The Envelope: The Envelope: Acting | Foreign Language Films

For this year’s awards season, The Envelope brought together a unique group of actresses, including rising stars breaking through to the next level and established stars breaking out into new roles and challenges, each earning some buzz for their current films.

Playing a slick attorney in “The Judge,” Robert Downey Jr. traded Iron Man’s armor for more tailored threads.

With its turbulent swirls of black and gray, British painter J.M.W.

As Michael Keaton’s critically lauded “Birdman” emerges as an Oscar hopeful, with its tortured actor losing sight of where his character ends and how much realism to bring to the stage, it calls to mind 1930s and ‘40s actor Ronald Colman.

My adaptation of “Gone Girl” began with a filthy, nasty amount of cursing. I really outdid myself.

“Two Days, One Night,” Belgium’s foreign-language Oscar entry, boasts the star power of Marion Cotillard under the direction of naturalistic masters the Dardenne brothers.

Brendan Gleeson, an actor often more known by his face than his name, is earning some of the best reviews of his life with his latest film, “Calvary,” in which he stars as the unlikely and unafraid Catholic priest Father James, who ministers to a small Irish town.

Moviemakers love war.

We take a look at just some of the World War II-themed films that have received attention from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences through the years.

The academy has received foreign-language film submissions from 83 countries this year, topping the previous record by seven.

Arriving on the dot for coffee and a chat in Los Feliz, 32-year-old actress, stand-up comedian, writer and one-woman multimedia phenomenon Jenny Slate lines up for her caffeine in an elegant cream-colored summer dress accented with bright flowers.

“Not my tempo,” the bandleader says. The drummer tries again. “Not my tempo!”

When director Tate Taylor called on costume designer Sharen Davis to suit up his cast for the energetic “Get On Up,” a biopic of soul singer James Brown that covers multiple decades, she was already a pro at dressing showy singers for film, having been nominated for Oscars for her work on “Dreamgirls” and “Ray.”

In the brutal World War II action movie “Fury,” Logan Lerman plays a raw draftee thrown into battle, enduring a 24-hour crucible of death and destruction.

No matter what audiences conclude about “Gone Girl’s” lead character, Amy Dunne, the film’s star Rosamund Pike says that by the end of the movie, they shouldn’t be wondering about Amy’s authenticity.

While scouting locations in New York City for their film “A Most Violent Year,” producers Anna Gerb and Neal Dodson encountered a problem: It seemed in the 30-odd years since the movie’s titular year of 1981, New York had really turned it around.