The 50 Best Movie Performances of the Decade

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Kristen Stewart (“Personal Shopper”)

Kristen Stewart is one of the most famous people on the face of the planet, but you’d never know it just from watching her most recent movies. In the years since fulfilling her obligation from the YA franchise that launched her to stardom, Stewart has played Steve Carrell’s secretary, Juliette Binoche’s assistant, a young lawyer in rural Montana, a prison guard at Guantanamo Bay, and an anonymous drone in a dystopian society founded upon the idea of suppressing the things that make people special. She’s been drawn to parts that contradict her outsized public persona, confront the all-seeing eye of her celebrity, and warp it into a lens through which we might all look at her more clearly.

Olivier Assayas’ “Personal Shopper” epitomized Stewart’s penchant for playing beautiful people who do invisible jobs, a contrast that allows the actress to explore the expressive power of her own vulnerability. The film finds her more exposed than ever before, naked in every sense of the word. When she’s not trying to commune with the spirit of her dead brother, Maureen works for a hostile, high-powered fashionista who seldom appears on screen. She runs errands around Paris and beyond, slipping into (and out of) the clothes she’s picking up for her boss, looking to see if each new costume can tell her more about herself than she can glean from her own nude body. 

From texting with a hostile ghost (maybe) to slipping on a slinky new dress, Stewart allows her performance to become a radical expression of unsureness. “I wasn’t making a movie anymore,” she told IndieWire. “I wasn’t trying to lead anyone anywhere. I was just very aware of the fact that some questions have answers in retrospect, but can only ever be asked spiritually and without words.” Her work in “Personal Shopper” is haunting for how it seemingly manages to ask them all.—DE

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Robert Pattinson (“Good Time”)

Like a lot of franchise actors, Robert Pattinson faced a tough crowd when he moved on from “Twilight” and took on more director-driven, cinephile-friendly projects. While he juggled the audacious demands of David Cronenberg for “Cosmopolis” and took a peculiar right turn in David Michod’s apocalyptic “The Rover,” it was the Safdie brothers’ “Good Time” that solidified Pattinson’s remarkable evolution into one of the most exciting young actors working today.

As the scatterbrained bank robber working overtime to get his developmentally disabled brother released from prison, Pattinson morphed into a fast-talking Queens hustler incapable of pulling back on his jittery tendencies as he careened through one misconceived scenario to the next. From the moment the blond-haired actor bursts into the movie early on, he imbues it with astounding narrative momentum: Alternately, angry, determined, and flabbergasted at each new twist, the Queens hustler is a fascinating enigma who you can’t help but root for. “Good Time” reportedly inspired the recent casting of Pattinson in “The Batman,” and for good reason: The Safdies’ movie finds the actor playing the ultimate dark knight, a man driven to unruly behavior for a noble cause even as it remains unclear if he can ever truly save the day.—EK

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Lily Gladstone (“Certain Women”)

The cast list of Kelly Reichardt’s loosely connected omnibus exploration of life in the sprawling American Northwest is formidable, from Reichardt mainstay Michelle Williams to the consistently amazing Laura Dern and Kristen Stewart launching firmly into her indie career. And then there is Lily Gladstone, appearing in only her fourth feature as shy ranch hand Jamie, who manages to outshine everyone else in the film, care of a gentle, searching performance. Somehow both understated and impossible to ignore, Gladstone’s section of the film opens with her quietly going about her work duties, an introduction that’s immersive and graceful and shows the budding actress’ uncanny ability to wholly inhabit a character.

Not much “happens” in “Certain Women,” but the biggest narrative twist belongs to Jamie’s story, as she accidentally stumbles upon a farflung law class taught by Stewart’s Beth. Wide-eyed at landing in a new corner of the world — and Beth, of course — Jamie slowly changes her life in order to accommodate her class schedule. The changes in Jamie are small, nearly imperceptible, but even in the truncated state of “Certain Women,” the evolution rings true. Gladstone makes off with the film’s most compelling emotional bits, turning even quiet moments of reflection and surprising moments of desperation into something rich and wonderful. Few performances ever feel this bare, this open-hearted.—KE

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Ando Sakura (“Shoplifters”)

Re-watching “Shoplifters,” it becomes clear how much of Kore-eda Hirokazu’s narrative sleight-of-hand is only made possible by the remarkable performance of Ando Sakura. All good actors are capable of externalizing emotion, but few can show a character shielding what we sense is inside — few can indicate a nucleus of truth that the film itself never speaks. Ando is the rare star who’s able to turn that sense of withholding into her most powerful asset. 

Ando plays Nobuyo, the mother of a makeshift, hand-to-mouth Tokyo family whose lifestyle is threatened when they illegally “adopt” (kidnap with kindness, really) an abused and abandoned little girl named Yuri. And while the film is buoyed by a deep ensemble, our eyes are drawn to Nobuyo from the start. It’s not only because the camera loves her, which it does, but also because she’s withholding something from the rest of the world in a way that makes you want to lean forward and learn her secrets. From the start, Ando’s downcast gestures and weary remove have a way of complicating her character’s outward self-interest, as if Nobuyo has spent a lifetime walling off her heart in order to survive.  

Yet when Kore-eda reveals the truth and we see Nobuyo’s motives in a different (and somewhat less flattering) light, it’s Ando’s broken smile that lets us see how the family bonds were actually real. The character’s devastation seeps onto the surface during an interrogation scene so powerful that it feels like the whole universe depends on Ando’s ability not to crack. With minimalistic body language, Ando conveys an inner cavity of pure need — a need to be a mother, and to keep her family together. It’s enough to make you reconsider the fundamental nature of familial love.—CO

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Sally Hawkins (“The Shape of Water”)

The silent heart of Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning fairy tale, Sally Hawkins is absolutely enchanting as mute janitor Elisa, who falls in love with the slimy humanoid aquaman curiousity (Doug Jones) who is being stashed in the shady government lab where she works. As the film’s “princess without voice,” Hawkins sings, dances, and makes us believe in the reality of everything that happens around her in this heightened fairy tale.

The one thing Hawkins doesn’t do — aside from a dreamy black-and-white musical number — is speak. She spends the rest of the movie confounding expectations at every turn. She masturbates in the tub every morning while her eggs are boiling, she convinces us that she’s capable of having full-on sex with a regal fish-man while her bathroom floods around them, and she conveys every piece of emotional information the film needs us to know. Elisa is self-reliant, stubborn, crafty, loverly, angry, skeptical, rebellious, and affectionate as she plots the escape of her River God from his laboratory prison. Who else could have pulled this off? Not since Holly Hunter in “The Piano” has a movie performance been able to communicate so much with so few words.—AT

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Elsie Fisher (“Eighth Grade”)

There’s no single scene in which Elsie Fisher suddenly becomes awkward middle schooler Kayla in Bo Burnham’s feature directorial debut “Eighth Grade.” It’s there from the start, fully formed. The timely (and timeless) story of Kayla’s final weeks in the unique hell of eighth grade captures the full spectrum of modern middle-school life. Fisher, who had just finished her own middle-school years when the project filmed in summer 2017, brings a natural veracity to the role — here’s an actual kid, playing a kid, and bringing all that fresh experience with her — but her performance isn’t a shallow aping of her own life.

Kayla’s initial introduction to the audience is a disarming one, a portent of the open and honest work to come. She stares straight into her computer, delivering a motivational speech about “being yourself” that she will upload to her YouTube channel, where it will languish alongside dozens of other cheery-faced pieces of footage that no one will ever bother to watch. She ends her video, like all the others, with a single word: “Gucci.” It’s a cool-kid thing, hip slang that the youngsters are using these days, and in Kayla’s voice, it sounds terribly wrong. It hurts. Within mere minutes of “meeting” Kayla, Fisher has delivered not just important information about her character, but actual emotions and a glimpse at the personal history that will influence her future.

