100 Performances Oscars Forgot – 14/20

RE-POST

Sorry Albert Brooks you are outnumbered here by feisty, fierce women. Go take a look at these Oscar never-weres.

Jennifer Jason Leigh for The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) – – – Robin Write @Filmotomy

Jennifer Jason Leigh has hardly been synonymous with an Oscar contender in her moderately successful film career. That reputation is misleading if you look closer. In the mid-nineties in particular she had a flourishing few years which could have resulted in succession of Academy Award mentions, with stand-out performances in the likes of Short Cuts, Georgia, Dolores Claiborne, and perhaps her most talked-up bid for a Lead Actress nomination for her fine work in Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle. I have always relished her rat-a-tat performance in the Coen Brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy. As ruthless, quick-talking reporter Amy Archer, Leigh pretty much pulls the rug from under the feet of Tim Robbins and Paul Newman. Eventually the super-ambitious Archer becomes the love interest, but it is Leigh’s early scenes that claim the limelight. Brilliantly imitating the kind of snappy way of talking we are accustomed to with Rosalind Russell or Katharine Hepburn, Leigh’s energy not only drives the Coen Brothers’ frenetic pace, but also highlights her own gift as an actress who can convincingly punch above her apparent weight.

Irene Papas for Iphigenia (1977) – – – Paddy Mulholland @screenonscreen

A performance of scintillating power! What a treat to behold the Greek Grand Dame of acting, Irene Papas, prove the full extent of her prowess as a performer in Michael Cacoyannis’ marvelous adaptation of Euripedes’ Iphigenia at Aulis. It’s a triumphant turn in a triumphant film from a play written by one of the all-time greats – a true display of true Greek dramatic superiority. As Clytemnestra, the desperate mother of the doomed titular character, Papas runs wild with her character’s wild emotions, but with exceptional control, rightly seeking the proper style and tone with which to make her character’s rational unreasonableness seem entirely reasonable. She storms through the role and through the film, with a performance that would have registered as outrageously overwhelming were this any other actor in any other film. But it’s not! It’s Irene Papas in Iphigenia, and it’s magnificent stuff!

Reese Witherspoon for Election (1999) – – – Joey Moser @JoeyMoser83

Everyone went to school with a Tracy Flick, and some of us were Tracy Flick. Before she landed on the Hollywood A-List, Reese Witherspoon blew everyone’s minds as one of the most ambitious high schoolers ever written. Tracy is obnoxious, pushy, and absolutely hilarious. Even though Election begins and ends with Matthew Broderick’s unraveling schoolteacher, Witherspoon unwittingly steals the rug out from under him the entire film. At this point in her career, Witherspoon lands a lot of prestige films (last year’s Wild and her Academy Award winning turn as June Carter in Walk the Line), but her Tracy Flick is her scrappiest. She could play almost anyone she wants, and I wish she would tap into the same control she does in Alexander Payne’s comedy. It might be her most physical performance; it’s almost as if Tracy purposefully wraps her lips around her teeth to escape the wrong words from coming out of her mouth. She zooms through the maze of high school with the scene of success on her nose like a mouse with cheese. High school can be a very confusing time, and teenagers change who they want to be every five minutes. Tracy Flick, however, has laser beam focus even though the adults around her have decided that she’s something entirely – one teacher views her as a plaything and Broderick thinks she must be stopped. She tells a weary Broderick early in the film, “We’re going to be spending a lot of time together.” Thank God for that.

Albert Brooks for Drive (2011) – – – Jonathan Holmes @MisterBrown_23

Much like Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love or the late Robin Williams in Insomnia, the famed comedic actor playing a mob boss is not just a break from form – it’s a transformative performance that makes you look at Brooks in a new light. He’s not doing his usual shtick, even as an antagonist. He’s a straight-up brutal, cold and menacing thug who wants the money the Driver (Ryan Goseling) stole from a pawn shop in a heist gone terribly wrong, as a way to stop the East-Coast mob from killing him and talking over his turf as revenge. Watch him sit down, face to face with Driver, telling him in precise detail the only option he has, and see the void of emotion he has in his face; the coldness he has in his eyes. To be blunt: it’s fucking frightening, and the kind of acting ability I never would have thought Brooks had in him.

Kathleen Turner for Body Heat (1981) – – – Steve Schweighofer @banjoonthecrag

Lawrence Kasden’s Body Heat was the neo-noir answer to the Reagan years where everyone is on the take, outsmarting each other to get what they want and horny as hell while doing it. When Kathleen Turner appears on the big screen for the first time in her career, her catlike Matty Walker becomes the poster girl of the era. Her whiskey voice and fearless physicality wraps William Hurt, along with everyone else in the film she encounters, around her little finger during her ploy that ends in a lounge chair on a desert island. Yes – spoiler – she completely gets away with it (Reagan years, y’know). Body Heat made a major star of Turner and she did go on to get Oscar nominated ONCE while gathering a slew of Globes and critics awards for several other roles until her successful retreat to the New York stage at the end of the decade. Kathleen Turner was a meteor of a female screen icon – brilliant, but brief – so we savor what we have. Too bad Oscar missed the chance.

100 Performances Oscars Forgot – 13/20

RE-POST – Originally Published September 2015.

Here are 5 more acting performances not nominated for an Oscar. And might I add even further gratitude to those writing for me at the moment, your enthusiasm and talent is highly appreciated.

