Brit Marling - Maggie - Sound of My Voice (40th on Imp’s 2012 List)



The key for me to Brit Marling’s performance isn’t her ethereal, waif like quality or that the film is constructed as such (often frustratingly so) that the audience has no choice but to keep constantly guessing throughout as to the validity of Maggie’s claim, no for me it’s her quite startling ability to turn on a sixpence. I think most of us have some assumption as to what a Cult leader is probably like, I myself imagine a person who craves power and subjugation and will use fear, intimidation and humiliation combined with a benign friendliness to control and maintain a following. As the supposed traveller from 2054 Marling switches from laidback Sunday school teacher to terrifyingly imposing bully so easily that the films deteriorating final stretch can be forgiven.





Mark Ruffalo - Bruce Banner/Hulk - The Avengers (58th)



How do you solve a problem like Hulk? You use him sparingly and you get one of the finest and most understated actors of his generation to play the less than jolly green giant. As Bruce Banner, Mark Ruffalo is brilliant and is by far the best thing about the extremely successful (if muddled, forty minutes fixing a fan, generic alien threat *) film and though his screen time is limited by a crowded guest list of heroes he gives a standout performance. As the wary and weary Banner, Ruffalo gives us a mixture of sweet natured science nerd and a man terrified of his destructive capabilities. In amongst all the explosions and the crash bang wallops there’s little time for reflection and development and though the quieter moments are few Ruffalo offers a refreshing alternative to the bluster on display from preening playboys, patriotic super soldiers and boastful gods.

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19.

Yuliya Aug - Tanya - Ovsyanki / Silent Souls (25th)



Yuliya Aug utters not a single word in Silent Souls, there’s a perfectly good reason for this which I won’t discuss because it doesn’t matter. As Tanya a young wife and paper mill worker she manages to convey an astronomical amount (in a few brief scenes) of emotion and character. As a viewer you can tell that though dutiful she is not as enamoured with her husband as he is with her and with a simple delightful look you know that she has for a split second known what it is like to be in love and to be loved by another.





Ohad Knoller - Yossi – Ha-Sippur Shel Yossi / Yossi (39th)



It has been ten years since the tragic death of his lover Jagger but Yossi is still in mourning, in a semi self-imposed exile from the world and in the closet. He goes about his work well enough but life is less than satisfying and the loneliness is having an effect on his person and is slowly creeping into his ability to function. A chance encounter with an openly gay conscript is the start of change. It could have been easy for the character of Yossi to be seen as a self-pitying loser, a guy that an audience would have had a hard time sympathising with let alone encouraging him to take a leap of faith, luckily we get a lovely low key turn from Knoller, warm and affecting.

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18.


Amanda Bauer - Claudia - The Myth of the American Sleepover (32nd)



On the last night of summer before the start of school we follow a group of teenagers as they cross paths, interact and narrowly miss each other as they search for the popular party, an elusive crush, romance and a little adventure. When we look back at our adolescence it is usually caught between a nostalgic limbo and one of the more hellish periods of life, we remember the bad and eulogise the good at least that’s what I’ve caught myself doing. In Myth we look at the mostly good, the small moments that we rarely forget that can have the biggest impact on our futures selves. It’s a loving amble through one night and is a beautifully made and wonderfully acted (there are several brilliantly natural turns) piece, a freshman Robert Altman with overlapping stories and crisscrossing characters all linked in some way or another. It can be seen as a tad earnest in its depiction but I felt it was sufficiently awkward, movingly confused and yet confident about itself as a representation of a certain stage of youth. In amongst all this there are a number of standouts including Claire Sloma as Maggie, Marlon Morton as Rob and Brett Jacobson as Scott Holland. My favourite though is Amanda Bauer as the girl who kisses another’s boyfriend, hey the girl got with her crush! As Claudia, Bauer is superb, a self-assured new girl who has an unexpected spikiness and the intelligence to use it. Now it may be the faint Linda Manz vibes that personally struck a chord but Bauer gives an assured and striking performance.





