This was a very strong year for this category, even
if I seem to like many people that didn’t get a lot of awards – oh, well, I’m
right. Performances I didn’t have room in the top 10 include: Mackenize
Davis in Tully seems too good to be true in this movie – and that is the absolute
right choice. Claire Foy in First Man who
took the thankless “wife” role, and brought much more humanity to it. Anne Hathaway in Ocean’s 8 is basically
playing the version of herself that people who hate her believe her to be – and
doing it brilliantly and hilariously.
Blake Lively in A Simple Favor completely owns in this role, as essentially
a comedic Gone Girl. Both Molly Parker
and Miranda July in Madeline’s Madeline are wonderful – two opposite mother
figures, that still somehow don’t come close to what the main character needs. Haley Lu Richardson in Support the Girls is
so light and funny here, and still so real – yet another reason she is going to
be a huge star if she wants to be. Marina
de Tavira in Roma is excellent as the middle class mother trying to keep
things together – who can either be kind or cruel, but is always human. Tessa Thompson in Annihilation had a
great year, a nowhere better then she was in this film – especially her
stunning final scene. Letitia Wright in Black Panther was the
best of many fine supporting actress performances in the film – she gets my
vote over the others because I would love to watch a whole movie about her.
10.
Amanda Seyfried in First Reformed
Ethan Hawke richly deserves all the awards he is
winning for First Reformed. But I wish a few groups had at least nominated
Amanda Seyfried’s work in First Reformed right alongside him. While it is true
that this is a role that is more symbol driven than character driven, Seyfried
still manages to play her as a real, sympathetic person. She has never used her
large, expressive eyes better than she does here, making her character all the
more convincing as someone who could push Hawke into doing what he does,
without ever meaning to. She is also right there with him at all the biggest
moments. These types of roles are harder than they appear – and Seyfried does a
great job in this one.
9.
Tilda Swinton in Suspiria
Swinton delivers a trio of performances in Suspira
– the biggest one being the odd lead teacher at the Berlin ballet school that
acts as a cover for a coven of witches. Here, her otherworldly aura is used to
great effect, as she plays a person who places her work over everything else,
and doesn’t even seem to realize what that cost is. She is also great as the
elderly doctor, who has keep up futile hope that his Jewish wife didn’t die in
the Holocaust decades earlier, and somehow got out – she is the personification
of futile, impotent if well-meaning patriarchy (I won’t mention her third
role). It is a trio of performances that you wouldn’t expect from anyone other
than Swinton – who continues to be one of the best, most risk taking actresses
in the world.
8.
Natalie Portman in Vox Lux
Natalie Portman turns everything up to 11 when she
walks onto the screen in Vox Lux just past the half way point, and then
completely takes over the movie. Playing the biggest pop star in the world – a
whirlwind of chaos (with a great Staten Island accent), she embraces her
characters limited worldview and inflated sense of ego. She has destroyed
pretty much everything in her life – her strained relationship with her sister,
her teenage daughter she plays the popstar as a Faustian character – she has
everything she wanted, and is miserable, and wants to make everyone else
miserable under the guise of helping them. But boy, can she put on a show.
7.
Rachel Weisz in The Favourite
Rachel Weisz seems to be tailor-made to star in the
films of Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos – I’ve often thought she is a cold
actress, and is best when playing cold characters, and that is what Lanthimos
specializes in. Here, in her second collaboration with Lanthimos following The
Lobster, she delivers what may well be the best performance of her career. Her
Lady Sarah is cold, cruel, mean – and incredibly smart, basically running the
country of England, as she keeps everyone in check – until she meets her match
in her equally ruthless cousin. Weisz is great with the acid tongued dialogued,
and is good when brought low. Yes, she is probably ranked third of three great
performances in the film – but that’s such an amazing trio, I don’t think it
matters much.
6.