Bryce Dallas Howard for The Village (2004) – – – Robin Write @Filmotomy

With The Village continuing the steady decline of the career of one-trick pony M. Night Shyamalan, I can still find a couple of great things about the mediocre 2004 thriller. They are both called Howard. For one, James Newton Howard’s incredibly provoking, transcending score, which owes a lot to Hilary Hahn and her violin I might add. And secondly, actress Bryce Dallas Howard making her breakthrough lead role. I wonder how many of you recall the minor echoes of support for Howard as a possible Oscar Best Actress contender. That never unfortunately amounted to a serious challenge. In the end the movie’s poor reception damaged its chances and even the Best Original Score nomination was considered a surprise (it was most certainly well-deserved). Bryce Dallas Howard does the best with what she has to work with here, her blind Ivy Walker is the most endearing and sympathetic character in The Village – noted this is an actress known for playing quite unsavory characters. Howard’s performance here is both truly engaging and appropriately sedate, she gives Ivy the innocence and determination that sets the narrative in motion. An impressive, affecting portrayal of a girl who cannot physically see nor anticipate the life-changing secret before her. A pleasure to watch, I’m a real sucker for this performance (many of you likely feel this selection itself is a bit of a Shyamalan-style twist), and not sure Bryce Dallas Howard has been this captivating since.

Oscar Isaac for Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) – – – Al Robinson @AlRob_MN

When the Best Lead Actor nominees were announced in 2014, Oscar Isaac’s name was nowhere to be found. This is a tragedy. In Inside Llewyn Davis, Oscar Isaac plays the title role of Llewyn Davis. He’s a singer-songwriter who is stuck in a major rut. He tried to get his career started, but then his singing partner jumped off the George Washington Bridge. Oscar Isaac plays Llewyn so well because he finds the pain and anger his character has and works it into his wonderful line delivery and facial expressions. You can also see it and hear it when he performs folk songs at different times during the film. He sings with a sadness and despair that only a person doomed to fail knows and possesses. Oscar is also great when working with other actors like Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, and Adam Driver. He understands his place in the film. My favorite scenes (when he’s not playing songs), is when he’s working with the cat – in the film itself, the metaphor being that Llewyn is the cat. And Oscar Isaac played the cat wonderfully. It’s a shame that Oscar wasn’t nominated for the Oscar, but at least his performance will live on for years to come.

Kirsten Dunst for Melancholia (2011) – – – Bailey Holden @BaileyHoldenM

God. No one gets better performances out of women than Lars Von Trier, there were so many to choose from. I could have gone for Nicole Kidman for her twist for banal to malign in Dogville, Bjork for her stunningly convincing realistic pathos in Dancer in the Dark, Emily Watson for her deep inner conflict in Breaking The Waves (she was nominated). And yet, even with all those performances, brilliant as they are, I have chosen one of the more abstract performances in a Von Trier film, Kirsten Dunst as Justine in Melancholia. Depression is a heavy topic to explore for any filmmaker, especially one as famously insensitive (intelligent though he may be) as Lars Von Trier, and yet, almost miraculously here we have the best on-screen vision of depression I have ever seen in the form of one Kirsten Dunst. It’s a significantly less tangible performance than those aforementioned, Dunst has an airiness almost vacant quality about her in the first half, making the bathtub scene where all the stress and anxiety seep through the cracks all the more hard hitting. But what’s even more interesting is how her performance changes in the second half of the film, once the whole world knows that the eponymous planet Melancholia is going to consume the whole of earth, she gains a power, a smugness almost unseen in her character before. Depression makes the whole world around you feel so dark that your feelings are justified, and when Justine realizes she was right all along she gains a power both inner and supernatural, the ultimate depressive state’s fantasy.

John Huston for Chinatown (1974) – – – Paddy Mulholland @screenonscreen

One of the greats of film directing turns in one of the great displays of film acting in Roman Polanski’s classic noir Chinatown. It’s a performance rooted in a fearsomely keen understanding of this type of tyrant – John Huston plays water tycoon Noah Cross with a powerful presence attained equally through the vividness of his work and the precision of it. Huston never overplays an overpowering role, instead provoking in the viewer a response of bone-chilling intensity that matches the intensity he’s put into it, only as potent as it is because Huston’s Cross is so horribly believable. He communicates a lifetime of work, wealth and a deep-seated superiority complex that this pessimistic picture implies will endure as long as it is designed to – forever! Huston truly makes us believe that at any time, in any place, he at least is capable of anything.

Anamaria Marinca for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2008) – – – Tobi Ogunyemi @spaceliontobi @SpaceLioncs

When Cristian Mungiu’s New Romanian masterpiece came into the world and won the Palme d’Or at that year’s Cannes festivities, Marinca’s performance in particular was described – among a number of platitudes – that in a perfect world, she would’ve cleaned up awards and have a world renounced career ahead of her. Although that may not have happened (in regards to the Oscars – who are usually very anti-Cannes – and Hollywood in general), Marinca’s work as the Romanian student Otilla who in 1987 has to juggle a number of plates in the air – study for finals, have dinner with her boyfriend’s parents, schedule an abortion for her roommate (you know, average college stuff as one does) – and serves up a masterclass in how to display frustration and dogged determination with everything in an actor’s disposal, including most importantly, their face. With abortion a highly criminal federal offense in Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime (for anyone involved), clear steps must be taken and Otilla goes through everything to a tee. From hustling to get American cigarettes to securing a hotel to even allowing oneself to be blackmailed by the back alley abortionist she has contacted beforehand, Marinca’s physicality shows the weariness of all this takes out of her, the tension that accumulates with each passing second of what could happen if just the slightest thing goes wrong. How she’s framed in shots, how the camera follows her and doesn’t, her back against the camera, how she occupies space in so many of the classic long static shots that the film employs, Marinca takes advantages of everything the film – and the time period of that film as well – limits her to, and is able to make everything soar all-around her. The final shot between Otilla and her friend, Gabriela, is a silent one but is weighed with so much deft and subtext, and it’s the perfect final period for Marinca’s landmark performance as well. Hard work hardly pays off, or is even appreciated, but it’s amazing to witness it done so well at this level.