Films of her's that don't get enough love

Carved, good mention of Café Society, which was a nice film and a strong performance by Kristen. Also Welcome to the Riley's and other roles. She enjoys doing the Indy roles which are often more character driven and does so well with them, as seen especially by film festival awards she's received.

My first notice of her was in Panic Room. She was just a kid, twelve or thirteen, but she seemed so mature in her role that I was impressed. Young actors that can show such maturity, like Dakota Fanning and others, impress me. Especially good is how well Kristen and Dakota, among some others, have made the transition from child to adult actors, where it's often a very difficult change for many young actors.

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I became a fan of Kristen Stewart when 'Speak' premiered on Showtime (and Lifetime) in September 2005.

Watching her in Adventureland instantly made me a fan around the time of it's DVD release in August of 2009 and I haven't looked back since--well at least not including the times I've re-watched it. So soon will be the 10th anniversary of my fandom. As a case in point, might I refer to a couple of brief video edits which better encapsulates what I loved most about her in this film, better than I could ever express in words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tclNJcSlvzA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QmvBvq6CPQ

As far as my fave film of hers which she has ever starred in, not just talking about performance but overall quality of the film, it would have to be "Panic Room". As far as performance, I would go with the critics consensus and say "Clouds of Sils Maria". That being said, I would wholeheartedly agree with you Carved, in that some of her best performances came during her younger years such as in "The Safety of Objects", "Panic Room", "Speak", "Fierce People", "The Cake Eaters", "Into the Wild", "The Yellow Handkerchief" and "Cutlass".

It should also be mentioned that she also did well in "safe" roles in family friendly fare, roles that moviegoers seem to have a greater liking for in stark contrast to taking on more challenging roles, in films such as "Zathura" and "Catch That Kid". Mainstream moviegoers, and Oscar voters for that matter, haven't fully embraced some of the most challenging roles ever performed by young actresses over the past few decades. I say this because while Abigail Breslin for "Little Miss Sunshine", Saoirse Ronan for "Atonement" and Hailee Steinfeld for "True Grit" all received Oscar noms for their relatively safe roles in these films, in my opinion, young actresses who excelled in much more challenging roles did not receive such recognition such as Natalie Portman in "Leon: The Professional", Dakota Fanning in "I am Sam" and "Hounddog", and Chloe Moretz in "Let Me In."

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As for not getting credit in the major awards, she did receive a French Caesar Award for Sils Maria. That's the highest French film award and rarely given to non-French. She's also received great, positive critiques for some of her performances in many film festivals, which are very high praise and measure of an actor's work.

Good point Ron. Had the Cesar award been given out decades prior to its inception in 1976, I'm pretty sure Jean Seberg would have been the first American actress to have ever won it for her role in Breathless (A bout de souflle), a film I finally got to watch a few weeks ago.

Whenever I tell others that Kristen is the first and only actress to have ever won a Cesar Award, they often downplay this accolade by saying somewhere along the lines of, "That's a French award. I'm only concerned about major U.S. awards such as Oscar, GG, and SAG."

So I then go on about how Kristen won more awards from the most prestigious film critics groups in the entire world (i.e., New York Film Critics Circle, National Society of Film Critics, Boston Society of Film Critics, Los Angles Film Critics Association) than any actress, or actor for that matter, during the 2015 awards season for her performance in COSM. Before politics played a major role in who receives Oscar nominations, getting the backing of the top film critics, most notably the NYFCC, was perhaps the most significant precursor to an actor receiving an Academy Award nom or even nod. And Kristen was definitely a critics darling that year.

I was doubly peeved when Kristen got snubbed by the Academy for her role in COSM, knowing that most of the actresses who were the front-runners in the race and received Best Supporting Actress Oscar noms that year were for lead roles, not supporting roles--category fraud as those in the industry call it. During this time, Scott Feinberg, film awards analyst for The Hollywood Reporter, wrote a piece entitled: "Awards 'Category Fraud': The Insane Manipulation of the Acting Categories"
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/awards-category-fraud-insane-manipulation-842089

So in my opinion, Kristen should have easily received a BSA nom, more like she sould have been a lock, especially if it was based on merit alone, as the actors branch of the Academy couldn't even find 5 supporting actress candidates worthy of consideration and felt the need to bend the rules to fill those 5 slots, despite the fact that Kristen absolutely blew away the competition when it came to film critics group awards. But who said life is fair?

