The Best of Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep is not a new name to any Hollywood movie lover. Streep has been in the movie business for many decades. She has performed each role with sheer perfection, making us fall in love with her acting and herself each time. She has been nominated and won for numerous awards over the period. Today we’ll share a list of her top 10 classic Hollywood movies with you.
- SOPHIE’S CHOICE
Sophie’s Choice depicts the story of a Holocaust survivor named Sophie played by Meryl Streep, and her abusive lover, the Jewish-American Nathan, who is obsessed with the Holocaust. Their rocky relationship is affected by this obsession, as well as Sophie’s traumatic past, as they befriend Stingo, a writer, and the narrator of the film.
Meryl Streep’s performance as Sophie is simply the finest performance ever captured on film. Period. The subtlety and depth with which she reveals Sophie’s wounds are simply spellbinding. She is at once radiantly beautiful, yet deeply wounded. She is charming, yet vulnerable. She is someone you want to love, yet someone whose pain keeps you at a distance.
- DOUBT
Based on the stage play by John Patrick Shanley (who brought the movie to the big screen himself), Doubt followed the goings-on at a Catholic school when one nun believed a teacher was paying too much attention to one of his students. Streep starred as the nun leading the school, and the one tipped off to the behavior. Though all of the principal cast were nominated for Academy Awards for their work, they didn’t win them. Streep did take home a Critics Choice Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance though.
- THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY
Inspired by the novel of the same name, The Bridges Of Madison County became Streep’s best-known movie for a long time. A romantic drama, it features Streep in the role of a woman who has an affair with a photographer who comes to her small town to photograph the historic bridges. Like most of Streep’s highest-rated roles, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her work but didn’t win one here.
- KRAMER V/S KRAMER
One of Meryl Streep’s first movies, Kramer Vs. Kramer was an iconic role for both her and Dustin Hoffman. Kramer Vs. Kramer is a legal drama about a custody battle between Joanna Kramer, and her ex-husband Ted Kramer. Famous for its depictions of the effects of divorce on the psychology of children, as well as the gender roles of the time, it became the highest-grossing film of the year when it came out in 1979.
- MANHATTAN
Manhattan was one of the earliest movies in Streep’s acting career, and it put her into the fold of then-creative-powerhouse Woody Allen, who both directed and starred in the movie. It followed Allen’s character as he fell in love with the mistress of his best friend, but dated a teenager. At the time, the movie was widely praised, but for modern audiences, the plot has become incredibly controversial. While it’s got Gershwin’s music and beautifully shot black and white film to please audiences, a romance between a teenager and a twice-divorced forty-something doesn’t sit well with the modern audience.
- THE DEER HUNTER
The Deer Hunter is an epic war drama film about a trio of steelworkers whose lives are changed forever after they fight in the Vietnam War. The cast includes Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, John Cazale, Meryl Streep, and George Dzundza. The story takes place in a little working class town south of Pittsburgh, and in Vietnam. The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Walken. It also marked Meryl Streep’s very first Academy Award nomination. She is now the most nominated actor in history. It was named the 53rd greatest American film of all time by the American Film Institute (AFI). The film’s initial reviews were mostly positive. It was hailed by many critics as the best American epic since The Godfather. The late Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars and called it “one of the most emotionally shattering films ever made.”
- JULIE & JULIA
Parallel stories have always made for something neat in movies – especially when they’re true stories – and Nora Ephron’s “Julie & Julia” is a really good one. Half of the movie focuses on Julie Powell (Amy Adams) an unfulfilled government employee in a New York where the memory of the 9/11 attacks is still fresh in people’s minds. So, she sets out to prepare every recipe in Julia Child’s cookbook, all the while blogging about it. Meanwhile, we see Julia Child (Meryl Streep, masterfully chewing the scenery) during her years in Paris learning how to become the chef that everyone knows.
At the very least, this film should make you want to prepare at least one fancy meal. But beyond that, it’s a fun look at life. The movie makes clear that both women wanted to do something more than the lives that they led, and they both made the most of themselves. It’s a truly fine piece of work, and hopefully will garner both actresses Academy Award nominations.
- THE HOURS
David Hare’s brilliant adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Michael Cunningham depicts three interlocking storylines all sharing the one common thread: Virginia Woolf’s novel `Mrs. Dalloway’ ping-ponging back in forth from 1940’s where the suicidal Woolf (Kidman barely recognizable under a prosthetic nose; one of her finest roles to date) is in the midst of composing her work in question; 1950’s with depressed homemaker Moore (equally compelling) preparing her loving husband’s birthday celebration and contemporary book editor Streep (ditto) organizing a banquet party for her ex-lover and poet (Harris in a memorable performance) dying of AIDS, all three characters are imploding while their world’s are spinning (metaphorically) out of control and their very lives’ meanings in question to how trivial they truly are/aren’t. The sterling assembled cast gives the film merit despite its melodramatic trappings and director Stephen Daldry showcases his three leads to their best strengths and utter vulnerabilities. At points poignantly heartbreaking and wholeheartedly humane.
- SILKWOOD
If “Silkwood” is such a great movie, then a large part of its greatness is definitely owed to Meryl Streep: She plays Karen Silkwood, a single mother who is working in a nuclear plant based somewhere in Oklahoma. In the beginning, Karen seems to be an average working-class girl living a rather simple life, without any ambitions or hidden potential. She stays with her boyfriend Drew (Russel) and their room-mate Dolly (Cher), and the three of them are living an uneventful life. However, Karen changes dramatically, when she starts to realize that the management of the plant they work in, is quite lax on security and health issues. As she starts to get more involved, she gradually finds people around her being distanced from her and even outright hostile and potentially dangerous. And yet, she becomes more and more determined to her goal, defying the risks that are continuously piling up…
The performance that Streep gives as Karen Silkwood is really touching. She gives an excellent portrayal of a girl, who could be naïve and even self-destructing on the one hand (just count the cigarettes she is smoking throughout the film to get an idea!), while on the other hand she proves to be a very altruistic and responsible person who does her utmost to protect her unappreciative fellow workers. Streep is amazing in her role, and she definitely deserved the Oscar for that one.
- THE RIVER WILD
Curtis Hanson directed this exciting thriller that stars Meryl Streep and David Strathairn as Gail and Tom Hartman, who are taking their son with them on a white water river rafting trip in the mountains while on vacation. Gail is the real expert rafter, which will come in handy as they are intercepted by two men named Wade and Terry(played by Kevin Bacon and John C. Reilly) who at first pretend to simply be lost and inexperienced rafters. Wade even bonds with their son to an extent, and appears charming to Gail, but they are both really crooks who kidnap them at gunpoint and force Gail to lead them over the rapids, where they will meet up with their accomplices. How can Gail get them out of this mess? Good film with solid direction and performances, especially Streep and Bacon. May not be entirely original, even routine, but so skillfully presented it doesn’t matter.
We hope this you will find something as per your likings to watch for movie night and enjoy Meryl Streep’s spectacular performance. And we can never get enough of her ever!
