DVD: Divine Viewing Diversions

She was an actress before she was a movie star.

Now she’s both.

And Meryl Streep is, pretty much by consensus, our most gifted and accomplished movie-screen actress.

Which renders each new movie she turns up in an event.

True, there are detractors who complain about her, who find her mannered or overexposed, who are just plain bored with her monotonously reliable excellence.

Fine.

The point is that she’s the best at what she does, always a fascinating proposition for viewers.

It’s no accident or coincidence that she has received more Oscar nominations than anyone in the history of the movies.

And she continues, some four decades into her spectacular career, letting us see right through her to an array of arresting images of ourselves.

So, here is a sampler of her movies that promise hours of movie-watching pleasure for both completists and casual fans taking a satisfying stroll down the Streep where you live.

THE DEER HUNTER (R, 1978)

Streep’s first substantial movie role was as an ensemble player in Oscar-winning director Michael Cimino’s controversial and unforgettable drama that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Employing Russian roulette as its central metaphor, it addressed the effect of the Vietnam War on not only soldiers but on the Pittsburgh steelworkers back home as well. It was impossible not to notice her considerable presence despite the fact that she was sharing the screen with such charismatic actors as Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken; she and De Niro were nominated for Academy Awards while Walken took home the statuette for Best Supporting Actor. Streep was off and running, playing with the big boys, ready for parts that showcased her obvious thespian skills.

KRAMER VS. KRAMER (PG, 1979)

Writer-director Robert Benton’s custody-battle drama, which won him the Best Directing and Best Screenplay Oscars, was elegant in its simplicity and monumentally moving in its impact. Dustin Hoffman’s portrait of an ambitious, self-absorbed husband and father won him the Oscar for Best Actor, while Streep took home the prize for Best Supporting Actress, playing a mother who walks out on her husband and young son in the film’s opening scene. But because she abandons her son early on and then comes back later to ask for custody, Streep uses her considerable improvisational talent in the courtroom to put the audience through a roller-coaster ride of shifting allegiances and rousing rooting interest. With her Oscar on her shelf, Streep was ready for leading roles.

THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN (R, 1981)

Director Karel Reisz’s movie adaptation of the complex novel by John Fowles, adapted by Harold Pinter, is a haunting, elusive experience. Streep, rewarded for her efforts with an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, plays opposite Jeremy Irons as a mysterious woman in Victorian England who keeps her secretive past from the scientist who loves her. Meanwhile, the present-day footage visits the two movie actors portraying the scandalous lovers while conducting an illicit affair of their own. The parallels between the two relationships are fascinating even if the editing scheme is daunting. But Streep is a striking and compelling presence in the title role, and is plainly ready for an even more demanding lead the following year.

SOPHIE’S CHOICE (R, 1982)

Few movies are as indelible or viscerally troubling as this Holocaust drama, which sits squarely on Streep’s shoulders, winning her the Oscar for Best Actress. Writer-director Alan J. Pakula’s movie version of the best-selling novel by William Styron shows us the horror of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and climaxes with a scene that might haunt your nightmares. Mastering a Polish accent, Streep’s protagonist exposes her survivor’s guilt as she tries to build some semblance of a life in Brooklyn following World War II. Playing most of her scenes opposite Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol, Streep makes her title character charming, sympathetic, funny, convincing, and – finally – heartbreaking.

SILKWOOD (R, 1983)

The next year, the real-life story of Karen Silkwood, directed by Mike Nichols, gives Streep another vividly delineated character to play, thanks to the compelling screenplay by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen. Silkwood is a nuclear-plant worker and activist looking into careless practices at the facility. Because Silkwood died in a 1974 automobile accident under suspicious circumstances, much of the audience knows the true-story ending on the way in. So, the denouement loses a degree of power and surprise. But a decent measure of suspense is nonetheless generated. And Streep disappears completely into her character, as is her wont. The result? Another Oscar nomination for Best Actress, her third in three years.

OUT OF AFRICA (PG, 1985)

Director Sydney Pollack’s lush romantic epic earned 11 Oscar nominations, including Streep for Best Actress, and seven Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture. It focuses on Danish writer Karen Blixen, whose book that bears the same title as the movie was published under the pen name of Isak Dinesen. She travels to Africa, marries indifferently, manages a coffee plantation in Kenya, then falls for a British hunter-pilot played by Robert Redford, who for some reason sports an American accent. But, otherwise, superior production values are on display from first frame to last. Action is not always at a premium, but the Oscar-winning cinematography of David Watkin keeps you visually engaged. As for Streep, although her role is not as demanding as other recent roles, she provides inspired, lived-in behavior throughout.

DEATH BECOMES HER (PG-13, 1992)

Although this effects-driven comedy won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, it’s the performances by Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis that earn the film its legitimate laughs as it pokes fun at the obsessiveness about aging and vanity and beauty displayed by Hollywood – and us. Director Robert Zemeckis – always adept at mixing live action and acting talent with technical razzle-dazzle so that the wizardry enhances the story rather than overwhelming it – has Streep singing at the top and indulging her comedic side in what seems till now a road less traveled for her. The film has its detractors, but Streep demonstrates that she can prosper in a much wider array of genre than even her most fervent fans realized.

THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY (PG-13, 1995)

With Clint Eastwood as her director and co-star, Streep tries on another accent – Italian this time – in this romantic drama. It is based on the runaway best-seller by Robert James Waller about a lonely and restless housewife and mother of two in the 1960s, Francesca Johnson. She encounters Robert Kincaid, a loner of a photographer from National Geographic, when he comes to Iowa to shoot scenic local covered bridges, gets lost, and stops at her farmhouse to ask for directions. Streep and Eastwood are splendid together, passing their chemistry exam with flying colors, and Streep gets yet another Oscar nomination for Best Actress for this intimate, mature romance. Thriving under Eastwood’s lean and clean directing style, Streep has never been better.

ADAPTATION. (R, 2002)

This decidedly offbeat offering from director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman represented an opportunity for Streep, who took a salary cut to accommodate the film’s budget, to return to ensemble work. She plays Susan Orlean, the real-life author of the book, “The Orchid Thief,” which is being turned into a problematic movie. Streep, seeming more and more like an automatic nominee these days, nabs a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. Chris Cooper wins for Best Supporting Actor, and Nicolas Cage, in a dual role, is nominated for Best Actor. Kaufman was nominated for his surreal, unpredictable, elusive adapted screenplay. Streep gets no more attention than her collaborators, for a change, but delivers a playfully quirky comic performance that fits right in.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (PG-13, 2006)

Streep gets to contribute a Best Actress Oscar-nominated Boss From Hell characterization in this fashionista comedy, a glossy adaptation of the best-selling novel by Lauren Weisberger about the world of fashion magazines. Her riskily broad approach to her frosty and treacherous character, the intriguingly named Miranda Priestly, never becomes a caricature and pays big dividends as the film progresses with Anne Hathaway as her long-suffering personal assistant. Streep’s fierce and funny rendering of a character who the makers swear is absolutely not supposed to be Vogue editor Anna Wintour, reminds us of how adroit at comedy Streep has turned out to be, delivering snide putdowns and dismissive insults with a truly impressive display of perfect comic timing.