Is Cate Blanchett the best actress working today?

Cate Blanchett in Carol

After seeing her new film Carol last night, I think it might be time to crown Cate Blanchett Hollywood's female MVP.

It's not one of my favorite films of the year. It's a gorgeously photographed but very slow paced companion piece to director Todd Haynes' superior Far From Heaven.

Still, Blanchett is spectacular in it -- as she is in pretty much everything.

Take a look at her filmography. She has virtually no missteps. She has effortlessly transitioned from blockbuster fare (both Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films, for instance) to more artistically satisfying fare, like the underrated Notes on a Scandal.

Although she is stunning, I can't think of one part where she was cast simply to be a beautiful accessory to a male lead. Her career, to me, most resembles that of Meryl Streep, the previous reining best actress alive, whose longevity in Hollywood can be mostly attributed to her pure acting talent.

Streep is still very active, but for the most part she has been coasting on her track record for the last few years. On the male side of the aisle, Robert De Niro had been the man. Several would-be replacements have stepped up over the years -- Ryan Gosling and Sean Penn come to mind. Daniel Day-Lewis is probably that dude right now, but he doesn't make movies often enough. Right now there really is no go-to actor who can guarantee quality time-in and time-out.

Blanchett right now does have that kind of track record. I've never seen her give a bad performance and, like Streep, she takes on accents and personas with such grace that she makes it look easy.

Cate Blanchett and her second Oscar

In Carol, she plays a barely closeted lesbian woman in a disintegrating marriage, who falls for a young department store clerk (played by Rooney Mara) after a chance encounter. The film would be a triumph of production design and little else if it wasn't for Blanchett, whose face registers so many complex emotions over the course of the roughly 2-hour running time.

It's actually not my favorite female performance of the past year. Right now Brie Larson in Room and Lily Tomlin in Grandma are a notch higher for me, but Blanchett certainly deserves to be and will be in the conversation for the Best Actress Oscar.

That's pretty remarkable considering how much the academy tends to lean towards ingenues for that award. Blanchett won just two years ago for her remarkable work in Blue Jasmine, one of those performances that you just knew as soon as you saw it, would win.

In an era when the best actors of either gender are forced to make superhero films and reboots to stay relevant, Blanchett has been a brilliant outlier. She has chosen smart, interesting projects that clearly speak to her on a creative level, without diminishing as a commercial force. Her films average a $73 million gross, much better than many male A-listers.

I'm excited to see her career continue to evolve (she's only 46!) as the decade progresses.