And yet, there’s a lightness there, a buoyancy; when Kayla tries to turn up her smile, it’s with all the hope in the world. Perhaps this will be the video that changes things, maybe this time people will care, there’s surely a breakthrough around the corner. Her optimism is infectious, if only because it’s the kind everyone — especially everyone who endured middle school — can remember feeling.—KE

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Kim Hye-ja (“Mother”)

Fanatically devoted to her son doesn’t even begin to describe the title character of Bong Joon-ho’s gripping murder-mystery. Kim Hye-ja’s character is never even named: she’s just “Mother,” a woman indivisibly self-defined by her relationship to her one and only adult child, whose intellectual disability and predisposition towards self-defense makes him the prime suspect in the murder that sensationalizes small town South Korean. When Kim’s character is forced to reckon with the fact that her son may not be the man she raised him to be, it’s not just her perception of the boy that undergoes a critical shift, but also her entire grasp on reality. 

How far will she go to ensure she remains in denial? Never farther than you’re able to believe, as Kim’s devotion teeters into desperation with an electric terror that would feel more shocking if it weren’t so grounded in emotional truth. But the true brilliance of Kim’s performance comes when her character’s denial melts into clarity, and her mother’s love isn’t enough to make things right. Her pain is profound, and its accompanying hopelessness hard to watch, but there’s something ineffably beautiful about how Kim is liberated by the knowledge that her son isn’t a monster — a liberation that can only be expressed through dance.—CB

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Emmanuelle Riva (“Amour”) 

Michael Haneke’s 2012 drama “Amour” won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film largely because of Emmanuelle Riva’s shattering performance in one of the lead roles. Best known for her painfully wistful turns in post-war classics like “Hiroshima mon Amour” and Georges Franju’s “Thérèse Desqueyroux,” Riva saved her best and most devastating work for the last years of her career. She was 84 years old when Haneke cast her in the role of Anne Laurent, a Parisian music teacher who becomes a burden to her husband (Jean-Louis Trintignant) after a paralyzing stroke robs of her body and her voice.

The film is almost entirely set in the couple’s musty apartment, but it would be even more accurate to say that Riva’s face becomes its primary location, as Haneke sets the most pivotal and wrenching scenes in the actress’ desolate eyes, or in the blank face face that’s had all of its expression siphoned out of it like a cyst. Riva’s commitment to the part, and the trust that it inspired from her director, allows the performance to assume the intimacy of watching a loved one confront death — this at a time when Riva was growing ever closer to her own mortality. She broaches her character with an almost unfathomable degree of fearlessness, and merges with Anne so completely that you aren’t sure who to mourn when the end arrives.—ZS

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Emayatzy Corinealdi (“Middle of Nowhere”)

The right actor in the right part can transform a satisfying film into a heart-stopping one, and that’s exactly what happened when Ava DuVernay cast Emayatzy Corinealdi in her gorgeous and criminally underseen 2012 drama, “Middle of Nowhere.” Appearing in her first lead role in a feature film, the former soap opera star delivered a beautifully wrought performance as a woman in waiting — a woman whose life is suddenly no longer under control. 

Ruby, a registered nurse in Compton, is faced with a dilemma that’s all too familiar to the women in her part of the world: Her husband is sentenced to eight years behind bars, and she has to figure out how best to live her life in his absence. Graceful and dignified at all times, Corinealdi cuts a singular portrait of a woman persevering through hardship. And not just persevering, but also confronting hardship — standing by her man even when she’s repelled by his actions. Ruby is fiery when she needs to be, but never falls into melodramatic traps; her eyes radiate with an innocence that only makes it easier for the audience to see the secondhand guilt that’s weighing her down.

Despite DuVernay’s subsequent mega-success, “Middle of Nowhere” is still looking for its audience. But Corinealdi’s performance makes sure that everyone lucky enough to find this film is stunned by what they discover inside.—TO

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Anne Marsen (“Girl Walk // All Day”)

Anne Marsen doesn’t say a single word in “Girl Walk // All Day,” but you don’t have to talk when you’ve got moves like this. Elevating a feature-length music video into an irrepressible work of art that completely eclipses the album it was made to accompany, Marsen delivers a dance performance that expresses more emotion in a moonwalk than most actors could convey in an entire Oscar monologue.

Her role, “The Girl,” is never intended to be more than an archetype, but her sheer irrepressibleness makes the character feel unique. It’s not just that Marsen is a (very) talented dancer, but also that she’s absolutely fearless. Manhattan is her stage, and all of the people in it can’t help but become her audience — from midtown sidewalks to department store showrooms, she transforms every space she enters, electrifyingly tipping New York City’s unique balance between public and private spaces. We demand a sequel.—DE

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Chadwick Boseman (“Get on Up”)

Before assuming the Wakandan throne in “Black Panther,” Chadwick Boseman took on the daunting task of playing the Godfather of Soul — the hardest working man in showbusiness. Boseman overcame his initial hesitations and painstakingly transformed himself into the musical icon, capturing James Brown’s swagger as well as his signature dance moves.

Mimicry, however, was never going to be enough; not by the time Brown had already become one of the most parodied celebrities on the planet, and even a sincere tribute could easily sink into caricature. But in a decade that had its fair share of note-perfect biopic emulations, Boseman stood out by going the extra mile; by burning past imitation and pushing towards resurrection. His performance is so flawless that he didn’t even have to do his own singing to complete the illusion. Boseman becomes Brown, immersing himself in the man’s speech patterns, his confidence, his vigor, and his vulnerability. It’s an awe-inspiring attention to detail in a movie that often plays fast and loose with everything else. The performance should have earned Boseman an Oscar; it ended up earning him a lot more than that.—TO

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Timothée Chalamet (“Call Me by Your Name”) 

Jerking off into a peach is one hell of a way to launch an acting career, but Timothée Chalamet’s star-making performance — arriving a year after he proved his chops in Julia Hart’s “Miss Stevens” — is so much more than its most famous scene. That sweet moment was always destined to become an Oscar season punch-line, but it’s the tender vulnerability and concerned shame Chalamet displays once young Elio is found out that still make it stick. Those are just two of Elio’s many compelling shades; at times he’s as graceful as he is lanky, flitting through his family’s Italian summer home with a Gene Kelly confidence that belies his teenage insecurity. Other times he’s awkward and animalistic, lost in his newfound bodily urges as he hovers on all fours, breathing in the musk from his new beloved’s dirty underwear, wrapped askew on his head as he arches his back and humps the heavy air. 

It all builds to a heart-destroying four-minute close-up that displays the full range of Chalamet’s talent, and left such a bittersweet taste in peoples’ mouths that it made the peach scene feel like a distant memory. “Call Me by Your Name” ends with Elio crying into a lit chimney, a hot mess of feelings passing over his still-boyish face. “I have loved you for the last time,” sings Sufjan Stevens over the soundtrack, but the image echoes another lyric from earlier: “Oh, to see without my eyes.” That poetic missive is as apt a metaphor as any for the abundant gifts that Chalamet gave to the world audience with this film. He left it all on the field. Or, in this case, threw it all into the fire.—JD

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Viola Davis (“Fences”)

Viola Davis has long-captivated audiences with her portrayals of strong and complex women, but she has a special history with the role of Rose Maxon. She first played the loving but neglected matriarch of August Wilson’s “Fences” in the show’s 2010 revival, and knew Rose inside out before Denzel Washington invited her to revisit the character on screen. Needless to say, it was hardly a surprise to see that Davis delivered a performance that felt as though it had been lived in for decades, and was shouted over a lifetime of being silenced. 