John Hawkes - Patrick - Martha Marcy May Marlene (28th)



I always liked John Hawkes, as a mostly satisfied if forever longing Deadwood fan I enjoyed and respected his performance as the affable Sol Star a performance equal to those around him and no less memorable but certainly not as juicy? Still Hawkes obviously had the goods and soon we saw him as Teardrop Dolly in the excellent Winterbone where, as actors have it he was very different but no less good. In Martha, Hawkes again plays opposite and offers sterling support to a phenomenal debutant leading actress the difference for me this time is that as commune leader Patrick he sticks around longer in the mind and in the gut. He is intense and though I wouldn’t say charismatic he certainly knows how to lure and manipulate new comers to the fold by focusing his attentions on them. It is a chilling, uncomfortable and downright disturbing portrait of a man who establishes power by changing the names of his devotees, psychologically (before physically) pervading their person.

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17.


Shirley MacLaine - Marjorie "Marge" Nugent – Bernie (36th)



In the wonderfully weird and colourfully macabre Bernie, Shirley MacLaine plays the virtually reclusive and recently widowed Mrs Nugent. She is befriended by popular mortician Bernie Tiede and soon they are practically inseparable. The wealthy woman soon goes missing. Still no one really notices or really cares because Mrs Nugent is by far the meanest woman in town. MacLaine (as Marge Nugent) gives us a deliciously sour and fierce turn as the mean spirited old biddy, a scarily possessive individual, a splendidly loathsome creature.





Jack Black - Bernie Tiede - Bernie / Seann William Scott - Doug Glatt – Goon (36th/50th)





My mother said something a few years ago along the lines of “…every actor has at least one half decent performance in them…” I didn’t completely agree but here we are at the end of 2012, the apocalypse was a bust and two of my favourite acts of the year belong to a pair of ‘comedic’ actors I have in the past (to put it lightly) had very little time for. Coincidently or not both Black and Williams play characters based on real people and their experiences. One a sweet natured dolt finding his place in the world as a hockey enforcer and the other a man so beloved by the community that when he admits to murdering an elderly lady they rally to his side in defence.

As Doug Glatt, Scott if not a revelation at the least is a surprisingly heart-warming screen presence, quiet, a little bashful and very much the heart of the film. In Bernie, Black reins in some of his more obvious comic foibles and adds a subtle layer of slickness that is used effectively and puts a little bit of doubt into the minds of those watching.

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16.


Nadezhda Markina - Elena – Elena



The marriage and ten year relationship between ex nurse Elena and the wealthy Vladimir is content enough, they have a routine and despite Vladimir’s naturally cold personality have a genuine affection for each other, except of course where their children are concerned. Vladimir has a daughter from an earlier marriage who lives for pleasure not work; Elena has a son who lives with his wife, teenage boy and baby in a bleak Moscow khrushchyovka. When Vladimir falls ill he makes it clear that his wealth will be left solely to his daughter, this does not bode well for Elena’s grandson who without money for University must enter the military.

As the titular Elena, Markina doesn’t give us a grandstanding, wildly overt performance that such a melodramatic tale often has. Instead she gives us a beautifully understated turn as a woman that no doubt has had a less than easy life, a woman devoted to her husband of later life and a woman who (as unfair as it may be in this day and age) understands her place in this socially “unequal” relationship. It is also clear that she is dedicated to her layabout son and adores her grandchildren and so is rightly frustrated by Vladimir’s unwillingness to help either. When Elena takes action against Vladimir there is a scene shortly after in which all her fear, her guilt and her love are bubbling together under the surface, this moment alone would have had Markina on the list as it is a brilliant piece of acting but coupled with the overall unfussy nature of the performance it is something that lasts a little longer in the memory.




Will Poulter - Dean - Wild Bill



I have only seen Will Poulter in three films; Son of Rambow (superb), Voyage of the Dawn Treader (the perfect Eustace) and Wild Bill. From these three performances I hope that he will go on to have a good, long lasting career. As the abandoned older (he’s fifteen) brother of recently released prisoner Bill (Charlie Creed-Miles) Poulter shows incredible maturity as a child forced to grow up quickly and all that bitterness it entails whilst still managing to be as awkward as any boy when talking to the girl he fancies

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