Golden Globe predictions, 2021

It's the Golden Globes tonight! They screwed up epically last year, awarding Best Screenplay to Tarantino's insufferable Once Upon a Time in Hollywood..., giving that hack another platform to blather on about how great he was. The fact that they rewarded his contrived film over the brilliant Parasite further attests to the Golden Globes' chronic lack of taste, and how they just kiss the more famous person's ass.

(Graciously, the Oscars did it right, crowning Best Original Screenplay and Best Director and Best Film to Parasite over Tarantino's yawnfest, giving me faith that voting bodies do occasionally exercise good judgment!)

Thus, I'm predicting the Golden Globes this year, but I really don't expect anything good from them. They've shown their true colours in the past, time and time again.

I'm still yet to watch quite a few of the nominated titles, but when I have free time, I have been making my way through the films which interest me, that are available on streaming services. Yesterday I watched I Care a Lot, which was Rosamund Pike reprising her streak of Gone Girl-villainy, to very entertaining and thrilling effect! 

Best motion picture - drama: The Trial of the Chicago 7

Sharp Objects gets rated 18 by the BBFC

I finished reading Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects this week. The book has been turned into an 8-part HBO miniseries, and although I’m yet to watch it, it had very much been on my radar due to the expert way it had been marketed: ‘From the director of Big Little Lies, from the producers of Get Out, from the author of Gone Girl, and starring Amy Adams’. Any semi-cineliterate individual will know that that is a killer recipe for success.

‘Killer’ being the operative word. The plot revolves around a journalist, Camille Preaker (Amy Adams), who returns to her stifling Missouri hometown to investigate the disappearance of two young girls in the town. Having a tonne of baggage herself, including strained relationships with her frosty mother, the investigation causes Camille to revisit some of her demons, including the death of her beloved sister Marian, a death she never got over.

10 Prettiest Ladies in a 2009 Film

My archives of eye candy lists by year are here, if you want to inspect my taste in guys and gals holistically!

10. Léa Seydoux, Inglourious Basterds 

09. Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air

10 Most Attractive Ladies in a 2010 Film

The prettiest ladies in a 2011 film list, here. As ever, the list is constrained to only movies I've watched.

10. Ellen Page, Inception

I think Christopher Nolan is partial to actors and actresses with brown hair, but I'm not sure... Incidentally, I think 'Ariadne', Page's character, is the only well-written female in a Chris Nolan film. (This is partly why Dunkirk was so good; there were no women in it for him to invent just to kill off).

Statistical Analysis of the 141 films I watched in 2017, with BBFC analysis.

Just like last year, when I put my hard-earned coding skills into practice by analysing all the marks I’d awarded every film I watched in 2016, I repeated the process again this year.

The arithmetic mean of the 141 films was 6.64, a fractional increase from last year, meaning that my discernment skills to have improved slightly. That being said, the lowest mark out of 10 I gave last year was a 2, whereas I gave 1/10 to two films this year, and zero out of 10 to one, Darren Aronofsky’s bloated stinker, mother!, which is the worst film I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and featured that movie ingredient that I am so averse to: Jennifer Lawrence screaming her head off.

Album review: REPUTATION (Taylor Swift)

A month shy of turning 28, Taylor Swift has been around the block and suffered a few knocks to her standing (not to mention her heart) for her troubles. Her sixth album comes at some time when some self-reflection is much-needed.

With a title like ‘Reputation’, she’s certainly cognisant of that artefact. It would be trite to dub her 15-track album as a ‘confessional’, as she’s always been very forthcoming about wearing her heart on her sleeve, and channelling her painful life experiences into song-writing inspiration, but there's a salient self-awareness in this album that was perhaps lacking in her previous work.

My top 10 films of 2016 [5-1].

Part 1 of this rundown was here, which also featured five films you ought to avoid like the plague.

05. Elle

Don't Drunk Snapchat.

When I send Snapchats when I'm drunk, I usually end up saying shady things that I regret the next day.

In last night's case, I just reiterated something that I've been banging on about for a year now.

In an attempt to do something a bit adventurous with my hair, I tried curling it to look as glam as Rosamund Pike's did in the book launch scene in Gone Girl:

I daresay my hair didn't quite stay as it was meant to, aha.