She’s a stoic and reliable presence in most scenes, and absolutely dominant when she needs to be. Beyond convincing — and unafraid to let things get a little messy if that’s what the moment calls for — Davis allows Rose to hold her own against her mercurial and domineering husband, Troy (Denzel Washington). Davis understands the dutiful supplication required for this woman to satisfy her husband’s definition of a wife, but at the same time she draws a clear line in the sand, and finds a newfound strength in herself when Troy dares to cross it. It’s a wrenching transformation to watch, and one that Davis turns into the central crux of the movie by sheer force of will. She won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her trouble, but her Rose Maxon was a true lead if ever there was one.—TO 

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Payman Maadi (“A Separation”)

On paper, Nader might seem condemned to being a one-dimensional character — a man incapable of seeing his wife’s point-of-view, or understanding her need to raise their young daughter outside of their native Iran. But actor Payman Maadi shreds any such basic assumptions, his performance in Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation” adding any number of wrinkles (not all of them sympathetic) to the plight of a husband trying to hold onto his family in an unabashedly patriarchal society. While Nader defaults to self-righteousness after his wife demands that he abandon his Alzheimer’s-ridden father, Maadi shades the character’s stubbornness with layers of pained love that he’s never been taught how to express.

Farhadi’s script deprives Nader the comfort of “being right,” and surgically forces him towards a kind of moral ambiguity that men in his position have seldom had to sort through. It’s in these strained moments that Maadi’s performance allows us to see the cognitive dissonance that’s driving his character’s actions. The more that circumstances spiral out of Nader’s control, the more that Maadi grips on to the serrated edges of his role; the harder it gets to relocate the story’s moral center, the easier it is to appreciate the urgency with which Maadi is trying to find it for the first time. To this day, no actor has been a better vessel for the tough-minded humanism that brings all Farhadi’s work to fruition.—CO

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Leila Hatami (“A Separation”)

No actor, that is, with the possible exception of Maadi’s co-star, Leila Hatami.

Asghar Farhadi’s Iranian tale of feuding parents in the midst of a divorce and the impact on their child may have won the director a well-deserved Oscar, but Leila Hatami deserved one, too. She plays a woman keen on escaping the country’s oppressive laws by fleeing elsewhere, and when her husband won’t budge, she decides to move on anyway. The courts stand in her way — but that’s just the start of their problems, as a showdown with hired help takes a grim turn that complicates the family’s conundrums on a whole new level.

Hatami gives the movie a commanding center as a determined woman keen on taking control of her surroundings even as they slowly close in on her. She exudes desperation but never takes it to histrionic extremes; much about the success of the performance extends from frustrated glances and baffled reactions as the court and other accusers continue to heap discomfort on her life. However, her resilience adds a transcendent dimension to the role on par with Farhadi’s nuanced script. She’s the key engine in the movie’s rage against the system.—EK

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Mya Taylor (“Tangerine”)

There’s nothing more exciting than a star-making turn from a previously unknown talent, and Mya Taylor’s Cinderella story is damn near as perfect as it gets. Grounded in raw naturalism and brimming with easy charm, Taylor’s performance is the beating heart of Sean Baker’s groundbreaking iPhone film, an exuberantly tender day-in-the-life tale about trans gal pals working the Los Angeles strip. 

Alexandra is the film’s protagonist, but it’s the chemistry between Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez — roommates long before filming began — that makes “Tangerine” really crackle. As the “straight” person of the duo, Taylor has the harder job, as Rodriguez scores most of the major laughs. But Taylor is more than up to the task of supporting her explosive co-star, and it’s in the more tender scenes between Alexandra and kindhearted regular Razmik (Karren Karagulian), where her heart comes through and she really shines. 

Taylor won both an Independent Spirit and Gotham Award for her work in the film, making her the first openly transgender actress to receive either honor. Her embrace from the industry represented a turning point for proponents of trans casting, ushering in one of the decade’s most positive trends. More than anything, the heart and soul that she brought to the role — the lived experience that Baker was smart enough to let flow freely — was the driving force behind a movie that truly felt like it changed things, both with the camera and in front of it.—JD

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Tiffany Haddish (“Girls Trip”)

Eagle-eyed comedy buffs already knew that standup-comedian-turned-actress Tiffany Haddish was one to watch by the time she appeared in Malcolm D. Lee’s hit as the charmingly foul-mouthed Dina — she had, after all, already turned in memorable work in films like “Keanu” and series like “The Carmichael Show” and “Real Husbands of Hollywood” — but familiarity with her oeuvre wasn’t necessary to recognize a supernova in progress. As the least-famous fourth lead in a film that stars the royal likes of Queen Latifah, Regina Hall, and Jada Pinkett Smith, Haddish exploded off the screen as a character unto herself, while also allowing the rest of the film’s stars to truly shine by her side; here was someone best-known for talking to Jimmy Kimmel about about Groupons, and suddenly it was like she was the one giving the rest of the cast permission to be funny.

It’s not just that Haddish is the best thing in an uproarious, loving film, it’s that she is the best thing without making anyone or anything else feel lesser. Her brassy, bruising, foul-mouthed Dina is the main attraction from the start, boldly (and sometimes inadvisably) shrugging off her job to go on a much-needed trip with her best gal pals. At over two hours, Lee’s film is heavy with plot, subplot, and all manner of unnecessary fluff, but Haddish is always on hand to sprinkle in a little spice, a wild joke, a well-placed punch, and/or a warm dose of genuine affection. Her delivery of the word “bootyhole” is a work of art unto itself, and the kind of sui generis comedy gold that elevated her performance into the awards season scrum. The Oscars may not have recognized her talent, but Paul Thomas Anderson sure did.—KE

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Tim Heidecker (“The Comedy”)

Revisiting “The Comedy” eight years later, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the world might look radically different right now if the movie had grossed more than $41,000 in theaters. A scabrous, borderline sociopathic condemnation of an increasingly online world that was just starting to hide behind a shield of irony and entitlement, Rick Alverson’s grim masterpiece feels like the most nihilistic character study that Sofia Coppola never made; it’s a damning portrait of an aging hipster who will laugh at anything and anyone as long as it means that he’s not the butt of the joke. 

Alverson couldn’t have found a more perfect choice for the film’s lead role — an aging Brooklyn hipster who’s set to inherit a small fortune once his comatose dad finally kicks the bucket — than Tim Heidecker, whose transgressive comic persona has always deflected outwards, and destabilized people into laughing at themselves. Whether verbally abusing a cab driver, hitting on a girl by championing Hitler, or playing a drunken game of wiffleball as “The Disintegration Loops” drone over a city that has taught itself not to see its own scars, Heidecker’s semi-improvised performance is the Platonic ideal of white privilege. It’s the luxury of not caring, and the arrogance of assuming that you don’t need to connect with other people in order to be at peace with yourself. In a decade where everyone was desperate to see themselves represented on screen, Heidecker’s merciless performance ensured that no one was safe from being seen clearly.—DE

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Elizabeth Debicki (“The Great Gatsby”)

It’s no secret that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Long Island is a galaxy of poseurs, social climbers, and general ne’er-do-wells. For all their exorbitant wealth, the heroes of “The Great Gatsby” never quite step out from behind their materialism, seductiveness, and vulgar machismo. The combination makes for a pretty decent book, but every experiment needs a control group. Enter Jordan Baker, the most natural and well-adjusted person in East Egg and a highlight of Baz Luhrmanm’s exuberant film adaptation. Elizabeth Debicki, then virtually unknown, slid into a hot mess of bonafide movie stars and elevated what could have been a functional side character into an icily clever slice of Jazz Age femininity. Her Jordan Baker knows what she wants and — unlike certain characters — what she doesn’t. She glides through society’s upper crust with a subdued confidence existing at the intersection of wealth, beauty, and intelligence. More than anyone else, she belongs in this world, and she knows it. The most frightening person Nick had ever seen, sure, but impossible to ignore. 

To command attention against the backdrop of Luhrman’s extravagant parties is no small feat, but Debicki never fails to call our eye. Her droll running commentary shows a woman who understands her world without taking it too seriously. And while the cleverness comes courtesy of Mr. Fitzgerald, the stout poise and piercing gaze is all Debicki’s. Jordan’s bobbed hair, crackling wit, and love of speed once made her something of a prototype, a new woman for a new century. Elizabeth Debicki picked up those pieces and crafted a silver screen icon, deservedly launching a major career of her own in the process.—CZ

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Yalitza Aparicio (“Roma”)

Another unbelievable fairytale story along the lines of Mya Taylor’s breakout performance in “Tangerine,” Yalitza Aparicio’s overnight transformation from aspiring pre-school teacher to Oscar-nominated actress elevated the unknown star from total obscurity to worldwide fame, and made her an icon for indigenous Mexicans. Aparacio, the first indigenous woman to grace the cover of Vogue and be recognized by the Academy, shouldered the spotlight with grace — the same grace that she brought to her performance as Cleo, a domestic working living with (almost for) a wealthy family in Mexico City’s Rom neighborhood. 

