Best I Saw in 2008: Actress

Sorry, ladies of 2008, you didn't have a chance in hell of cracking this lineup.

Vivien Leigh, Gone with the Wind (1939). It's the greatest Best Actress winning performance of all time, unless Leigh's turn in A Streetcar Named Desire deserved the title. Either way, this is earth-shaking acting. A chill just went up my back from remembering her "I'll never go hungry again" speech, but that kind of dramatic intensity is not even half of her performance.

Runners-up:

Kay Francis, One Way Passage (1932). How is it that she made this and Trouble in Paradise in the same year, but she's still largely unknown?

Janet Gaynor, Seventh Heaven (1927). Holy god, she also did Sunrise this year. The best single year of actressing in history? And I still have Street Angel to look forward to, the third film included in her historic Oscar win.

Patricia Neal, Hud (1963). It would be hard to compare to Paul Newman's smoldering sexpot, but Neal (along with Melvyn Douglas, who you'll be seeing on here shortly) even manages to outshine him at times.

Barbra Streisand, Funny Girl (1968). Stranded as she was in this ungainly mess of a movie, it's a shock that she's so great, so unafraid, and so deserving of the thousand-watt spotlight that's on her constantly.

It hurt to leave out: Claudette Colbert, Imitation of Life (1934); Mia Farrow, The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985); Jane Fonda, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969); Jean Harlow, Bombshell (1933); Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married (2008); Katharine Hepburn, Holiday (1938); Carole Lombard, To Be or Not to Be (1942); and Mary Tyler Moore, Ordinary People (1980).