I’m never going to finish this, am I? It’s February.

Honorable Mention: Dominic Cooper in The Devil’s Double, Hunter McCracken in The Tree of Life, Will Ferrell in Everything Must Go, Shailene Woodley in The Descendants, Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life, Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids, Tom Cullen and Chris New in Weekend.

10. Stanley Tucci- Margin Call- By now, any supporting performance honored by The Academy is debatably a lead performance. This started sometime around Sean Connery’s win for The Untouchables and Whoopi Goldberg’s win for Ghost. But in the ’70s, you could get recognized for a few scenes: Ned Beatty is barely in Network, Jane Alexander has one scene in All the President’s Men, Chris Sarandon shows up sparsely in the last third of Dog Day Afternoon. In that way, Tucci’s performance in the first ten minutes of Margin Call is a throwback. He’s a formerly powerful man being fired, and the only emotion he has to project is the one associated with that experience. But it’s a complex emotion that doesn’t even really have a name. He’s dejected and fearful, but he’s also offended, self-righteous, and prideful. He wears it all on his face, sets the tone for the movie, and leaves for an hour, only to steal the movie back near the end.

9. Elle Fanning- Super 8- The heart of Super 8 disappears when the sci-fi elements are introduced, so it makes sense that Fanning, the heart of that first, better half, is missing in action for the third act. Besides the two scenes of hers that everyone will remember from the film—“makeup before the train crash” and “how to play a zombie”—you have to factor in degree of difficulty. Elle Fanning isn’t just playing Alice Dainard: She’s playing everyone’s first love.

8. Melissa McCarthy- Bridesmaids- Have you ever gone on vacation and done something you wouldn’t normally do, thinking, “Who cares? I don’t live here. I’ll never see these people again”? Melissa McCarthy played that idea for two hours.

7. Evan Rachel Wood- The Ides of March- For most of The Ides of March, actors are making cool speeches about what the American people want and how their candidate is up or down in whatever county. It’s fine, but it doesn’t invest the viewer in anything emotionally. The force that does that is Evan Rachel Wood’s forlorn eyes and crooked smile. In scenes like the wordless one in which she walks home from an abortion clinic by herself, she adds all of the gravity to the film and shows up some of the best actors on the planet in the process.

6. Michael Fassbender- Shame- When an actress appears nude in a film, the code critics use is that it was a “fearless performance.” If that’s the case, Fassbender’s performance in Shame is quite fearless. But it’s fearless and naked in more than just that way. Fassbender has one of those faces that is certainly handsome but also indistinct. Perfect in a boring way. And what it allows him to do is sink into any role—four great ones in 2011—and let us forget who he is. He’s great at what he does, so I guess I hope he becomes famous if that’s what he wants; but I want him to retain his anonymity too.

5. Michelle Williams- My Week with Marilyn- Marilyn Monore is one of the easiest people to imitate. There’s a reason there are still lots of Monroe impersonators fifty years after her death. So this is that rarest of performances to portray effectively: It seems easy but is ridiculously difficult. Because if there was any note of artifice or contrivance, we would have noticed. If it were just an impression instead of an interpretation, an emodiment, the movie would have fallen flat on its face. Michelle Williams makes sure that’s never the case.

4. Michael Shannon- Take Shelter- Had Michael Shannon’s paranoid, tortured performance in Take Shelter been nominated for an Oscar, the show’s producers no doubt would have played the one scene in which he freaks out and flips a table over. But that’s the only scene of release in a performance marked by restraint. Instead of acting out, he lets you see the gears in his head turning, and he shows, in his craggy face that looks too old for him, what it looks like to be overwhelmed by everything you see.

3. Yun Jeong-hie- Poetry- Although sometimes my favorite performances are the balls-out, wicked showmanship of, say, late Pacino, this is another subtle one. What makes Yun’s character in Poetry captivating is that she’s never in her own element, never comfortable in any setting. In the poetry class she’s taking to expand her world view, she seems provincial and simple. Among the men negotiating the payoff for the rape her grandson participates in, she seems naive. In her daily life, she seems lost because of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Rather than making those seem like separate people, however, Yun is a portrait of consistency.

2. Christopher Plummer- Beginners- You would think that a man who has lied to people his whole life about his sexuality would be sorrowful, but Plummer plays a man who comes out in his seventies as playful and vivacious. In any of his scenes, he injects warmth and joy, and that only makes it more powerful when the character’s cancer takes hold, and he has to show strength (and sometimes ignorance) through that disease’s challenges.

1. Elizabeth Olsen- Martha Marcy May Marlene- Olsen is the find of the year. As an appreciated cult member, she is hopeful, assertive, and protective. As the escaped, recovering version of that same character, she is doubtful, lonely, and resigned. As the film jumps back and forth between those two versions of her, she conveys the differences with a deepening of her voice here, with a wider smile there, with almost imperceptible levels of difference. But over the course of the movie, they add up. With someone even ten percent less talented in the same role, Martha Marcy May Marlene would have been a disaster. With someone as prodigious as Olsen, it’s a triumph.