Director: Paul Feig
Cast: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd
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Display Width: 250Kristin Wiig
Bridesmaids
Kristen Wiig has been stealing movies in supporting roles for several years now. She did it again back in March’s sci-fi spoof Paul, outshining Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Seth Rogen for the movie’s biggest laughs. But in Bridesmaids, Wiig finally got her shot to be the star. And, as we already know, she nailed it. Wiig, as co-writer, gave herself a lot of the movie’s best comedy bits, but she also made Annie a fully developed character. Annie’s often ridiculous behavior always stems from her insecurity over the fear of losing her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph): to marriage, to another woman, and to another city. It doesn’t help that the stress of being the maid of honor to Lillian comes on the heels of her cupcake bakery going under, getting fired from her day job, and being kicked out of her apartment and having to move back in with her mom. It’s a testament to Wiig’s acting ability that she makes Annie’s lengthy list of issues completely believable while still being hilarious. Chris Conaton
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Robin Wright, Stellan Skarsgård, Christopher Plummer, Joely Richardson
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Rooney Mara
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Since she’s the title character, you’d figured she’d be played with bravado. But what Ms. Mara does with the role of Lizbeth Salander is something special. Defying convention (original Goth hacker queen Noomi Rapace was brilliant) and twisting her take into a fiendish freak show of fetishism, the heretofore unknown actress becomes an alien, a literal extraterrestrial among her flat fellow humans. With a personality that matches her chameleon like last name and the courage many of the men around her lack, she embraces everything that is her role in this mystery — cog, scapegoat, catalyst, defiant feminist hero — and since this is the first part of a trilogy, she’s just getting started. Bill Gibron
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Cast: Leila Hatami, Peyman Moadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat, Sarina Farhad
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/s/sarina_farhadi_a_separation.jpg
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Sarina Farhadi
A Separation
Directed by her own father, Sarina Farhadi plays Termeh, the daughter of the divorcing Nader and Simin, in A Separation. Often shown solitary in the frame, excluded from her parents’ decisions but having to cope with the full force of their bitter conflicts, she seems to embody the film’s theme of female voicelessness. This all changes in the climax, in which Termeh is asked by a judge to choose whether she will live with her mother or father. Only then do we realize how crucial she is to the film; her overpowering feeling for both parents, despite all that she has suffered through. It’s one of the most rousing and affecting scenes of any this year, and Farhadi carries the moment beautifully. Andrew Blackie
Director: Paul Feig
Cast: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/m/melissa_mccarthy_bridesmaids.jpg
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Melissa McCarthy
Bridesmaids
In Bridesmaids, Melissa McCarthy delivers a completely shameless performance as the brusque, oversexed Megan and nearly walks away with the entire film. While all of the Bridesmaids are a mixed bag of personalities, McCarthy portrays the “anti-bridesmaid” — the gal you need to counterbalance the “bridesmaidzillas” who would find a way to incorporate monogrammed Lilly Pulitzer toilet paper into a wedding if they could. As the bride-to-be’s future sister-in-law, Megan is the odd woman out, drafted into the taffeta-trussed ranks of friends of the bride. Megan becomes not just the bridal party’s booming voice of reason, but a true friend to all of the women in the bridal party. McCarthy’s take on the character comes across as a modern interpretation of the no-nonsense ‘40s “gal pal” archetype, updated with an unchecked libido and affinity for flatulence while still being extremely likeable — and even sweet. Lana Cooper
Director: Terrence Malick
Cast: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Tye Sheridan, Fiona Shaw, Irene Bedard
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Jessica Chastain
The Tree of Life
It seemed as if Jessica Chastain was everywhere in 2011, and at year’s end, she won awards and nominations for six different films: Coriolanus, The Debt, The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, The Help, and Texas Killing Fields. So it’s only fitting that we highlight here the one role that most speaks to her omnipresence: Mrs. O’Brien in Terrence Malick’s masterpiece, The Tree of Life. As the mother of the family at the center of the enigmatic film, Chastain is more of a presence than a single person; not one mother, but every Mother.
