Let’s start with the simple truth that no award of any stripe, merit or loftiness will ever get it 100 percent right, or can be expected to —Tolstoy, for example, didn’t win the Nobel Prizefor literature. What would he have had to do, write a sequel toWar and Peace?But it’s easier to get worked up about acting subs at theOscarsthan literary snubs in Stockholm. There are many cultural reasons for this, but the chief one is that the Oscars are more important. Why else would there have been this year’s uproar overthe failure to includeBarbie’sMargot Robbiein the running for Best Actress?
Hereditary.A24/Courtesy Everett Collection
A24/Courtesy Everett Collection
Toni Collette,Hereditary(2018)
Birth.New Line/courtesy Everett Collection
New Line/courtesy Everett Collection
Nicole Kidman,Birth(2004)
Evita.Hulton Archive/Getty
Hulton Archive/Getty
Madonna,Evita(1996)
Madonna has struggled, to put it mildly, to achieve success as a movie actress — she can be so unsure of herself in a role that you just about lose all patience with her. ButEvitadrew on her undisputed strengths as a music-video performer — the role of Argentina’s Eva Perón is sung through, without dialogue, and the role is sexy and sharp-edged, with a metallic harshness (plus, it’s not emotionally all that deep). If you can strike a pose while singing, andMadonna surely can, you can pull off a triumph, and Madonna surely does. Admittedly, the thought that Meryl Streep at one point was going to star (with Oliver Stone directing) can set you wondering about what might have been: You can just imagine Streep’s Evita — deluded, messianic, pathetic — with her arms raised above an adoring multitude. But thatEvitadoesn’t exist. Madonna’s performance ranks up there with Liza Minnelli’s inCabaret.
American Psycho.Lions Gate/courtesy Everett Collection
Lions Gate/courtesy Everett Collection
Christian Bale,American Psycho(2000)
Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’.Scott Garfield / Paramount Pictures / Courtesy Everett
Scott Garfield / Paramount Pictures / Courtesy Everett
Tom Cruise,Top Gun: Maverick(2022)
There are movie stars who can act, and those who can’t. Cruise, though, is something in between, a movie star who can act asifhe’s acting: Every smile and gesture has the heroic conviction of a performer who wants his presence to register with seismic force. Cruise happens to do this exceptionally well — better than anyone, really. Isn’t that as good a reason for an Oscar nomination as any?Maverick,which actually improved on the original 1986Top Gun,was an enormous hit, and the whole enterprise — with its military hardware, gung-ho spirit and polite romance — seemed to emanate wholly from Cruise’s certainty, will power and view of himself in the world (and Hollywood). Surely this should count as something with the Academy.
Lupita Nyong’o,Us(2019)
Here’s another example of Oscar’s disinterest in exceptional performances that happen to be in horror movies. N’yongo, who wonSupporting Actress for 2013’s12 Years a Slave,showed a revelatory emotional range here — she plays two characters who happen to be (on what turns out to be a very freakish level) the same person: There’s Adelaide, a woman with a perfectly comfortable life with her family, and then there’s her murderous doppelgänger, Red, who belongs to a frightening legion of “twins” suddenly assaulting society. N’yongo plays Adelaide and Red very distinctly — Red speaks in a voice ragged with pain — but also establishes an odd empathy between them. The performance swings back and forth with the diabolical momentum of Poe’s pendulum.
My Best Friend’s Wedding.TriStar/courtesy Everett Collection
TriStar/courtesy Everett Collection
Julia Roberts,My Best Friend’s Wedding(1996)
This early performance is one of Robert’s most delightful — and possibly counts as her first mature performance, as well: It introduced the note of thorniness that’s been key to so many of her later vehicles, includingAugust: Osage County(2013) and the Amazon seriesHomecoming(2018). Perhaps that touch of ornery complexity counted against her this time out, along with the fact thatWeddingis a subversion of rom-com fantasy — in fact, it’s the opposite ofPretty Woman,for which Roberts, as a the world’s most winningly lustrous sex worker, was nominated for Best Actress. Here she’s Julianne, a food critic who decides she wants to marry an old friend (Dermot Mulroney) — although that means she’ll have to disrupt his upcoming marriage (to Cameron Diaz, also delightful). If you don’t root for Roberts here — who would want to see Cameron Diaz hurt? — you spend the movie anticipating the moment she’ll finally sort out this whole mess and bring the story to a harmonious close. Only a performance of real magic could accomplish that.
Lady Gaga,House of Gucci(2021)
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Michelle Pfeiffer,Batman Returns(1992)
A better title for directorTim Burton’s secondBatmanfilm might have been justCatwoman. That would have been one way, at least, to acknowledge Pfeiffer’s beautifully crafted performance, which brought an intense neuroticism and a a dark sexuality to the role — this is perhaps the fullest expression ever of the rococo perversity of Burton’s sensibility. And the glamour of a genuine Hollywood star still clings to her, giving her Catwoman a romantic glow. It’s one of the few truly great superhero performances — and a lot more pleasurable than Joaquin Phoenix’s excruciating (but Oscar-winning) turn in 2019’sJoker.
source: people.com