10 Fittest Ladies in Film, 2014.

Happy Hump Day! Here be a previous post in the series. I post male and female lists alternately, every Wednesday.

10. Nina Dobrev, Let’s Be Cops

Some BBFC nerdiness at the Oscar nominations.

Hey Em, don't make it sad. Take a shite batch of Oscar nominations and make it better! With BBFC stats and shiz, of course.

Half-birthday Top 5s of 2016 (so far).

It's my 26.5th birthday today, so I thought I'd list my top 5 of the dominant 'Oscar' categories as of now (having seen 42 titles). 

For the acting categories I'll try my best to be objective and list in order of 'best' rather than 'favourite'. For example, my favourite performance of the year so far is Jesse Eisenberg in Café Society because I identify with his character the most. He'll almost certainly make my 10 favourite performances of 2016 list, but I concede that it's not necessarily the best male lead acting performance of the year.

To further illustrate this point, in my favourite performances of 2015, I listed Domhnall Gleeson in The Revenant because he looked damn gorgeous with a ginger beard. But objectively, he was probably only the fourth best performance in that dull film after Leo, Tom Hardy and Will Poulter.

I'm doing these lists now so I can show my love to some actors who didn't necessarily appear in prestige pictures, as they might get bumped out of the top 5s when Oscar bait like La La Land and Fences drops. For example, Jena Malone in The Neon Demon, an excellent, arresting turn, wouldn't get near the Oscars, but it was so good it needs to be highlighted. And not just due to the shock of Johanna Mason from The Hunger Games romancing the dead, haha.

And obviously, top films are not so objective because those are just favourites, haha.

Film

01. A United Kingdom 
02. Zootropolis
03. Café Society 
04. Kubo and the Two Strings 
05. Hell or High Water 

Direction
01. Amma Asante, A United Kingdom
02. Travis Knight, Kubo and the Two Strings
03. Pedro Almodóvar, Julieta
04. Dan Trachtenberg, 10 Cloverfield Lane
05. Nicolas Pesce, The Eyes of My Mother

Actor, Leading Role
01. David Oyewolo, A United Kingdom
02. Chris Pine, Hell or High Water
03. Jesse Eisenberg, Café Society 
04. Jonah Hill, War Dogs
05. Miles Teller, War Dogs

Actress, Leading Role
01. Emily Blunt, The Girl on the Train
02. Adriana Ugarte, Julieta
03. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, 10 Cloverfield Lane
04. Rosamund Pike, A United Kingdom
05. Emma Suárez, Julieta

Actor, Supporting Role
01. Alden Ehrenreich, Hail, Caesar!
02. Ben Foster, Hell or High Water
03. John Goodman, 10 Cloverfield Lane
04. Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water
05. Tom Bennett, David Brent: Life on the Road

Actress, Supporting Role
01. Kate McKinnon, Ghostbusters
02. Jena Malone, The Neon Demon
03. Viola Davis, Suicide Squad
04. Haley Bennett, Magnificent Seven
05. Kristen Stewart, Café Society 

Screenplay (adapted and original) because I CBA to google which were original and adapted and hence do separate categories for both, haha
01. Café Society 
02. War Dogs
03. Zootopia
04. Julieta
05. The Hunt for the Wilderpeople

I haven't watched enough big hitters to do the aural/visual categories, as the best scores and camerawork are usually in the films which aim high and have budgets to match. But yeah, that was that!

--

Because I'm a shady cow...

Worst Film

01. High-Rise my only 2/10 score of the year. What a load of bloated wank. Also, it should have been rated 18 because it was so unpleasant to watch.

02. The Boss

03. Mission Milano

04. So Young 2: Never Gone

05. Absolutely Unfunny Fabulous

Worst Performances

01. Cara Delevingne, Suicide Squad this probably won't change at the end of the year
02. Kris Wu, So Young 2: Never Gone 
03. Ricky Gervais, David Brent: Life on the Road
04. Sienna Miller, High-Rise
05. Chris Pratt, Magnificent Seven

Found Girl.

A couple of blurry / sub-par photos from the BFI London Film Festival!

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I was walking past Leicester Square on Wednesday after the disappointing The Girl on the Train and realised that all the commotion was due to the BFI film première starting!

My phone was, lamentably, on very low battery (biggest shortcoming of Samsung S4 goddamnit) and I was too far away to get good pictures, but here are the low-quality, grainy ones I was able to get!