If The Tree of Life can be boiled down to an investigation of human nature and the choice to live according to nature or the way of grace, then Chastain’s gracefulness seems to provide some answers to the mysteries Malick hands over to viewers. Brad Pitt’s Mr. O’Brien runs his home in a stern and often bitter fashion, which contrasts with the “grace” notes played by Chastain. She begins the film as a grieving mother and is seen in flashbacks as the nurturer and sole source of levity within the home. By the end, she has grown to embody the possibility of salvation and resurrection. These Big Ideas would fall apart entirely without a protean performer like Chastain. In keeping with Malick’s conception of the mother’s role, she’s the force that holds the whole thing together… whatever the thing may be. Thomas Britt
15 – 11
Director: Steve McQueen
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Nicole Beharie
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/c/carey_mulligan_shame.jpg
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Display Width: 250Carey Mulligan
Shame
At the very least, Mulligan’s performance in Shame destroys any potential for pigeonholing her as a sweet, young, and innocent character caught in the middle of sexual or violent impropriety (as seen in An Education and Drive). Luckily, it is also a powerful addition to an already great collection of performances, an incredible mix of frailty, melodrama, and bravura. If we’ll never think of Mulligan as sweet and carefree again, it is because the image of her as the emotionally scarred Sissy Sullivan is now seared in our minds. Tomas Hachard
Director: J.J. Abrams
Cast: Kyle Chandler, Ron Eldard, Noah Emmerich, Joel Courtney, Riley Griffiths, Elle Fanning, Ryan Lee, Zach Mills
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/e/elle_fanning_super_8.jpg
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Elle Fanning
Super 8
Somewhere, Sofia Coppola’s best film, was Elle Fanning’s de facto debutante ball. She already had an impressive list of credits as a very young actress, but Somewhere seemed right in step with her emerging teenage years and the wise-beyond-her-age quality Fanning can bring to a role. J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 is as different a film from Somewhere as you’re likely to see, but it is an ideal next step for Fanning’s arrival as a major talent. Operating on the conventional wisdom that girls mature faster than boys, a major subplot of Super 8 has the young teenage boys of the film consistently befuddled in their classmate’s presence.
She’s Alice, the lone girl of the group, and Fanning plays her as a young woman not yet fully aware of her power over young men. When she recites a dramatic monologue in the film the kids are making, the boys stand off camera, unsure of how to deal with her convincing passion. In another scene, her young admirer interprets her “zombie” embrace as a romantic overture. Fanning breezes through these complex moments like an innocent creature surrounded by a band of brothers who don’t know what to make of her, and that intrigues them even more. As such, her performance unearths another alien aspect of young teenage life — one that has nothing to do with the film’s sci-fi set pieces. Thomas Britt
Director: Joe Wright
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams, Jason Flemyng, Jessica Barden, Michelle Dockery
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Saoirse Ronan
Hanna
Saoirse Ronan has done a lot already in her young career, but she breaks new ground as Hanna, a badass teenage assassin. Raised in isolation by her father (Eric Bana), Hanna knows a hundred different ways to kill a man, how to survive in the wild, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of science facts. What her father failed to teach her, however, is how to act around other human beings. Hanna gives Ronan the chance to do some incredibly cool action work, from taking out the CIA squad sent to kill her to escaping from a secret underground installation using only her wits. Where she really shines, though, is when Hanna travels with an ordinary English family on vacation. Hanna doesn’t know any social norms, and her carefully practiced cover story falls apart almost immediately. Ronan manages to make Hanna believable in both the action sequences and the scenes where she desperately tries to learn how to interact with other humans. Chris Conaton
Director: Tate Taylor
Cast: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sissy Spacek, Allison Janney
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Octavia Spencer
The Help
Any Oscar pundit worth their salt is predicting Octavia Spencer as a lock for a Best Supporting Actress nomination later this month. Many of these same prognosticators who cast Spencer as the one to beat for the nod announce this news with a sort of wet blanket caveat: many proclaim she has no shot at winning. They dismiss Spencer’s work in the pivotal role of maid “Minny Jackson” as too “comedic”, too “light”. I’m sorry, but did I see the same movie? Because what I saw was a moving, engrossing portrayal of a woman being battered not only by the shocking racism in the not-so-far-in-the-distant past Mississippi, but also at home by her husband. Yes, there were a couple of great jokes and one epic just-desserts moment, but behind most comedy there is frequently great tragedy. Spencer, who was a real life inspiration for the character, bravely plays Minny’s sharp tongued realness in equal measure to her vulnerability and her pragmatism, in a region that had been historically, shamefully hostile toward African Americans, women in particular.
