2014: Julianne Moore for Still Alice

In what is currently the most recent Best Actress winner (for the next 6 days), Julianne Moore plays a linguistics professor who, at the age of 50, is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

This is a truly heartbreaking story that is made even more so by Moore's incredibly believable and relatable performance. Probably the most demanding, and consequently the most impressive, aspect is the portrayal of the progression of the disease. When the film begins, she's only just started to notice symptoms, and by the end, she's barely there at all. Given that she's playing a character who is literally losing her mind, some overacting would probably be forgivable, but I didn't notice any. The progression seems very real and natural and not at all forced. Toward the beginning, there are a lot more scenes when she's struggling to find her memories, whereas later on she no longer realizes that she's forgetting things. This is brilliantly executed, and she does a fabulous job of conveying her state of mind to the audience at every moment. Julianne Moore has very convincing confused and unfocused expressions, so we can always tell when she knows what's going on versus when she's not quite sure versus when she has no clue.

Though we don't see Alice before her symptoms begin, Moore clearly understands who she is, which enables her to show us the person and not just the disease. She is losing her memories and her sense of self, but that wouldn't be nearly as tragic if she didn't seem so real. Moore manages to make her accessible to everyone while still believably struggling with a disease that most of us don't have, and that has to be what earned her the Oscar and so many other awards for this performance.

Julianne Moore received her first Oscar nomination for her supporting role in 1997's Boogie Nights. She received her first leading role nomination for 1999's The End of the Affair. She was nominated for both a leading and a supporting Oscar for 2002 films: leading for Far from Heaven, and supporting for The Hours, for which Nicole Kidman won Best Actress. She then went 12 years without a nomination before winning for Still Alice. I think pretty much everyone knew that she was going to win this one, partly in recognition for past work and partly because she did such a great job.

One thing I noticed that I must point out: this was the fifth year in a row that the Best Actress winning character had some sort of mental illness. Is this because actresses these days are particularly good at portraying mental illness, or because such roles seem more difficult and thus stand out more, or for some other reason, or just a coincidence? I don't know, but I still think it's interesting.

Next up will either be the second win in this category for Cate Blanchett or Jennifer Lawrence, or the first win for Brie Larson, Charlotte Rampling, or Saoirse Ronan. We'll find out this Sunday night!

2013: Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine

Cate Blanchett plays a disturbed socialite who has just lost everything and is forced to move from New York to her essentially estranged, working-class sister's apartment in San Francisco.

Remember the last time an actress won this award for a Woody Allen film, and I wrote about how undeserved it was because she didn't have much of a role and the story was mostly focused on the man? Well, that didn't happen this time. Woody Allen still bugs me, but at least he's demonstrated that he is able to write and direct a woman-centered story. Cate Blanchett unquestionably plays the leading role, in addition to giving an incredible performance that completely defines the movie.

She's very believable, both in the flashback scenes when she seems to mostly have everything together and in the present day scenes when she's completely losing it. The way she handles the scenes when she's talking to herself - usually the result of re-living past events that we've just seen in flashbacks - is particularly intriguing and impressive. She gives the impression that she really thinks it's happening right then, and that she's reacting to it naturally, when she's really staring at nothing. But what's so great about those parts is when she snaps back to the present and finds that people are staring at her. She clearly realizes why, but she never looks embarrassed; she either ignores them completely or glares at them defiantly until they look away. No one could have pulled this off better than Cate Blanchett.

I'm also impressed by how controlled her performance is, considering that she's portraying a mental breakdown. While her character is often over-the-top, I never feel like she's over-acting. She keeps it realistic, so that even though I don't particularly like her character, I can't help sympathizing with her. On the whole, I would call this a pretty good, not great, movie, but without Blanchett's performance it could have been terrible, so if it had to win an Oscar, it won for the right category.

