16 Days of Birthday, Day 6: My Favourite Female Performances

This will be pretty much the same as last night's post, but of course, tonight I'll be focusing on brilliant performances by members of the female species. The first 20 picks I have are all performances which I really liked, but aren't the big mammas of performances (they're all in alphabetical order because I'm lazy). The last 5 are my 5 favourite performances as of today, the 12th of August, a whole ten days before my 16th birthday. They're in order, because they're easy to put in order.

Performances in which I liked:

Kim Basinger in L.A. Confidential

Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight

Cate Blanchett in The Aviator



Vera Farmiga in Up in the Air

Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married

Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story

Kate Hudson in Almost Famous

Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge!

Rinko Kikuchi in Babel

Diane Kruger in Inglourious Basterds

Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights

Carey Mulligan in An Education

Natalie Portman in Black Swan

Noomi Rapace in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Sissy Spacek in Carrie

Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity

Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada

Jacki Weaver in Animal Kingdom

Olivia Williams in The Ghost Writer

 

Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

 

And here are my five favourite female performances...

5. Amy Adams in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

You all know that I love Amy. But you may ask, why not Enchanted? Why not Junebug? What about Doubt? You didn't like her in The Fighter? Truth is, I love her in everything she's starred in (okay, maybe not the bits I saw of Cruel Intentions 2). But I gotta say, when it comes down to choosing my favourite performance of hers, it has to be her one in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. The movie itself is a very light and fluffy rom-com, but it's, well, done right. Her performance, as up and coming actress/singer who is currently courting three different men, is so mind-blowingly delightful and filled with glee. Seriously, her charm is infectious!

4. Bette Davis in All About Eve

There are so many other Bette Davis performances that I could have picked, but this is by far her best. She takes bitchiness to a whole other level, with her fierce portrayal of a fading actress at war with a sneaky younger actress. The title may suggest that this film is 'all about Eve', but really, it's all about Bette Davis.

3. Marion Cotillard in La Vie En Rose

Many actors and actresses have tried their hand at portraying a famous figure in the world of music, but few have succeeded as well as Marion Cotillard. Here she plays French singer Edith Piaf, basically for most of her lifespan. Marion put her body and soul into this movie, and even though she didn't actually sing the songs, her lip-syncing was spot on. It's absolutely impossible not to be in awe of what Marion achieved with her amazing performance, and I'm sure as hell glad that she got the Oscar that year!

2. Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream

Even months after seeing the film, I am still traumatised by Ellen Burstyn's brilliant performance. Her story is the one that I think it the most heart-breaking out of all of them, mainly because Ellen portrayed the differences in her character - thanks to drugs - so well. I think she made me cry the most, too. I mean, when she was going through shock treatment: I cried. When her friends saw what had happened to her: I cried. When she had that one last dream about the game show: I had finished the entire box of tissues. And that all important line "I'm going to be on television!" still echoes through my head every now and again, reminding me of how lucky I am not to be addicted to drugs.

1. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind

I had such a hard time deciding which was my most favourite performance of Vivien's out of this and A Streetcar Named Desire. Scarlett only just beat Blanche. As some of you may know, I'm a huge fan of Vivien Leigh. Have been ever since I watched...you guessed it, Gone with the Wind. Her performance in this film is just impeccable. She adapts to Scarlett's unlikeable traits and still makes sure she comes out as the heroine in the end. Scarlett O'Hara is a damn good part, and Vivien took the opportunity in both hands and did some amazing things with it. All I can say is thank goodness David O. Selznick has waited until literally the last minute to cast his Scarlett, because even though Vivien was British, she was pretty much the most perfect thing about this film.

Now it's over to you: what are your favourite female performances?

Classic--Requiem for a Dream

or: The most depressing film. Ever.

One word to sum it up: Depressing.

How about this for irony? At Christmas, the happiest time of the year, I asked my friend to get me Requiem for a Dream, since I had wanted to see it for a long time. Just a little under a month later, it finally got posted and I received it as my Christmas present. Little did I know that that Christmas present wasn't really the happy gift that I could rejoice over. Instead, I literally felt drained of all happiness when that movie ended. I don't think I have ever cried so much during a movie!

Pills and heroin offer fulfillment of the dreams of four residents of Brooklyn's Brighton Beach in the shadow of a crumbling Coney Island amusement park. Sara (Ellen Burstyn) dreams of appearing on television wearing a red dress that's a bit snug. So she starts a diet assisted by uppers. Her son Harry (Jared Leto), his girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly), and his best friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) pin their hopes for money on moving up from pushing nickel bags of heroin to buying in bulk. They also deal to support their growing habits. Things are going well: Harry buys his mum a new TV, she's losing weight, she has status among her friends, Tyrone's girlfriend is cool, and the team has money in a shoe box. These dreams are addictive.

Jesus Christ. This movie is not one I want to watch again anytime soon. It was far too traumatic. I have to admit, with the R18 rating heavily slapped on it, I feel as if I was too young to watch this movie. And I never admit defeat to a censors rating. I was watching it, thinking, 'this isn't too depressing...' However, once I got to the scene where Harry injects heroin into a decaying hole in his arm, I was watching this through my fingers. Seeing the end to each characters story thrown together in that beautifully edited climax tore me to pieces. I knew the effects of drugs, but I think I was too naï­ve to believe that it was quite that heartbreaking. My warning for this movie is: it's ultra depressing, on an epic scale.

Besides the shocking story, this movie is very well made. Darren Aronofsky, in his early years of film making, created a movie which is a lot like being high (I guess). The editing is perfect, and there are such quick cuts that the movie just blows away from you in no time. Aronofsky uses every trick in the book: split-screens, time lapsed photography, extremely tight closeups, long tracking shots, hip hop montages...it's the kind of film making that is truly amazing to watch. Set to a soaring score by Clint Mansell, the momentum this movie builds up is the type I could expect from an epic action film rather than a drama, which is something that happens too rarely. In short, the style of this movie is the kind that I go for. If I were to ever make a movie, then it would probably be similar to this.

The performances, too, are phenomenal. Especially the one from Ellen Burstyn as the tragic Sara Goldfarb. She is the main emotional arc in this movie, and her slow burning insanity is heart breaking to watch. The unfortunate thing is that her characters dream is immensely close to reality. Jennifer Connelly is wonderful as Marion. I absolutely adored the bath scene she's in which is a slick copy from a Japanese movie called Perfect Blue. Jared Leto isn't fantastic in this movie, but its the type of movie which makes you think that he should really still act. Marlon Wayans is surprising, and proves that he shouldn't really be doing...whatever it is that he does these days. The performances, the direction, the music...they're all at great form. And that's why Requiem for a Dream rocks, even if it's emotionally rattling.


THE VERDICT: Darren Aronofsky's talents are well on display here, with some clever visuals that help tell a tragic and depressingly true story of dreams shattered.

9/10