Best Actress 2018

For the films of 2018
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Which of the nomineees for Best Actress of 2018 was best?

Yalitza Aparicio - Roma
0
No votes
Glenn Close - The Wife
6
25%
Olivia Colman - The Favourite
12
50%
Lady Gaga - A Star Is Born
1
4%
Melissa McCarthy - Can You Ever Forgive Me?
5
21%
 
Total votes: 24

nightwingnova
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Re: Best Actress 2018

Post by nightwingnova »

Olivia Colman because while I would classify her's as a supporting performance (she was background dressing for the fighting in the foreground), she gave the most memorable and unique insightful performance.

Yalitza Aparicio was sensitively natural - but overall more presence than revealing acting.

Melissa McCarthy did well but I can't say she was terribly impressive and she didn't quite meet my expectations of the shrew of the real-life character.
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Re: Best Actress 2018

Post by Big Magilla »

"
Uri wrote:
Big Magilla wrote: This was a tough year to find five nominees.
Why? The Favourite alone offered you three equally - quality as well as quantity wise - valid candidates for best lead actress of the year.
That assumes that the two actresses campaigned in support were in the wrong category. I'm not sure I agree, but if they were, then, yes, it would have been easy to find five.
Uri wrote:
Big Magilla wrote: Yalitza Aparicio in Roma, is good, but not that good. The year's best portrayal of an unselfish character was Rosamund Pike's real-life war correspondent in A Private War.
I haven't seen Rosamund Pike's film' but I did see the trailer - which I guess is enough - but I must say I admire this mental acrobatics of associating these two performances - I guess I haven't read the memo about the newly appointed one humanitarian slot on each best actress lineup.
Point taken, however, my comment was taken out of context. In the previous paragraph I said "if they were looking for someone who could sing and act" so I suppose I should have said "if they were looking for someone playing an unselfish character..." to make my intended apples to apples comment clearer.
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Re: Best Actress 2018

Post by Precious Doll »

Olivia Colman was an easy pick for me but I don't want to discredit in any regards the excellent work of Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive?. Definitely the only two ladies on the ballot that are award & nomination worthy.

Glenn Close may have been the best thing about her film but at best that is a back handed compliment. If any moment rubbed me up the wrong way in 2018 it was her response to the King of Sweden (or Norway?) "I'm a kingmaker" when he asks her what she does. Urgh. Proof that even an actress of the calibre of Close can't save clunky material.

Whilst I loathed A Star is Born, Lady Gaga was the one redeeming presence in the film for me. She really didn't have a great deal to do and was completely inoffensive and with a very pleasant screen presence but had no place earning awards or nominations for her performance.

As for Yalitza Aparicio, well it really wasn't a performance - she simply appeared in the film. Its clearly what Cuaron wanted but aside from running into the water and then all of them having a group hug she barely registered.

Emma Stone & Rachel Weisz belonged in this category and I'd like to think that if Fox had done the right thing a campaigned for all three Favourite leading ladies, that they may have made history and all got nominated - but we'll never know.

There were lots a great performances by actresses in leading roles aside from Colman, McCarthy, Stone & Weisz, though some of them won't be eligible until 2019 and are bound to get overlooked:

Tao Zhao, Ash is Purest White in the best role yet that her husband has written and directed for her to date in the most interesting collaboration of director/actress in China since the Gong Li/Yimou Zhou days. The film may fall apart in the last act by Zhao's performance does not;
Halldora Geirharosdottir, Woman at War playing an environmentalists warrior with material yearnings (to be remade by and starring Jodie Foster - pass me a sick bag please);
Melanie Thierry, Memoir of War as the legendary Marguerite Duras during the dying days of WW2 that provides Thierry with one particular scene that most actresses can only dream of;
Marie Baumer, 3 Days in Quiberon as the legendary Romy Schneider in shocking decline that was almost a preface for her untimely death a short time later;
Ana Brun, The Heiresses a newcomer to cinema who I understand gives her film debut performance as woman a timid, sheltered woman forced into her own being and new life experiences with such beautiful understatement;
Kathryn Hahn, Private Life given probably her best role to date that she seizes with pathos and humanity. I've been a fan for a while now and I hope we see prominent roles in the future;
Lea Drucker, Custody I don't think I've ever seen a film or performance tackle a divorcee with the intensity of this. Drucker get puts through the wringer and she's up for everything that director throws at her. 2018 French realism at its best - at least she has a Caesar :D ;
Ioana Jacob, I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians as a woman preparing to put on a public show with details the horrors of a particular event from WW2 in Romania who in turn discovers some unpleasant hard truths about the world we live in today;
Kiki Layne, If Beale Street Could Talk full of passion and quiet determination. It wasn't until I have spoken to friends in recent weeks why this film didn't fare to well with the Academy and general audiences - responses have been heavily muted but I was transfixed and Layne's performance so deserving of a nomination over some of what did eventuate;
Maripier Morin, The Fall of the American Empire playing a tart (and a very well paid one) with a heart and a brain and she is gorgeous to boot;
Angourie Rice, Ladies in Black as a young woman in dreary Australia in the late 1950's beginning interested to all sorts of foreign delights with eyes wide open.
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Re: Best Actress 2018

Post by Uri »

Big Magilla wrote: This was a tough year to find five nominees.
Why? The Favourite alone offered you three equally - quality as well as quantity wise - valid candidates for best lead actress of the year.

