But so much of what’s great in acting, as in life, happens in the margins. “Deserving” isn’t the same as marvelous, thrilling, sexy, titillating, arresting, strange or discombobulating. It doesn’t always allow for wonder or surprise or anger, or any number of complicated feelings that actors can draw out of us. And an actor who pulls off one of the hardest effects to achieve — that of believable, extraordinary ordinariness — is likely to get lost in the shuffle.

Which is why I’m here to give a big Texas cheerleader shout-out to Sandra Bullock in John Lee Hancock’s “The Blind Side.” The movie, based on the true story chronicled in Michael Lewis’ book “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game,” details the rags-to-shoulder-pads rise of Michael Oher, a once-homeless African-American kid who was taken in by a Memphis mom and her family and who, with their help and encouragement, went on to become a top NFL draft pick. In the movie, the lumbering, gentle Oher — his nickname, one that we learn he doesn’t much care for, is “Big Mike” — is played by Quinton Aaron, in a cautious and economical performance. Bullock is the Memphis mom, Leigh Anne Tuohy, a former Ole Miss cheerleader who lives extremely comfortably in a big house with her husband, a former star athlete himself (played by Tim McGraw), and her two children. She works (as an interior decorator), she raises her kids, and she engages in occasional fundraising activities with the other society ladies. She’s blond (from a bottle, natch), she’s peppy and she’s a Republican. So what else do you need to know?

The trick, and the reason this is a performance worth paying attention to, is that Bullock gives us reasons to want to know. I’ve already heard and read too many critics talking about how “The Blind Side” isn’t much loved by critics but has done extraordinarily well at the box office. The subtext is, “This is a movie for them, not us.” That dismissiveness extends to Bullock’s performance: In the week since the Oscar nominations were announced, more people have been interested in talking about Meryl Streep’s performance in “Julie & Julia” (which, for the record, I also love, and I’ll have more to say about it about in the coming weeks) than in what Bullock is doing here. The consensus seems to be that Bullock is just doing a slightly altered version of what she’s always done: playing a likable, scrappy heroine, this time in a drama as opposed to a romantic comedy. To an extent that’s true, insofar as all good actors use all the tools available to them. Bullock, who is 45, has built an extremely successful career playing the forthright-yet-vulnerable heroine, almost always in romantic comedies. (A notable exception was her 1994 breakout role in Jan de Bont’s crazy-legs runaway-bus extravaganza “Speed.”) She’s one of the most financially successful Hollywood performers of her generation, and the fact that she can release three movies in one year — the other two are the reasonably entertaining “The Proposal” and the true stinker “All About Steve” — says something about her energy level.

But what Bullock does in “The Blind Side” is something new, built on things she’s done before but also, I suspect, on amped-up angles of her own personality. To become as successful as Bullock is, we can assume that she must be, to varying degrees, a deal maker, a charmer, a hard worker as well as a hard-ass, and possibly — we hope — a fair boss. Bullock’s Leigh Anne enfolds all of those qualities, and more. This isn’t a case of an actor “playing herself,” a weird charge often leveled at relaxed or unassuming performances (and one that presumes some intimate knowledge of the self in question). It’s more a case, possibly, of an actor locating in herself the very things that make a character tick, an approach that ties into method acting (though this particular performance isn’t “method” in any strict sense).

Bullock’s Leigh Anne has a directness, a no-bullshit quality, that’s softened by the glow of amusement that flickers in her eyes when Mike does something funny or surprising. On the first Thanksgiving Mike spends with the Tuohys, the family members come to the table to load up their plates before retreating to sit in front of the living room’s two televisions. (Those two TVs are, by the way, a detail director Hancock just sets in front of us, without excessive underlining or quotation marks.) Mike is the only one who automatically sits down at the table to eat, presumably out of simple good manners, but also out of some idea of what Thanksgiving should be, drawn less from his own experience than from Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom From Want.” When Leigh Anne sees this, she smiles in a way that betrays her wonder at this decidedly old-fashioned display of gallantry and gratitude, and her eyes narrow just a little bit: “Who is this kid?” she’s thinking. “Look at my little ingrate offspring, headed straight for the TV, and here’s this gentleman who’s all of a sudden appeared in my life.” Her Leigh Anne might be too easily characterized as a woman who acts with her heart, but Bullock also shows us someone who thinks on her feet.

