Best Actress 2020

[Big Magilla]

I thought that McDormand's first two wins were in films (Fargo and Three Billboards) that should have won Best Picture in those years but didn't. This year I thought there were two better films than Nomadland (Minarai and Sound of Metal) and one performance that was better than McDormand's, namely Mulligan's in Promising Young Woman.

I thought Davis and Kirby were perfectly fine and deserving of their nominations, but Day's total performance consisted of taking off her clothes, doing drugs, singing a song, and landing in jail - repeat ad infinitum.

[Sabin]

Now this is a lineup. I may not wholly love every performance but these are different, challenging roles from a variety of actors, new and old, that resulted in an exciting race where none of us was sure who would win. Actually, I'll go on step father: this is the first Best Actress race since 2010 where I can say everyone involved deserves to be here. Truly.

I'll excuse myself from expressing opinion on Frances McDromand. I'm sure she's amazing. My lingering doubts about her effectiveness in the film are more a product of the film as a whole. I'm just missing something from my sole viewing, which I will correct at some point.

Vanessa Kirby was never taken that seriously for a win for Pieces of April. And yes, there were some better performances out there like Carrie Coon for The Nest or Elisabeth moss for The Invisible Man (off the top of my head) but her film is completely dreary and unpleasant and she remains credible and quite good. She deserves some kind of award for enduring all the horribleness that the film demands of her. I'm excited to see what else she does.

I don't really have a strong preference between the other three performances. I have more fond memories of Andra Day after the fact than while enduring The United States vs. Billie Holiday. The film is a mess but it's a mess that suits Lee Daniels' talents well enough. He's a trashy filmmaker but the music melodrama genre works well enough for him. Andra Day is up to the task. At the time, I wrote that Andra Day has everything she needs to win an Academy Award. I still think that. I have no idea what she's going to do from here but I'm excited to see it.

I find it interesting that Carey Mulligan was seen by so many as a strong favorite to win when she managed just a LAFCA and an Indie Spirit nomination. There was a lot of wishful thinking involved with a lot of people, but it's clear to me that voters saw the film as a triumph of writing rather than acting. I liked the film much more on a second viewing. On a first viewing, I found Cassie as a character to be a bit of a writer's device. I still have some quibbles with her character which are more due to the editing, I think. The notion that she has a list goes unexplained and vanishes completely. After two viewings, I've come to like the film, I think this is probably the most exciting performance of Carey Mulligan's career, and I think I wanted her to win even though I don't think there are quite enough human moments in the film for her that makes me think she ultimately deserves to.

In the end, I think I'm going to pick Viola Davis. She deserves to be listed in supporting almost as much as she deserved to be listed as leading for Fences. I'm choosing her because for years, she's always nominated for playing women who suffer in the past: as a mother, as a wife, as a servant. Here she is Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. She's stubborn, talented, ridiculous, and sometimes even quite funny. Out of all of these performances, she was the person I felt like I got to know the best. What's more (and I know this isn't a terribly nice thing to say), it's clear at this point that Viola Davis is a very talented actor but also just a terribly self-important person (her 2016 Oscar speech is so cringy). Ma Rainey is a good fit for her.

[mlrg]

McDormand and Mulligan are both very good but McDormand sometimes feels she is playing her real self. I ended up voting for Mulligan.

[CalWilliam]

Great lineup, despite the mediocrity of four of these movies and the uncertainty of the result, which in the end turned out to be incredibly satisfying. The best performance here for me is clearly Frances McDormand at the top of her game, who richly deserved her third acting Oscar even more so than the other two.

If not McDormand, only Carey Mulligan really deserved to win, despite the very underwhelming film she's in. Very unique and compelling performance. Of course, she was obviously never going to win with that character.

Kirby was impressive, but her movie was not precisely John Cassavetes.

Andra Day created a better Billie Holiday than Diana Ross, but her film is really awful.

And Viola Davis' outstanding physical language made it all as Ma Rainey, to the extent that I really thought she was going to win this Oscar. Her main shortcoming, though, apart from having recently won, was her measly screentime (26 minutes) and that she had very little to do during that time, although I think she was nominated in the right category. What do you think?