Zoe Kazan in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
It really took me until my second viewing of The
Ballad of Buster Scruggs to really get what precisely she is doing in this
movie that is so effective. She plays the timid, quiet woman in the longest
segment of the film – really the heart of it – where she travels on a Wagon
Train with her brother, who doesn’t make it very far. Her scenes from there
with Bill Heck are quietly, subtly devastating as they flirt in their strange,
quiet, sad way. Her ultimate destiny in the movie is tragic and heartbreaking –
but it’s her work in those earlier scenes that makes her character one of the
most fascinating in the movie – and it makes this perhaps the talented Kazan’s
best work to date.
5.
Sakura Ando in Shoplifters
Sakura Ando’s performance in Shoplifters is the
films center – both emotionally, and morally. Playing the adoptive mother to
two children, not to mention a wife, a granddaughter, a sister and a woman
slaving away to try and make ends meet. It takes a while for her to stand out
from the pack a little bit in the movie – Kore-eda’s film is generous to its
large ensemble cast, giving them all moments to shine. Yet, it is Ando who does
the best work – especially in the final scenes where everything comes crashing
down around them – and she is finally able to exhale, to be honest to everyone.
This is a quiet performance – and a heartbreaking one in its way, but also
strangely hopeful.
4.
Emma Stone in The Favourite
Emma Stone has already had a remarkable career to
this point – great work in Easy A, Birdman, La La Land and Battle of the Sexes
among others – but her work in The Favourite is the best of her career so far. When
she arrives in the film, she is perhaps the film’s most sympathetic character –
the one who does horrible things, but is doing them in order to survive more
than anything else. But throughout the course of the film, here needlessly,
wantonly cruel side slowly reveals itself. Stone uses her natural likability to
great effect in the film – in the early going to get you on her side, and then
later as a shocking contrast to her behavior. I loved this new, darker Stone –
who has always been good, but has never been better than she is here.
3.
Regina King in If Beale Street Could Talk
Regina King is one of those actresses who has been
so good, for so long in so many different projects (and kinds of projects) that
is it is easy to sometimes overlook just how terrific she is. Here, in what is
clearly her best film role (so many of her great performances have been on TV),
King grabs hold of the role, and will not let it go. As the supportive mother
of the pregnant young woman at the core of the movie (and surrogate mother to
the male lead), King is all kinds of sympathetic and supportive in the opening
scenes of the films – taking subtle charge of every situation, while letting
others think they are in charge. When she travels to Puerto Rico to try and
convince the witness to change her mind, she shows a spine and resolve of
steel, and gets to take over the movie. King has done an excellent job for
years, bringing the kind of nuance and heart that is so often missing from
thankless “wife” or “mother” roles (because they normally are written as
afterthoughts) – and here she delivers the best performance of hers I have seen
in a movie. She is deserving of all the awards she is winning this season.
2.
Jong-seo Jeon in Burning
Although Jong-seo Jeon disappears from Burning for
the entire second half of the film, she is in many ways the heart of the movie
– and the most mysterious character. The story is about the two men in her life
– and the way they interact with each other, but her Hae-mi is the enigma at
the core. She never explains herself – never explains what her relationship
with Jong-su is, or why she wants to keep being his friend when Ben enters her
life. She is a cheery, eternal optimist on the outside – but there is something
quiet and sad beneath all of that surface. Her final scene in the film is
perhaps the most haunting of any movie this year. Jong-seo Jeon is a newcomer,
but she is delivered a performance in Burning that I don’t think I will ever
forget.
1.
Elizabeth Debicki in Widows
Out of all of the characters in Widows, it is Elizabeth
Debicki’s Alice who goes through the biggest changes. She starts the movie as
an abused wife of a criminal, who then becomes a widow, where her best options
for a time are either being controlled by her abusive mother (Jacki Weaver), or
become a prostitute. Throughout the movie though, she finds an inner strength –
something inside of her that allows her to stand up for herself, and actually
do something for herself. She goes toe-to-toe with Viola Davis, and has the
good sense not to try and out power her, but instead goes somewhat smaller in
her scenes with her. She dominates her scenes with Lukas Haas in a fascinating
way – by pretending not to have the power. Debicki has been building a strong
resume for years now – and here, delivers a truly stunning performance.
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