         Individual Performance Reviews Grouped by: Decade | Name | Order of Composition | Star Ranking Reviews will open in a new window of your browser |
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Jun '10: I have reviewed 45 of 408
nominees, or 11%. Most recent addition: Judy Garland (54) |
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1920s 29 Betty Compson, The Barker - "Midlevel work... Has so much more vitality when she's seething" 29 Jeanne Eagels, The Letter - "Delicious, weird... A tough and daringly embroidered performance" 29 Corinne Griffith, The Divine Lady - "A fine, energetic, but dispiritingly superficial vessel" 29 Mary Pickford, Coquette - "Creaky... Plays an already specious character as 18-going-on-7" |
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1930s 35 Elisabeth Bergner, Escape Me Never - "Organizes multiple vectors like a skilled pro" 35 Miriam Hopkins, Becky Sharp - "Relentless gales of hubris and energy... Hard-driving slapstick" 39 Irene Dunne, Love Affair - "Banks on sharp, clear, modest phrasing to signal concealed depths" |
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1940s 43 Joan Fontaine, The Constant Nymph - "Feels most of the time like a credible girl, not an angelic savant" 46 Olivia de Havilland, To Each His Own - "There's ability but not a surfeit of fire, and even less of mystery" 46 Jane Wyman, The Yearling - "A solid, unexpectedly formidable person, but not invulnerable" 48 Barbara Stanwyck, Sorry, Wrong Number - "Holds back from connecting all the notes supplied to her" |
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1950s 52 Julie Harris, The Member of the Wedding - "A very emphatic performance, laudable for its energy" 53 Ava Gardner, Mogambo - "Vibrant, sensational... the salvaging figure in this dispiriting roster" 53 Maggie McNamara, The Moon Is Blue - "Eerily close to Shelley Duvall in 3 Women, minus the ironies" 54 Judy Garland, A Star Is Born - "Carries musical drama to the cathartic, precarious plane of opera" 54 Audrey Hepburn, Sabrina - "Turns an uneven, ambivalent lark into a modest but real pleasure" 54 Grace Kelly, The Country Girl - "Merges the compulsively watchable with the plainly inadequate" 55 Katharine Hepburn, Summertime - "We perceive a host of stories that Jane/Hepburn performs for herself" 55 Eleanor Parker, Interrupted Melody - "Eschews a dewy or a garish approach to Reynolds's hardships" 56 Ingrid Bergman, Anastasia - "Doesn't look like she's made nearly enough of her own decisions" 57 Anna Magnani, Wild Is the Wind - "Dislodges other actors from settling into their own cadences" 57 Elizabeth Taylor, Raintree County - "A quandary... Hard to parse into categories like 'good' and 'bad'" 58 Susan Hayward, I Want to Live! - "A victim of radical miscasting that only looks like no-brainer casting" 59 Audrey Hepburn, The Nun's Story - "Vigilant... A miracle... A portrait of complex thought" |
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1960s 60 Deborah Kerr, The Sundowners - "Warm... Limber... Relaxed and ready to spring into spry action" 60 Melina Mercouri, Never on Sunday - "More of a prop here for Dassin's schtick than a credible actress" 61 Natalie Wood, Splendor in the Grass - "Ambitious, careful, magnetic, touching, and memorable" 62 Lee Remick, Days of Wine and Roses - "Smart, affecting, even gutsy... Traces a humbling arc" 63 Leslie Caron, The L-Shaped Room - "Nicely rewrites it as a film about a woman who is thinking" 63 Shirley MacLaine, Irma La Douce - "Slim and coasty... Builds no reserves of emotion or personality" 63 Rachel Roberts, This Sporting Life - "Adds shades and layers that enrich the film as it plays" 65 Simone Signoret, Ship of Fools - "Keeps a tight leash on any form of sentimental self-congratulation" 67 Edith Evans, The Whisperers - "Confounds any stable borders among madness, indigence, and solitude" 69 Geneviève Bujold, Anne of the Thousand Days - "Impetuous and unwilling to be cast aside" 69 Jean Simmons, The Happy Ending - "A gradual sense of conviction and surprising specificity" |
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1970s 70 Sarah Miles, Ryan's Daughter - "Personalizing stamps are a recurring problem for this actress" 72 Maggie Smith, Travels with My Aunt - "Laborious... A constant burlesque of unnecessary ironization" 72 Liv Ullmann, The Emigrants - "An amazing knack for profound but unshowy distillation of emotion" 73 Marsha Mason, Cinderella Liberty - "Sticks to broad emotional states... Intriguing but half-full" 73 Joanne Woodward, Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams - "From moment to moment, full of surprises" 75 Ann-Margret, Tommy - "A kind of secret genius for getting the audience to root for her" 76 Marie-Christine Barrault, Cousin cousine - "A breezy, smiling equanimity... Agreeable unfussiness" 76 Talia Shire, Rocky - "Charismatic without being generically strong or generically sweet" 79 Jill Clayburgh, Starting Over - "Just fine... Clayburgh pushes, but only in small ways" |
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1980s 84 Judy Davis, A Passage to India - "Turns Adela into the crypt-keeper of her own feelings" |