 

Hi Draco! (sadly I didn't get to grab his hand like I did with his Harry Potter co-star five years ago!)

Jessica Oyelowo

The next few were me grappling desperately trying to get decent photos of Rosamund Pike with my phone's waning battery, all the way squealing 'ROSAMUND PIKE!!!' at the top of my voice.

This is from the next day, before my viewing of A United Kingdom: 

--

And this was the Q&A with director Nicolas Pesce, after The Eyes of My Mother yesterday.

So yeah, I had an amazing time during the BFI Film festival! Love living in London. ♥♥♥♥♥

Hopefully next year, I'll a) see more than two films and b) have more battery on my phone to take better-quality photos ♥

Film review: A UNITED KINGDOM (Amma Asante, 2016)

I've been making the most of the BFI London Film Festival - I saw this title today, and am seeing a horror movie on Sunday.

--

Seretse Khama, the prince of Bechuanaland (now named Republic of Botswana) is studying Law in London, primed for return to his country as King. One night, at the London Missionary Society, he meets Ruth Williams, a British secretary, and the two instantly connect. A whirlwind romance follows, culminating in his proposal of marriage and for her to return to his homeland with him, which she accepts immediately. It being 69 years in the past, however, their union is met with opposition from almost everyone they know.

Amma Asante's previous film, the delightful Belle, touched upon similar themes as A United Kingdom, and the two films both capably balanced delivering a true-life romance that crossed barriers, whilst defeating the insularity and racism that meet the protagonist.

Both also clocked in at 104/105 minutes, illustrating that important stories that deserve to get the film treatment do not have to suffer from a stodgy running time in order to get the message across. In both Belle and A United Kingdom's cases, with their concisely edited scenes and unfussy screenplays, Asante clearly has enough faith in the stories she's delivering to speak for themselves, without the need for frills. And both films are better for it.

A United Kingdom wouldn't be half as enjoyable it was without David Oyelowo's fearless, heartfelt performance. When he addresses the people of Bechuanaland, you can positively see the turmoil in his eyes, as his character juggles his national duties and his heart. I'm not ashamed to say I was moved to tears on no less than four occasions when Seretse spoke powerfully. Oyelowo just has one of those voices; one of those screen presences. It did not surprise me to learn, yesterday, at the Gala Opening of the London Film Festival that he and Amma Asante have known each other for 18 years; she seems to know her subject intimately, and doing so helps her coax a performance of great emotional intelligence out of him.

The path of true love never did run smooth, but for Seretse and Ruth, it's considerably less smooth than usual. The two main characters never wallow in self-pity, but instead conduct themselves with the grit and resourcefulness that all pioneers of history need. Some of the scenes where their relationship is met with opprobrium are difficult to watch, such as when Seretse is racially abused by some yobs, who then call Ruth a 'slut'. But such scenes are only reflecting what actually happened. The way the director and writer, Guy Hibbert, retain the impact of these scenes without sensationalising such events, is impressive.

After baring her teeth in Gone Girl, Rosamund Pike is reliably great in a role closer to her typical habitat, playing the sweet Ruth Williams. She's terrifically still in the majority of her scenes, projecting a calm exterior, but the occasional tell-tale sign of body language (for example, a shaking arm) indicates that her character recognises the full force of what she's gotten herself into by marrying the Prince of a small nation and she’s terrified, yet, no matter how difficult, she's robust enough not to give up. 

The supporting players are all well cast, some of the standout performers being Draco MalfoyTom Felton as the villainous Rufus Lancaster (incidentally, he also played a bigot in Belle), Jack Lowden perfectly embodying Tony Benn’s social conscience (Benn’s first introduction in the film was met with a delighted gasp by the audience), and Only Fool's and Horses' Nicholas Lyndhurst as Ruth's disapproving father.

A United Kingdom also delivers an important history lesson about the apartheid in South Africa and the not-so-blameless role Britain played in enabling it, although it affords gratitude towards the trailblazers who were bold enough to stand up against what was clearly not right. The film also has more levity than you would expect in one about such a weighty topic, and towards the end, when Seretse delivers a glib one-liner (that was delivered to him earlier by Jack Davenport’s slimy government official), it was met with applause in the audience.