Cleo is both an everywoman and indelibly herself, and Aparicio brings such depth to her daily routines that the character swells full of desire and strife, even as the film foregrounds the family’s needs over her own. Her labor is everywhere; whether just offscreen in the opening shot as sudsy water rushes over the stone floors of the family’s dogshit-covered driveway, or all the way through to her daring charge into risky waters to rescue the children from drowning in the film’s final scene. The narrative of “Roma” may not always privilege Cleo, as the character is often presented as a steady moral center, but Aparacio is able to do that while also showing us an entire life behind her eyes — a life hidden just below the surface, but one as rich with hopes and dreams as that of anyone else. The view through those eyes — which emanate a truthfulness that most actors train for years to achieve — is clear as day.—JD

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Tom Cruise (“Mission: Impossible — Fallout”)

For almost four decades now, these have been Cruise’s two dominant modes: Larger than life and/or bursting at the seams. And while films like “Jerry Maguire” and “Vanilla Sky” forced him to plant one foot on either side of the fence, that’s a hard stance to maintain for a man who moves at a full sprint. After the embarrassment of “The Mummy” and the muted response to “American Made,” it seemed as though Cruise would be forced to make a hard decision in order to weather the storm of the post-star Hollywood landscape: Go even bigger, or embrace the arduous transition into dramatic acting.

Naturally, he decided to do both. Because that’s the thing about Tom Cruise: He may believe that Xenu is real, and that “Battlefield Earth” was a historical epic, but the one thing he doesn’t believe in is compromise. And so, in hindsight, perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised that his magnificent (and utterly inimitable) performance in “Fallout” was nothing less than a do-or-die attempt to fuse together his two disparate modes. He broke down a character he’s played for 22 years and rebuilt him over the course of an epic summer blockbuster that’s explicitly about one man’s struggle to choose between saving his friends and saving the world. The resulting film immortalized Cruise as one of the greatest action stars of this (or any) era, while also cementing his genius for emotional expression. Not only is “Fallout” his best work since the late ’90s, it should have been reason enough for the Academy to finally reconsider its long-standing blindness to action movie acting. Weather the storm? Tom Cruise is the storm.—DE

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Toni Collette (“Hereditary”)

Toni Collette was the victim of the greatest Oscar snub in recent history, as the Academy chose to ignore her ingeniously unhinged performance in one of the decade’s best genre films; a performance that almost single-handedly elevated horror into the awards conversation for the first time in forever. If Collette just wanted a trophy, she could probably win one in her sleep; what she had to do in “Hereditary” was so much harder than what typical awards bait requires from actors. And to think, the Academy could have nominated someone for playing a woman who resents her own son for existing, climbs his bedroom walls like a demonic spider monkey, and then enjoys a nice trip to the attic. Hell, she deserved a nomination for the dinner scene alone.

Anyone familiar with Collette’s work over the years knows that she has one of the most robust toolboxes of any actor working today; she came up as a character actress, and developed killer comic instincts along the way. But she is also able to draw on a deep well of emotion when called for, and “Hereditary” gave her the freedom to use everything she’s got. Most impressive is the control she has over her versatile instrument; the precision with which she can turn on a dime from hollow, grief-stricken zombie to wailing manic terror and then back to cool and collected in the blink of an eye. In one indelibly chilling shot, as the spirit washes over her, she doesn’t even need that blink. It’s a dizzying display of acting prowess from an artist at the top of their game.—JD

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Steven Yeun (“Burning”)

An enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a riddle, Steven Yeun’s Ben is someone you can never quite read. A dashing Gatsby figure who returns to Seoul after many years abroad, Ben is Korean, but at the same time he also seems to come from another world. That ambiguity is central to Yeun’s first Korean-language performance, a compulsively watchable turn that feeds off the star’s intersectional identity. Yeun’s unpolished Korean, which he had never spoken in a film before, was a subtle enhancement to the character, and even non-Korean speakers could hear how it distanced him from the other characters, and made them feel like Ben was privy to a world of secrets they were too provincial to understand. No one is more baffled, threatened, and obsessed by Ben than Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in), a stunted writer who’s so incapable of solving the smoke and mirrors of Ben’s charisma that he’s ultimately driven to violence. 

Yeun’s performance threaded the needle between seduction and sociopathy, standing with one foot on either side of the the line in a way that allowed the actor to openly interrogate his own screen presence. Can he carry a major dramatic role? Is he dazzling enough to seduce a big crowd and convince them all to disbelieve their own assumptions? Can he straddle multiple identities in the way that non-white-men are required to in order for Hollywood to bank on their appeal? The answer to all of these questions (and several more) was a resounding “yes.”—CB

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Lady Gaga (“A Star Is Born”)

The first time Bradley Cooper’s grizzled, drunk, ruined Jackson Maine sets eyes on Lady Gaga’s Ally, she’s obscured underneath an inch of pancake makeup, playing at being Edith Piaf in the middle of a rowdy, wonderful drag bar. Still, he sees her. We’ve already been introduced to a different Ally, scraping by at a bum catering gig, not doing much with her life, but already in possession of such a voice that even one tossed-off line — in a dirty alley, of all places — is enough to prove her imminent greatness. We’ve seen her and we know what’s to come.

The trick, of course, is that Lady Gaga — a global superstar, a musical icon, and the winner of nine Grammys — has to convince everyone that such greatness is indeed imminent, it’s not already present. That Gaga slips so deeply inside her role of Ally, a role that plays on our expectations that we are watching a hugely accomplished singer struggle in the industry, is an astounding feat. There’s no point in Cooper’s film in which Gaga’s authenticity isn’t profound and complete, from the moment she’s first forced out on stage to sing “Shallow” to the closing moments when she willing approaches a very different mic to belt out “I’ll Never Love Again.” Even moments that seem ripe for over-the-top emotions and an amateur approach, like Gaga’s Ally destroying a hallway or sobbing on a couch, are treated with a fine touch. The emotion never wavers, there’s never a false note.—KE

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Daniela Vega (“A Fantastic Woman”)

An autodidact who had little acting experience and was training to be a lyrical soprano when director Sebastián Lelio cast her in the role of his most acclaimed film, Daniela Vega was absolutely brilliant as Marina Vidal, a transgender woman whose world comes falling down when her much older lover drops dead from an aneurysm.

Embodying the pressures faced by trans women to submit to feminine cultural norms, Vega was challenged to navigate her character’s grief in addition to the targeted discrimination she experiences from her late partner’s family. She played the part with the steely resolve of someone who knows that they bring out the worst from certain people, and did a remarkable job of negotiating a heartache that her character is told she’s not entitled to feel. Her soul-baring work saw her become the first transgender person to be a presenter at the Academy Awards — a step in the right direction to be sure, but she deserved to be among the nominees.—TO

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Regina Hall (“Support the Girls”)

Regina Hall, who seems to deliver the performance of a lifetime whenever she steps in front of the camera, saved the best work of her resurgent decade for Andrew Bujalski’s “Support the Girls.” A slice-of-life dramedy about the twilight of an independent Texas breastaurant, the film stars Hall as Lisa, an (almost) infinitely patient manager who reaches the end of her rope during a very long day that forces her to deal with an abusive employer, sexist customers, a kitchen staff with sticky fingers, and a group of vulnerable twentysomething waitresses who she feels inclined to protect at all costs. 

