Same thing, different day. We're looking at the best leading and supporting performances by female actors today. Why not actresses? My actor friends prefer to be called actors. Simple as that. Let's get to it.
Best Supporting Actor
5. Elizabeth Debicki, The Great Gatsby
Elizabeth Debicki is the only performer in Luhrmann's visually lush production to draw focus from her surroundings. Her Jordan Baker is everything I ever imagined the character to be (except present in the second half of the story in any significant way). Debicki is an unstoppable force of gossip smashing through Gatsby's orchestrated grandeur just because she can. Frankly, if Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce actually included Jordan's romance with narrator/everyman Nick Carraway in this adaptation of The Great Gatsby, the quality of Elizabeth Debicki's performance would have given the film some much needed tension and energy.
4. Kristin Scott Thomas, Only God Forgives
The more I think about Only God Forgives, the more I really like it. It's a ghost story with a living specter and a musical without lyrics or dances. Kristin Scott Thomas won the screenplay lottery by not being in any of the scenes that required writer/director Nicholas Winding Refn to use editing and score to cover for thick, dialogue-obscuring dialects. Her obsessive mother demanding justice for her son's murder (a son who brutally raped and murdered a teenage girl for sport at the beginning of the film) is just so. It's a heavily mannered performance that matches the super saturated cinematography and revenge fantasy of the film.
3. Carey Mulligan, Inside Llewyn Davis
I'm currently working on a production of Funny Girl and the opening lyrics to "I'm the Greatest Star" really describe Carey Mulligan's performance perfectly, "I've got 36 expressions: sweet as pie to tough as leather." Mulligan's Jean is an angel onstage (really lovely vocals with great placement and folk style) and the most aggressive, bitter, regret-filled character whenever trapped with Llewyn outside of a club. You really get the sensation that Llewyn is the only person in the world that can turn the genuinely nice Jean into a monster foaming at the mouth for the next perfect put down. Mulligan's achievement is making both sides of this wild character belong together in one role.
2. Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave
Lupita Nyong'o's achievement in 12 Years a Slave is turning a character used as a plot/contextual device into something wholly believable onscreen. Patsy is used in this film as the representation of the abusive treatment of slaves. She is not the only character punished for no reason, but she is the character that most of the arbitrary abuse falls on. Nyong'o does not allow Patsy to just be a victim. She also ensures Patsy is not a foil to the main narrative of Northrup trying to restore his freedom after being kidnapped and sold into slavery. Her Patsy is real, making her subplot all the more devastating.
1. Emma Watson, The Bling Ring
Some day, somebody is going to really unravel what Sofia Coppola set out to do with the structure of The Bling Ring and everything will come together in a meaningful way. For now, I gaze at this fascinating film from the outside and appreciate the quality of craft going on. Emma Watson is top of the class as known-famewhore Nicki. Nicki may not have instigated the initial break-ins and robberies at celebrity mansions, but she sure pushed everyone else to keep going back for more. Watson opens and closes the film with interviews about how much the ordeal of being caught changed her life (and plays it for huge laughs), but it's the total commitment to creating such a vapid and ugly character that puts her over the top. There is no self-awareness or shame in her Nikki. You never doubt that she is narcissistic enough to think people will view her as the real victim while wandering around in stolen clothing and jewelry. She's never off, either. Even when she's blurry in the background or cast in silhouette, the vapidity and greed of this character never falters.
Click through for the top five leading performances of 2013.
Best Actor
5. Mia Wasikowska, Stoker
Playing the antihero in legitimate Edgar Allan Poe adaptations resulted in some of Vincent Price's finest work 50 years ago. Now, Mia Wasikowska is following a similar path to success with a Poe-like story, complete with unreliable narrator with unusual powers. Something is wrong with India Stoker. She hears things that no one else can, like a single blade of grass in a field or pollen floating in the breeze. When her Uncle Charles comes to live with her and her mother after her father's death, India knows something is terribly wrong. She hears everything Charles says and does on the property. Charles knows it, too. Wasikowska pulls off a very tricky transformation (remember the first time you read "The Tell Tale Heart" and reached the point where the narrator actually snapped and went through with his plan?) in a totally believable way. The beauty and terror of her performance only grows from that turn.
4. Melissa McCarthy, The Heat
Melissa McCarthy is nothing short of amazing in The Heat. Her role as Mullins, the tough-talking and acting Boston cop defending her home at any cost, starts as a one-note joke and quickly grows to be so much more. McCarthy's comedic chops are so strong that she wound up with an Oscar nomination for an over the top farce of a character in Bridesmaids. In The Heat, she gets to showcase so much more of her abilities. Not only is she a fine physical comedian, totally committing to bits as ridiculous as crawling through multiple car windows to get out of a parking lot, but she has very strong dramatic chops, as well. The scenes with her brother, a recovering drug user and dealer, are so emotional. You really feel her passion for the protection of her city. If The Heat was your typical crime thriller without all of the physical comedy, she would have been nominated for every major acting award. Shame about that anti-comedy bias in most critics and industry groups.
3. Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Cate Blanchett is giving the performance of a lifetime in Blue Jasmine. As fallen high society woman Jasmine, Blanchett will break your heart again and again. This woman lost everything she had, including her sanity, because of an unthinkable act of betrayal involving her family. The more you learn about her, the more you want to hate her and everything she stands for. And if Woody Allen had his way, you'd be handed a diaper before walking into the theater because he thinks mocking and torturing the mentally unwell Jasmine is the highest form of comedy. Cate Blanchett's performance alone stops Blue Jasmine from being the worst kind of cruel joke. She'd be my win, easily, if I could stomach why Woody Allen decided A Streetcar Named Desire needed to be rewritten as a comedy inspired by old side show culture. Blanchett's achievement is making you not want to throw peanuts at the freak show Woody Allen tries to create.
2. Rosario Dawson, Trance
Trance is one of the best modern thrillers you could see. Rosario Dawson stars as a hypnotherapist attempting to recover the location of a stolen painting from a low-level art thief who blacked out the memory. There is so much going on in this film it will make your head spin in the best way possible. Dawson is captivating. Her character functions as a plot device, a way to turn the narrative in unexpected directions as the story progresses, and she makes you believe every word of it. When the truth really starts to come out, she'll break your heart. That tension and distance in her first scenes (enough to make her performance intriguing) is so much more nuanced than you could ever imagine.
1. Brie Larson, Short Term 12
As far as I'm concerned, Brie Larson gave the best performance of the year by any film actor in any role. She plays Grace, a higher level staff member at a foster care facility. Grace gives everything she has to these children who cannot return home, but hits a major road block when she believes one young woman is being returned to her abuser for weekend visitation. Larson makes Grace real. You don't doubt her sincerity, her commitment, or her growing frustration with the system she has dedicated her life to. The scene in the office where her boss tells her she's nothing more than a babysitter is unbelievable because of Larson's commitment to the character. I cannot stress how amazing Larson is in Short Term 12, which itself is a brilliant must-see film.
So those are my picks for the top female performances of 2013. What are yours? Share them below.