Bullock’s voice here is commanding, a little nasal; it’s Memphis belle, but there’s a hint of barbecue in there too. That voice, that directness, are part of the texture of the performance: Bullock’s Leigh Anne is a woman whose kindness is expressed not in showy, magnanimous gestures but in take-charge efficiency. Human decency so often demands instantaneous reaction; hesitation is the enemy.

That decisiveness extends to Bullock’s carriage: She struts into a scary, other-side-of-the-tracks neighborhood in high heels and trim white jeans, not with a sense of entitlement — she knows she’s not welcome there — but with a sense of purpose. She has work to do there, and the only thing that matters is getting it done. As a director, Hancock knows how important it is to pull back rather than move in — he serves his performers quietly and skillfully, in ways that he hasn’t been given appropriate credit for. When Leigh Anne pays a visit to Mike’s mother — an irresponsible sometime-drug addict who loves her son but has never properly cared for him — she moves, at a crucial moment, from her chair to sit next to the distraught woman on the couch. Instead of moving the camera in for a close-up, Hancock keeps it at a remove that allows the whole image to sink in. Time and again, he lets the figures in the frame — through their proximity to or their distance from one another — tell the untellable parts of the story.

The response among people I’ve read and talked to since Bullock’s nomination seems to amount to this: She’s an actress people like, but they’re more grudging about granting their respect. But I’d argue that playing an extraordinary everyperson comes with its own specific challenges and its own potential pitfalls. What Sandra Bullock does in “The Blind Side” is wonderful precisely because it doesn’t reach for greatness. Instead it’s built on the sturdy, reliable vocabulary of the ordinary.

It’s easy to be cynical about the foreign-language Academy Award, given its history of rewarding pretty, heartwarming vapidity. “Ajami” might sound at first more like a publicity gimmick with laudable social goals than a legitimate work of art: a film co-directed by an Israeli, Yaron Shani, and a Palestinian, Scandar Copti, that tries to capture the two communities’ tormented coexistence. But “Ajami” is neither pretty nor heartwarming: It begins and ends with scenes of young boys shot down on the street, both of them ending up as cruel footnotes to a stupid misunderstanding.

Shot in what might be called the “international style” of independent film — a hand-held, eye-level camera, mostly in medium close-up — “Ajami” has a large cast that mixes Israeli professionals and neighborhood recruits. Cinematographer Boaz Yehonatan Yacov (who also shot the remarkable “My Father, My Lord”) captures the streets, living rooms and restaurants of Jaffa in near-documentary detail, and this pays off at the level of character complexity and social context. Inexplicable and unforgivable things happen in “Ajami”: We see an Israeli cop about to shoot an unarmed underage suspect in the head, and an Arab man stab a Jewish neighbor in the heart during an insignificant street argument. Shani and Copti’s central strategy is to show us these crimes and then, through their cut-up, back-and-forth chronology, explain how they happened.

In no sense is this movie some kind of lily-livered apologetic for violence on either side; indeed, in depicting all their characters as human beings with family lives and recognizable wants and needs, Shani and Copti also depict them as people in the grip of a near-hopeless pathology. If there are two central characters in “Ajami,” they are Omar (Shahir Kabaha), a Jaffa teenager whose family is deeply in debt to a dangerous Bedouin crime family, and Dando (Eran Naim), a stocky Tel Aviv cop and family man whose brother has gone missing in action in the Palestinian territories. Neither is an ideological or religious zealot; neither is consumed with hatred for the other side. But long years of war and hatred have taught them where to direct their anger.

Omar and Dando will eventually collide during a drug bust gone wrong in a Tel Aviv parking garage, an event we see multiple times from multiple perspectives. Along the way, Omar’s next-door neighbor is shot by the Bedouins (who take him for Omar), his cosmopolitan friend Binj (played by co-director Copti) — an Arab who plans to move in with his Jewish girlfriend — meets an ambiguous end after a police raid, and Dando’s missing brother is found dead in a West Bank cave while his personal effects turn up on Jaffa’s black market. Throw in a sinister Christian-Arab godfather figure, a wide-eyed kid from the territories who’s trying to raise money for his mom’s bone marrow transplant, and the cops who rule Ajami with an iron fist, and you’ve got a multistrand potboiler worthy of an Israeli Dickens.

