Ten Deep 07.09.09: Top 10 Movie Debuts

Posted by Owain J. Brimfield on 07.09.2009

From Natalie Portman in Leon (The Professional) and Ed Norton in Primal Fear to Edward Furlong in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jason Statham in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, 411's Owain J. Brimfield ranks his top ten movie debut performances!





Welcome to week 38 of 'Ten Deep'! So after a slightly shaky start to my tenure in charge of the column with the reboots list, last week's look at the best directorial debuts elicited a much more positive response (only one insult in the comments section though... I obviously wasn't being as controversial as I'd expected, more fool me) and there was some pretty healthy debate from some of 411's own writers following the column (which I won't repeat here, but is certainly worth a read). I also received a very nice email from Elizabeth Yoffe, producer of My Big Break, which I happened to reference. It looks like a very intriguing documentary for anyone who's curious about the movie business, so I'll happily plug it by giving a link to view the trailer and synopsis of the doc's entry at Acefest in a few days, or the film's official website. Well worth a look. Anyway, let's take a look at some other:

Reactions and interactions

Firstly, to touch on other suggestions for top directorial debuts made by Snacks, Nick M, dweebo, Uncle Jimbo, Dude, redfoot and Guest#5961 (I think that's all of you):

Following (Chris Nolan) - fantastic to see this get a mention, but while it's certainly a memorable debut it's hard to watch without regarding it as Memento-lite.
The 40 Year Old Virgin - well, it's a decent movie, but it's not likely to make it into many top ten lists outside of "top ten films in which Judd Apatow had involvement".
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (George Clooney) - certainly not too bad of a debut, but far surpassed by his sophomore directorial outing.
Blood Simple (The Coens) - made the last draft of the shortlist, but lost out to Boyz n' the Hood for an honorable mention.
Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels (Guy Ritchie) - again, made the shortlist, but considering Ritchie's subsequent career it was a bit of a one-hit wonder.
Bad Taste (Peter Jackson) - hugely enjoyable, yes, but it's not quite the classic the others were.
A Bronx Tale (Robert De Niro) - never seen it, albeit never really had the opportunity to.
Clerks (Kevin Smith) - you know I actually completely forgot about this one until I had the top ten drawn up and was about to revise it, but I didn't think it would quite make the cut in the end. Another very strong contender though.
The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan) - not his debut.
The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer) - ditto.
Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson) - another I haven't seen, but Wes Anderson is one of my least favorite directors currently working so I highly doubt it would have gotten anywhere near the list.
Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck) - on my rental list, as its release was delayed by a year or so here in the UK due to similarities to a real-life criminal case.

That just about covers it. Elsewhere, Michael wonders if any country other than the USA makes movies. Believe me, originating nationality had precisely squat to do with my selections, and that nine out of ten were American-made is purely coincidence.

Wyatt Beougher thinks that the editors of Spinal Tap should really get the credit, and he has a point, although from everything I've read about the film Reiner did have a lot to do with the editing process, so it's not like all he did was "point the camera".

Talon complains that for all the plaudits given to Reservoir Dogs, it's rarely mentioned how much the film lifts from City of Fire. It certainly does owe a sizeable debt to Ringo Lam's earlier film, but that doesn't prevent it from being a highly impressive movie in its own right. Still, he's right, everyone who likes QT should take the time to track this one down.

IJP accuses me of lazy writing, a mightily hypocritical statement coming from someone who offers precisely zero supporting argument for his proposition. Oh, and writing "fuck" as "F**k"? If you're going to try and insult me, here's a tip - self-censoring just makes you look like a tool.

stephen contends that The Blair Witch Project was a more successful horror movie than Night of the Living Dead. Certainly, if you're speaking purely in terms of the box office ($249m from $60k budget over about $42m from $114k), but in terms of the legacy the respective films left, Night takes it by a country mile.

Uncle Jimbo wonders what exactly constitutes a "feature-length". Well, AMPAS rules it as 40 minutes' running time or greater so I guess that's the concrete definition, but everyone tends to have their own perspective. Personally, I usually go by an hour or so as the minimum length.

RJ questions how I can "not like The Godfather". This will undoubtedly come up in more detail in a future column, so you'll just have to stay tuned!

