Reel and Roll: Reel and Roll Awards (9): Best Actress 2017

10. Annette Bening, Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool

Bening gives a lovely performance as the Hollywood Golden Age starlet, Gloria Grahame. Her impersonation of the iconic actress, though not dead on, is as close as it gets to a realistic evocation of her public persona without delving into caricature. She has splendid chemistry with Jamie Bell and as the 'superstar' is absolutely luminous, and tempers that with a heartbreaking portrayal of her character's ailing state. She toes the line of melodrama perfectly in her performance, and though I do think she's somewhat overshadowed by her co-star, it's a great performance nonetheless.

9. Michelle Williams, All the Money in the World

Terrific lead for our thriller, as Williams puts so much investment in what could have been either an extremely bland or extremely over-the-top performance. It's an excellent performance that carries the emotional heft of the film in her increasingly desperate attempts to track down her son. She helps make up for the parts where Mark Whalberg's underwhelming performance is severely lacking in selling the intensity of the situation, and it's one of her best performances.

8. Aubrey Plaza, Ingrid Goes West

Daring portrayal of a very complex and difficult titular character, even when the film somewhat falters she never does in her portrayal of an obsessed social media stalker. I was surprised by how much I cared about her character and her toxic mentality towards social media by the end, and makes a very unsympathetic character in conception surprisingly relatable and even somewhat poignant in her plight. Plus, as is expected for Plaza she absolutely delivers on the comedy front, selling every one-liner and snarky comeback while never compromising the more dramatic elements of her character.

7. Carla Gugino, Gerald's Game

Fantastic reactionary performance as Jessie, the disgruntled housewife who essentially plays the James Caan-esque in Misery role here, she perfectly embodies the whole tension of firstly her marriage to the titular Gerald (a wonderfully sleazy Bruce Greenwood), and then when things go wrong in a kinky sex game they play the intensity of her situation as she becomes beset by hallucinations, haunting memories, and a strange Moonlight Man. This is a good Stephen King adaptation, but a great performance.

6. Brooklynn Prince, The Florida Project

A deceptively simple but brilliant portrayal that like so many other child performances in recent years, is just an extraordinarily naturalistic performance. In many ways Moonee is our eyes and ears to the world of the Florida projects, and she gives such innate life and energy to the mischievous but always endearing, even when she does some silly things, little girl. She's often hilarious, and in a way that seems natural to this particular sort of kid, but the most exceptional moments are when she gives a real gravity to the darker side of things as she begins to realize just what's going on. She never once falters in her performance, and gives an incredibly moving performance.

5. Emma Stone, Battle of the Sexes

She's every bit as good as she was in La La Land, in a very different sort of superstar performance. This is one of the more classical biopic performances a la Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour which would in most year head into awards season with a full head of steam, unfortunately Stone missed out this year though she'd just won, so I doubt she's too fussed. Stone is first and foremost just as dnamic and charming a presence as ever, bringing the appeal of Billy Jean King both as a public personality and among her circle of friend, while giving the proper sort of restraint to show that while she's a strong advocate of woman's rights and is willing to fight for them on the court, she's not the most outspoken or showy individual. She finds this quiet drive within her performance that really shows the constant fire within Billy Jean King to make something of not just herself, but the responsibility she feels she owes her fellow players. I particularly love her more casual scenes of intelligently explaining the plight of women's tennis players to the public, and her putting on something of a show in her interactions with Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) as the two have such a delightful rapport that's antagonistic but not overly acidic because it's all really just a show.

Then there's the more intimate scenes involving Billy Jean King's self-discovery of her sexuality, I found this part of her performance particularly crushing, not a lot of dialogue is spent on it but she nevertheless carries such a strong sense of her guilt, confusion, and dilemmas she faces in the face of this new development. She coheres both the difficulties in her public and private life to the depiction of the final 'battle of the sexes', and the moment that sticks with me the most from her performance is her penultimate scene of quietly sitting in the locker room and overcome with emotion, letting everything sink in. This is a wonderful performance by Stone and I hope she takes on more roles like this in the future.

