Oscar pick-a-palooza: Who should win Best Actress?

This is part three of an ongoing (and fourth annual!) series of posts (featuring myself and TooFat4SkinnyJeans' Brian Wezowicz) about the 2017 Academy Awards, honoring the best Hollywood had to offer from last year. 

Check out our previous posts on the Best Supporting Actress race here and Best Supporting Actor here. And stay tuned for our takes on all the other major categories.

Brian: Next up is Best Actress.  Some real strong performances here (plus Meryl Streep's Academy mandated nomination).  I think 2016 was a particularly strong year for women, so there were bound to be a few on the outside looking in.  This category does have a few notable snubs. Amy Adams deserved a nomination for her moving performance in my favorite movie of the year, Arrival.  The other notable snub would have to be for Annette Bening's raw performance in 20th Century Women (one of your favorites of the year).

Of the women nominated, this appears to be a three person race between Natalie Portman, Emma Stone and Isabelle Huppert.  If I had to pick today, I would give this one to Emma Stone. La La Land will win big, but I don't think that Ryan Gosling wins Best Actor since Casey Affleck looks to be a lock in that category.

Here are the nominees:

BEST ACTRESS:

Isabelle Huppert, Elle
Ruth Negga, Loving
Natalie Portman, Jackie
Emma Stone, La La Land
Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

Will Win:  Emma Stone.  She's a Hollywood darling in the most nominated movie of the year.  I think she pulls it off.

Should Win:  Ruth Negga.  I know she isn't a favorite, but I'd like to see The Academy think outside the box this year and her reward her.  Alas, she probably won't win it

Dark Horse:  Portman.  Will The Academy make the former Princess Amidala a two time Best Actress winner? I'm not so sure, but her performance in Jackie is strong enough to warrant it.

Adam: I agree about this being a banner year for women's roles -- especially after the last few years where the male categories have been very competitive, the women's races tend to bog down to a single front-runner with perhaps one potential spoiler. I can't remember a real surprise Best Actress win since maybe Marion Coltiard back in 2007. All too often it's the glamorous ingenue who is getting pit up against the wily veteran and the whole thing reeks of sexism. At the very least, the industry seems to have turned away from the trend of honoring women for 'getting ugly' for roles, and instead have opted for less gimmicky and more unique work.

As you mentioned, one of my favorite performances in one of my favorite movies of the past year -- Annette Bening in 20th Century Women -- was overlooked here. Which is a huge disappointment to me. God knows, Meryl Streep is a national treasure, but must we nominate every performance she gives at this point? Bening gave one of the best, if not the best, performance of her career in this film. She has never won an Oscar despite many close, worthy calls. I haven't seen Florence Foster Jenkins, but my understanding is that its not Streep's most groundbreaking work. I get it, actors aren't always recognized for their best performance, it can often be about timing and who's due -- for instance, no one thinks Scent of a Woman, as charming as it is, is peak Pacino.

Natalie Portman in Jackie

But that too should be argument enough for Bening being included. I would also like to give a shout out to Rebecca Hall's work in Christine, a tense, little seen drama which creates the real life story about a mentally deteriorating television newswoman in the 70s. It's a bleak, dark film, which will probably never find a wide audience, but Hall was phenomenal in it and really showed me something I've never seen before from her. And yes, I was surprised not to see Amy Adams, one of the best young actresses in Hollywood and the total anchor of Arrival, get overlooked when the film itself and director did get nods.

Lead categories can break your hearts some years. I am still smarting over snubs for Robert Redford (All Is Lost), Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips) and Denzel Washington (American Gangster) from years past.

But enough griping, let me talk about the nominees. I think you may be right. I think that because La La Land is such a mammoth hit (and growing) and it provides Emma Stone with arguably the most tailor-made role of her career, she is probably the front-runner by a nose. Had Natalie Portman not already won an Oscar for Black Swan she might be a bigger threat, but Jackie, although it's terrific, has not caught on with audiences like Black Swan did, even if I think her performance here might actually be more technically impressive. The real intriguing figure here is Isabelle Huppert, a very respected French actress who's been fantastic for decades and is finally getting the acknowledgment she deserves for a performance I hear is fantastic.

Will win:  Emma Stone, La La Land. Streep is too lightweight. Negga is too unknown, although she gives a lovely, quiet performance in Loving. I think Portman's previous win, which was relatively recently, will turn people away for picking her this time. Huppert is the wild card.

Should win: Natalie Portman. This was a tough one for me. I can't really find fault in Stone's performance. She was luminous, funny, and lovable in La La Land. And just like in Birdman, she showed just enough flashes of edge to avoid being grating. But there was something very Julia Roberts-y about her in this movie. It felt like a great movie star performance, more than a transformative acting experience. I have nothing but respect for her singing and dancing, and her apparently earnest appreciation for the Hollywood icons who inspired her. But for me, Portman gave the most emotionally rich and affecting performance in this bunch although I must confess I still need to/want to see Elle, and that may change my feelings about this. But to me Portman has the harder role. Playing someone as iconic as Jackie Kennedy could have been a disaster but she ended up disappearing into the role in a way she never has before.

Dark Horse: Isabelle Huppert. Sometimes the Oscars like to reward a veteran and even though its not always an accurate indicator, her win at the Golden Globes was eye opening. This could wind up being like the 2003 Best Actor race, when everyone thought it was either going to be Jack Nicholson (for About Schmidt) or Daniel Day-Lewis (for Gangs of New York) and then wacky Adrien Brody came out of nowhere and won for The Pianist and then creeped out a generation of Oscar viewers by assaulting Halle Berry on stage. In other words, I expect Emma Stone to win, but I wouldn't be shocked it Huppert does.