Amma Asante has made the first film of 2016 to blow me away. A United Kingdom is a testament to the redemptive power of love, and how in the face of hatred and small-mindedness, as long as the couple love each other, this love will triumph over hate. Admittedly, such a moral is hardly revolutionary, but delivering the message with this true, remarkable story, of two remarkable people, and such talented cast and crew, who clearly moulded this picture with love, renders A United Kingdom a lovely experience.

9/10

Film review: THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN (Tate Taylor, 2016)

Rachel, a depressed 30-something alcoholic, embarks on a destructive Groundhog Day of a routine: taking a train which goes past her ex husband's house and peering at his newfound state of matrimonial bliss with the woman he cheated on her with, and their baby.

A few houses down from this seemingly perfect family is another equally photogenic, younger, couple, Megan and Scott, who have a penchant for shagging in clear view of commuters. One day, on her usual voyeuring, Rachel notices that Megan has switched up sexual partners, and, bringing up dark memories of her own, she reacts adversely, getting wasted and getting off the train at the station where she used to live. A while later, Megan goes missing.

In the title role, Emily Blunt is fantastic, giving a career best  turn. Her Rachel would be laughable if she weren't so pathetic, sipping vodka out of a plastic bottle, scaring off other commuters with her slurred speech and still pining for a relationship that long outgrew her.

Due to blackouts she gets from her deleterious drinking problem, her memory on the night of Megan's departure is hazy, rendering her a compelling yet unreliable narrator. Usually such a beautiful woman, Blunt de-glams considerably to play Rachel, looking quite rough indeed. She also convincingly plays drunk, no mean feat, given most attempts to act inebriated usually veer into insufferable caricature (see: Jennifer Lawrence as Rosalyn in American Hustle). 

With a stagger and slurred speech, Blunt evokes sympathy from the audience for such a broken woman, particularly her impassioned drunken monologues, which could be given from many a hammered young woman I’ve encountered on the 11.15pm train home, haha. That she was completely sober during filming (Blunt was pregnant), renders her performance even more remarkable.

As the audience tries to discern fact from fabrication, Megan and Anna, Tom's new wife, enter the fray with their narratives. In the novel, the story is told from the P.O.V. of all three of these women, but in film form, such a fussy storytelling device is frustrating and distracting. The end product feels like a very poor man's Rashômon, not aided by an awful script that features, amongst other things, whiny voiceovers from Rachel and Megan, and clunky conversations between characters. Note to the screenwriter: lines like 'I'm not the girl I used to be', and 'I'm the mistress of re-invention' don't really suit the big screen. They'd be better suited to stage. Or a bad shampoo commercial.

Furthermore, every single character in The Girl on the Train, from the therapist who Megan was confiding in to the incompetent cop investigating the case, are unlikable. The three main males in the film were all quite misogynistic in their own ways, and thus, I simply wasn't engaged with the plot. You find yourself not really caring what happened to Megan, and whodunnit. Although the plot 'twist', when it hits, is as contrived as it is predictable.

Finally, the film suffers from a crisis of identity, as Tate Taylor wants it to be both sensual (sex scenes pepper the film, but they’re loveless, mechanical, and as a result, completely unerotic) and unsettling at the same time. What he actually gets is a movie that is both bland and dull.

Emily Blunt deserves a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her tremendously convincing depiction of a fragile woman. Whether she gets one remains to be seen, but sadly, I have my doubts; it is a strong year for Best Actress with buzz surrounding a three-way frontrunner status for Emma Stone in La La Land, Natalie Portman in Jackie and hopefully the eventual winner, Viola Davis in Fences (it's Viola's time!).

Usually, for an actress to get nominated for her performance in a thriller (a genre that is not really one of Oscars' preferred), the film has to have fared well with the moviegoing public, as Gone Girl (the third highest grossing 18-rated movie in the UK after 50 Shades of Grey and Wolf of Wall Street) and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo did. What those two films had, which The Girl on the Train lacks, was an extremely adroit director in the form of David Fincher, who's dexterous ability to manipulate the audience helped Rosamund Pike and Rooney Mara, respectively, give performances that transcended their films' pulpy roots.

Tate Taylor is, lamentably, a less gifted storyteller, seems to feel that, when all else fails, he can always go to Plan B: heavy-handed close-ups of Blunt's blotchy face. The actress deserves so much better than the director, or the film, have to offer.

