Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actress

Julianne Moore is the frontrunner for Best Actress for her work in the film Still Alice.

Each day as we make our way to the Academy Awards ceremony Feb. 22, Last Cinema Standing will take an in-depth look at each of the categories, sorting out the highs, the lows, and everything in between. Check back right here for analysis, predictions, and gripes as we inch toward the Dolby Theater and that world-famous red carpet.

Best Actress

The nominees are:

Rosamund Pike for Gone Girl

Julianne Moore for Still Alice

Felicity Jones for The Theory of Everything

Marion Cotillard for Two Days, One Night

Reese Witherspoon for Wild

Despite the consistent, misguided fear that Best Actress will be a weak field – a fallacy we addressed in this space a few months back – the Academy managed to put together a magnificent list of nominees this year. All five women do excellent work as powerful, strong-willed women. Nowhere in this group will you find a meek house frau or someone who is just a wife and mother. To be sure, there are wives and mothers in here, but they are not defined solely by their family lives. They are defined by their strength, perseverance, and agency.

The same could be said for these five actresses, among whom there are two first-time nominees, two former winners, and a beloved industry veteran with five nominations but no Oscar. Pike and Jones are enjoying their first trip to the ceremony, while Witherspoon and Cotillard are back for the first time since their respective wins in the category. Cotillard is the last person to win this award for a foreign-language performance – and the only person in the last 50 years to do so – a feat she will try to replicate this year.

In the past, voters tended to like ingénues or beautiful women who ugly themselves up such as Charlize Theron in Monster, Nicole Kidman in The Hours, or Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry. Recently, however, they have been on a kick of giving this prize to an actress who plays a character with a mental illness. Three of the last four actresses to win this award played a character who is mentally ill, and somewhere in there is a joke about Margaret Thatcher making it four of the last four. This recent history bodes well for the presumed frontrunner and likely winner.

Julianne Moore for Still Alice – Moore has spent her career delivering knockout performance after knockout performance. She has been nominated for an Academy Award five times for roles in films as diverse as Boogie Nights, Far From Heaven, and The End of the Affair. In Still Alice, she plays a world-renowned linguist who is struck in the prime of her life by early-onset Alzheimer’s. It strikes suddenly and deteriorates quickly, turning Alice into someone neither she nor her family recognizes anymore.

Moore is brilliant in a role that is obviously emotionally taxing but also surprisingly physical. As the disease progresses, Moore slackens her face and shuffles her feet, using small gestures and movements to suggest just how far Alice is slipping away. In the time right after the diagnosis, she is determined to fight it and angry over how something like this could happen to her. Later, the fear sets in as she is able to feel herself transforming into a shadow of her former self. Finally, there is nothing there at all.

Still Alice is an honest, bracing film that takes an unflinching look at how disease can shape our lives and the lives of those around us. Directors Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer have cast a perfect actress in Moore. She has both the bravery and vulnerability to give herself over to this challenging role and the talent to make it come alive.

Reese Witherspoon for Wild – Witherspoon has had a rough stretch personally these last few years, but creatively, she is experiencing something of a renaissance. Appearing in the fantastic Mud in 2012 and Wild and Inherent Vice this year, she has shown a willingness to stretch as an actress and to take on roles in challenging, high-minded films. As Cheryl Strayed, a woman who embarks on a solo hike up the Pacific Crest Trail, Witherspoon devotes herself to a highly physical part that requires her to carry not only the weight of her pack but the weight of the film.

It would have been nice if the film had given Witherspoon’s performance more room to breathe because she is magnificent in the quiet, lonely moments on the trail. When she has nothing but the stars and her thoughts, Witherspoon is able to bring out the most in Strayed. However, the film piles on the voiceovers and flashbacks, pulling us away from the central journey and somewhat burying Witherspoon’s performance. The actress mostly shines through this, but it would have been interesting to see her in a more subdued version of this film.

Rosamund Pike for Gone Girl – As intense an emotional journey as Moore goes on in Still Alice and as physically trying as Witherspoon’s role was in Wild, no nominated performance asked more of its actress than the part of Amy Dunne in Gone Girl required of Pike. She is the smartest person in the room, an angel and the devil, and a goddess among mortals who by design never seems anything more than ordinary. She is a perfect sociopath.

If she were not in such a middling film that was clearly disliked by the Academy – as evidenced by this being its lone nomination – Pike might even have a shot at the upset win here. The movie was a huge hit, and the work is exceptional, but more than likely, Pike will have to be satisfied with just the nomination this time. Hopefully, the recognition means Pike will be afforded more opportunities to play intriguing, complex characters. If so, she will be back in the mix again someday. 

