The Steak Knives

To be eligible for the Steak Knives, candidates must not have been recognized by the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the Independent Spirit Awards or in the top tier of the IndieWire Critics' Poll. To see the ineligible nominees, click here.

Zoë Bell
Grindhouse

Stuntfolk aren't given the due that other on-screen performers are, despite being the on-screen presence in some of the most memorable moments of some of the most memorable performances. Given that film grammar is so hard-coded into our brains, it's no surprise that we can construct a scene or character so seamlessly that we never register that two different performers are playing the same character. (For a great, compact example of this in Mission: Impossible III, skip to the 15:55 mark in this video.) Zoë Bell, a New Zealander stuntwoman best known as Uma Thurman's double in Kill Bill, remarks on the phenomenon:

People always say, are you pissed off that the actors get all the glamour and attention? To be honest with you, that never bothered me — I didn't become a stuntwoman to be some movie star or anything. But I would it find it infuriating to be given a mean gag or amazing stunt that we'd worked out and shot from different angles and it looks fantastic, but the one angle that sells it and makes it look incredible, you can't shoot it that way because you'd see my face and the actress can't do it, so you lose the best shot — you lose it because you can't shoot it that way.

Niche film fans from martial arts enthusiasts to musical mavens to silent comedy connoissuers know the pleasure of watching an actual actor actually execute something flabbergastingly graceful and real. And so it is with Bell in Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino's feature-length contribution to Grindhouse. Death Proof is as much of a moviegoing pleasure as anything Tarantino has ever done, which is saying something because its main character is a serial killer of women he fetishizes. The first half of Death Proof is that killer, Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), ingratiating himself with his victims, principally a trio of old friends, before battering them to death with his car. The second half is another clot of friends — Tracie Thoms, Rosario Dawson and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as low-level movie cast and crew welcoming Bell, playing herself, to Tennessee for some location filming — that runs afoul to Mike's leer.

Bell has all the charms of any of Tarantino's heroines, and if the patter between the girls isn't memorable in a quotable away, it nevertheless beautifully conveys the genuineness and warmth of these relationships, and Bell navigates her monologues nicely. But it's when Bell wants to play "ship's mast" — in which she lashes two belts to the front doors of a 1970 white Dodge Challenger (because it's the same model as the one in her favorite cut car flick Vanishing Point, natch) and hangs on for dear life as her friend speeds down country roads, because this is what stuntwomen do for kicks — that the stuntwoman-cum-actress realizes her desire to capture "the best shot." Because of course it's during ship's mast that Stuntman Mike catches up to them, and Bell turns the nifty trick of, as a stuntwoman, executing her stuff with the ease and equanimity that keeps those in her profession alive while, as an actress, convincingly freaking out as Mike sideswipes them again and again. (Granted, Bell the actress was more securely restrained than Bell the character, but I still hold that pretending to panic while you're sliding across the hood of a speeding car is a rare skill.) But the coup de grace of Bell's performance is the dialogue between the girls between when she is thrown from the hood and when the car speeds off in pursuit of Stuntman Mike. What Bell sells in that scene justifies the entire Death Proof enterprise, which totally upends the "impervious movie psychopath" archetype. Time will tell whether Bell has a career's worth of performances in her — her first post-Grindhouse role is in this Thursday's Lost — but she got off from the starting blocks with élan. — Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)

Jennifer Garner
Juno

In all its acclaim, the most underrated aspect of Diablo Cody's Juno screenplay is the turn of Vanessa, the "paranoid yuppie," into a font of maternal warmth. At first, Jennifer Garner plays Vanessa as a control-freak McMansionite who wants motherhood simply to prove that she is woman enough to have it all. Over the course of the film, the energy Vanessa pours into motherhood preparation transforms from hypermaterialism into something deep and touching. Garner's intensity when trying to hammer out the adoption arrangement seems a bit too business-oriented for such a sensitive situation. Vanessa cuts off the lawyer, looks right at Juno, and tries to reassure her that she'll "be taken care of." Here, Vanessa's intensity comes off as perhaps a little manipulative, as if she's trying to rush Juno into the arrangement to make sure she gets what she wants. Later in the same scene, Garner softens and cries a bit, but again, because she's wearing the pantsuits in the family, this can easily be read as standard yuppie.

As the story unfolds, we see that Vanessa isn't solely a superficial career woman who wants children just to prove a point. Juno sees Vanessa at a mall playing with kids, then walks over and lets Vanessa feel her belly. Garner gives Vanessa exactly the same vibe that she had in her initial scenes — the only difference is that the context has changed. Vanessa's meticulous attention to detail that seemed paranoid at first now transforms into motherly competence. She isn't trying to manipulate; she just has a strong maternal instinct to make sure everyone is properly cared for. Garner's look of surprise and joy when feeling the baby kick dispels our prejudices about her power-woman persona. Her feelings about "always wanting a baby" that seemed manipulative now come across as genuine. Because Garner doesn't change Vanessa's character over the course of the film, we feel as Juno does when she decides to go through with the adoption — that she's trustworthy. In truth, Vanessa doesn't change; Jennifer Garner helps us change our feelings about her. — Stephen Himes (stephenhimes@hotmail.com)

Kelly Macdonald
No Country for Old Men

Kelly Macdonald first gobsmacked the discerning in Trainspotting playing Diane, the fast-talking love interest (Jezebel in a plaid jumper) to Renton, the dubious hero. In that role, Macdonald gets to do a marvelous before/after sequence, going from naughty nightclub sophisticate to needy schoolgirl in the morning after. She is completely incandescent, by far the most winning of the characters; her involvement with the heroin-addled Renton sets ticking the horror that she will succumb to AIDS, at least assuring that the viewer cares about somebody's fate in the bleak story.