Cate Blanchett received her first Oscar nomination for 1998's Elizabeth. She won the next time she was nominated, for Best Supporting Actress for 2004's The Aviator, in which she played 4-time Best Actress winner Katharine Hepburn. I still haven't seen that movie, but I can't possibly imagine anyone convincingly playing Katharine Hepburn except Katharine Hepburn, even someone as talented as Cate Blanchett. But anyway, next she was nominated for her supporting role in 2006's Notes on a Scandal, and the following year she was nominated twice: for Best Supporting Actress for I'm Not There and for Best Actress for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, but she lost both: the first to Tilda Swinton, the second to Marion Cotillard. Blue Jasmine was her next nominated performance, and currently she's nominated again for Carol, so I may be blogging more about her soon. We'll find out in two weeks.

But in the meantime, the last person I know for sure that I'll be blogging about is Julianne Moore

2012: Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook

Jennifer Lawrence plays a troubled young widow who meets a troubled bipolar man, and they agree to help each other get what they want. For her, that means entering a dance competition; for him, that means getting his estranged wife back, which becomes increasingly hard on her as she falls deeper in love with him.

It's really funny to me because this wasn't incredibly long ago, but it was back when it was really cool to love Jennifer Lawrence. I feel like lately there's been a lot of backlash against her, partly because of this win, and partly because she was so beloved that people felt she must be overrated, and now it's becoming cool to hate her. It always really annoys me when it's cool to hate celebrities for being famous, so I was anticipating defending her win in this post. But after re-watching this movie for the first time since it was in theaters - which, okay, was only like 3 years ago, but I watch a lot of movies - I find that I cannot.

Lawrence's performance in this movie certainly isn't bad. In fact, it's quite good; it's just not that noteworthy. She's not the main focus of the film by any means, so it seems highly unjustified for her to win its only Oscar. Bradley Cooper had a much harder job and pulls it off splendidly, although I think the Academy made the right choice giving Best Actor to Daniel Day-Lewis that year. Anyway, Lawrence isn't in very much of the movie, and when she is she doesn't get to do much except pine after Bradley Cooper and constantly have her hair fall in her eyes (which was really distracting to me). The scene in the diner when she flips out on Cooper doesn't really do it for me, either; it feels forced and over-the-top.

However, she does have a couple of really good scenes in this movie. The part when she tells off Robert De Niro by rattling off sports statistics is fantastic, and I love her delivery of those lines. Then when the scene progresses and the focus moves outward from the two of them to the whole room, she seamlessly integrates into the ensemble, which is unexpected since it's near the end and we've barely or never seen her interact with most of the other characters before. That scene and the aftermath of the dance competition are probably Lawrence's best moments in the film. Beyond that, the performance was mostly good, but not really Oscar worthy. Maybe in the supporting category, but even then I'm not convinced it would have been deserved, and anyway she would never have beat Anne Hathaway. Weirdly, I haven't seen any of the other Best Actress nominated films from that year, but I have to believe at least one of them was more outstanding than this.  But to be fair, it's not anywhere near the most terrible performance to ever win this award, so I guess there's that.

This was Lawrence's second Best Actress nomination, the first being for 2010's Winter's Bone. She was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for 2013's American Hustle, and is currently nominated for Best Actress for 2015's Joy, for which she has already won a Golden Globe. If she wins this year, she'll finally break the record for youngest winner of a second Best Actress Oscar, which has been held by Luise Rainer for almost 78 years. Even if Lawrence doesn't win in a couple of weeks, I'm almost positive that she'll win another Oscar at some point in her career. I really hope that if she does, it will be for a performance that demonstrates her incredible acting talents better than this one. It's too bad the Hunger Games series got written off as teenage girl movies because personally, I think her acting in that is much better than in this.

Next up: Cate Blanchett, who is also nominated again this year

2011: Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady

In her second Best Actress winning performance, Streep plays Margaret Thatcher, the highly controversial first female Prime Minister of the UK, who, as an aging woman suffering from dementia, reflects on her life.

I don't think this is as good as her previous winning performance in Sophie's Choice, but that's not saying much. I mean, this is Meryl Streep we're talking about; she's always fabulous, no matter what. There's a lot about this performance that's very impressive, but I think it's somewhat less demanding than her other winning role. She doesn't have to speak a different language (although she does have a different accent), and she doesn't have to survive a concentration camp. Also I feel like she's in less of this movie because in a lot of the flashbacks, particularly towards the beginning, there's a different actress playing Thatcher. But beyond that, it's still an incredible performance.

