How Jennifer Lawrence and Tommy Lee Jones Made Our List of the Year’s Best Movie Performances

Lincoln's Daniel Day-Lewis was too obvious...

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The Weinstein Company

Jennifer Lawrence has had a banner year, and 2013 may be even better. This spring, she wowed audiences as Katniss in the film adaptation of The Hunger Games, based on the trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Then she made TIME movie critic Richard Corliss’s annual list of 2012’s best movie performances for her role as a young, promiscuous widow who wins the heart of Hangover star Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook. Nominated for a Golden Globe, Lawrence is the “silver lining in this by-the-numbers playbook,” according to Corliss. Lawrence and Cooper will also star in Serena, a movie based on the Ron Rash historical fiction novel that is expected to come out next year.

Though Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln was the centerpiece of Steven Spielberg’s historical drama Lincoln, Corliss’s list singles out Tommy Lee Jones’s “inspiring” performance as House Ways and Means Chair Thaddeus Stevens — considered the father of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. Jones has also received a Golden Globe nod for best supporting actor.

But feel free to judge the performances for yourself, and see who conquered the list here.