Snacks and Chris O'Grady both lament how Welles' success with Citizen Kane effectively hamstrung the remains of his career, particularly RKO's treatment of The Magnificent Ambersons. Certainly true, and had he been able to take such an approach for any of his subsequent films, it's very tempting to speculate on what we might have seen.

Finally, dime138 raises a very interesting point (which incidentally went on to inspire further debate):

"A top 10 directorial debuts that doesn't have Citizen Kane number 1, written by a guy who's never seen Breathless or The 400 Blows... I can't knock the "some guy" for having a lengthy "yet to see" list because there are a lot of movies out there, but Breathless and The 400 Blows are absolutely essential viewing and have a huge historical significance on films that have come after. A serious question, and no offense to the writer but just curious, what does it take to write for this website?"

That's a valid query. For what it's worth, there's no "test" of film trivia to qualify any of the writers here at 411 Movies. Personally, I have a solid grasp of film history, but I'm undoubtedly less of an expert on the subject than some of the other guys around here, and I'm sure there are a number of readers whose knowledge trumps mine, too. What it takes to write for 411 is simply a command of the written word, an ability to cater for the site's demographic, and a passion for one's subject matter (well, that, and not pissing off Csonka by missing deadlines). More often than not, I think you'll find this accounts for some pretty damn good columns here on the site.

To address your other point, did the column suffer a loss of integrity due to my not having seen Breathless and The 400 Blows? I don't believe so. Aside from the fact that all "list"-type columns are in fact, as you say, little more than the opinion of "some guy", and thus are only as credible as the strength and conviction of his assertions, I highly doubt there are more than a handful of film writers who have seen every classic film in the history of the artform. Unless this is your full-time occupation and you have a lot of spare time to boot, there's simply not enough time in the day to trawl through the annals of movie history and watch every single film you want to watch. 'Empire' magazine even ran an article recently about the "classics" that each of their writers had never seen, and titles ranged from The Silence of the Lambs to The Godfather Part II - these are people, remember, whose livelihood depends on writing about film for one of the most respected publications in the industry. What hope then, for a freelancing schmuck like me? That's precisely why I employ the golden rule for each of my top tens.

Moving on!

Sticking with the theme somewhat, this week we turn out attention to the other side of the camera to have a look at the best debut acting performances in a movie, which as I realized when I began to compile the list is a much trickier proposition than last week. While there are a number of actors who have made big impressions early on in their career, when you actually refine that to strictly debut movies it's a lot harder to pick and choose (particularly with child actors, which at least allays the concern I had that this list would morph into a "best kids in film" kind of column). Still, I've stuck at it, so take a look and enjoy some of the most inspiring debut performances - in a feature length cinematic film, mind - you're likely to see.

As always, there's one golden rule: if I haven't seen it, it's not allowed on the list.





Honorable mention: Cameron Diaz in The Mask

Undoubtedly a star-making, eye-popping turn if ever there was one.

Honorable mention: Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfront

With only a short body of TV work behind her, Saint won an Oscar for her striking film debut.

Honorable mention: Haing S. Ngor in The Killing Fields

Another Oscar winner, this time one with no previous acting experience, in a compelling role as a Cambodian journalist.

10. Jason Statham in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels

Well, I suppose I should begin by reassuring you that the remainder of this particular top ten does in fact highlight some "serious" entries, but having The Stath at number ten is my concession to lightheartedness this week. Statham, thanks in large part to his work with Guy Ritchie and the Transporter and Crank franchises, has morphed into one of the few action stars currently working who recall the heyday of the genre in the 80s when Arnie, Sly, Bruce and the rest ruled the roost. While his acting range is limited to say the least (although I've yet to see The Bank Job in which I'm told he actually shows some decent chops), very few people can pull off the straight-faced ass-kicking star as well as Statham, and despite the relative banalities and inanities of the movies in which he appears he's always an appealing and entertaining presence. Plus, the man can bust balls with the best of them, with a body frame that seems to be impeccably designed for handling stylized movie violence.

