The Critic's Ballot: Best Actress

Leading up to this year's Academy Awards on March 7, critic Christopher Kelly discusses who he thinks deserves to take Oscar gold in the major categories.

Today: Best Actress

The nominees : Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side), Carey Mulligan (An Education), Helen Mirren (The Last Station), Gabourey Sidibe (Precious), Meryl Streep (Julie and Julia)

If Chris chose the winner: Meryl Streep

Full disclosure No. 1: Like appropriately 99.9 percent of the population, I still haven’t seen Helen Mirren’s performance as Leo Tolstoy’s wife in The Last Station, a drama that’s received mostly mixed reviews.

Full disclosure No. 2: I wouldn’t term any of the other four nominated performances in this category Oscar-worthy. Indeed, I would have been much more inclined to root for Emily Blunt, whose turn as the title character in The Young Victoria was talked up for a nomination but didn’t make the cut.

But as much as I’m sick of hearing about how brilliant she is — and as much as I found Julie and Julia to be uneven and grating, especially in the scenes that focused on Amy Adams’ character — it’s hard to vote against Meryl Streep. She nailed the physical aspects of the iconic chef: the warbling, New England-meets-Paris accent; the fluttering, head-thrown-back laugh; the moments of quiet ecstasy as she’s biting into a heavenly piece of food. More impressively, she effortlessly captured this woman’s humanity. Witness the take-your-breath-away moment near the very end, when she opens a letter and discovers that her long-in-the-works cookbook will finally be published — a mixture of pride, joy, melancholy and exhaustion comes pouring off the screen. Nothing Sandra Bullock does in The Blind Side comes even close.

Who will win: Meryl Streep . Conventional wisdom says Sandra Bullock, but I’m convinced otherwise.

Coming up:

Saturday: Best Picture