A natural comedienne who came into this movie hot off her blockbuster performance in “Girls Trip,” Hall had no trouble finding the humor in the absurdity of Lisa’s working life. But the wry comic edge on sharpens Hall’s deeply moving take on a working-class woman who’s just trying to maintain a measure of integrity amid the chaos, uncertainty, and constant degradation of trying to get by in an increasingly corporate America. Through Lisa, Hall shines as a strong but uninvincible advocate for women, and a resilient but angry as hell avatar for the 99% in a world that isn’t cutting them any slack. When she screams, we all scream along with her.—TO

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Jesse Eisenberg (“The Social Network”)

So often Hollywood casts and criticizes biopic performances based on an actor’s ability to “nail” the impersonation of a well-known public figure. What’s so refreshing about Eisenberg’s “Social Network” turn is that he’s not “doing” Mark Zuckerberg — and thank goodness for that, because it would make for the most boring movie ever made. The Facebook founder, who is noticeably pained and stunted whenever forced to speak in public, would seem incapable of delivering (or even being a vessel for) the verbal wit that screenwriter Aaron Sorkin invented for Zuckerberg’s silver screen incarnation. 

In Sorkin and director David Fincher’s parable for human interaction in the internet age, Eisenberg shrewdly externalizes the outside-looking-in insecurity of the young Harvard student as he creates the world’s most powerful social media platform. All coiled arrogance and Machiavellian need, Eisenberg wears Zuckerberg’s insecurity on his sleeve, belittling other people until he seems like a giant (if only to himself). And yet we can’t help but root for him, at least a little bit. It’s not only because Eisenberg knows how to act like the smartest guy in the room, but also because he projects enough “hate the player not the game” helplessness to retain plausible deniability. Maybe Zuckerberg is an asshole, and maybe he’s not. But Eisenberg makes one thing clear: His character isn’t trying to be anything else.—CO

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Patricia Arquette (“Boyhood”)

Richard Linklater’s one-of-a-kind experiment with cinematic time is, per its title, tethered to one kid’s coming of age. And yet “Boyhood” — like many actual boys — is shaped by the people who plays its parents. In order to film this epic story of a Texas family coping with the vicissitudes of life, Linklater’s cast had to remain on call for 12 years of annual shoots. Patricia Arquette, herself a young single mom in her early twenties when production began, was happy to jump on board as soon as Linklater pitched her on his wild idea. Little did she know that she’d spend more than a decade living a kind of double life, perennially dipping a toe into an alternate reality where she would become Olivia Evans, a divorcee struggling to balance her own needs with those of her son (Ellar Coltrane), her daughter (Lorelei Linklater), and even those of her footloose ex-husband (Ethan Hawke). While Coltrane is the engine that pushes the film’s story along, it’s Arquette who holds it together even when Olivia is falling apart, and provides the expansive project with its bruised and loving soul. She takes to the character like breathing, and earns our sympathy to the point where we can’t bear to say goodbye. “I thought there would be more,” Olivia sighs in her crushing final scene, but Arquette gave this movie absolutely everything.

That exposed nerve of a scene helped earn Arquette the Supporting Actress Oscar, but that prestigious trophy wasn’t the most important thing she took away from “Boyhood.” “I’m gonna look back on this experience all of my life,” she told IndieWire. “And when I’m an old gal in my dying days I’m gonna be like, I was part of a really important work of art.”—AT

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Hugh Grant (“Paddington 2”)

As washed-up actor Phoenix Buchanan — an aging legend of the West End reduced to hosting carnivals and starring in dog-food commercials — Hugh Grant not only gets the best role of his career, he gets several of them. When Phoenix discovers that a bear named Paddington has found a pop-up book that doubles as a treasure map, he busts out his old costumes, dons a number of ridiculous disguises (a knight, a hobo, a very attractive nun), and puts on the performance of a lifetime in order to steal the book and frame Paddington for the crime; it’s like watching all six of his characters from “Cloud Atlas” squeezed into a single preening narcissist with a dastardly plan.

The villainous part does a brilliant job of playing up Grant’s slightly misanthropic reputation, and the former rom-com star (himself a few years removed from his heyday) seems to be having the time of his life. He relishes in every ridiculous moment, radiating the self-obsessed desperation of a faded star who’s desperate to return to the limelight. Of course, all Phoenix really wants is a captive audience, and the mid-credits scene in which he finally gets one makes for an absolute showstopper.—DE

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Denis Lavant (“Holy Motors”)

There are some actors with the uncanny ability of portraying many different characters throughout their career. With “Holy Motors,” Denis Lavant stuffs that skill into a single beguiling package, as jaded and enigmatic Oscar, who roams around town in a limousine acting in a range of scenarios for some unseen spectators (it might be us). As Oscar shifts from elderly beggar to motion-capture artist to the deranged street urchin known as Monsieur Merde, the mysterious figure — who operates at the whims of a shadowy organization — has grown forlorn and exhausted by his unusual gig. Anyone who has played many roles throughout an eclectic life can relate.

Lavant is one of the great physical actors, and director Leos Carax crafted this singular role for the him in a way that takes full advantage of Lavant’s artistic powers. While some of the more bizarre and provocative sequences have the freewheeling quality of avant-garde theater, Lavant often gets to show his tender side, as in one gig where he plays an elderly man on his death bed. But the movie’s pièce de résistance is an accordion interlude in which the actor leads a charged ensemble through shadowy tunnels as they rock out with all of the emotions no words can describe, and the actor brings such startling intensity to the moment that he practically reinvents the art of film acting before your eyes.—EK

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Kirsten Dunst (“Melancholia”)

Playing a woman whose marriage triggers an interstellar cataclysm, Kirsten Dunst delivered one of the best performances of her career in Lars von Trier’s operatic meditation on how depression can feel like the end of the world. As she traipses through the first half of the film in a wedding dress and a growing daze, her opaque expression belies an inner torment as epic and tumultuous as the explosions that open the film. But even as von Trier blares Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” over breathtakingly cinematic visions of oblivion, Dunst refuses to become part of the wallpaper. From the nightmare-like prologue to the apocalyptic finale, Dunst’s melancholy remains more of a spectacle than even the sight of two planets smashing into each other.

Dunst dials up the mania methodically throughout the film’s 136 minutes, sprinkling hints of panic (and grim acceptance) along the way in a vacant flash, a pensive stare, or a witheringly dark one-liner about how the world might be better off without us. Transforming from bubbly and glowing at the film’s opening nuptials, to manic and self-destructive by the bitter end, Dunst holds so many people inside of her it’s amazing she can keep track.—JD

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Eva Melander (“Border”)

In “Border,” Swedish actress Eva Melander buries herself in the role of Tina, an ostracized woman who feels out of place in society because of her otherworldly appearance. The peculiar creature she plays in director Ali Abbasi’s gothic fantasy suggests the unholy offspring of Quasimodo and a Tolkien Orc. But that’s just the starting point for an entrancing and unexpected love story when Tina — who works a lonely job in border security, using her rat-like sense of smell — wakes up to her superpowers when she meets a fawning man (Eero Milonoff) who looks just like her.

This alluring fairytale owes much to its leading lady’s remarkable physical transformation, but audiences gripped by “Border” would never recognize its star on the street. While “Border” justifiably scored an Oscar nomination for its makeup and hairstyling, Melander deserved just as much attention for this striking physical transformation in a movie that takes its thematic cues from her performance. Blending body horror with magical realism, “Border” digs inside the process through which Tina comes to terms with her unique gender identity, resulting in one of the most audacious and unexpected queer films of the decade. But its ambitious ideas would collapse into B-movie tropes without Melander’s vivid emotional embodiment of what it means to truly come to terms with yourself no matter what society says — and how it can lead to better possibilities.—EK

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Agyness Deyn (“Sunset Song”)

When Manchester-born model Agyness Deyn started pivoting towards movies, the film industry predictably put a low ceiling on her potential. Before she was cast as the heart and soul of Terence Davies’ career-long passion project, Deyn’s cinematic legacy consisted of playing a glorified lust object in “Clash of the Titans.” Seeing her in “Sunset Song,” in which she plays the role of an early 20th century Scottish farm girl named Chris with such earth-shattering depth that it feels like her body is a natural outgrowth of her family’s land, it was clear that Hollywood had fucked up in a big way — they’d let one of the most gifted actresses of her generation slip through its fingers and find her way towards more substantial fare, and now the studios would have to compete for her services against every English-speaking auteur in the world (we can’t speak for Deyn’s future plans, but she sure was magnificent in Alex Ross Perry’s “Her Smell”). 

