Best Acting

Bradley Cooper - Silver Linings Playbook

"What do you mean I can't play with you guys?"

Mental disorders are a tough thing to accurately portray because an actor can have a tendency to create a charicature of what they perceive normal mental disorder behavior is instead of a unique character who happens to suffer from a mental disorder.  In this regard, Bradley Cooper hits this one out of the park.  The story doesnt revolve around him suffering from an illness, but instead focuses on him trying to put his life back together while he has an illness.  Cooper hits all of the right notes in his performance, taking the usual character he plays, the pretty boy douche, and adding a spice of realism and unspoken intensity. 

Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained

"Hey QT, what's my line? N*****? Oh, ok."

Quentin Tarrentino specifically wrote this part of a German bounty hunter for Christoph Waltz, and that becomes evident very early on in the movie when we see the ease with which Waltz is able to deliver the fast paced dialogue that Tarrentino usually writes.  Regardless of what the title of the movie is, Waltz' Dr. King Schultz is the lead of this movie, and the driving force behind much of the plot moving forward.  He gives us a bounty hunter with a heart and a mind rather than just a killing machine.  I found myself drawn in every time he opened his mouth to speak, wondering what fascinating thing he may say next.  He now has 2 Oscars to go with his 2 performances in Tarrentino movies.  Why would he work with anyone else?

Daniel Day Lewis - Lincoln


Thanks for inventing the penny.

This performance is so iconic and masterfully acted, that when your grandkids picture Abraham Lincoln, they will not see the real Lincoln, but Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln.  There is no greater praise you can give to an actor than that.  He is able to play Lincoln as a quiet and reserved leader one moment, then in a matter of seconds, he explodes with a biting quip or a surge of intensity.  His Lincoln is a man of the people (well, half the people), telling drawn out stories then hammering home a punchline like a 19th century stand up comedian.  Day Lewis will go down as the greatest actor of our time, and possibly, of all time.

Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook

"You mean he was on the roof the whole time?"

It would have been entirely too easy to dismiss Lawrence in this movie.  She is only 22 years old, yet she was playing someone who had already been married and widowed.  However, she tackles this role with such a self-assuredness that we the audience immediately forget this fact.  She fully encapsualtes the character and makes it her own, drawing all eyes to her even in scenes where she shares the screen with the great in this movie, De Niro.  We accept that her character is kinda whorish and manipulative and we root for her, not in spite of these things, but because she makes them simply character traits and not definitions of her character.

Judi Dench - Skyfall

"It's Dame Judi Dench, you insolent little twit."

She is a thief.  She managed to steal away the entire plot of a Bond movie and made this all about her, and I could not be more thrilled about that.  The Bond films have always felt very formulaic to me, with Bond encountering a new villain, then screwing and drinking his way to a resolution that usually involved violence.  The newer Bond movies have upped the ante a bit by adding a compassionate side to Bond, showing us that he is truly affected when the people he cares about are taken away from him or put in harms way.  The greatest example of this being the use of M in Skyfall.  Dench exudes that usual aura of hers that demands that her character be respected and laces it with a new insight to her character that allows us to see just how deeply these two characters care for one another.  In lesser hands, the role of M could have been simply there to move the plot along, but in Dench's hands, it became so much more.

Quvenzhane Wallis - Beasts of the Southern Wild

I would make the same face if The Onion called me a c***.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I question how much of a child's performance should be credited to the child itself and how much should be given to the director.  (I will be doing a longer article next month about this very topic.)  With that said, Wallis is simply captivating in this movie, as we see her grow from a dependant child to someone ready to take responsibility for themselves.  Much of her best work is done through voiceover, but even when she is on screen not saying anything, you are drawn to her and her story, and the credit belongs to her performance.  Its easy for a child to lose their whimsy when they are put up on the screen, but that isnt a problem here and we never forget that this is a child tackling some major adult issues.