As Minny sends her eldest daughter off to her first day of service, what begins initially as a scene of humor turns, quite unexpectedly, into one of pathos and heart as Minny reminds the young girl to not talk back to her white employers. When her daughter laughs off the suggestion, a deadly seriousness shoots from Minny’s eyes, and with a laser beam focus, she repeats her instructions verbatim, in a tone that implies years of history and experience. It paints Minny as a steely survivor whose advice is always to be listened to despite her frequently cheerful exterior. This is anything but a comic relief role and to dismiss it as such is egregious, to not see Minny’s details — years of heartbreak and cruelty buried underneath a quick-witted veneer — completely misses the point of the performance, the film, and the character. The sheer gravitas that Spencer, as a storyteller, brings to her key moments throughout The Help are more than enough for her to land the Oscar nomination, yes, but make no mistake that in a fair world her work as an instantly iconic character in a hugely successful movie should also be more than enough to earn her a deserved win. Please don’t make a terrible awful mistake, Academy voters. Matt Mazur
Director: Drake Doremus
Cast: Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Charlie Bewley, Alex Kingston, Oliver Muirhead
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/f/felicity_jones_like_crazy.jpg
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Felicity Jones
Like Crazy Strong actors can perform well in bad movies. Felicity Jones, in the poorly constructed Like Crazy, takes it one step further: she transcends the picture with incredible warmth for a character so tortured by love. The film’s title is meant to convey youthful ignorance as well as that unique feeling one gets when they’re falling head over heels for someone new. Jones captures both of these with the command of an older actress who has the personal experience to create a layered, endearing character like Anna. She portrays her romantic struggle through a wide array of looks, gestures, and vocal tics. Like Crazy uses small moments to suggest massive problems, forcing the actors to convey quite a bit through very little. Jones excels even when the movie doesn’t — the mark of an incredibly talented thespian, young or old. Ben Travers
10 – 6
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Michael Sheen, Nina Arianda, Carla Bruni, Kurt Fuller, Tom Hiddleston, Mimi Kennedy, Alison Pill, Corey Stoll
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/m/marion_cotillard_midnight_in_paris.jpg
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Display Width: 250Marion Cotillard
Midnight in Paris
A dream in the midst of nightmares (or perhaps vice-versa) in 2010’s Inception, the almost-ethereal Cotillard returns in Woody Allen’s time-travel comedy as a muse, a lover, a socialite and nearly every character’s “the one that got away”. With grace and sublime ease, Cotillard brings Adriana to the forefront of the viewers’ hearts and minds, even when we should be rooting for Gil and Inez to make things work in the modern era. With a simple smile, wink or shrug, Cotillard makes both Gil and the audience forget about logic, commitment and even fidelity, and we want her to get exactly what she desires, no matter what that is. Simply put, Cotillard make Adriana the embodiment of Desire, and Midnight in Paris is all the more magical for it. Kevin Brettauer
Director: Rodrigo García
Cast: Glenn Close, Mia Wasikowska, Aaron Johnson, Janet McTeer, Jonathan Rhys Meyers
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Glenn Close
Albert Nobbs
Some have complained that Glenn Close’s work as the titular character in this rich, literary drama is too mannered and stiff for it to be believable that she could pass as a man, even in 1890s Dublin. This seems to miss the point entirely, and not because the character of Nobbs is in fact a highly mannered and stiff person. Close isn’t just trying to play a woman playing a man, she’s getting into the skin of a woman who’s been living a lie for so long that it’s not her gender that’s being hidden, it’s her entire being. A heart-breaking reminder of Close’s greatness. Chris Barsanti