Felicity Jones for The Theory of Everything – Jones falls into the “If it’s new to me, then it’s news to me” category for me. Before The Theory of Everything, I had never seen anything she had done, except for one episode of Lena Dunham’s HBO show Girls, for which Jones played a character named Dot. I have no idea who that is. So, I had no frame of reference for what Jones was capable of, but when she appears in The Theory of Everything, she absolutely commands the screen. My introduction to Jones as an actress was one of the most pleasant surprises I experienced at the movies last year.

Jane Hawking, wife to the famed physicist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne), is a thankless character for an actor to play. Redmayne is playing the clearly flashier part, while Jones has the role marked by dogged determination and immense internal struggle. Her challenge as an actress is to make that internal conflict compelling to watch, and she proves more than able to rise to the challenge. Jones plays Jane Hawking as a graceful, strong, and flawed woman whose struggle feels real because we can read it on the actress’ face and hear it in her voice.

Marion Cotillard for Two Days, One Night – The surprise nominee in the category, Cotillard has turned in consistently strong work throughout a career that has spanned more than 20 years, but she really broke out onto the international stage the last time she was nominated for an Oscar, when she won Best Actress for La Vie en Rose in 2007. In the intervening years, she has starred in major Hollywood blockbusters for big-name directors such as Christopher Nolan and Michael Mann, but her best work remains in smaller films such as The Immigrant, Rust and Bone, and Two Days, One Night.

Cotillard was a big get for directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who have spent their careers making art-house films about the struggles of average people. Some wondered how casting a big Hollywood star would affect the feel of the Dardennes’ work. The answer: She takes a good film about a simple moral dilemma and transforms it into a great film about the small human dramas that play out in our everyday lives. As a woman forced to beg and plead for her job, Cotillard maintains her sense of pride and poise, even as she throws herself on the mercy of her friends and co-workers.

The final analysis

Having won every meaningful precursor, this is Moore’s to lose, but she will not lose. A multiple nominee long overdue for an award and an industry favorite turning in career-topping work, Moore will win this in a walk. This is not to say the other nominated actresses would not make deserving winners, particularly Pike and Cotillard, but they simply will not win. For a sterling career and a magnificent turn in Still Alice, Moore will walk away Sunday with her first Oscar.

Will win: Julianne Moore for Still Alice

Should win: Julianne Moore for Still Alice

Wish she had been here: Charlotte Gainsbourg for Nymphomaniac

Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel lead Oscar nominations

For people like me, much of the movie-going year leads up to two days: Oscar nominations morning and Academy Awards night. Today was the first of the two, and if you were not up in time to watch, well, the announcement was a bit of a strange one. The Academy was all over the place really, showing a lot of love for a number of films, a little love for some, and next to no love for others that had been expected to do well.

First, here are the nominees for Best Picture, if you missed the announcement:

American Sniper; Birdman; Boyhood; The Grand Budapest Hotel; The Imitation Game; Selma; The Theory of Everything; Whiplash.

My first reaction is that there is not really a clunker in there (full disclosure: I have not seen American Sniper but plan to tonight). There is nothing embarrassing such as Interstellar or Unbroken, though those films showed up in a number of technical categories and deservedly so.

The nomination that stands out the most is the well-deserved recognition for Selma in Best Picture, despite the film missing in virtually every other category. What that means is a number of Academy voters – at least 5 percent per the rules of the nominations process – thought the film overall was the best of the year, but on the micro-level, no one aspect of the production stood out as best or in the top five. It is an odd bit of logic, to say the least. Ava DuVernay missing out on a Best Director nomination for Selma is my biggest disappointment of the morning.

On the flipside of the odd Selma nomination is the odd Foxcatcher omission. Foxcatcher picked up nominations in key categories such as Best Director for Bennett Miller, Best Actor for Steve Carrell, Best Supporting Actor for Mark Ruffalo, and Best Original Screenplay for E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman, as well as a Best Make-up nod. However, it missed in the top category. This is the reverse of the Selma situation, meaning Academy members loved the individual parts of Foxcatcher but did not name it their favorite film of the year.

Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel lead the list with nine nominations each (click here to go to the Academy website to check out the full list), while The Imitation Game is close behind with eight. Little surprise there as all three of these films are technical marvels, though The Grand Budapest Hotel got there with no acting nominations, which is unusual.

My favorite nominations of the morning came in the Best Foreign Film category, where my No. 1 movie of the year, Leviathan, was chosen among the nominees, and in the Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costume categories, where the otherwise-ignored Inherent Vice pulled nominations. I am also delighted by Marion Cotillard’s Best Actress nomination for Two Days, One Night and by Dan Gilroy’s Best Original Screenplay nomination for Nightcrawler.

