One of the strongest years for this category in many years, this year
had no shortage of candidates who would have been deserving to inclusion – and
several that could have easily been my top choice in other years.
In addition to the top 10 performances in this category, there are many
others that could have been there including: Tom Burke in The Souvenir is charming enough that you can tell why
the main character stays with him so through so much crap. Jimmie Falls in The Last Black Man in San Francisco who makes his
absurd, slightly delusional quest, both quietly touching and somewhat tragic –
and full of heart. Eddie Murphy in
Dolemite is My Name pushes himself for the first time in quite some time – and
finds surprisingly one of his best roles as the charming, profane and generous
Rudy Ray Moore. Theodore Pellerin in
Genesis is heartbreaking as the gay teen in Philippe Lasage’s underseen
film – including one of the best speeches of the year. Joaquin Phoenix in Joker is the one element of Joker, which I was
extremely mixed on, that I cannot find much fault it – even if the role lacks
real depth, Phoenix just goes all out, balls to the wall insane, in a way that
is convincing, and heartbreaking.
10. Brad Pitt in Ad
Astra
In year a that saw Pitt deliver the best performance of his career in
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a film that made the best use of all of Pitt’s
many gifts as a movie star and an actor – also saw him deliver this
performance, one of the quietest performances of Pitt’s career. This is Pitt at
his saddest, his quietest – a man paralyzed by his inability to have any sort
of connection with anyone, because of his horrible, distant relationship with
his father. For a film with so many special effects, the film is more about
Pitt’s face than anything else – a man who finally figures out how to quite
literally let go. Another great performance by Pitt.
9. Kelvin Harrison Jr.
in Luce
A terrific year for Harrison Jr. started with his performance in the
title role of Luce. He plays the African adopted son of two do-gooder white
liberals in America who has the type of “inspiring” true story that people like
to pat themselves on the back over, without really dealing with the trauma of
it all. On the surface, Luce is perfect – a great student, a great athlete, a
great future ahead of him – and everyone, and I mean everyone, just loves him,
except for one teacher, who thinks she can see through him. Harrison Jr. does a
remarkable job of showing the audience code switching – how he acts around the
different groups he has to survive, but how all of that is a mask – a mask he
will only let slip in private (the two deliveries of the same speech, once by
himself, once in front of everyone is the key to the character, movie and
performance). This is one of the most underrated performances of the year.
8. Paul Walter Hauser
in Richard Jewell
There are certain areas in which Hauser’s performance as Richard Jewell
in Clint Eastwood’s film overlaps with his breakout role in I, Tonya. Both men
are law enforcement obsessed men with a heightened sense of their own
importance and power. But this time, Jewell is not a figure to be made fun of –
he is a tragic figure, someone who did the right thing, saved lives, and then
was dragged through the mud for month on end, and had to live with suspicion on
him for a long time. Hauser plays Jewell as a guy who just wants to help –
anyone, or everyone, but especially law enforcement. So when he becomes the
bombing suspect, it is confusing to have to try and fight back against them –
to not be deferential. For a while, you think he doesn’t get it – but he really
understands it all, and is pissed that the institutions he loved don’t love him
back. The film doesn’t paint Jewell as an angel – but a man who didn’t deserve
what he got. And Hauser sees beyond what could have made him a punchline in
something much deeper.
7. Robert Pattison in
The Lighthouse
Robert Pattinson continues to be one of the best, and most risk taking,
young actors in Hollywood (hopefully his stint as Batman will help him continue
to do more films like this and High Life). In The Lighthouse, he plays a young
man running away from his past, who ends up working at a remote lighthouse,
with a much older partner (Willem Dafoe) – and the two men basically wage a
private mental war with each other for the entire runtime of the film.
Pattinson’s performance is more internal than Dafoe’s – as his grip on reality
starts to slip, and then steadily declines, Pattison keeps up with all the
weird turns – the flatulence, the seagull murder, the mermaid sex, and the
Prometheus ending of it all. Pattinson is fully committed, and goes for it from
opening frame, to closing frame. Don’t get lost in franchise films Pattison!
6. Antonio Banderas in
Pain & Glory
Antonio Banderas gives the best performance of his career in Pedro
Almodovar’s Pain & Glory – playing some version of his old friend Almodovar
himself. As the aging director, whose health issues keep him from directing,
Banderas is great as a man looking back on his life with a mixture of nostalgia
and regret. His constant pain keeps him from doing too much – and he starts to
abuse heroin, the better to escape from his current life. But as he reconnects
with his past – the actor he always though messed up his movie, with the old
lover he left years before, or coming to grips with his relationship with his
mother, Banderas is the perfect grounding force in Almodovar’s movie – giving
it depth, grace and genuine emotion. Banderas hasn’t always been used well in
movies – but his old friend Almodovar gives him a gift with this role, and he
makes the most of it.