Davies certainly recognized what Deyn could do. His films are rooted in memory and swaddled by nostalgia, suspended between an acutely remembered past and the unbearably painful present that it leaves in its wake. With Chris, he found a character who feels that dislocation in her bones, and with Deyn he found an actress who could move between the years — between the men who love Chris, and the violence that rots them from the inside out — with the grace and endurance of the seasons themselves. Deyn’s performance is steady and self-possessed in a way that becomes a spectacle unto itself. You can’t help but awe at how she weathers the changes and stands her ground. And you certainly can’t help but accept it.—DE

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James Franco (“Spring Breakers”)

“Look at my shit!” James Franco only needed those four words to turn Alien from Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers” into one of the century’s most quotable movie characters, and the perfect Mad Hatter for a 21st century “Alice in Wonderland.” Sporting braided hair, oversized sunglasses, and silver grills, Franco effortlessly transformed into a slithery drug dealer who seduces four female college students down a rabbit hole of hard drugs and partying. The performance started with an imitation of the rapper Riff Riff — that’s where Franco got the boozy drawl and the cornrows and the trap house charm — but Franco elevated Alien beyond mere caricature by finding just the right balance between love and fear.

He’s silly and serious, stupid and beautiful, degenerate and also living the American dream. Franco’s Alien is larger than life, but at the same time a believable expression of it, and his unmoored insanity has the perverse effect of making Korine’s film world feel palpably dangerous.—ZS

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Tilda Swinton (“Only Lovers Left Alive”)

Eve is old, but she’s not that old. And yet, watching Swinton’s earthy and omnisciently cool performance as an ancient vampire who’s outlived everything except the love she has for her husband, it’s so tempting to think of her as the first woman there ever was. Perhaps — to channel Reynolds Woodcock for a moment — the only woman there has ever been. Eve has seen it all and done it all. She’s good friends with Christopher Marlowe, but also familiar with Jack White. Her knowledge of the universe is only eclipsed by her enduring curiosity for its mysteries.

Eve is pretty benign for a bloodsucker, and yet she vibrates with the primal hunger that writer-director Jim Jarmusch has always seen in Swinton (“It’s her physicality, and the way that she moves,” he once said. “Like a vestigial predator; like a wolf”). The beating heart of a film that takes place in a paralytic stupor — “laconic” is the word that many critics used to describe “Only Lovers Left Alive” — Eve allowed Swinton to literalize her unparalleled ability to be exposed and invincible all at once. Even when her character is slurping a blood popsicle or dumping a body in a vat of acid, Swinton’s performance is so human that you can feel every twinge of desire, and so natural that you almost don’t see it happening; if not for the fangs and Eve’s frazzled shock of white hair, it’d be tempting to think she was just playing herself.—DE

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Natalie Portman (“Jackie”)

Often, performances are lauded because of their seeming transparency, the melding between performer and role, the way an actor can slip inside a part with apparent ease. And then there are the performances that so obviously involve work — and the ones that are all the better for the visible strain they put on their actors. Nothing about Jackie Kennedy’s life was easy during the period of time Pablo Larrain’s film covers, and star Natalie Portman reflects that stress and pain in her own performance, pulling from the depths of herself to find the First Lady. 

Brittle, bruising, and righteously pissed off, Portman’s Jackie is a portrait of a woman not just on edge, but in full free fall. She’s grasping for the only things she has: keeping her family’s legacy intact, reckoning with her faith, and understanding how this will always be the biggest part of her story. Portman jangles and crackles as Jackie, all big (and faithful!) accent, chain-smoking terror, and a flashing eyes. She doesn’t melt into Jackie so much as the two women melt into each other, offering a thrilling depiction of historical truth and modern fame set against one of the worst times in American history, Jackie holding it all together. So too is Portman, and that’s real transcendence.—KE

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Daniel Kaluuya (“Get Out”)

It’s all in the eyes for Daniel Kaluuya. The “Get Out” star can communicate a hyper-legible but perfectly shaded panorama of emotions with a single look, and director Jordan Peele took full advantage of that fact in his paradigm-shifting debut, as so many of the key moments in the film cut to close-ups of Kaluuya as his pupils zing across their sockets or a single tear rolls down his cheeks. Crucially, Kaluuya helped Peele split the difference between comedy and horror; he was able to bring levity to the funnier and more broadly satirical first half, while also conveying the mounting sense of terror that his character — Chris — begins to feel about being the only self-aware black man in a house full of rich white body-snatchers. 

For much of the movie, Kaluuya is quite funny as our jovial (if somewhat oblivious) guide through the sinister and wacky world that Peele has invented; all he needs is a split-second look to convey mordantly hilarious skepticism with a touch of panic, and he’s brilliant at conveying the cool façade of practiced indifference in the face of a “joke” that’s really a micro-aggression and/or an obnoxious linguistic appropriation. By the time we arrive at the film’s most iconic scene, where Catherine Keener’s Missy hypnotizes Chris with her swirling teacup act, Kaluuya’s skills are out in full force. In a decade where mainstream cinema was bent towards spectacle, few things were more arresting than a simple shot of Kaluuya’s eyes frozen in panic as tears stream down his otherwise eerily placid face; it’s an acting masterclass that confirmed Kaluuya as one of the most talented craftsmen of his generation.—JD

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Helena Howard (“Madeline’s Madeline”)

Helena Howard’s performance is impossible to extricate from “Madeline’s Madeline.” Without diminishing the virtuosity of Josephine Decker’s form-busting masterpiece, or the genius of her many gifted collaborators (Ashley Connor forever), it’s fair to say that Helena Howard’s performance essentially is “Madeline’s Madeline.” This movie wouldn’t exist without the elastic raw nerve of a teenage girl at its center, a natural mega-talent who made Decker cry at a high school acting competition, and left such an impression that the filmmaker was compelled to make her the subject of her next feature.

“She said that she wanted to make a movie centered around me,” Howard told IndieWire, but with thematic elements that are based on truths that we experience routinely.” Those truths involved the perils of artistic collaboration and the politics of telling someone else’s story, perils and politics that “Madeline’s Madeline” twists into a kaleidoscopic house of mirrors that Howard’s performance holds together even while her character is falling apart. Whether pretending to be (or is it becoming?) a cat, experiencing her first kiss, or turning her strained relationship with her mother into the stuff of a painfully cathartic acting exercise, Howard embodies Madelne in a way that makes every feral moment feel self-reflexive and emotionally present at the same time. It’s the work of a preternaturally gifted performer who has the rare ability to be herself and someone else at the same time, and in a way that strengthens them both. Few things make us more excited about the next decade of movies than the role(s) that Howard might play in them.—DE

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Leonardo DiCaprio (“The Wolf of Wall Street”)

It should be embarrassing to the Academy that Leo had to suffer in the frozen tundra and sleep inside a dead bear — or whatever other woe-is-me stories were spun for the benefit of the Oscar campaign for “The Revenant” – to finally get his shot at the Best Actor statue, when in fact his real tour de force performance came a year earlier in the form of coked up stock broker Jordan Belfort. Channelling a rapid-fire James Cagney, DiCaprio plays the hard-driving, slick-talking, pill-popping, working class Wall Street huckster with an endless hunger for more. 