4. Dafne Keen, Logan

Phenomenal work by yet another young actress this year. Keen gives a phenomenal performance in a role that initially appears to be sort of like Eleven from Stranger Things, yet I never felt an overlap between the two characters because Keen just makes the role of Laura so much her own. Her silent performance is excellent as she creates this constant suspicion and alertness in her portrayal of Laura's paranoia while she's on the run, and is particularly great in the scenes where she's wrecking havoc among the goons sent to capture her, as she brings such a feral intensity in showing just how much pain and torture she's endured in the past to make her into this walking weapon. She's terrifying and frankly pretty badass in the role which is in itself quite an achievement. The idea of this young Wolverine child could've gone pretty badly but Keen ensures it never is so.

What's truly outstanding about the performance is the way in which Keen gradually loses this edge to the character the more time she spends with her 'father' and 'grandfather', Logan and Charles. I love the growing sense of discovery and interest she finds in these two figures who grow to care for her, as she establishes this wonderful sense of camaraderie with Stewart even though the two barely know anything about one another, besides the fact that they're both mutants, and with Jackman this more antagonistic dynamic of two stubborn-minded individuals gradually loosening up into something quite heartfelt, with even a few pretty humorous moments thrown in that in no way feel out of place for the character. Then there's individual moments like her devestating portrayal of the rage at seeing what has happened to the people she's grown to love, her terror at the X-24 coming to capture her, and her final scene with Jackman is absolutely outstanding as she matches the latter's terrific work to a tee with her delivery of a single line. Great work in a film that the more I write about, the more I realize just how much I adore it.

3. Florence Pugh, Lady Macbeth

Terrific work that brings life to one of the most drastic arcs of the past year in film. This is the sort of performance that starts out one way and ends up on the complete opposite side of the scales, and it's up to Pugh to make sense of Katherine Lester's journey. She starts off as the Joan Fontaine in Rebecca-esque figure, that could fit into just any old Gothic period piece as this shy, retiring young girl who does exactly as she's told by her cruel new husband, and aims to be seen and not be heard, with just the smallest hints of her repressed anger and disgust towards her repulsive spouse and his habits, and the slow inner workings of her mind as she moves about the household silently thinking over her next course of action, and her hidden but not too hidden desire for the dashing stable boy, which in most films would present a way out of her shell, but even when she begins carrying out an affair that internalized idea of her work is maintained, she's charming and alluring for sure in her interactions with Cosmo Jarvis, but there's always that underlying sense of the character's reserve even when engaging in lust and hedonism, and becoming steadily more defiant to her husband and father-in-law.

It's midway through the film where Pugh's performance takes something of a drastic turn, and one scene that still stands out to me after all this time is a slow-burning scene as she calmly watches her father-in-law die via poisoning, as she brings such menacing yet calm cordiality to this scene. From this point on the character's vicious side goes further and further past the expected point, yet even as she does some truly horrendous things she never loses sight of the character's humanity in teh brief moments where she falters ever so slightly in carrying out her plans, and her slight sympathies for the pawn in her plans, but then takes on such a fascinating subversion of the Victorian heroine, and her final few scenes of her consolidating her vicious streak is just incredible.

2. Sally Hawkins, Maudie

One of the most mannered and risky performances of the year - and executed perfectly. I love Hawkins in both this and The Shape of Water equally, so I decided to rank them together, why not? Anyway, Hawkins gives one of her two career-best turns as Maud Lewis, Canadian painter with arthiritis, now if this sounds like an extremely Oscar-baity performance, well it should've been and deserved to be, but it never feels like one because Hawkins' portrayal of her character's physical condition is phenomenal, she amkes it feel like the natural state of the character, and in the moments where she finds humour and wisecracks within the character it's never at the expense of her condition, or mocking herself, but rather the inherent wit of the character. She's great in the opening stages in showing this woman who while not maltreated, certainly hasn't quite gotten the life she wanted or deserved and feels confined, both socially and artistically because of her condition, and because of her family.