In an Oscar category that also includes Michael Haneke’s “White Ribbon” and Jacques Audiard’s “Prophet” (which opens in late February), “Ajami” might not be the best film or the likely winner. But it’s still a remarkable accomplishment, a swirling, choral sea of humanity that forces us to confront that a man who does terrible things can also be a loving father who gives his infant daughter a bath. There’s no prescription for coexistence amid the fateful swirl of passion, cruelty and violence in “Ajami,” and certainly no assurance that things are getting better. For Copti, Shani and the rest of us, though, the fact that a bunch of Jews and Arabs got together to make this powerful film has to mean something.

“Ajami” is now playing at Film Forum and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema in New York, with wider release to follow.

Jane Campion, who wrote as well as directed, has created an incandescent and utterly satisfying story of young love — romantic and tragic and true.

Its title taken from his poem of the same name, “Bright Star” tells the story of the poet John Keats and his neighbor, Fanny Brawne. It follows their relationship from the time of their first meeting, through and after his death.

It is a relationship that develops naturally and believably; each coming into their own as they awaken to each other, and the sensual joys of the world around them.

Their relationship is complicated by his poverty — he’s not seen as a suitable match for Fanny — and by the jealousness of his best friend, who resents her intrusion into their bachelor lives.

Time and circumstance bring their critics around. Even her mother and the doubting friend yield to the understanding that this is not just a bad case of puppy love, but a heavy dose of the real thing.

Abbie Cornish, who plays Fanny Brawne, gives a flawless performance as a young girl awakening to herself, and to love. Ben Whishaw plays Keats with just the right amount of passion and angst — acutely sensitive, but never cloying.

Can you watch this and not be reminded of your own first love, when the world was lit up and new? No, you cannot. Like a great poem itself, the movie delivers us that world again.

If God is in the details, the details are in this film: the wind coming in through the open window in Fanny’s room; her hands as she touches the wall between them; the new coat she sews when she sees his old one, threadbare.

When the inevitable happens, her breakdown is almost unbearable.

In contrast, “Up in the Air” was a confused, bleak mess of a movie, whose characters and plot points played like cartoons. It was written by a young Hollywood screenwriter who seems to have stumbled across the big themes of our time, but didn’t have a clue what to do with them. The fact that it’s up for best picture, and “Bright Star” isn’t … I’m losing hope for Hollywood. Again.

Given its lone nomination, “In the Loop” is the only film recognized solely for its writing, and rightly so. Its rapid-fire dialogue recalls Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond at their best (though far more vulgar), and it is without question the best in the category by a long shot. What’s most surprising is that Steven Soderbergh’s “The Informant!” didn’t pick up a single nomination, particularly in the screenwriting category. How any voting member of the Academy can justify choosing “District 9,” a film that is hardly dialogue- or character-driven, over Soderbergh’s rich and beautifully written adaptation is a complete mystery.

What passes for screenwriting these days is worrisome by any measure. “Avatar,” the most successful film of all time (and a glorious spectacle), has some of the worst dialogue in recent memory. Now more than ever it’s critical to recognize those that are striving to keep the art of the screenplay alive. The best-picture Oscar can and will remain a populist award. That shouldn’t be the case for recognition of genuine craft.

In equal confusion with Childress over the Gyllenhaal-over-Moore decision, Peter Knegt of indieWIRE has a list of 10 Oscar surprises, including “The Blind Side” even being in the running for best picture.

Variety and Movie City News have a plethora of raw reactions from the nominees themselves, with an enthusiastic Lee Daniels, director of “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” stating: “After 82 years, it’s the first film nominated for best picture directed by an African American. Isn’t that great? It’s so exciting. How can you lose? You can’t lose!”

Across the pond, David Cox of the Guardian considers “Precious” an affront to the lower class, and goes on to explain why.

Not to imply an agenda, but Cox’s colleague, Xan Brooks, thinks “The Hurt Locker” should take the top prize.

Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere calls the institution’s choice to limit Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” to only one category — best costume design — an “injustice,” claiming the film was “shafted big-time this morning — up and down and around the town.” The announcement that Joel and Ethan Coen’s “A Serious Man” was a contender for best picture was Wells’ only “whoo-hoo!” moment of the morning.

Speaking of snubs, Lane Brown of New York magazine is not surprised that “Avatar” was overlooked for best original screenplay.