The actor has always been Scorsese’s perfect conduit for knife’s edge nervous energy, but his physicality shoots into another dimension in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” It’s only because of DiCaprio’s grounded, but over-the-top performance that Scorsese is able to see-saw the comedy of excess back and forth between deliriousness and damnation. The famous Lemmon Quaaludes scene not only shows off DiCaprio’s full-body virtuosity, but also his singular willingness to let Scorsese push the film through absurdity and reach the bottomless pit of desperation that’s just on the other side. It’s hard to imagine any other actor of his generation delivering such a finely tuned, safe-at-any speed performance about being so out-of-control.–CO

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Charlize Theron (“Mad Max: Fury Road”)

Long before Hollywood went all-in on the concept of the “strong female character” there were, well, plenty of strong female characters populating every era of the industry. Still, for those short-sighted enough to not remember back any further than the last two decades, Charlize Theron has been an incredible standard-bearer for the idea that female stars can be badasses too. Theron’s reign as a tough chick with emotional layers to spare has taken her through a variety of roles, from “Monster” to “North Country,” “Atomic Blonde” to “Dark Places,” even the queasy one-two punch of “Young Adult” and “Tully.” Being “strong” doesn’t necessarily mean being “good,” something Theron has never struggled with and even seems to enjoy toying with. And so there’s Imperator Furiosa, the post-apocalyptic descendant of “Monster” inspiration Aileen Wuornos: an (understandably) man-hating woman with her own (literal) drive and hard-earned sense of justice.

George Miller’s glorious return to the desolation of his other great franchise (the other one being, of course, “Babe”) ably combines classic brooding man action (Tom Hardy is an unexpected and totally natural fit for the eponymous role) with a flexing girl power edge that doesn’t seem at all pandering. Theron’s Imperator Furiosa is a badass, a strong woman, and a character to be reckoned with the moment we meet her — sometimes, all those cliches actually do amount to something fresh — who soon enough offers up a hell of a twist; she doesn’t work for these wretched, abusive men, she’s got her own plan.

Furiousa is the real hero of the story, armed with not only intelligence and grit, but serious skill behind the wheel of a war rig. Initially unyielding in her toughness, steady revelations finally let Max — and the audience — into her deep emotional reserves, with Theron marrying Furiousa’s toughness and smarts with an unshakable sense of nostalgia and destiny. It may not turn out the way she and her kickass accomplices had hoped, but Miller ends his return to form with something even more exciting: the promise of a better future, led by the only person willing and able to make it happen.—KE

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Oscar Isaac (“Inside Llewyn Davis”)

A remarkable breakout that only took Isaac nearly two decades of off-and-on work — including roles as diverse as playing the romantic lead in Madonna’s maligned “W.E.” and Joseph in Catherine Hardwicke’s mostly forgotten “The Nativity Story” — the actor easily slipped into the role of the down-and-out title character. Loosely based on the life of hangdog folk singer Dave Van Ronk, Isaac is still able to make the character entirely his own (that Van Ronk is still mostly unknown to anyone who isn’t an American folk jam fan is both helpful and reflective of the honesty of the story at hand).

On the outs when we meet him, not necessarily on the rise when we leave him, Isaac’s Llewyn Davis nestles prickly charm into a hard exterior, a bruiser who has had to fight for the little he’s gotten so far — even if his literal fighting skills are lacking. Underneath, of course, there’s deep pain, punctuated by grief for the things and people he’s lost along the way (and the ones who are still slipping out of his hands). All that opens right up when Llewyn starts singing, pouring his pain into his art, just as Isaac does here, his entire body and mood and face shifting with the release. As soon as it starts, it’s over again, Llewyn bundling back up for the cold, keeping everything close and locked in and away from prying eyes. We, of course, have already seen the truth.—KE

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Ralph Fiennes (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”)

It can’t be a coincidence that veterans of the two most prominent Holocaust dramas of the last 30 years – Ralph Fiennes and Adrien Brody – both ended up in Wes Anderson’s heartbreaking paean to inter-war Europe. Brody, who’d played a survivor of Nazi tyranny in “The Pianist,” became a leader of the fascist Zig-Zag party in “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” And Fiennes, who in the words of the late David Carr had “played like the scariest Nazi ever” in “Schindler’s List,” changed sides to embody the fastidiously humane heart of Anderson’s arch rebuke to the brute ugliness of tyranny.

Monsieur Gustave H., Fiennes’ meticulous concierge, is found at the center of Anderson’s nested plot — he’s the soul of both “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and the fictional hotel from which the movie takes its name, and the one key element that remains after all the other layers have been pulled apart. Monsieur Gustave is a tragic character, but the genius of Fiennes’ performance is in how it prohibits you from making a fuss about that. He’s one of cinema’s great portraits in dignity, his natural hospitality and dedication to good service an indelible reminder that what happens to you is less important than how you respond to it. Monsieur Gustave certainly believes manners make the man, and through Fiennes’ perfectly calibrated performance those manners make this movie.—CB

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Lupita Nyong’o (“12 Years a Slave”)

Portraying a brutally abused plantation slave in Steve McQueen’s harrowing Solomon Northup biopic, Lupita Nyong’o won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2014 by delivering the kind of earth-shaking performance that made the whole world feel as though they had discovered her at once. Nyong’o landed the role of Patsey right after graduating from the Yale School of Drama, and she launched into the part with the scarring abandon of someone with nothing to lose — not yet, anyway.

Enduring undiluted depictions of rape, lashings, and the deepest possible despair at the hands of Patsey’s sadistic owner (Michael Fassbender), Nyong’o committed her entire body and being to the hardships of a role that must have been impossible to shake off at the end of each shot; she absorbed the pain on a virtually Bressonian level, refusing to soften or sentimentalize the brutal truths of America’s darkest chapter. Her anguish pumps directly from the heart of this movie, and Northup’s inability to save her from that suffering casts an infinitely long shadow over his own happy ending.—TO 

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Sandra Hüller (“Toni Erdmann”)

It’s not always rewarding to play the straight-laced character to the pie-throwing, bigger-than-life prankster, especially when that character falls dangerously close to the sexist cliche of the lifeless career-driven woman. Yet Sandra Hüller helped “Toni Erdmann” writer-director Maren Ade flip the script with Ines, an outsourcing consultant in Bucharest, who has become her lonely father’s reclamation project. In navigating her sexist work environment and her father’s disruptive presence, Ines’ journey isn’t the simple “seeing the light” arc that lesser comedies have conditioned you to expect — she plays the boys’ game at work, explores sexual power dynamics in private, and sees the pain behind her father’s antics.

At the heart of this is the complexity Hüller brings to a character whose comedic rigidity accommodates co-star Peter Simonischek’s absurdity, but who is never frigid, nor predictable. It’s a performance that anchors the comedy in a place of acute desperation, and one that Ade builds off of as she lays the groundwork for two incredible, over-the-top, transformative climatic scenes that are as emotionally earned as they are absolutely hysterical.–CO

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Saoirse Ronan (“Lady Bird”)

It’s easy to understand why filmmaker Greta Gerwig would alight on Saorise Ronan as both her muse and surrogate for her breakout coming-of-age feature, loosely based on her own youth in Sacramento: she’s utterly charming. And she’s also proven, over the course of a 15-year career (what are you doing with your time?), that being charming in no way dictates her work or her choices (see: “Atonement,” “Hanna,” “On Chesil Beach”). 

That’s a perfect combination, that pull between being charming and insolent, for Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, a self-possessed teenager who manages to zing between being, well, charming and insolent from minute to minute. Ronan’s great trick is making Lady Bird — “I gave it to myself. It’s given to me by me” — thoughtful and empathetic and funny and wise even when she’s messing up every inch of her life. Of course she’s messing up! She’s a teen! But she’s also got a spark of something special beating within her, so even when she’s being terrible to her family or picking the worst possible romantic partners or slagging off her dedicated best friend, you know there is goodness — even greatness! — within her.—KE

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Mahershala Ali (“Moonlight”)

In 2016, “Moonlight” introduced moviegoers to a Bay Area college basketball player who earned a Masters in acting from NYU named Mahershalalhashbaz Ali. Mahershala for short. Some clued-in viewers might have seen him before, but after that year — in which Ali also appeared in “House of Cards” and “Hidden Figures” — he was impossible to miss. But it was the time he spent with Barry Jenkins over the course of three successive Miami weekends that changed his life forever. And possibly yours as well.