I don't have a newly found perspective I didn't have a month ago, when I evaluated the nominees - Colman and especially McCarthy are the only ones on this list worthy of a nomination. (I'm one of those who voted for the latter). Close pure professionalism was not enough to save neither her film nor even her own performance. Gaga's turn was harmlessly clichéd while Aparicio's had no place being a part of any discussion about acting.
Big Magilla wrote: Yalitza Aparicio in Roma, is good, but not that good. The year's best portrayal of an unselfish character was Rosamund Pike's real-life war correspondent in A Private War.
I haven't seen Rosamund Pike's film' but I did see the trailer - which I guess is enough - but I must say I admire this mental acrobatics of associating these two performances - I guess I haven't read the memo about the newly appointed one humanitarian slot on each best actress lineup.

Anyway, if one is inclined to include non English speaking turns, Sakura Andô gave the best performance by a lead actress I saw last year. And Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Kindergarten Teacher should have been in the mix. And maybe others too, once I see the films they were in. I have a lot of catch up to do.
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Re: Best Actress 2018

Post by Big Magilla »

This was a tough year to find five nominees.

Though everyone, including me, predicted a nomination for Lady Gaga for the fourth film version of A Star Is Born, she was not someone I could include on my own list. Having recently re-watched the deservedly maligned third version with Barbra Streisand, I found it less off-putting than much of the fourth version which took the narrative away from the star being born and put the focus on the star burning out. If they wanted to include a bright new star who could act as well as sing, then Joanna Kulig in Cold War should have gotten that spot. If they wanted someone who could be the centerpiece of her own musical, then Emily Blunt should have gotten the spot for Mary Poppins Returns.

Maids and cooks and other domestics who fill the mother role better than the real mother is a film staple fondly remembered for the performances of Marie Dressler in Emma and Jane Wyman in The Blue Veil among others. Yalitza Aparicio in Roma, is good, but not that good. The year's best portrayal of an unselfish character was Rosamund Pike's real-life war correspondent in A Private War.

The other three nominees were all perfect in their roles. Two of them (Olivia Colman, Melissa McCarthy) were great in great or near-great films, while the third (Glenn Close) was great in a not-so-great film. They were all special performances. My vote goes to the overdue Close.
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Re: Best Actress 2018

Post by Sabin »

Olivia Colman. Her Oscar win combines everything we claim to love about these awards: it was deserving, surprising, and memorably entertaining. Even though she is going to win this poll by a landslide, it is worth mentioning the other great performance in this field: Melissa McCarthy. I still see shades of her other "kinds" of performances in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, but this film points to countless ways that her talents can be utilized in more serious, challenging fare.
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Re: Best Actress 2018

Post by mlrg »

Olivia Colman, by a mile
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Re: Best Actress 2018

Post by Big Magilla »

That's good news, Precious, as far as heavyweights like Cuaron and Scorsese (the upcoming The Irishman) and maybe the Coens (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs) are concerned, but not necessarily lighter weights like Cary Fukunaga whose Beasts of No Nation is now four years old and still confined to the bowels of Netflix hell.
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Re: Best Actress 2018

Post by Precious Doll »

Big Magilla wrote: Roma and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs are not coming to home video - they are Netflix releases and require a Netflix subscription or a friend or relative with one if, like me, you are still a holdout.
Roma will be coming to home video later in the year according to director Alfonso Cuarón (rumours yet to be confirmed indicate via Criterion). Netflix didn't produce Roma and acquired it last April just prior to the Cannes Film Festival which rejected the film due to a change of rules for films screening in competition. I imagine part of the agreement for acquisition with Netflix included a physical media release. Actually, once all the rights to films that Netflix acquired stand some chance of home video release once their Netflix agreements expire. However, Netflix financed films will in likelihood remain in streaming hell.
"I want cement covering every blade of grass in this nation! Don't we taxpayers have a voice anymore?" Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977)
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Best Actress 2018

Post by Big Magilla »

Time to start polling the 2018 Oscars in the categories we've covered over the years - Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Picture, Direction, Screenplay and Cinematography.

We'll begin with Best Actress since that is the only category we'll be voting on for which most of us have had an opportunity to see all the nominees. We await home video releases of If Beale Street Could Talk (next Tuesday) and Vice (the following week), which factor into other categories. Roma and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs are not coming to home video - they are Netflix releases and require a Netflix subscription or a friend or relative with one if, like me, you are still a holdout.
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