5/10

My Favourite Performances in a U-rated Film.

The much more sanitised, family-friendly younger sister list to this one. 

My motivation for doing this list is because, naturally, due to the Universal rating, an actor is constrained in terms of the amount of cursing they can do, as well as being limited by other elements of their acting repertoire. In an 18-rated film, for example, you can cuss, Coke and have a candle up your bum. (And that's just Leo in WoWS). 

In a U-rated film you're barely allowed to say 'bloody' and a kiss on the lips is about as saucy as it gets. 

So, which actors managed to impress me with their acting without resorting to the naughty stuff?

10. Rosamund Pike as Jane Bennett in Pride & Prejudice

Ms. Pike, who I admire on many levels: for her intellect (she did English at Wadham College, Oxford and speaks extremely eloquently in interviews), beauty (a 5 foot 8.5 genteel English rose) and flawless acting skills (here's hoping she picks up a second Oscar nomination for this year's upcoming A United Kingdom!), plays Keira Knightley's nice, docile sister Jane in the role that won her the heart of the director, Joe Wright, who later turned out to be a bit of a knob and played her. Men called Joe are untrustworthy knobs like that.

Her appearance on this list makes Rosamund the only actor/actress to feature in both my 'top 18-rated performances' and 'top U-rated performances' list. Get you an actress who can do both.

One final piece of awesome, there's a copy of the Pride & Prejudice audiobook that Rosamund Pike reads! Boom.

09. Henry Fonda as Juror #8 in 12 Angry Men 

08. Ziyi Zhang as Zhao Di in The Road Home

Ziyi's more appearance on this list, in a much more wholesome role, makes her the only actress to feature on my 'top U rated performances' list and 'sexiest femmes in film' list. Brilliant to see a Chinese sister consistently slaying!

07. Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve 

All ABout Eve, one of my favourite films is one of the greatest films about divas and features one of the cattiest performances of all-time by Bette Davis. How shady can she be in a U-rated film?, you might be wondering. Well the answer is very, and the genius of Ms Davis' performance is it's not so much the waspish comments she makes to the other actresses. It's the way that she says them.

06. Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennett in Pride & Prejudice 

Some critics didn't care for Keira's giggly portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet, causing director Joe Wright to rant at the BAFTAs when he was picking up an Award about how dare they not nominate her. Awkward. (Told you Joe Wright was a dislikeable cnut).

And to be honest, the first time I saw this film, I agreed. Initially, I found Keira Knightley too slight in the role. But like any layered acting performance, and quite the opposite from Jennifer Lawrence's initially flashy but ultimately one-dimensional turn as Tiffany in Silver Linings Playbook which even Jlaw stans admit was one of the most undeserved Oscar wins in Academy Award history, it grows on you after repeat viewings, particularly if you think about the character more.

Knightley imbues Elizabeth with a light-heated outward demeanour, but behind the pretty face, still waters run deep. Like an onion, it's a performance of depth and complexity, and I'm more than happy to admit that when I first watched her at 15, I didn't quite appreciate the nuances of good acting. She's actually rather brilliant; I daresay even Jane Austen would approve.

05. Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund in Casablanca

04. Joan Fontaine as Lisa Berndle in Letter from an Unknown Woman 

Don't know if you can tell, but I'm somewhat of a sucker for Old Hollywood weepies!

03. Wei Minzhi as Wei Minzhi in Not One Less 

My brother hates this film, finding it cringey, but Not One Less means a lot to me and is my third favourite film of all time. It encapsulates the hardships that people in rural China have to endure on a daily basis, and the hell they have to put themselves through and dignity they have to sacrifice just to make ends meet. Tom wouldn't know how this feels because he was born in London with a silver spoon in his mouth, and unlike his sage older sibling who was born in China but came to England at a young age, hasn't ever experienced the destitution shown in this movie.

Back to the film and not making everything about myself as per, director Zhang Yimou (who also directed entry #8 on this list) plucked an unknown, Wei Minzhi, and cast her as the lead in Not One Less. She plays a young girl who has to take over teaching a disruptive class. The teacher who's leaving for a spell promises her bonus pay if there's 'not one less' student in the class when they come back as when they left.