A surprisingly tender drug dealer who takes the movie’s fatherless young protagonist under his wing, Juan was a difficult character for Ali to play, as the actor took the role into his heart and lived with Juan’s pain under his skin. It was a process that required Ali to reach into his own past. “When I read Barry’s script, you see somebody who’s a reflection of people you actually know,” Ali told IndieWire. “It was refreshing and important, because now I felt I could give something to this character. This person is a real reflection of someone I know from these neighborhoods coming up.”

But Ali’s performance is ultimately memorable for its softness, and the hope that clings to it like stray bits of lint. Little (Alex Hibbert) lives with his drug-addicted mother (Naomie Harris) and is bullied at school for being “different,” but Juan and his wife (Janelle Monaé) take the boy into their home, and offer him shelter. Juan becomes a much-needed role model of sorts, teaches Little about the world, and — in one particularly beautiful scene — teaches him how to swim. He takes a boy who feels small and makes him feel special. The echoes of that relationship are felt for decades to come, but they only resonate because of how the grace and love that Ali is able to suffuse into them. Little goes on to shed his identity for several others, and grows into the body of a much larger man, but Ali ensures that he can always feel Juan’s hands on his back, holding him up in the water.—AT

HUPPERTELLE

Isabelle Huppert (“Elle”) 

When Paul Verhoeven wanted to make a psychosexual revenge thriller about a woman who pursues a relationship with her rapist, no American actress was willing to play her. It was, almost inevitably, a job for Isabelle Huppert. The director was so eager to work with her that he turned “Elle” into a French movie and learned his star’s native tongue. Huppert’s performance made the effort worth Verhoeven’s while.

It’s hard to imagine anyone else being able to pull off the role of hard-driving video game entrepreneur Michele: She’s wicked, flawed, impish, fierce, frightened, flirty, elegant, turned on, angry, loving, brusque, imperious, and determined, sometimes all in the span of a single scene. She will not be a victim of rape. She will not let her violent assailant get the better of her. She will keep going forward, strong and self-reliant — she’ll buy pepper spray and learn how to shoot a gun. She won’t let rape make her hate sex, or deny her joie de vivre. 

“Elle” is able to get away with that because it’s liberated from the confines of genre, and it’s limited from the confines of genre because of Huppert, who adds comedy to the mystery and tragedy to the tension. Huppert, as per usual, never worries about making the audience uncomfortable, or what a viewer will think of her character. Michele often behaves badly, at least by straight-laced moral standards, but never in a way that makes us not want to root for her. Of course, what we enjoy about Huppert is that she’s multi-faceted and complex, easy to read but impossible to predict. Verhoeven and Huppert wanted it that way — they left room for the audience to get lost in the character, and in doing so found a way to earn Huppert her long-overdue first Best Actress nomination.—AT

DAYLEWISLINCOLN

Daniel Day-Lewis (“Lincoln”)

Here is a list of things the lauded British actor reportedly did during his predictably Method-esque tenure as the beloved American president: texted co-star Sally Field in character as Honest Abe, requested that no one on set tote around modern technology (which confuses the texting question), didn’t break character for three months (even with director Steven Spielberg), never stopped using Lincoln’s voice during filming (even during breaks), grew a beard (easy), and didn’t speak to anyone with a British accent (lest he “lose” his adopted Lincoln voice). Here is how that all turned out: he won his third Best Actor Oscar for the role (the only male actor to pick up three wins for leading roles), while handily continuing the mythos of “Daniel Day-Lewis, real immersive guy.”

And, yet, has always been the case with Day-Lewis’ techniques — from building canoes to learning Czech for a role that was actually in English — those seemingly maddening building blocks paid off. To say that a role is Day-Lewis’ best or one of his performances is the richest is to be right for perhaps a moment, at least until the “retired” actor emerges for one more crack at this performance thing. Even Day-Lewis once thought the idea of him playing the 16th president was “preposterous,” which means he’s not only incredibly talented as an actor, but suffused with the kind of self-awareness not typically ascribed to those in the profession. 

So, yes, Day-Lewis went deep into the role — as he has always done — to craft Lincoln from the inside out, from his choice of voice (unexpected) to a deep feeling emotionality when it comes to his views on the government (necessary). When a film about politics can move you to tears, as “Lincoln” does every time Day-Lewis opens his mouth and lets out a (yes, slightly high-pitched) speech, that’s something. That it happens because there’s never any line between actor and subject, performer and role, is not just Day-Lewis’ specific brand of magic, but a true marriage that sets “Lincoln” apart as, yes, his finest work. For now.—KE

CAROLBLANCHETT

Cate Blanchett (“Carol”)

The greatest performance in a career where almost every role feels like a legitimate contender, Cate Blanchett’s take on Carol Aird is a veritable symphony of repressive silence. A regal 1950s housewife whose mutual attraction to a Manhattan shopgirl inspires her to peek back out of the closet at a very inopportune time, Carol is defined by the things that she can’t say. For Blanchett, that wasn’t an obstacle so much as a divine opportunity. The actress put on a master class in the space between words, punctuating the film with perfect gestures, furtive looks, and an entire love language of things that have to remain unspoken; her watchful eyes provided a window behind the mask, negotiating the Carol’s public identity and private desires as lucidly as they navigate a course between the movie’s classic veneer and modern heart. 

On one hand, Blanchett’s Carol is a romantic lead ripped straight from Old Hollywood. She’s glamorous, seductive, and capable of telling a story with every fleeting look. Through her, a simple question — “what do you do on Sundays?” — can land with the weight of a crucible. Through her, the words “I love you” sound more fraught and urgent and even triumphant than they ever have before, onscreen or off. When Carol and Therese are alone, the film plays like an epic celluloid love story, the silver screen treatment that lesbians should have received in 1940. Blanchett’s performance pulls from the best Hollywood traditions, and gives them to a community that was never allowed to enjoy them.

But Carol and Therese are not always alone. There’s an entire world determined to punish them, and Blanchett is acutely aware of it. She never lets us forget that Carol is compelled to spend her life hiding. Every movement is so calculated, each glance masking the concern that all can be lost at a second’s notice. Carol is a woman who can never let her guard down, and Blanchett maintains a level of tension that permeates even the smallest of moments. The same eyes that contained so much love reveal the pain of a woman with everything to lose. Carol’s great tragedy is that the two emotions are so different; Blanchett’s genius is in how she makes them feel not at all contradictory.—CZ

HOFFMANTHEMASTER

Philip Seymour Hoffman (“The Master”)

Every new Philip Seymour Hoffman performance was a cause for celebration, and it surprised no one that the chamelonesque performer’s greatest (and sadly final) collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson delivered on expectations. However, the most exciting outcome of Hoffman’s turn as enigmatic cult leader Lancester Dodd was how unexpected it felt all the way through. Hoffman’s fictionalized riff on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was simultaneously eerie and comforting, loaded with the contradictions of the organized religion in which Joaquin Phoenix’s wayward seaman finds some kind of solace.

Hoffman possessed an uncanny ability to module the emotions of his characters and hint at their interior lives. Lancaster’s a riveting soothsayer from the moment he arrives, coaxing Phoenix’s Freddie Quell through a mesmerizing therapy session that breaks through Freddie’s goofy tendencies to bring to a higher level of consciousness. In the process, Hoffman brings the whole movie with him: “The Master” is all about what it feels like to fall under an alluring spell, only to face a harsh wakeup call when the truth comes rushing in. The actor’s ability to oscillate from inviting patriarch to seething psychopath transforms the story into a kind of cinematic hypnosis. As with most of his roles, Hoffman dug deep to unearth a new kind of film performance. It’s tragic to consider how much more he could have done, but his cinematic achievements in “The Master” will last the ages. —EK