While Statham didn't exactly get to show off much of his ass-kicking expertise in his debut role as the humbly-named Bacon in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, he did get to display an easy pseudo-gangster charm as the nominal leader of a small-time gang of crims who lose a rigged game of brag and are faced with a half-million in debt to be repaid to one Harry the Hatchet, with their livelihoods - and fingers - at stake. While undoubtedly benefitting from the fresh energy that director Guy Ritchie harnessed and injected into the project - an energy, incidentally, he'd struggle to recapture in his subsequent directorial outings - Statham took to the big screen like a nervous pooer to a soundproof toilet cubicle, seemingly possessing the charisma of five men and an unforced demeanor that allowed him to fit right in amongst a cast of much more experienced actors (and Vinnie Jones). While certainly not delivering a powerhouse of a performance like some later entrants in this week's list, Statham's debut saw him take to the movies with two feet running and set him on a course to be a genuine "name" movie star, and also created and helped shape the deadpan Cockney image to which the man played, to some degree or another, in all of his later films.

9. Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins

Admittedly, this is perhaps a choice that doesn't exactly make for a consistent tone with this week's list, but then I wouldn't want anyone to think I like to make things straightforward. For all its cloyingly sweet sentiment and Dick Van Dyke's legendarily atrocious attempt at a "Laaaahn-dan" accent, Mary Poppins is an important film in the history of musicals, and one of those from which everyone can hum a few measures of one song or another. Julie Andrews (or Dame Julie, if we want to be proper about these things) has of course gone on to have a longstanding successful career as an actress and singer, and one has to surmise that to some extent that was helped along the way by her performance as the eponymous Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way, and no doubt also by her subsequent lead role in The Sound of Music for which she is probably most famous. Of course, we can't discount the bevy of stage performances which she had undertaken in the preceding years, but Mary Poppins was undoubtedly her big break, having earlier missed out on the lead in My Fair Lady.

Things were already looking promising for Andrews, who had apparently been personally sought for the role by cuddly uncle Walt himself, anxious for her to play the English nanny in Disney's forthcoming musical. Although aided in some respects by the tweaking of the title character's personality (the Poppins of Pamela Travers' original books was more authoritarian, not a character trait that's really going to make the cut for the protagonist in a Disney film), Andrews delivered all the sweetness of a spoonful of sugar that the role required, as well as the hints of sternness and mystery that creep in around the edges. There's no faulting her performance in the musical numbers, particularly everyone's favorite question in the spelling bee 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious', but then that was to be expected given her background in musical theater. What was more impressive, though, was that Andrews managed to translate her stage beginnings so successfully to the big screen with such immediate effect that she'd be winning awards for the next several years, displaying a peerless charm that warmed cockles everywhere. Not that we condone that sort of heartwarming nonsense around these parts, mind.

8. Chloe Sevigny in Kids

Moving on to debut performances of the sort that would be more expected from a list like this, and Larry Clark's Kids, which proved rather controversial on its initial release and contained a number of striking first-time roles, in particular from Rosario Dawson, Justin Pierce and Leo Fitzpatrick, who probably would have taken this slot on the list had he actually gone on to have an acting career of note. However, he didn't, so Chloe Sevigny takes the spot for her portrayal of teen Jennie, who finally comes to realize the consequences of the kids' youthful promiscuity when she tests positive for HIV. Sevigny seems, unfortunately, to be mostly known these days for her role in The Brown Bunny, which pretty much involves her sucking off Vincent Gallo and little else (no wonder Kirsten Dunst turned the role down), but aside from that she's played a number of strong roles in various independent films as well as occasionally branching out into the mainstream (notably with her award-winning turn in Boys Don't Cry and as Patrick Bateman's assistant in American Psycho).

Her performance in Kids confirms her independent roots, though, with the documentary-style proceedings lending extra fire to Harmony Korine's script, which portrayed American youngsters as violent, foul-mouthed, drug-taking sexaholics - not entirely far from the truth, but certainly not what audiences were used to seeing on film. Sevigny's character represents the emotional heart of the film, as Jennie learns she's contracted HIV from previous (and, painfully ironically in the context of the film, only) sexual partner Telly and desperately tries to track him down and warn him before he spreads the disease further afield thanks to his quest to deflower as many virgins as possible. Her increasing desperation is difficult to watch, particularly during a drug-addled taxi ride near the film's end, and the distressing events at the film's denouement cast a further shadow over the whole experience. Sevigny confirmed herself as a name to watch, an actress untroubled by difficult material and capable of centering herself with a remarkable maturity, and her role in Kids as perhaps the only genuinely likeable character is still one of my favorites of hers, along with her subsequent outing in Steve Buscemi's Trees Lounge.

7. Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures

Considering her almost complete lack of acting experience at the time (a few episodes of some random television shows, including children's sci-fi show Dark Season (oddly enough scripted by resurrector of Doctor Who, Russell T. Davies), it's quite surprising that Kate Winslet landed one of the joint lead roles in Peter Jackson's semi-true-story Heavenly Creatures, although not half as surprising as the change of direction for the man behind splatterfests Bad Taste and Braindead. In hindsight though, it's no real shock that an actress renowned these days for taking on a series of idiosyncratic and varied roles (even if she is still most famous for Titanic, one of her weaker performances, but that's to be expected when you star in the highest grossing film of all time) would begin her career in such a fashion. Having built a reputation for appearing in quirky or left-of-the-middle roles and films, looking back it makes perfect sense that Winslet would begin her big screen career with such a performance.

As Juliet Hulme, the passionate and creative fifteen-year-old who befriends a fellow teen and conspires to murder her friend's mother when the latter begins to disapprove of their intense relationship, Winslet is a coiled spring and offsets her partner superbly. Her naiveté and inexperience undoubtedly played into the performance, which adds an extra layer to her portrayal of Juliet, obsessive both in her real-life relationship and in the imaginary fantasy world she shares with Pauline (and about which she dreams of writing novels). Despite the seeming innocence behind the girls' friendship and fantastical stories though, they come to realize that their relationship is becoming something more forceful, and the nervous energy Winslet exhibits from the point the girls are to be separated and begin their clandestine plot to off Pauline's mother is palpable. The murderous machinations come to a devastating climax and there's no way back for the two girls, but somehow we're still, not exactly rooting for Juliet, but certainly sympathetic towards her plight, and that's thanks in no small part to Winslet's winning performance here, which would set her off on a pattern of playing similarly troubled, complex young women that would serve her pretty well further down the line.

6. Robert Duvall in To Kill a Mockingbird

The oldest entrant on our list, and thus the one with the longest history through which to trace back to his debut role, as the mysterious and reclusive Boo Radley in Robert Mulligan's adaptation of Harper Lee's classic courtroom tale. Duvall, although I'm sure this doesn't need to be clarified, went on to have a lengthy and immensely successful acting career, including a number of important roles in some of the greatest films made, and also one of the most ridiculously named characters in cinema history as astronaut Spurgeon 'Fish' Tanner in Deep Impact. He also differs somewhat from the other actors in today's column in that he'd amassed a fair body of work on television and on Broadway in the few years prior to landing his big screen debut, and by all accounts, to anyone who'd seen his work on the stage, he was likely to be a big hitter in the movies. Although he'd go on to embody such iconic characters as Tom Hagen and Bill Kilgore, his work began with a much smaller role in To Kill a Mockingbird.

As Arthur 'Boo' Radley, Duvall's presence is limited, nay non-existent, throughout the film - well, he's playing a character who's essentially been locked in his father's back room for all of his adult life. Radley only emerges from the darkness near to the end of the film in order to save the lives of the Finch children, having previously been leaving them material gifts but this time giving the most valuable gift of all [cheese alert! - Ed]. So how come I've put Duvall's performance down here as one of the best debuts ever, when his character has only limited screen time and approximately one line to deliver? Well, partly due to his subsequent career as touched on previously, but mainly due to the fact that, despite his absence for the majority of the running time, Boo Radley is a key character in Mockingbird, and Duvall makes the most of his presence to deliver a short but memorable portrayal of a kindly but misunderstood soul inkeeping with the titular theme. It would be another six years or so until Duvall appeared in another "big" motion picture (Bullitt), but for that time his initial big screen persona certainly didn't dissipate.

5. Catalina Sandino Moreno in Maria Full of Grace

And so we come to the "dark horse" entry in the list, although I'm sure now I've said that Sod's Law dictates you were all anticipating this one anyway. Catalina Sandino hasn't particularly gone on to have a successful later career like all our other entrants this week (with the possible exception of the upcoming actor), with only supporting roles in Paris, Je T'aime and Che parts 1 and 2 really of note since her debut in Maria (incidentally, while I think of it, I'm led to believe the original Spanish translation of the title is a little more redolent of the subject matter, but such is usually the way with these things - at least they didn't use Babel Fish). However, that's only been a secondary criteria when compiling this list, so that leaves us with the performance itself, which in this case helped Maria Full of Grace to big things for an independent picture, and landed Catalina herself a bevy of "breakthrough"-type awards for what was, I believe, her first actual acting performance, let alone her big screen debut. Not to mention being the first Colombian to be nominated for an Oscar, which even if it doesn't sound like a big deal is certainly one for the record books.