Streep is very convincing as both the old lady Margaret Thatcher and the middle-aged Margaret Thatcher, and particularly in uniting the two. It really seems like the different portions of the movie were filmed decades apart, or at least that she aged decades between them. The makeup helps a lot, and also won a very deserved Oscar, but it's her voice and walk and posture that really convince us that she's truly aged. Yet we can always see elements of the younger woman in her, so we never question that she's the same person. She looks so frustrated by her struggles with her mind that we are firmly convinced both that she has a neurodegenerative disease and that she is used to being in complete control over her brain, as she was during her term as Prime Minister. While she made some questionable and controversial decisions, she was always extremely confident in her reasoning behind them, and now she has trouble remembering her children's names. All the frustration and pain and sadness that this causes is clearly visible in Streep's eyes.

Perhaps the most impressive achievement of this performance is it makes Margaret Thatcher seem very human, and not at all made out of iron. I know the script was written this way, but still it would have been very easy to make her seem cold and unfeeling, as Thatcher is often remembered, particularly in the Prime Minister scenes. But even when she's not playing an old lady that you feel bad for, even when she's acting rude or argumentative or unsympathetic to the needs of others, she's still a real, thinking, feeling human being. That's all Meryl Streep. No one else could have played this role like she did.

Even if this had been a less worthy performance, it was about time Streep actually won again. It confused me at the time, and confuses me still, that in her acceptance speech she said that people were probably thinking, "not her, again," since it had been nearly 30 years since her last Oscar. But by this time she had already broken the record for most acting Oscar nominations - this was her 17th - and for most Best Actress in a Leading Role nominations - this was her 14th. Since this win she has been nominated twice more - for her leading role in 2013's August: Osage County and her supporting role in 2014's Into the Woods - thus adding to her significant lead in number of nominations (second place is currently a tie between Katharine Hepburn and Jack Nicholson, with 12 each). Last year, presenter Jared Leto joked that she was nominated "in accordance with California state law," but for once she's actually not nominated this year. Personally, I feel like she has to be nominated at least once more to make it into the 20s. Given her talent, it's a pretty safe bet, assuming she doesn't randomly decide to retire, that that will definitely happen within the next couple of years.

Up next: Jennifer Lawrence, the first and so far only Best Actress winner who is younger than me

2010: Natalie Portman for Black Swan

Natalie Portman plays a dedicated but timid ballerina who is given the highly coveted lead role in "Swan Lake" only to find her sanity unraveling.

I know I've called several movies "weird" on this blog, but Black Swan is definitely the weirdest yet. I finished it late last night, and went to bed wondering if anything was real. It's intensely bizarre and profoundly disturbing. I don't think I'll be able to watch it again any time soon. But I did think that Natalie Portman's performance was excellent.

There seems to be some debate about how much of the dancing she actually did, which moderately affects how impressive her performance is. If, as some claim, she did as much as 80% of her own dancing, it's ridiculously impressive, but if it was mostly her body double with her face edited in, as others claim, then somewhat less so. But regardless, the non-dancing part of the performance was superb. Portman really gets inside her character's head, which cannot have been easy considering how unstable she is. She also undergoes a significant transformation from meek, guarded, technically focused and suffering from slight impulse control issues to confident and in touch with her feelings but also completely psychotic. Neither of those would be easy to portray on its own, but the fact that she manages to nail both while still convincing us that they're the same person proves that she's an incredibly talented actress. She may or may not also be a talented ballerina, but the acting part is undeniable.

I also have to mention Mila Kunis. She, too, gives an incredible performance, providing a sharp contrast to Portman. Kunis isn't in that much of the movie, but I don't think it would have worked without her. Portman's very good the rest of the time, but it's her scenes with Kunis that really allow us to understand her character fully. I don't know if this means Portman's performance is less worthy of recognition, since some of her character is only revealed through Kunis, or more worthy because it demonstrates her ability to play off other actors. Either way, it's worth mentioning. The main thing to take away from all this is the movie is super weird and I'm not sure I liked it, but I did really appreciate the performances, particularly from Portman and Kunis.