Director: Simon Curtis
Cast: Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, Emma Watson, Julia Ormond, Toby Jones, Dominic Cooper, Judi Dench, Dougray Scott, Derek Jacobi
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/m/michelle_williams_my_week_with_marilyn.jpg
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Michelle Williams
My Week with Marilyn
Michelle Williams does such a great job of embodying the late, great Hollywood bombshell that you might miss the more nuanced aspects of the performance. Blink and you might not see the sequence where a flummoxed Monroe decides to don her noted persona for the workers at a local estate. Scoff and you may not witness the warm and inviting way this forlorn icon both repels and attracts her suitors. Dismiss the casting as something akin to a stunt and you’ll never navigate the intricate ins and outs of this breathy biopic. Almost everyone knows there was more to Marilyn Monroe than cheesecake and psychosis. Williams walks all the lines of her perplexing personality, and creates a classic. Bill Gibron
Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Patrick Wilson, Charlize Theron, J.K. Simmons, Elizabeth Reaser, Patton Oswalt
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Charlize Theron
Young Adult
Playing the protagonist you love to hate is a challenge in and of itself, but the selfish, snobby, Mavis Gary in Jason Reitman’s dark dramedy Young Adult straddles the love/hate line more than any other character this year. Charlize Theron captures both sides of Mavis beautifully by illustrating her unappealing habits without remorse. Usually these kind of imperfect protagonists have little moments of saving grace. Not this time. Mavis is either talking down to her hometown’s locals, scheming to steal a married man, or failing to pity a partially crippled former classmate (Patton Oswalt with a performance to rival his own in Big Fan). Theron’s is a subtlety powerful performance you can’t help but love, even if you hate her onscreen alter ego. Ben Travers
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgård, Kiefer Sutherland, Cameron Spurr
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Kirsten Dunst
Melancholia
I’m convinced that Kirsten Dunst is the best actress of her generation and has been for many years. Still, the remarkable range she has shown throughout her career — in films spanning from Interview with a Vampire to Bring It On to Marie Antionette to her brilliant turn in the upcoming Sundance player Bachelorette — didn’t fully prepare me for the refined, mature and deeply soulful nuances that Dunst brings to the elegantly manic depressive character of Justine in Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia. In a performance that plays like a piece of classical music (perhaps “Death and the Maiden”), Dunst navigates an extreme spectrum of highs and lows, uncovering the troubled mind of a young bride who must come to terms with impending doom. What power does the planet Melancholia have over Justine? To quote another Von Trier film, Dancer in the Dark, she’s “seen it all, there is no more to see”. Her burden seems to be bearing the knowledge of the world’s destruction before anyone else, and this knowledge unravels her.
While her premonitions will eventually be proven true, Justine will experience debilitating anxieties and depression, just until the end of the world. Following an intense, reptilian-eyed showdown with her caretaker sister, Justine, freed of the anxiety that once pummeled her into the ground, sets out to construct a “magic cave” shelter with her nephew in preparation for the last act’s planetary collision as her sister falls apart. Dunst swings her character’s arc into one of redemption, of strength, just as Earth is destroyed, without it ever being cliched or gooey. Justine’s nephew calls her “Auntie Steel Breaker”, a term that is never really explained, but I think that implies he sees her as being strong enough to break through steel, she is his hero. When he calls her this while she is in the throes of despair, laying paralyzed with grief, it is hard to listen to.