Unfortunately, getting students to remain in class is easier said than done, given a) Minzhi isn't a particularly experienced teacher and doesn't deal with kids well and b) most of the children in the class are as poor or more so than she is, and so for them, education is a luxury their parents can't afford. As such, one boy quits school pretty early on to find work instead, and the film follows Minzhi as she travels across China to try and drag him back to class.

I'm probably not selling the film very well, but it was an extremely emotional experience because it bought back memories of parts of rundown China which I see every time I visit and the levels of poverty which people really do live in. The motivations of Wei Minzhi's character in the film are too real, and as such, it was a stroke of genius to cast an unknown everyday person in the lead role. Because she has had the life experience of having to sing for her supper on a daily basis, her performance is more authentic and affecting than any amount of years at Drama school could instill into someone.

02. Audrey Hepburn as Princess Anya in Roman Holiday 

Oblig shout-out to the prettiest, classiest lady in Hollywood history!

01. Alec Guinness as eight members of the D'Ascoyne family in Kind Hearts and Coronets 

One of the best comedic performances of all-time. The pinnacle of an actor playing multiple roles in a movie; Guinness really sells every character as disparate from the last.  BOSS!

OOTD: Gone Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Shirt: Hollister

Vest top (worn underneath): Primark

Earrings: TK Maxx

Glasses: Red or Dead

My 10 Favourite Performances in an 18-Rated Movie.

I watched The Canyons this week, a Kickstarter-funded movie about the sexual jealousy and betrayal between a hedonistic movie producer and his glamorous girlfriend (Lindsay Lohan). The fact that the film was low-budget was apparent in the shoddy production value, lazy script and daytime TV-esque performances, but Lindsay Lohan was genuinely brilliant, even more so if you consider she had to deliver laughably bad lines and make them plausible. The high quality of her performance jarred with everything else about the film, which was extremely cheap and trashy, but at least it inspired me to do another list: favourite 18-rated performances.

Certain directors seem to be drawn to darker content than others, so it's no surprise that this list features multiple entries from films from three directors: two Fincher-directed performances (both fierce women who like a bit of revenge), two Quentin Tarantino-directed performances, and three Martin Scorsese directed-performances. But not the two seminal Robert de Niro turns (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) that you might expect to see.

Very honourable mentions: Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves, Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds, Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York, Uma Thurman in Kill Bill Vol. 1  and Pulp Fiction, Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet (another spirit animal of mine. I jest. Or do I?), Lindsay Lohan in The Canyons, Léa Seydoux in Blue is the Warmest Colour, Leonardo DiCaprio in The Depahted, Dominique Swain in Lolita and Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street (heard he gets his penis out in a pool party scene or something).

10. Ray Liotta, Goodfellas

1990. director: Martin Scorsese. Rated 18 for strong violence.

09. Bel Powley, Diary of a Teenage Girl

2015. director: Marielle Heller. Rated 18 for strong sex.

08. Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 

2011. director: David Fincher. Rated 18 for strong sexual violence and sex.

07. Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street 

2013. director: Martin Scorsese. Rated 18 for very strong language, strong sex and hard drug use.

06. Sharon Stone, Casino

1995. director: Martin Scorsese. Rated 18 for strong violence. Not like a Scorsese film to have strong violence, now is it?

05. Mélanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds

2009. director: Quentin Tarantino. Rated 18 for strong bloody violence.

I idolised her back in 2010, and I still idolise her now. Au revoir, Shoshanna!

04. Michael Madsen, Reservoir Dogs

1992. director: Quentin Tarantino. Rated 18 for strong bloody violence, torture, strong language & sex references 

03. Kevin Spacey, American Beauty

1999. director: Sam Mendes. Rated 18 for strong language, once very strong, strong sex, violence & drug use 

It's interesting I had Dominque Swain as Dolores 'Lolita' Haze in my honourable mentions list, for this film, one of my top 15 of all-time, has heavy Lolita overtones running throughout. Even Kevin Spacey's character's name, Lester Burnham, is an anagram of 'Humbert Learns'.

And the top two, which was an absolute no-brainer...

02. Adèle Exarchopoulos, Blue is the Warmest Colour

2013.  director: Abdellatif Kechiche. Rated 18 for strong sex and very strong language.

01. Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl

2014. director: David Fincher. Rated 18 for strong bloody violence and very strong language.

Surprise!