We have about six weeks to go to the Academy Awards. Right now, Boyhood is your presumed frontrunner, having won the Golden Globe for best drama, as well as a mountain of critics’ awards. Little about this morning’s announcement did anything to change that as Richard Linklater’s film came away with a healthy haul of nominations, chalking up six. Check back here later for more in-depth analysis on the nominations and follow along throughout the season as we make our way to the big night.

New movie review: Two Days, One Night

Marion Cotillard plays Sandra in the new Belgian drama Two Days, One Night.

Ethics 101: A train barrels toward a fork in the tracks. If it goes one way, it strikes a busload of children. The other way, it hits one person. You stand at the switch. Which way do you throw it? Variations on this conundrum have littered psychology text books the world over for years, and even the Joker has put Batman to the test on more than one occasion.

Despite the difficulty or impossibility inherent in choosing, we like these kinds of questions because we all know precisely how we would react. In our hearts, we know we are good people who will make the altruistic choice and sacrifice the individual for the good of the many. Add a layer to the question: There is a still a bus of children, but the lone person is your mother – or even yourself. Now, how do we act? The numbers have not changed. The reality has not changed. Maybe we even think our answer has not changed. History says we are wrong.

There is a reason we enjoy these theoretical dilemmas. They allow us to feel good about our own altruism without ever having to learn the truth, as most of us will never face this situation or one similar. Yet, we know the truth. Many people alive today have lived the truth. From the rise of Nazism to the prison camps at Abu Ghraib, history makes it plain: If it is us or them, to hell with them.

In Two Days, One Night, filmmaker siblings Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne stretch out this dilemma to feature length. Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, a Belgian wife and mother who finds out on a Friday she will lose her job come Monday. Her 16 coworkers have voted to lay her off. In exchange, each will receive a 1,000 Euro bonus (about $1,200). The foreman agrees to hold another vote Monday, which gives Sandra the weekend to convince a majority of her coworkers to give up their bonuses so she may keep her job.

Complications arise in the details, but the idea is simple, and as a premise, it is nearly irresistible. Cotillard is magnificent – dressed down and a little dowdy but still her recognizable movie-star self – as a woman battling clinical depression and crushing self-doubt. With each person who turns her away, she sinks deeper into her malaise but is perked up again every time she shifts a vote over into her column. Forced to beg, Cotillard projects pride and defiance as Sandra goes door to door to plead her case.

Taken together with her performance earlier this year in The Immigrant, Cotillard continues to prove she is more than just a sex symbol. She is not playing the femme fatale of her work with Christopher Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises) or the eye-candy love interest as in Nine or A Good Year. It seems she prefers – and duly shines in – more confrontational work such as her Oscar-winning turn in La Vie en Rose or 2012’s Rust and Bone. Thankfully, there are filmmakers who want her to do more than look pretty and smile, and Cotillard is hungry enough to chase challenging roles.

Yet, as great as Cotillard is and as intriguing as the premise may be, Two Days, One Night never forces the audience to move beyond the surface pleasures of its narrative. The Dardenne brothers make it too easy to sit in judgment of Sandra’s coworkers. The audience should come away wondering what it would do if posed the question: my bonus or a coworker? Instead, the film lets viewers off the hook when it should be making them squirm.

Most of the Dardennes’ films are low-key dramas about real people in difficult situations, and this may be the epitome of that style. Shot almost entirely with handheld cameras in and around the neighborhoods of the brothers’ Belgian hometown, Two Days, One Night drips with authenticity. Its naturalism helps to establish the characters in a recognizable place and time to which audiences from any part of the world could relate.

The downside of the film’s dogged realism is that the stakes remain low throughout. In treating even major events with a “That’s life” wave of the hand, the Dardennes fail to imbue the proceedings with much urgency, which has the added side effect of making Sandra’s interactions feel repetitive. By her sixth or seventh visit, we pretty much know how this is going to go as many of her coworkers have the same excuse. They need the money – a valid excuse and one we all might share but not particularly illuminating the 10th time we hear it.

Sandra’s coworkers live in richly detailed environments that suggest deep inner lives, but the general circumstances are roughly similar. People have families they need to support, or recent life changes necessitate an influx of cash. Otherwise, they are friends of Sandra’s or people for whom she has done a favor. This creates two camps within the film: those who will vote for Sandra and those who will vote for their bonus. There is little separating the members within each group from one another, which keeps the suspense at a minimum as few people have reason to deviate from their stated intention to vote one way or the other.

Stellar performances and an intriguing premise make the film a must see, but I cannot help but be a little disappointed. The opportunity was there for the Dardennes to confront their audience and force viewers to question the way they think about themselves, their loved ones, and the people orbiting just outside their personal solar systems. How would we react? Is it necessarily wrong to take the bonus? Where do we draw the line between us and them? In leaving these questions unasked, the film settles for being merely good, when it could have been great.

See it? Yes.