Ten points for guessing the name of Catalina's character in the film, a young Colombian girl (another surprise there) who, forced to work all hours of the day for a pauper's wage to support her sister and finding herself unexpectedly pregnant by her casual boyfriend, takes what appears to be her only route for finding a better life - smuggling cocaine to New York as a drug mule. It's not the lightest of material, and the sombre plotline is fully underpinned by Catalina's heartwrenching turn as Maria, aware of her fate and determined to escape it, but not realizing that her chosen path is leading her towards an exponentially worse destiny. The film's superb tagline, "based on a thousand true stories", hints that this is a real way of life for a shocking number of people, but for all the desensitized westerners like myself who have no real conception of the nature of the drug business, Catalina's performance brings it home with a jolt. The fate of Maria's fellow drug mule eventually inspires her to realize the danger of smuggling pellets of cocaine in one's stomach (see, on the surface it sounds like such a stupid idea, but we entirely believe Maria's reasons for taking the risks), but the sight of the young girl reduced to such a torrid enterprise to escape the doldrums of her home life is captured exquisitely in Catalina's performance. Watch it again and try and believe the girl had no prior acting experience.

4. Edward Furlong in Terminator 2: Judgment Day

As I hinted earlier, young Edward Furlong's career wasn't exactly launched into the stratosphere by his appearance as the now-iconic character John Connor in T2. Thanks to battles with his personal demons, the only really noteworthy roles that followed came in American History X and the criminally ignored Animal Factory (do we count The Crow: Wicked Prayer as noteworthy? I submit we do not). Still, when your career begins with one of the key roles in one of the biggest movies of all time - nay, the biggest movie of all time, in early 90s terms - you could essentially retire right there and then and be happy. Kudos to Furlong, then, for taking on some more challenging subsequent roles, even if all he's really known for is the kid who taught Ahnuld how to say "hasta la vista, baby". Well, that and quite a bit more besides. After all, it were his tears that inspired the cheesiest line in the history of cheesy lines, "I know now why you cry".

I'm not going to contend that Furlong's role is necessarily an acting masterclass, because it isn't, and there are a fair number of child actors who could (and still can) out-perform him in front of the cameras. However, he was most definitely the right kid for the role of John Connor - surly, rebellious, independent and determined, but still underneath it all just a child, and displaying only subtle hints of the resolute and charismatic leader of people that Connor would become in the future war against Skynet. He doesn't look particularly like Nick Stahl or Christian Bale, but then again time travel was only used in the storyworld, not the real world. It was a bold and brassy introduction to the movie world for Furlong, who allegedly had no real desire to be an actor, but hey, he got an MTV award out of it, surely an indicator of quality if ever there was one. Opinions of the unwashed masses notwithstanding, Furlong's performance still sticks in the mind, even if to some extent it's as much to do with the film itself as it is the quality of the performance.

3. Orson Welles in Citizen Kane

It's a bottom spot on the podium for the second week running for Citizen Kane - and no, I'm not foolishly trying to court controversy once again - although this time around the plaudits go to Orson Welles the actor instead of Welles the director. While talk of Kane invariably tends to center around the merits of the film itself, no less an attraction and certainly no less worthy of admiration is Welles' performance - under his own direction, mind - in the title role as Charles Foster Kane. Welles was already a proficient and renowned actor on the stage, not to mention his successes in his numerous other directing and producing roles across a number of media platforms (or such as they were in the late 1930s), so in a sense it was not entirely unexpected that he would go on to perform just as well, nay better, in the talkies. However, the sheer breadth of his vision and the accomplishment of his dual role at the helm of Citizen Kane would go down in movie lore as virtually unparalleled.

Separating, if it were at all possible, the director from the actor to concentrate on the half of the tandem presented before the cameras, Welles revealed himself to be equally proficient acting in motion pictures as on the stage. In Charles Foster Kane, a life loosely based upon media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, with the influence of a few other reclusive eccentrics like Howard Hughes thrown in for good measure, Welles presented a screen character to rival the Shakespearean greats with whom he'd been involved on the stage. Throwing in autobiographical elements from Welles' own private life, the story of the rise and fall of Kane throws his character through an arc from poverty to tyranny, and Welles covers all the bases with aplomb, dominating the screen on all counts and pretty much eviscerating the reputation of Hearst while he's at it. While he would arguably go on to even better performances (viz. The Third Man's nefarious Harry Lime), Kane remains his most important role and still remains a debut performance stupendous in scale and ambition.

