Friday For Your Consideration: Linda Cardellini

Welcome to a special edition of a seasonal weekly feature here at Movies with Abe, Friday For Your Consideration. As every year nears to a close, there are a number of actors nominated for Golden Globes, Oscars, and countless other awards. There are so many spots and there are so many deserving contenders, yet some inevitably get left out. In the absence of a film to review, I’d like to spotlight someone from a film already released this year who is sure to be forgotten by the end of 2012.




Linda Cardellini (Return)
Where you’ve seen her before: She’s best known for her role as Lindsay on the short-lived cult show “Freaks & Geeks” and was also on the last few seasons of “ER.” She recently guest-starred in an episode of “Person of Interest.”

Why she deserves it: She sheds all of the awkward, youthful qualities she possessed in her star-making role on “Freaks & Geeks” to embody Kelli, a disconnected, detached soldier having difficulty easing back into the life she led before she went to war. She’s utterly real and unapologetic, and makes a subject that has become somewhat commonplace extraordinarily compelling.

Standout scene: Kelli is at her best when she’s ripping into someone, and the scene where she tracks down the woman she knows is sleeping with her husband and coldly stares her down at the car dealership where she works is a high point. It’s also mesmerizing to see her let her guard down when she escapes from her life to a rural cottage with John Slattery’s Bud.

Why she won’t get it: Movies released this early in the year (February 10th, in this case) are rarely remembered come Oscar time, and this subject has been only intermittently received by Oscar voters, with “The Hurt Locker” and “The Messenger” boding well while other films such as “The Lucky Ones,” “The Dry Land,” and “Stop-Loss” have been ignored. Cardellini doesn’t have the right fans to ensure that the memory of her performance makes it through the year.