This was Portman's second Oscar nomination, the first being for her supporting role in 2004's Closer. This is her most recent nomination, but it wasn't that long ago, and she's still pretty young, so she'll almost certainly receive more nominations in the future.

Next: Meryl Streep FINALLY gets another Oscar, 29 years and 12 nominations after her previous win

2009: Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side

Sandra Bullock plays a wealthy, privileged woman who welcomes into her home, and eventually adopts, a homeless teenager who attends school with her children and turns out to be an exceptional football player.

Overall, Bullock's performance is quite good. She has several biting lines that she delivers with the perfect expression and intonation. She exudes self-confidence in her walk, her posture, her voice, and all her other mannerisms, which is exactly what the role requires. Her interactions with her husband and children are very realistic, and she basically sets the tone for their family dynamic. But the most outstanding aspect of her performance, which is also by far the best aspect of the movie, is the way Bullock interacts with Quinton Aaron, whose performance I would also call Oscar-worthy, but who wasn't even nominated.

Both Bullock and Aaron do an extraordinary job of making their interactions and developing relationship believable, despite having hardly anything in common. At the beginning, he barely speaks at all, providing significant contrast to her extremely chatty character. I like the way she draws him out without pushing too hard, while conveying to the audience how difficult it is for her to not push harder. The two of them come from very different backgrounds, and each very convincingly conveys how foreign the other's lifestyle is. Perhaps the best example of this is her reaction when he casually mentions that he's never had a bed before. For once she has no idea what to say. Her confusion and the tears that follow after she leaves the room could have easily been over-the-top, but instead seem quite genuine. This is a common element of most of their interactions: she clearly cares about him a lot, but she doesn't overdo it. And that's what I think earned her the Oscar.

Most of Bullock's career seems to consist of romantic comedies, which hasn't gotten her much Oscar recognition, despite the fact that she's very good in them. This was her first nomination, and so far she's only received one more, for 2013's Gravity, which she did not win. But that wasn't very long ago, so there's a very real possibility that she'll receive more nominations in the future.

Next up: Natalie Portman

2008: Kate Winslet for The Reader

Kate Winslet  plays Hanna Schmitz, a mysterious, attractive woman who has a passionate affair with a teenager but breaks it off suddenly by disappearing. Years later, when he is a law student attending the trial of several Auschwitz guards, he is surprised to see her as one of the defendants.

This is such a weird movie and performance, and I have mixed feelings about both. My main thought about the performance is it was good, but I wanted a lot more. We only really get to see her character from the boy's perspective, and he's super obnoxious and immature, even when he grows up, so that's annoying. I want more of her story, and I want to see her doing more than desperately trying to cover up her big secret (spoiler alert: she can't read) and getting naked. Seriously, I'm pretty sure she has literally the same amount of screen time without clothes on as with clothes on, at least in the first half of the movie. Her acting is fine in the beginning, but the nudity is kind of distracting.

For me, both the performance and the movie pick up steam at the trial. That's when we really get a sense of who Hanna Schmitz is, how her mind works, and what precisely makes her tick. There are glimpses earlier on, but the film is so focused on Michael that it's hard to see. Even during the trial, we see more of Michael's reactions to what's going on than hers, but we get a better idea of what's in her head than we did before. In a way, she's more naked in that court room than she was during the sex scenes. Earlier in the film, we can almost never tell what she thinks or feels, except for a few moments when she looks slightly uncomfortable because someone is assuming she can read. But at the trial her face is much more expressive, and we can see how she feels. It's an odd time for this to happen. Before we know that she's a Nazi, she seems distant and almost inhuman, but then at the same time that we learn that she handpicked young girls to be sent to their deaths, she starts to seem more like a living, feeling human being. We even feel sorry for her when she's forced to either falsely claim that she was in charge or reveal that she can't read or write. It's clear that this was a very intentional transition to make the audience uncomfortable, and Winslet executes it beautifully.