This all is already a pretty tricky set of hurdles for a performance to overcome, but her next challenge is even harder in that she has to create a believable dynamic out of her interactions with her onscreen husband Everett, played by Ethan Hawke, and the fact the two actors bring about such an honest development of an oftentimes problematic relationship is great. Moments I particularly love in this performance involving that are her initial baby steps towards painting in the household, her righteous anger at her mistreatment, her shy and scared reactions to their first consumation of their relationship, and even the more lighthearted moments like when she mocks Everett for claiming to be her 'boss', she excels in all of them in creating this believable dynamic, and the blossoming discovery of herself and her artistic talent. She never sugercoats any step of this journey, and creates a multi-dimensional portrayal of what could've been a caricature and builds to where the character and her relationship with her art and husband in a truly powerful fashion. An added subplot about her past and a daughter she had to give up could have felt shoehorned in, but Hawkins uses it as a remarkable way to add even more pathos and pain into her character, and even in her happiest moments you see the past that haunts this woman in her very eyes and expressions. And I should just reiterate again that her chemistry wit Hawke is incredible through both the good times and the bad. Great performance, and just a sign of what a great actress Hawkins is, that she put out two such extraordinary performances within one year in such diametrically opposed roles.

1. Vicky Krieps, Phantom Thread

Where to start with this performance? Well where Daniel Day-Lewis struck me as an intriguing blend of Laurence Olivier in Rebecca and The Entertainer mixed with dare I say a touch of Malcolm Tucker, and Lesley Manville as an even more passive aggressive Judith Anderson in Rebecca with a more lively sense of humour and a blunter tongue, Krieps is our nameless Joan Fontaine protagonist of Rebecca, well she has a name, Alma, but that doesn't really concern the hungry boy, nor does her 'lack of breasts', all shall be corrected by him as Reynolds desires, as Krieps appears to at first be just another one in his long line of mistresses, a blank slate for him to project upon. Now in these early scenes Krieps is already quite marvelous in portraying Alma as completely out of the loop to the strange world of the Woodcocks, in fact some of her reactions to their ludicrous behaviour and statements are some of the funniest moments in cinema not just this year, but really any film of this sort.

Working against two of the finest actors working today, the relatively inexperienced Krieps could have been left in the dust, as could Alma have been left to be treated like a ghost by the Woodcocks, but Krieps ensures that she's never forgotten in any given scene. I love the first scene where she seduces Woodcock by telling him she's 'thirsty', as you see the game she's playing with Reynolds reflected not just in the words but her eyes as she seems to be studying his every move, and planning her course of action even though there's nothing too insidious yet. When the relationship between the two begins to fracture, I love the increasing desperation Krieps brings to her performance even as she keeps her reserve, for example the scene where she helps Reynolds in retrieving a dress from a client who doesn't 'deserve' it, on one hand you see someone who's become influenced by the callousness of the Woodcocks, but through her eyes and the slightly shaky delivery of her lines you can also see that she's in effect putting on an act, she doesn't want to be so cruel but she has to. The upwards and downwards spiral of their relationship with one another burgeons into quite the drastic series of turns as Alma commits some acts which I'll leave to a further extended review/analysis of Phantom Thread, but suffice to say she makes sense entirely of every step of the way. I love the scenes where she so enthusiastically sets about planning ways of making Reynolds happy, but when these plans are scuppered revealing such an unhinged, raw viscreal power to her confrontations that result in her matching Day-Lewis every step of the way. She never lets these overshadow her lighter moments either, and I think her scenes of 'taking care' of Reynolds and 'protecting' him are quite astounding in her creation of this individual with such unassuming control over a controlling individual. I've seen the film twice now and loved her performance more and more each time.