20 Best & Worst Movies From 2019 Oscar Nominees

16. Marina de Tavira

Best: Roma (2018)

Unless you're a fan of Mexican theatre, the most likely opportunity you will have had to see Roma's Best Supporting Actress nominee Marina de Tavira before this stunning film will probably have been in either Amazon’s Falco or Hari Sama’s This Is Not Berlin. You'll be hearing more from her after Roma's success.

The most impressive thing about de Tavira's performance - which is both personal to her own mother's experiences and to memories of director Alfonso Cuaron's - is that she wasn't given the luxury of seeing the script in advance. In fact, she never saw one, with Cuaron giving her her lines the day before when she had lengthy dialogue and encouraging improv. That's why it feels so real and why the emotion of the performance sings through.

Worst: Los árboles mueren de pie (2015)

De Tavira's screen work so far has been fairly limited, but Roberto Girault's remake of Carlos Schlieper Argentinian classic misses the things that make Roma so great. It's corny rather than realistic (partly because it's based on a late 1940s play and wasn't particularly updated) and it fails to generate anything like the same empathy for characters.