5. Andrew Garfield in
Under the Silver Lake
Andrew Garfield’s best performance to date is as the “detective”
investigating the disappearance of his beautiful neighbor in David Robert
Mitchell’s bizarre take on the L.A. stoner noir. Garfield is our lead – he’s at
the heart of nearly every scene in the film – but as the film movies along, you
realize that he is quite simply playing a total and complete asshole – a misogynist
is slacker’s clothing. It’s a tricky balancing act that Garfield has to pull
off – his quest for answers, his existential yearning, is real and relatable,
and yet he is a hateful character who may or may be a mass murderer of dogs. Garfield
uses his disarming charm to make you lower your guard, before it really does
kind of lower the boom on the character a little. Garfield, freed from
Spider-Man, has been doing some great, daring work again. This is his best work
yet.
4. Robert De Niro in
The Irishman
It’s more than fair to say that for about two decades now, Robert De
Niro has been phoning it in – sometimes coming out of hiding to deliver a great
performance like in Stone or Silver Linings Playbook, or direct an underrated
masterwork in The Good Shepherd – but basically being happy cashing his
cheques, and building his real estate business. But when he reunited with
Martin Scorsese for the first time since 1995’s Casino, De Niro very clearly
decided he couldn’t phone in this performance – that he had to go for it. Some
of the performance is De Niro returning to his Scorsese bag of tricks of course
– although, his performance in the character’s younger years isn’t as volatile
as De Niro could be back in the day. And it’s really De Niro in the character’s
older years where he is at his best – when he realizes he has completely sold
his soul – when he exchanges looks with his daughter, who sees right through
him, when he has a phone call with a widow of a man he just killed, and cannot
say anything of value, when he’s old and broken down and alone – with
absolutely nothing left. If Scorsese felt he needed to make this film before he
died – the same is true for De Niro – who for the first time in what seems like
years, legitimately delivers one of the best performances of his legendary
career.
3. Leonardo DiCaprio in
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
To me, the heart of the movie really is Brad Pitt’s performance (which
could have easily been considered a lead as well). And yet, that doesn’t mean
that DiCaprio isn’t great in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as well. It’s a
great role for Leo – allowing him to play off his own image of a movie star
drowning in excess – but the darker side of the coin, drowning in excess when
no one much cares anymore. His Rick Dalton is a sad, pathetic character – a man
drinking his life away, phoning in his performances, etc. And then, against all
odds, he finds that love of his craft again. Young Julia Butters puts him
through his paces on the set of Lancer – and then DiCaprio, as Dalton, brings
out all the tricks in the scenes he’s shooting – and it’s mesmerizing. It would
have been easier for DiCaprio to mock Rick Dalton – instead he finds that sad
core to him – that part that makes him an actor, and allows that to come out.
His final scene is wonderful as well. DiCaprio continues to be one of the
greats of his generation.
2. Adam Driver in
Marriage Story
Adam Driver has quickly become one of the great actors of his generation
– and when you look at his resume of directors he’s worked with – Scorsese,
Jarmusch, Lee, the Coens, Soderbergh, Gilliam, Nichols, Spielberg, Eastwood,
and now for the fourth time, Noah Baumbach, it’s clear to see he has great
taste, and the best directors working know how talented he is. In Baumbach’s
latest, and best, film Driver delivers what is arguably his best performance
(I’m partial to Paterson myself). He is clearly a character that Baumbach, and
Driver, have a lot of sympathy for – and yet not so much sympathy that they
have a blind spot to his flaws. It is a very interior performance in many ways
– he tries to put on a happy face, even as he is falling apart inside – until,
of course, in that one scene he completely explodes – which works so well because
of what he does in the rest of the film. It is a remarkable, restrained, deeply
humane performance by one of the few actors who can reasonably argue is the
best working actor in the America right now.
1. Adam Sandler in
Uncut Gems
Watching Adam Sandler’s career since 2002 has been incredibly
frustrating. That was the year he delivered his previous career best
performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, a brilliant comedy that
dared to take Sandler’s comic persona seriously, and portray him as the
anti-social sociopath he had always been. Since then though, Sandler has mainly
continued to make lazy movies – movies where he gets to hang out with friends,
and doesn’t challenge anyone. And then, he delivers a performance as crazy, as
inspired as genius as he does in Uncut Gems – which is basically the opposite
side of his performance in Punch-Drunk Love. That one embraced the quiet,
anti-social side of Sandler’s performance, this one allows Sandler to tap into,
and take to an extreme, the over-the-top, exaggerated performative aspect of
Sandler’s persona. Here, he’s at the heart of every scene of the movie – a
pulsating, anxiety inducing performance, as he keeps digging him in deeper, and
keeps getting out – but just barely. It is a comic performance – one that walks
that razor thin line between comedy and tragedy. Once in a while, Sandler
decides to show us all just what he can do – and when he does, watch out – he’s
going to blow everyone else away.
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