My Award Nominations: Best Supporting Actress

Unlike their male counterparts over in Best Supporting Actor, the five actresses chosen for my own personal ballot had a lot of competition to rise above in order to secure this nomination, and even as I write this they're not that secure. Ask me again tomorrow and I may have three or four new names surfacing as my favourites. That's because there's been a deep well from which to draw this year. So much so, that overlap between me and the Academy has been limited to a single performance (which is obviously going to win that Oscar, so you won't hear me complaining).

Check out my Best Supporting Actress contenders for 2014:

Review - Snowpiercer

The notion that everybody has their preordained place in life, and that stepping beyond one's bounds leads to a collapse in social order, is probably not a popular opinion in our modern world. It's ironic then that this would be one of the themes central to Snowpiercer, the latest effort from Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho, a director who so defies categorization that it's impossible to imagine what his bounds would be, even if he ever had any. Never content to coast on a set track, he has delivered another singular and unique cinematic achievement, albeit an imperfect one.

Based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, Snowpiercer is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which a radical atmospheric treatment intended to combat the effects of global warming has resulted in a new ice age, and the mass extinction of virtually all life on Earth. The only survivors of this cataclysmic cold snap are those who happened to be on board the Snowpiercer, a life-preserving locomotive that now circles the frozen world in perpetuity.

Review - The Grand Budapest Hotel

“There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity,” waxes Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson's pastry-lite eulogy for a golden pre-war age of chivalrous romanticism, classy refinement, and gaudy luxury.

Though now a desolate and scarcely frequented relic of a bygone era, the Grand Budapest was once the most lavishly appointed palace of 1930s Zubrowka – a fictional European nation on the brink of an unnamed war – where it was run by the fey and fastidious concierge Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and his faithful lobby boy Zero (Tony Revolori). We hear Gustave and Zero's story as recounted by a much older Zero (F. Murray Abraham) to a curious author (Jude Law), whose subsequent writings of the interview are being read decades later by an anonymous student...

… But back to the story within the story within the story:

M. Gustave's suave gold-digging ways have won him the bequeathal of a priceless painting – the hilariously mundane “Boy With Apple” – from a recently deceased old dame (Tilda Swinton); Just one of Gustave's many wooed blondes. Intent on rescuing the art from the conniving hands of the old lady's son Dmitri (Adrien Brody) and the brass-armoured knuckles of his hit man Joplin (Wilem Dafoe), Gustave and Zero make off with the McGuffin in the name of historical preservation... until, that is, they decide a few seconds later to screw preservation and cash in on the painting.

One Category at a Time: Actress

Before the SAG Awards dropped I was pretty conflicted in this category. Based on the distribution of precursor attention, it seemed that we had a tight three woman race for the Oscar, but now that the Actors have had their say, it looks like the frontrunner has a more comfortable margin. The Oscar lineup is mostly the same as SAG’s, except that Rooney Mara (one of the best performances of the year) slid in over Tilda Swinton (THE best performance of the year!). Oy vey. She really is the anti-Meryl Streep; consistently brilliant performances every year but rarely an Oscar nod to show for it. I suppose we should be thankful on her behalf that she has one for Michael Clayton, because she honestly doesn’t care about awards. Right on, Tilda.

Anyway, the nominees – all five of whom I predicted for nominations back in April!:

My Awards nominations: Actress

Not as packed as last year's stellar slate, but I still had some tough decisions to make Here are the five Leading Actresses who made the cut:

VIOLA DAVIS in The Help:

Davis' subdued expressiveness communicates a great deal of fear and sadness, but also a gradual self-realization and growing estem which gives the character her arc. Her exposition of backstory carefully seeps through even when it's not yet there on the page.

ROONEY MARA in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo:

Mara is gripping and magnetic as the misanthropic investigator who can dish it out as bad as she gets it, if not worse. The performance is mannered, distinctive, and ballsy. Mara embraces Salander's emotional maladjustment with alarming confidence, which is what makes her so fun to watch!

ELIZABETH OLSEN in Martha Marcy May Marlene:

Olsen is superbly ambiguous, every facial tick revealing unspoken anguish and uncertainty. Her internalization of an indoctrinated mind at war with itself informs her external struggle to reassimilate with her family and society, which feels painfully authentic as a result.

TILDA SWINTON in We Need to Talk About Kevin:

Swinton is becoming the anti-Meryl-Streep in that she's giving awards worthy performances every year that never seem to get awards attention. That'll hopefully change with this quietly controlled turn. She owns every moment with her subtle command of understated but deep-running emotion.

CHARLIZE THERON in Young Adult:

Theron's thorny, darkly comedic portrayal of an alcoholic, emotionally juvenille trash novelist teems with precise, bitchy mannerisms. She paints a caustic collage of depression, anxiety, and severe psychological immaturity; a woman (rather, girl?) drowning in her own bitterness.

Just missed: Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs, Stephanie Sigman in Miss Bala,
Meryl Streep in The Irion Lady, Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn

Review - We Need to Talk About Kevin

They say there's no greater grief than that of a mother who loses her child, but what about that of a mother who is hated by her child? In We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lynne Ramsay uses bold cinematic strokes to immerse us in the guilt, anguish, and confusion of a woman whose son holds an inexplicable personal vendetta against her, leading up to an atrocity that shatters more than just her life.

Tilda Swinton plays Eva, a practically catatonic woman struggling to lead a normal life in the wake of a hinted-at tragedy that left her without her family and reviled by her community. Through her daily drudgery she comes across sights and sounds that trigger memories that inform us about how she came to her current pitiable station. At first, the recollections are a vague but vivid wash of colour and sound; deep reds cascade across the screen while sirens and lawn sprinklers bleed in and out of the soundtrack.