In order to end on a positive note, here is the link to one of the COSM edits I did a while back which included an audio excerpt of an Awards Chatter podcast from Feinberg offering very high praise of Kristen for her performance in this film, basically saying the exact same things we are paraphrasing right now on this thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Wq5GHL3j0

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"I took a couple of family members to go see RT in a theater and we were all blown away by the jaw dropping experience, leaving us utterly speechless by the end of the third act as "Crimson and Clover" resonated in the background and the end credits began to roll. One family member was so impressed that she quipped, "Are you sure the one who played Joan Jett was the same actress from Twilight? No way!" I replied, "Yes way! And you haven't seen nothing yet."

That's quite impressive that they thought that way, that Kristen did so well at the part. I've had similar feelings towards other actors who I've seen excel at very different type roles than what I knew of them.

Also impressive that TR is up there on the music group biopics list.

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I think she is one of those actresses whose filmography is underrated mainly because of 1 franchise.

Yes Mody, I just hope when it's all said and done, when she finally decides to hang up her acting shoes, that the films she is known for most, in moviegoer circles and on movie sites such as IMDb, is not merely films from The Twilight Saga along with Snow White and the Huntsman. I mean, when will she ever be recognized for the talent that she is? While winning awards aren't everything, it almost seems as if unless she gets nominated for an Oscar, she will probably never live it down--well at least not in the eyes of mainstream moviegoers--so in that sense an Oscar campaign for AAE could be a godsend for her career.

On numerous occasions, Ron and myself have been discussing how in the past we would watch mostly bigger budget fare, like most moviegoers do and that Kristen almost single-handedly made us develop a fondness for independent and character driven films. And the thing is, most of the movies produced by the big studios appear to be playing it more safe in terms of churning out sequels and films based on already established franchises instead of films based on entirely original storylines, while trying to stay as socially and politically neutral and correct as possible and avoid upsetting the powers at be at all costs. But if that's really the case, Hollywood in general is doing a disservice in the sense that they should be giving us stories that tell or at least resemble the truth about the world we live in, instead of embellishing and sugar coating it almost beyond recognition to make it more digestible, or even predigested, for the moviegoing masses. I mean, I'll watch superhero films and animated features from time to time, like the vast majority of moviegoers do, but I'll never subscribe to the maxim to never let the truth stand in the way of a good story--as a good story should indeed reveal truth.

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Look at her co-star/ex boyfriend Robert Pattinson, he's now considered one of the best actors around and his filmography is pretty damn great, and that's not throwing in the lead role in Christopher Nolan's new film and him been cast as Batman. I just think Pattinson has just done it better then Stewart has in way. He's chosen meaty lead or supporting roles that have shown his acting range. His role is the Claire Denis High Life, one of the films of the year for me, is excellent. I think most of Stewart's post Twilight roles just aren't game changing stuff imo.

I do think she's better then many give her credit for and some of her work is underrated. I even liked her in Adventureland but I remember people just crapping on her performance in it. She needs something like a Good Time type of role like Pattinson did that just blows people away. I liked Personal Shopper and Cloud of Sils Maria, but they are the type of films that will split people down the middle. Some think they are pretentious and some who love it.

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"I think she is one of those actresses whose filmography is underrated mainly because of 1 franchise. To me her most underappreciated movies are Camp X Ray, Speak, The cake Eaters, And Anesthesia she gives a very powerful performance in all of these in addition to Still Alice, COSM,and PS."

Agreed, she still gets so much associated to Twilight and not so much to her other work of which she's done a lot of challenging, strong roles.

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I've seen all her stuff that has been released and would concur that the films you mentioned, especially the first two, were some of her best work to date.

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Personal Shopper and Clouds of Sils Maria, are probably two of her more well known acting work and probably her best work to date. I think many would consider both in their top 3 of her best work.

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Lizzie was good, and I hadn't really known the whole story until that film came out and then reading up on the actual story. Seems the movie portrayed things quite well, with excellent performances especially by Kristen and Chloë Sevigny IMO.

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I also liked Messengers, good little thriller film.

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