For the next week, I'll be featuring my picks for the big six categories (and maybe the screenplays, depending on how frequently I can pull myself together). Let's start with Best Supporting Actress, a category that has honored both the great (Juliette Binoche in The English Patient, Marcia Gay Harden in Pollock) and the dubious (Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, Mira Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite).
Here are my five picks for this year's top five:
1. Penelope Cruz, Vicky Christina Barcelona
Several years ago in college, for our annual joke issue, the Trasher, I think it was called, I wrote a faux news item about Penelope Cruz winning an Oscar. At the time, she had starred in Vanilla Sky and Sahara, so the idea did seem preposterous. This was before Almodovar transformed her into our generation's Sophia Loren, a timeless beauty with screen magnetism to spare. Her bit part in this Woody Allen laugher proves that her career-defining work in Volver was no fluke. She's a hoot as the wildly unstable Maria Elena, an artist consumed with herself, madness, and undying love for her ex-boyfriend (Javier Bardem). As worthy as the other actresses this year no doubt are, I'm pulling for this one.
2. Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married
The sibling relationship in Jonathan Demme's criminally underrated Rachel Getting Married reminds me of Georgia, a film that say one of its siblings (Mare Winningham) nominated for the Oscar. The title characters in both films play second fiddle to their crazy, neurotic, selfish sisters (Jennifer Jason Leigh - in one of her best roles - in Georgia, and Anne Hathaway in Rachel).Like Winningham before her, DeWitt does not allow her put-upon character to fade into the background, or to let the film turn solely into a showcase for Hathaway's histrionics. Of all of the film's naturalistic, raw performances, DeWitt's feels the most lived-in and authentic. You believe her frustration, aggravation, and ultimately (and here's the trick), her ability to relate and forgive. It's a performance so good that many are likely to see past it (it doesn't scream, "Hand me that damn statue!" in a Bette Davis-eque voice). At the very least, hopefully it will allow us to see more of her.
3. Tilda Swinton, Burn after Reading
Who knew she could do comedy? After searing dramatic work in Orlando, The Deep End, and Michael Clayton (for which she won the Supporting Actress Oscar last year), I knew she had range, but that doesn't always translate into winning comic timing? As the uptight wife of John Malkovich's discontented CIA man in this Coen Brothers fiasco, Swinton is my pick for best in show in a mostly winning ensemble.
4. Evan Rachel Wood, The Wrestler
Talk about a film full of surprises. Not only does it feature the year's best performance in Mickey Rourke, and pack an unexpected emotional whallop, but it also features this minor gem from an actress I've never really enjoyed. Sure, Wood's messy bundle of adolescent angst in Thirteen did resonate, but her bizarre off-camera existance (going goth and briefly dating Marilyn Manson) totally turned me off. Here, though, in the small role of Rourke's estranged daughter, all of Wood's confusion, detachment, and disappointment ring true.
5. Misty Upham, Frozen River
I wasn't a huge fan of Courtney Hunt's somber look at two desperate women barely making it by in upstate New York. It's a bleak view of the new economy, but the main storyline, about a discount store cashier saving up for a new trailer for her two sons, felt played out. The subplot, involving Upham's character, a Mohawk woman who lost custody of her young daughter, was far more intriguing. Upham imbues her character, who is forced to play on the wrong side of the law just to get by, with dignity and strength.
Check back in a few days for my Best Supporting Actor picks.
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