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Aubrey Plaza
Safety Not Guaranteed
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ShareThe Aubrey Plaza we meet at the beginning of Safety Not Guaranteed is a familiar one. As Darius, a sarcastic, cynical intern at an alternative weekly paper, her character is reminiscent of her previous roles in Scott Pilgrim and Funny People. But much like Plaza’s ever-evolving April on NBC’s Parks and Recreation, there is more to Darius than her cynical exterior. As she goes undercover to try to determine whether local weirdo Kenneth (Mark Duplass) has actually built a time machine, she finds herself drawn in by his passion and paranoia. The role requires Plaza to gradually begin to believe Kenneth, and even more gradually fall for him, and she pulls off that difficult, subtle transformation with aplomb. She goes from over-the-top seductress, treating Kenneth as a joke, to trusting him enough to open up about the death of her mother.
It all comes to a head late in the film, as Darius goes to interview a person who makes Kenneth’s whole story seem like a lie and then confronts Kenneth about it. The contrast between her quiet crumpling during the interview and the subsequent argument is a perfect illustration of just how much Darius had come to trust Kenneth, and the pain of that apparent betrayal. Plaza does the sort of great, subtle acting in Safety Not Guaranteed that deserves awards. That is, if award-giving bodies actually recognized great, subtle acting. 
Chris Conaton
Les Miserables
Tom Hooper
Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen
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Anne Hathaway
Les Miserables
Forget Susan Boyle. If your only exposure to the (by now, overexposed) song “I Dreamed a Dream” from this famous stage spectacle is via the dumpy former Britain’s Got Talent winner, you’ve been done a grand disservice. With the voice of a dying angel (recorded live during filming—kudos to you director Tom Hooper) and an acting interpretation that’s just devastating, the actress also known as Batman’s feline nemesis kills it. She takes a piece of pop culture trivia and turns it back into what it always was—a sickly mother’s call for hope. Yet when Anne Hathaway addresses the song’s last lines (“I had a dream my life would be / So different from the hell I’m living / So different now from what it seemed / Now life has killed the dream I dreamed”), you immediately realize her pleas are for naught. It’s one of 2012’s most distressing moments and brilliant bits of acting. Bill Gibron
8
Keira Knightley
Anna Karenina
It took me a long time to come around to Keira Knightley, but she won me over last year with her skittish turn in A Dangerous Method. Now she’s solidified her position as one of the best working actresses with a stunning turn as the titular Anna Karenina. Knightley handles the transition from proper lady to enraptured mistress with understated eye flickers and head tilts that make the ensuing scenes of passion all the more fervent. Once Anna realizes what her desire has cost her, though, that’s when Knightley really shows her range. Driven mad by an oppressive society and contradictory cravings, Knightley’s take on Karenina’s spiral is something to behold. I can’t wait to see what she comes out with next. Ben Travers
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Helen Hunt
The Sessions
In Jessica Yu’s 1996 documentary profile of his life and work, poet/journalist Mark O’Brien talks about the duality of his body and soul. He says his disability makes him more fervent in his belief in the soul, since it means his true identity transcends his diminished physical condition. In Ben Lewin’s The Sessions—a feature film adaptation of O’Brien’s essay “On Seeing a Sex Surrogate”—O’Brien does consider that duality as he consults his priest. But sex surrogate Cheryl (Helen Hunt) has an equally powerful (and unexpected) transformative experience of her own body and soul. Hunt’s fully nude scenes in the film have received a lot of press, which is a shame insofar as many of these accounts suggest something much more prurient than what the film actually offers.
While one could debate the necessity of her degree of exposure, there is much to praise about how Hunt subtly transitions from the strictly professional to the complicatedly emotional. Cheryl walks into the film certain of her ability to compartmentalize, but scene by scene Hunt expresses signs of that certainty slipping away. Many critical assessments of The Sessions focus on what O’Brien learns about his body through intimacy with his surrogate. Yet Cheryl’s growth is just as poignant, as we see her realize that she cannot resist the growing attachment with her patient. A late scene in the film foregrounds her attention to the sacredness of her body, but by then Hunt has already conveyed to us both the joy and the toll of her closeness with O’Brien. Thomas Britt
The Silver Linings Playbook
David O. Russell
Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, Chris Tucker, Jacki Weaver
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Jennifer Lawrence
The Silver Linings Playbook
Though she may have put herself on the A-list with March’s blockbuster The Hunger Games, Jennifer Lawrence reminded everyone she got her big break because of her acting chops with a nuanced turn in Silver Linings Playbook. As the widow Tiffany, Lawrence was asked to switch from bitterness to sorrow to anger at the drop of a hat. She went from 0 to 60 in even less time. We were with her all the way. The complexity of Tiffany wasn’t just in her background. Her decision-making was questionable (at best) and we had to be behind her if the love story was going to work. Lawrence took us there, and the movie was all the better for it. Ben Travers