Beyond that, I also like the way she lights up when she's being read to, and how eager she is when she finally has an opportunity to learn to read. But I feel like more could have been done with that. The story seems rather unfocused: is it a coming-of-age story? Is it pornography? Is it about the importance of literacy? Is it about the Holocaust? I'm confused. Overall, Kate Winslet does a good job of portraying this character, but I would have preferred to see more acting and less of her. Is that mean? It's nothing against Winslet; I'm just not a fan of gratuitous nudity.

To date, Kate Winslet has received seven Oscar nominations: four for leading roles and three for supporting roles. She was nominated first for her supporting role in 1995's Sense and Sensibility, and then for her leading role in 1997's Best Picture Winner, Titanic. She was nominated for one more supporting role, in 2001's Iris, which was followed by three more leading role nominations: 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2006's Little Children, and finally, this movie. So it seems like her win has to be at least partly in recognition of past work. After winning, she wasn't nominated again until now, when she's up for Best Supporting Actress for 2015's Steve Jobs. She already won the Golden Globe, so it seems promising, but we'll have to wait a few more weeks to find out.

Coming up next: Sandra Bullock

2007: Marion Cotillard for La Vie en Rose, aka La môme

In the second non-English language film to win this award, Marion Cotillard plays Edith Piaf, one of the most famous French singers of all time, through the ups and downs of her complicated, short life.

This movie is very confusing. It jumps around in time a lot and only sometimes tells us what year it is. I found it very difficult to keep all the minor characters straight, and it really didn't help that there were like three people named Louis. Maybe I would have gotten more out of it if I had known more about Edith Piaf beforehand, but I felt like parts of her life were glossed over too quickly to catch what was going on. I'll have to watch this again at some point to see if I follow it better, although it's not something I'll be able to watch over and over again because it's extremely depressing. I didn't particularly enjoy the film as a whole, but that's completely beside the point. I'm not here for the movie; I'm here for Cotillard's performance, and what a performance it is.

I haven't seen enough of Edith Piaf to gauge how well Marion Cotillard portrays her as a person, but that's usually not really the point of biopics like this. As far as embodying Edith Piaf the character, Cotillard is absolutely brilliant at every stage. From the fresh-faced 20-year-old street singer to the dying 47-year-old former star who looks about 30 years older than she is, and everything in between, her performance is spot on at all times. I particularly like how she changes her voice as she ages. In the scenes when she's in her 40s, between the makeup and her voice, not to mention her walk, she's barely recognizable. But while this transformation is very well executed and a vital component of this performance, it's by no means the only impressive aspect. Edith Piaf is a very complex character with a unique past that would ordinarily make her difficult to relate to, but Cotillard clearly understands her and makes her accessible to anyone. It would have been very easy to turn her into a caricature, but every time I thought she was approaching that line, Cotillard would give a look or adjust her posture or change her tone slightly so I'd go back to, Nope, still a real person.

Some of my frustration at the confusing nature of the disjointed story was alleviated when it was implied to be her jumbled thoughts and memories as she lay on her deathbed. There had been a few moments prior to that when I thought Cotillard might have gone a bit over-the-top, but looking at things from that perspective, it makes sense that some of her memories would be exaggerated, which leads me to think that even the few instances of minor overacting were intentional. This is one of those performances where if you think about it, everything must have been methodically planned and painstakingly rehearsed, but it appears effortless, as if she just woke up and stepped into her character's life. This is what Best Actress winning performances are supposed to be.

My only two criticisms, if you can call them that, are that she didn't do her own singing, and that I don't know how much of the effectiveness of her transformation is due to her makeup. But even though her voice wasn't actually used in the songs, she very effectively acted her singing, so that you really can't tell that she's not who you're hearing - particularly impressive given that much of the time it's the actual Edith Piaf that you're hearing. And the makeup won an Oscar, too, so at least both of the two best aspects of the film were recognized. Before watching this, I thought it was odd that it wasn't nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, but without Cotillard I don't know that it would even be worth watching, so it looks like the Academy got something right for once.

This was Cotillard's first Oscar nomination. So far she has been nominated once more, for 2014's Deux jours, une nuit (Two Days, One Night), a very different but also extremely impressive performance.

Next up: Kate Winslet