best film:   Isabelle Adjani stands out as the bespectacled Stella in Roman Polanski’s The Tenant. This, the middle film in Polanski’s apartment trilogy, is a proud film for any actor to have as their singular best even if Adjani's role is rather small. Possession from Andrzej Żuławski might be as good as The Tenant and Adjani does much more of the heavy lifting in the 1981 breakup horror masterpiece. Żuławski’s film is a stylistic tour-de-force with unrelenting camera movement and masterful color design. Admirers of The Shining – should seek out, appreciate, and study Possession.     best

  best film:  Dangerous Liaisons. Stephen Frears’ 1988 films is rock solid – but a film that barely squeaks into the top ten of its given year (currently #10 of 1988) should not be any great actor’s best film – so this category is a major problem for Glenn Close.  This lack of a best film sort of ends Close’s bid to be in the top fifty (50) of all time on this list. If one were to go looking for the other films close Dangerous Liaisons to compete for the top slot in this category… well… there simply

  best film:  This category is almost impossible to answer for Vanessa Redgrave.  The correct answer could be three films. The first that comes to mind is Michelangelo Antonioni’s genius 1966 film Blow-Up. Ken Russell’s controversial (but equally brilliant) film The Devils from 1971 is yet another fine choice. The third and final film may sneak up on some, but it is Joe Wright’s 2007 film Atonement. Vanessa Redgrave is only in a few minutes of the first (Blow-Up) and last (Atonement - playing the older Briony character in the epilogue) films mentioned but she plays a pivotal part of

  best film:  Johnny Guitar – and it is not terribly close. Johnny Guitar is Nicholas Ray’s masterpiece and a film that lands inside the top 200 of all-time. So, for Joan Crawford this category is neither a great strength nor a great weakness. Certainly, there is no shame in being the acting centerpiece of Ray’s best film – by definition beating out impressive titles that include Rebel Without a Cause, They Live by Night and In a Lonely Place. The next tier of quality films down for Crawford includes Grand Hotel and Mildred Pierce. These are two fine

  best film:Blue Velvet (1986). For cinephiles, Laura Dern will always be connected to the work of David Lynch. Certainly, many movie fans will always think of her as Dr. Ellie Sattler in Jurassic Park (a fine film to be remembered for).  Dern has also been nominated three films in non-Lynch and non-Jurassic films/roles (Rambling Rose, Wild, Marriage Story).  Blue Velvet is currently listed as the 48th best film of all-time so that wins out here. Other films that warrant serious consideration in this category are Wild at Heart (again with Lynch), Little Women, Marriage Story, and, of course,

  best film:  Rear Window is Grace Kelly’s finest film. She is very strong in a top 100 all-time film from the great master Alfred Hitchcock, so this category is a strength for Kelly. Her second best is actually Fred Zinneman’s western High Noon over the other two Hitchcock collaborations.     Grace Kelly in high gloss in an unforgettable close-up from Hitchcock's Rear Window     best performance:  Rear Window - and it is just by an eyelash over To Catch a Thief. She swallows up the scenes (in a positive way) in both films with

  best film:  Simone Signoret has three (3) films at the top that any actor would be proud of. She is in Max Ophüls’ La Ronde (1950), Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique (1955), and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (1969). In the end, Melville’s spy film triumphs in this category. This is a masterfully told espionage/war film – full of intelligence and a distinct narrative and visual tone. Melville’s style is fully developed and mature by the late 1960s and Army of Shadows is draped in a jaw-droppingly beautiful and consistent mise-en-scene of muted blues, grays and midnight indigo day for

  best film:  It is a two-horse race here and Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night reigns supreme above Preston Sturges’ The Palm Beach Story. Both films feature crazy good talent in front of the camera (Claudette Colbert in both of course – opposite Clark Gable in Capra’s film and Joel McCrea in The Palm Beach Story) and witty writing. It is Capra’s breakneck editing pace that really pushes it past Sturges’ film (and so many others) in the screwball genre.   1934 was the year of Claudette Colbert in Hollywood. She not only had It Happened One

  best film:  Blue Valentine squeaks past Brokeback Mountain, Synecdoche, New York and Wendy and Lucy for the top spot here. Sadly, Michelle Williams is lacking a masterpiece on her resume and that hurts her case - but there is a cluster of quality films (Shutter Island and Meek’s Cutoff not far behind the three films previously listed) vying for this spot which is something. Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine (from 2010 - and still his strongest to date) deserves comparison to brilliant films like Roberto Rossellini's Journey to Italy (1954), Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage (1973) and Noah

  best film:  As 2012 gets smaller in rearview mirror,  it becomes clearer that The Master is one of the best films of the 21st century. It is easily the best film Amy Adams has been a part of. The closest contenders (and there is some distance here) are Spike Jonze’s Her and David O. Russell’s American Hustle.     Adams plays Peggy Dodd in Paul Thomas Anderson's masterpiece. She plays the wife of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster. She is not given as much space to work as PSH (or Joaquin Phoenix of course) but hers is a

  best film:  Inception. Marion Cotillard, in her career, has been in four top ten of the year films (and The Immigrant is only locked out because of a crazy deep year in 2013) but Christopher Nolan’s Inception is clearly the greatest of those films. She appears on screen for no more than 10-15 minutes of the film but she packs a wallop as Mal, Leonardo DiCaprio’s (as Cobb) wife/nightmare/femme fatale. This is a mesmerizing turn by Cotillard in what is clearly one of the decade’s best films.     Cotillard gives the best per-minute (about 13 minutes

  best film:  Letter from an Unknown Woman from Max Ophüls edges out Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca and George Stevens’ Gunga Din. Joan Fontaine is superb in both Letter from an Unknown Woman and Rebecca (she does not get much time to shine backing up the boys in deeper support in Gunga Din). Letter from an Unknown Woman landed at #250 on the top 500 list so there are actors with a stronger best film left off this list for sure. It would have been great to see Fontaine in one of Hitchcock or Ophüls’ top tier efforts (this currently