The Golden Trousers Actresses of '08

First off, I'm just going to list off the women who've been hogging the awards and buzz here in this year-end rainstorm of statuettes who I still think are worthy of my love anyway. These are the ladies that keep winning prizes whose performances I very much liked and would probably make my real list below otherwise:

Kate Winslet, The Reader / Revolutionary Road

Melissa Leo, Frozen River

Viola Davis, Doubt

Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky

Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

I think all five of them are very much worthy of whatever praise they get - especially (obviously) my beloved Kate... but I wanna give some love to the others - the non-contenders. The ones nobody mentions too much. A lot of these are genre performances in questionably merited genre movies, so some people might say these performances are understandably ignored... to which I say poppycock. Poppycock! There's no ifs ands or buts about it - all ten of these ladies rocked my face off in 2008. These are in no real order, some are lead and some are supporting, and some ladies are credited for more than one performance... that just how I roll. Anyway, no more ado...

The Golden Trousers Actresses of '08

Samantha Morton, Synecdoche, New York / Mister Lonely - I already gave Miss Morton's Synecdoche performance some love in the Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon, which you can read here. I fell in love with Samantha hard in that film, and her dreamy, bruised performance in Mister Lonely only cemented it. Her sun-tan betrayal by her husband Charlie Chaplin (in context that sentence doesn't seem so insane) is one of the saddest most horrible things I've seen all year.

Naomi Watts, Funny Games US - While Haneke's remake of his own film will always be over-shadowed by the brutal first impression the original film had on me - it's a film all about that deep, scarring first impression - I can't dispute the fact that Watts gave her all and broke my heart here. It's the sort of place you really don't want to watch an actor have to go to, but she manages it with her usual flair.

Lina Leandersson, Let the Right One In - Those giant eyes of this man-girl eternal thing will coerce you into feeling calm for a moment. And that's when she'll tear your limbs off. Leandersson's performance is so soft and sweet for most of the film's running time, as she talks Oskar under her wing, that a lot of people have been fooled into thinking of this film as a delicate coming-of-age romance or something of the sort... those people make good food for the monsters.

Anna Faris, The House Bunny - I maintain that this performance is on par with the physicality of anything DeNiro did for Raging Bull. Only DeNiro didn't have to wear short-shorts that revealed his labia, now did he?

Michelle Williams, Synecdoche, New York / Wendy & Lucy - Her self-relective take on The Actress in Synecdoche was one of the funniest things I've seen all year. Watching her turn herself inside out to play a mirror upon a mirror upon a mirror of an already fake person was a blast, and she nailed every single nuance of the nonsense of this girl. As for Wendy & Lucy it's one of those performances that has grown on me with time - at first I was a little underwhelmed, but then it wouldn't let go.

Jess Weixler, Teeth - This performance is just so much fun. From the pro-abstinence speechifying gal at the start to the penis-chomper with a twinkle in her eye at the end... well I love her lots. Just never ever in the Biblical sense ever never.

Hanna Schygulla, The Edge of Heaven - From the moment Schygulla was on-screen I was captivated. Not to sound all Roman Castavet about it ("There was this thing you did with your hands...") but there was this thing she did with her head when her daughter headed off in pursuit of her deported lover that made me stop and rewind the film twice to watch it again and again. Haunting.

Jena Malone, The Ruins - You can find some of my previous love and defense of this performance in linkage form here; if Leandersson hadn't shown up I would've called this the best horror performance of the year. Malone's Amy is a squeak-voiced unserious little girl not at all pepared for what comes, and she brought the horror home.

Mena Suvari, Stuck - I enjoyed the hell out of this ripped-from-the-headlines morality fable, and that was mostly because of Suvari's astonishingly frustrating, selfish-bitch turn. You can watch her tiny brain working overtime in every single situation to find the way best suited to save her own ass as the world goes to shit around her, and its hilarious.

Catherine Keener, Hamlet 2 / Synecdoche, New York - I loves me some bitches, it seems! Keener was for my dollar the funniest thing in Hamlet 2 - she had me hyperventilating at her scene with the giant margarita. And the pall her absence creates in Synecdoche isn't just felt by Caden - we the audience keep waiting for Keener to reappear, but her ghost only haunts the edges. Her few brief scenes at the start are so sharp that they linger... but anyway, I have to go now, I'm famous!
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