Macdonald has been working steadily since then, but mostly in judiciously chosen British or indie projects, so she has yet to be seen on the slick covers racked by the cash register. Still she's been superb in all, and having worked with the full A-list of English actors, and directors like Mike Figgis (Loss of Sexual Innocence), Robert Altman (Gosford Park) and Michael Winterbottom (A Cock and Bull Story), she only seems to be getting better.

In No Country for Old Men the Glaswegian beauty with the bewitching brogue is transformed utterly into Carla Jean Moss, a west Texas redneckette, flawlessly accessorized with trailer home and rugged, laconic outlaw husband. Her reincarnation is so seamless and complete that even her stalkers may not recognize her in the role until the last reel. She doesn't get much screen time; but she makes it count, going from pouty sexpot to unflinching existentialist facing death down with aplomb. Precisely as in Trainspotting, hers is hardly the biggest role, but hers may be only character we care about. — David Essex (djessex@earthlink.net)

AnnaSophia Robb
Bridge to Terabithia

AnnaSophia Robb's performance in Bridge to Terabithia still haunts me. Her character, Leslie Burke, is first and foremost a dreamer. Terabithia is an imaginary kingdom in a nearby forest sprung purely from her mind, the kind of escapism that typically accompanies domestic unrest or some other strife. She herself authors this strife later in the movie, but the primary impetus of her world-making is to spur on the imagination of her newly-found friend Jesse (Josh Hutcherson).

Her performance is haunting because looking back over an average-sized pool of dating partners that usually precedes detection of and marriage to "the one," AnnaSophia Robb perfectly portrays that girlfriend or two each bloke finds that lives far outside the box, operating in a place unencumbered by the rules of Real Life. Maybe they're an artist, maybe a musician, maybe even an actress. To an average male, they're terrifying, threatening and fascinating; surely you can't expect this behavior to yield results beyond your sophomore year. We all want to be movie stars when we grow up, but there's no room for dreamers out there, and we're too old to be making believe.

These are familiar refrains for us button-down males who focus on how far we've traveled along the arc of sophistication … yet Leslie does what she wants. In the film, Robb is the walking and talking epitome of "free spirit." Just like the girlfriend you can't forget, she believes you don't need to do anything you don't want to, and when she says "Why not?" to your "You can't do that," you don't have an answer. The biggest threat Robb poses in her performance, just like the frivolous ex you can't shake, is that this isn't really frivolity — we are welcome to live free, and it reduces your worries by 90 percent or more, guaranteed. We act far too serious and worry far too much, and we are our own obstacles to happiness.

Leslie leading Jesse to Terabithia is direct metaphor for those women who make "grown" men sing and dance and play — and realize that they still can, that they still have permission to fly. Robb plays Leslie with a reckless joie de vivre, and it stings to see her execute this so well at the gangly onset of her teenage years, when our hopes, fears, dreams and inhibitions start to get hard-coded. Look away if you don't know the fundamental twist of this kids-lit classic, but in the middle of the film, Leslie dies from an accident on her way to Terabithia, a plot twist so cruel that it took this grown man's breath away. After achingly adoring this young girl's ability to open Jesse's mind to Terabithia, her death still makes me wonder: Did my ability to create a Terabithia die at that same age? — Andy Stilp (andy.stilp at gmail dot com)

Imelda Staunton
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Colin Cowherd, the latest in a long line of ESPN chuckleheads, typically vends in attitude and effrontery. Hidden among his volumes of vocal detritus is one insightful observation, regarding Jose Canseco and his Juiced memoir: It takes a lot of talent to change the future, but it takes so much more to change the past.

Enter Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge, the pompous puppet of the Ministry of Magic in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The book, which features Unbridge as a heavy who progresses from Potter prosecutor to headmaster of Hogwarts, has received notoriety as the slowest and dullest episode of the Potter series, a momentum killer after the taut and breathless Goblet of Fire. A sequence so horrifying as Lord Voldemort's resurrection is followed in poor juxtaposition by a naysaying squabble, primarily among grown-ups, that stretches from the Ministry to Hogwarts and beyond. Think of it in real-world terms: We've found Osama Bin Laden. He's alive, and he's quietly marshalling his resources, but we're not sure we believe the kid who found him, so let's wring our hands for 15 chapters or so.

Staunton portrays Umbridge as a bureaucrat-nee-administrator who is out of touch, not only with the students she teaches, but also with the Voldy crisis at hand. She is, and stop me when this sounds familiar, the boss who issues disjointed orders, the teacher who refuses to truck with modern times, the legislator you didn't vote for but get stuck with regardless. It's a finger on a nerve we all share, but Staunton's performance is a wink to those of us who have suffered. Her Umbridge is deliciously blatant; her "hem hem" draws a laugh because it's micromanagement we have all received at some point. And at Hogwarts, she's a square peg in a world without holes, round or otherwise.

Thanks to Staunton, the 500-page holding pattern that comprises the thick of the book becomes much more interesting. Rather than "Toad Face," the reader can insert Staunton's flared nostrils, her tacky pinks and mauves, her lusty shivers when the opportunity to smack down a subordinate arises. Sure, it's all on the page already, but what's oppressive on first reading turns into comedy on first viewing. — Andy Stilp (andy.stilp at gmail dot com)