However, by the film’s end, as Dunst reveals Justine’s solid core, she earns that moniker as Justine shockingly becomes the story’s most grounded, sensible, strong voice. No matter how flawed the heroines of Von Trier’s oeuvre may or may not be, each one of these women is expertly drawn by the performer and Von Trier. These are wholly original, daring and cinematic female characters. Whether you love him or hate him, he is still one of the only major working auteurs to consistently depict interesting, complicated women with such razor sharp edges and subtleties. Dunst’s prickly, coolly venomous portrayal of Justine is a work of vision and bravado that hints on even greater things to come. Bring it on, apocalypse. Matt Mazur
5 – 1
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Cast: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/t/tilda_swinton_we_need_to_talk_about_kevin.jpg
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Display Width: 250Tilda Swinton
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Tilda Swinton is the only actress who can portray a frumpy corporation attorney in one film (the excellent Michael Clayton), and a misguided messenger from God in another (the better left unmentioned Constantine). Here, she takes on her most demanding role — the mother of a literal demon from Hell. Little Kevin comes out of the womb a terror, and becomes even more evil as he grows up. The film shows us the aftermath of this child’s date with destructive destiny, and watching Swinton’s porcelain like facade crash into caustic reality is one of the performances many joys. She may never get to have the talk the title demands, but everything we need to know about this parent in written on her harried, haggard face. Bill Gibron
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Cast: Yoon Jeong-hee, Lee David, Ah Nae-sang
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/y/yoon_jeong-hee_poetry.jpg
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Yoon Jeong-hee
Poetry
Korean icon Yoon Jeong-hee came out of a 15-year-long retirement to play the lead in Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry and she infuses her performance with the excitement of a new star who possesses endless wisdom. Watching her play Yang Mija feels like discovering a whole new world in each and every scene. Mija enrolls in a poetry class to keep herself busy when she’s not working as a maid or looking after her grandson. Just as she begins to find pleasure in verse, she is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Lesser performers would’ve exteriorized Mija’s illness and reduce her to a series of tics and melodramatic line deliveries; Yoon however, chooses to turn her into a collector of moments and beauty, who tries to take the whole world in before her mind gets to it. She takes Mija to a place where every second is filled with childlike wonderment and possibility. By the time the film ends Yoon has made you see that poetry mustn’t be understood, but felt. Jose Solís Mayén
Director: Tate Taylor
Cast: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sissy Spacek, Allison Janney
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/v/viola_davis_the_help.jpg
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Viola Davis
The Help
It has been a long time since Viola Davis has appeared in a project that truly deserves her (Disturbia? Eat Pray Love!?), and The Help continues that unfortunate tradition. Amidst the easy and treacly banalities of this civil rights feel-gooder, though, Davis stands tall as the housekeeper Aibileen Clark, whose embattled humanity stands in sharp contrast to the cold shrewishness of her pro-Jim Crow mistress. Davis succeeds by not showing Clark as some paragon of righteousness, but an exhausted mother who is pushed past her limits by cruel fate and crueler system and yet continues to demand of herself that she do the right thing. She makes the film worth seeing — a higher compliment than it might seem. Chris Barsanti
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Cast: Leila Hatami, Peyman Moadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat, Sarina Farhad
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/l/leila_hatami_a_separation.jpg
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Leila Hatami
A Separation
Perhaps the most outspoken character in A Separation, Leila Hatami’s Simin is determined to leave Iran, even if it means divorcing her husband – a difficult move under the country’s legal system. Hatami conveys in one hard stare the complex, contradictory emotions which drive her character: frustration, spitefulness that her daughter will not come with her, and hidden sadness that her husband (Peyman Maadi) is so nonchalant about her leaving, which she is determined not to show. She matches her husband’s stubbornness with hard-headed rationality, coming to seem like the film’s voice of reason and indignant righteousness. Hatami’s portrayal of a woman who refuses to be constrained by her society or circumstances marks her as a highlight in a year of strong female performances. Andrew Blackie
Director: T. Sean Durkin
Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson, John Hawkes, Hugh Dancy, Brady Corbet, Julie Garner, Christopher Abbott, Maria Dizzia, Louisa Krause
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Elizabeth Olsen
Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene
As the brainwashed Catskills cult member suddenly reunited with her posh Connecticut family, Elizabeth Olsen (yes, she’s the younger sister of the infamous fashion disaster twins) is electrifying in Sean Durkin’s feature film debut. Required to walk a fine line between lost identity and lingering emotional damage, her frailty is only matched by her hidden intensity. Martha (renamed “Marcy May” by cruel Manson-lite leader Patrick) is the kind of gal you’d expect to runaway and join a commune. She carries a wealth of hidden issues inside her pale, plaintive face. On the other hand, Olsen taps into the deep psychological and sexual damage she endures to turn every waking moment into a taut night terror of suspense-filled fright. We keep waiting for the other shoe to drop in Martha’s manic existence. If and when it comes, we try but can’t look away. That’s the power in this turn. Through it all, Olsen remains a window into a world few will ever experience… or ever want to see. It’s a compelling, and creepy, performance. Bill Gibron
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