Actress Spotlight: Amy Adams
Two Adams performances -- one comedy and one drama -- that reveal her considerable skill
Who’s the best living actor that doesn’t have an Oscar? In our humble opinion, it’s Amy Adams. The immensely talented actress has been nominated six times by the Academy, but has yet to take home an award. There’s no doubt her time as an Oscar winner will come someday soon, but for now she’ll have to settle for a good ol’ fashioned DYLA Actress Spotlight.
Adams’ new psychological thriller The Woman in the Window hits Netflix today, so it’s a good time to recommend some of her best performances available on streaming services right now. Enjoy this Amy Adams edition of DYLA!
Billy recommends…
Doubt (streaming on HBO)
If there were a ranking of the top 5 actors of the 2010s you could probably have 4 of the 5 spots filled with the Oscar-nominated actors in this movie: Viola Davis, Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams. The last being the one we are profiling this week (somehow we have not profiled any of the other actors). Adams is known for her range in the midst of her utter familiarity. Doubt is her example of how she can be a quiet/meek character that by the end shows a great amount of strength.
Doubt profiles a priest named Father Brendan Flynn played by Hoffman, two nuns played by Adams (Sister James) and Streep (Sister Aloysisus Beauvier), and Davis, who plays the mother of one of the students. Father Flynn is being accused by Sister Beauvier of inappropriate behavior with a student named Donald Miller. The point of this movie is to continuously affirm the comfort of faith and feed the doubt we have with the organization/religion as a whole. Both sides equally get their moments of great arguments and convincing, but who is the character in the end that has experienced the new crisis of faith? Amy Adams character, Sister James.
James at the beginning is a young, naive nun who is confident in the direction of the church. Her students are being looked after and she is given the opportunity to enhance the students’ faith and education. Most importantly she is being mentored by the hardened Sister Beauvier who is simultaneously being phased out because of a more “progressive” doctrine, but she is progressive in her own right because she doesn’t follow the traditional hierarchy to get stuff done. Sister James is being pulled in both directions with equal force because she finds equal calm and disarray in each direction. One side is a trust towards the parish priest that is being shattered by these allegations and the other is a side that is empowering, but goes against the vows she has sworn to uphold.
Adams is third on the list for most screen time, but besides an extended absence in the third act, we see her story arc come the most full circle. Father Flynn and Sister Beauvier have conflict with each other, but ultimately their viewpoints are in the same place by the end of the movie. Flynn being immune to punishment no matter where the allegations take him and Sister Beauvier has put herself in the middle of conflict before, so no matter the doubt her aggression brings, she has somewhat become comfortable with the image she has as a hardened old nun. By the end Sister James, because of her rawness as a new nun, is filled with uncertainty of which way to travel because her naive worldview is being shattered. Adams beautifully portrays these wide range of emotions in such subtle ways that may not make her the standout for an audience in this role, but that kind of sums up her career. She has been nominated for an Oscar 6 times with no win yet. We hope that she soon gets her due and that this small token of gratitude gets you to watch some amazing performances by her.
Drew recommends…
Julie & Julia (streaming on Netflix)
Amy Adams has the range, as they say. Over her very impressive two-decade career she has proven that she can hang with the funniest people on the planet in a Will Ferrell comedy (Talladega Nights), go scene-for-scene with Oscar-caliber dramatic actors (Doubt, The Master), and play the lead in a movie with charm and grace, like she does in 2009’s Julie & Julia.
This culinary dramedy is actually better known for its tremendous Meryl Streep performance. Streep plays Julia Child, the famous TV cooking personality that is credited with popularizing French cuisine in America with her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Child was a larger-than-life figure, and Streep, unsurprisingly, nails her eccentricities. However, Julie & Julia depicts Child's rise to become a renowned cook alongside the true story of Julie Powell (Adams) in the present-day. Powell is stuck in a dead-end New York City job when she decides to start a project that just might give her a sense of purpose: She’s going to cook all 524 recipes in Child’s book in one year.
The two-pronged narrative (Julie and Julia never meet) might cause some to wish that this was just a biopic of the fascinating Julia Child, but I like the choice to make half of the movie a contemporary story of a woman following in Child’s footsteps, as we see those exact steps decades earlier. Of course, the Julie Powell scenes simply wouldn’t work if a less likable actress than Adams were in the role. She gets you on Powell’s side early when, after struggling in a dull job, she enthusiastically takes up her project, dedicating most of her free time to mastering Child’s recipes while writing a blog about it that eventually goes viral.
Adams’ husband is played by Chris Messina (The Mindy Project), and the two actors have plenty of chemistry. He makes martinis (and jokes) while she pursues her crazy project, but he’s pretty supportive overall. Adams and Messina come off just as well in the comedic scenes as they do the more dramatic ones later on. You end up feeling like you’re on a journey with her character to complete her self-imposed mission indebted to her idol.
Julie & Julia is lighter than some of Adams’ other notable performances, but it’s a delight to watch her (and Streep) build out these real-life characters connected by their love of cooking. Plus, this is the last movie by the great writer-director Nora Ephron, who's responsible for some of the best romantic comedies of our time, including When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle. If you like Adams, Streep, Ephron movies, or good food, Julie & Julia is an absolute treat.
Links
The Golden Globes are… maybe dead? Due to the embarrassing revelations about the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (the organization that hands out the awards), NBC has decided not to air the 2022 awards.
Well, the Knives Out 2 cast is coming together rather nicely. The upcoming Netflix film has added Dave Bautista, Janelle Monae, Edward Norton, and Kathryn Hahn to the Daniel Craig-led murder mystery sequel.
DYLA patron saint Matt Damon has a new drama out on July 30 called Stillwater. Check out the trailer here.