2. Edward Norton in Primal Fear

So now we come to the two debut performances that have the audacity of leaping ahead of Orson Welles in this week's list, so they'd better be stonkers or you guys are likely to get annoyed. Here's hoping they live up to it. Firstly here, taking the second spot in the list, we have a young Ed Norton, whose surprisingly recent cinematic debut was in 1996's Primal Fear starring opposite housewives' favorite Richard Gere (he of rodent/rear-end interface urban infamy). Norton's first role, following a short-ish period of stage work, as schizophrenic murder accusee Aaron Stampler, earned him an Oscar nod, as did his follow-up in American History X and his defining role soon came as the mousey sociopath narrator of Fight Club. Norton has gone on to become probably one of the best actors of his generation, tackling roles as diverse as a leprosy-stricken medieval king and the Incredible Hulk himself, Bruce Banner, and in a similar fashion to Kate Winslet, it's easy to see in hindsight how the eye-popping role in Primal Fear both appealed to him and played to his strengths.

Perhaps the most revelatory facet of Norton's performance here, and one of the main reasons he charted so highly this week, is that he single-handedly drags an otherwise staid and average courtroom drama by the trousers into the realms of compelling legal thriller. It's no stretch of the imagination to conceive that a lesser performance would have relegated the movie to the realms of the straight-to-DVD level of mundanity to which Richard Gere usually seems to aspire when he's out of his comfort zone. Yet Aaron is such a riveting character, terrified and vulnerable but clearly damaged goods when he morphs into his alternate, aggressive persona Roy, that it's hard to stop watching... and then the final twist of the knife turns everything on its head and forces you to watch Norton's act in a completely different light. That it succeeds on both levels, introducing the world to a prodigious acting talent and making Primal Fear a solid recommendation rather than the thumbs firmly in the middle it otherwise deserves to be, is testament to Norton's role and sees him just shy of the number one spot.

1. Natalie Portman in Leon

Nowadays one of cinema's smartest actresses, viewers are sometimes quick to forget that Natalie Portman is one of the relatively few child actor success stories who made the transition to full-on adult stardom (remember, Amidala in The Phantom Menace was only fourteen). As someone who simultaneously managed to star in the most lucrative movie franchise in history while studying for her degree to further her education, it's no shock that Portman has been smart about picking her roles; unlike Edward Furlong, it seems, she was always interested in becoming an actor. And what a beginning to her career, garnering the main supporting role in Luc Besson's Leon at the tender age of thirteen, and proving to the world that she possessed both maturity and acting chops beyond her years in the (on paper at least) apparently disturbing role of an orphaned child who falls in love with a hitman.

As a performance by a child actor, it's really only rivaled by Jodie Foster's turn in Taxi Driver. Portman is spellbinding as Mathilda, with her resolve to avenge her murdered family (and really, who wouldn't want to kill Gary Oldman in this film, he's absolutely despicable) driving her into the life of Jean Reno's titular assassin. The fact that their burgeoning friendship develops into a platonic love story would be unbearably creepy, were it not for the completely assured portrayal that Portman delivers. Mathilda manages to be wise beyond her years whilst remaining a naive little girl, and her transformation into a hitman's apprentice (even if she wants their relationship to be more than that), seemingly unbelievable, proves to be utterly real. It's an astonishingly confident performance by Portman (kudos too to Reno, who manages to uphold his side of the non-creepy bargain for his part of their relationship) and you'd never believe it was the work of a first-timer - at least Foster had a few years worth of television experience to back her up alongside De Niro. That a girl so young could leap into such a violent and conflicted world and become the cornerstone and heart of the film is remarkable, and speaks volumes for Portman's ability. A prime candidate for number one film debut, says I!

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And finally…

Feeling aggrieved or elated at this week's ten picks? Then let me know! The magic of the interweb allows you to post your comments right here on this very page, and if they're especially insightful (or idiotic), I may even respond in the next column. Be sure to tune in next week for another edition of 'Ten Deep', but until then - keep watching the skies.