Bryce Dallas Howard: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

4. Manderlay (2005)

Howard landed the main part as Grace Mulligan in hit-and-miss director Lars Von Trier's Manderlay. This is the second in a projected trilogy of films aimed to critique the American Dream. Set on the fictional slave plantation of Manderlay, 70 years after the abolition of slavery, this effort focuses specifically on the ugly story of racism. Less a movie than a social critique, it is hard to get behind the film, and therefore hard to get behind Howard's performance. Though landing the main part, much of the attention is focused on the injustices aimed towards the black men and women in the movie. Filmed on a sparse sound stage (it can be viewed as if were an impressionist play) and with the likes of Willem Dafoe and John Hurt on board, Howard would surely have been expecting good reviews, even if it was lacking in commercial appeal. Unfortunately it didn't quite work out that way, with Howard's character suffering from the same relentless humourlessness that pervades the rest of the film, and coming across more like a character sketch than a proper human being.