original Mal, the wife of DiCaprio's character Cobb, whom we see in fleeting glances of beauty and fragility. Then there's the desperate, broken, and unstable Mal after she wakes up believing she's still in a dream. Finally, and this is the Mal that we see the most, is Cobb's projection of Mal, more seductively dangerous and frantically emotional than she ever was in life. That's the last shade of Mal that Cobb saw before she died, and as hard as he tries, he cannot change the facade of her doppelganger. It's terrible that people have been so easily capable of downsizing the amazingly nuanced and specific performance that Cotillard gives.
There really is only one breakthrough performance this year that truly stunned and shocked me with brilliance, and that came from Hailee Steinfeld in Joel & Ethan Coen's newly released western, True Grit. Steinfeld played the role of Mattie Ross, the smart-as-a-whip and brave as hell young girl who
heads into the wilderness after the man who shot her father, Tom Cheney. So rarely am I shaken to my core by a performance from an actress I have never seen before, but she proves herself a strong leading actress with her work here. The scenes with her negotiating terms with Colonel Stonehill (Dakin Matthews) are the best written scenes of the film, and it may be the way the character is written, but Mattie Ross could have easily been seen as some annoying brat, but Steinfeld made her a character you can root for. To say that she's simply a supporting asset of this film is a gross and disgusting understatement. I admit that she has a better shot in the Supporting Actress category, but I'd say she'd have a considerable chance in the main race.All the same, at this point there is absolutely nothing in this world that could keep Natalie Portman from winning the Oscar for her challenging, heartbreaking, jaw-dropping performance as Nina Sayers in Black Swan. I always knew that she had more in her than the schmaltzy and pathetically romantic musings she employed in the Star Wars prequels, and it turns out we were right. It helps that she is given a character that is both mentally and physically demanding to play. It really amplifies her performance to new heights. It isn't just some expression in her voice or on her face. It's every single aspect of her being, and if we didn't believe that this fragile little spirit was cracking, everything in the film would break apart. Portman plays all of her emotions at the surface of her being. We see everything in look on her face, and as she transitions into the Black Swan, her performance goes from frightened to frightening. It's a career performance for her, and I hope she chooses other challenging roles in the future.
10. Alison Pill (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World)
9. Olivia Williams (The Ghost Writer)
8. Emma Stone (Easy A)
7. Mia Wasikowska (The Kids Are All Right)
6. Emma Watson (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1)
5. Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone)
4. Annette Bening (The Kids Are All Right)
3. Marion Cotillard (Inception)
2. Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)
1. Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
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