This is my favorite blog of the year. It’s the one where I get to thumb my nose at all the favorites. The Alphas. The class presidents and prom royalty. The more successful siblings. I’d better stop there, lest you read too much into my psychological shortcomings.
So, to put it more succinctly, this is the blog where I recognize all the wonderful movie performances from 2017 that don’t have a whisper of a prayer of getting an Oscar nomination. I am trying to restrict my selections to performances in movies that are actually eligible for an Oscar this year. Thus, few performances in foreign languages will be noted. However, I couldn’t resist tossing in one or two stand-outs. My blog, my rules.
And those rules are simple. Anne Thompson from IndieWire.com does an exhaustive examination of Oscar contenders. She updates the categories throughout the year. It’s a fascinating timeline to gauge how various movies rise and fall. I am using her latest updates for the four acting categories. She named 10 possibilities in the Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress fields, and 14 for Best Supporting Actor (always the most competitive acting category.) So, if you are on one of Ms. Thompson’s lists, you are excluded here. Sorry Lesley Manville. You may not have been a prom queen, but you are one of Thompson’s possibilities for Supporting Actress based on your work in Phantom Thread. Same to you Jason Mitchell. Thompson names you for Mudville, thus I cannot. (BTW, interesting trivia – Manville and Mitchell are previous recipients of this particular recognition for Another Year and Straight Outta Compton, respectively.)
Thus, with no further preamble, the best performances this year with no shot at an Oscar, are…
LEAD ACTOR
Harris Dickinson in Beach Rats.
As a coming-of-age story about a young man wrestling with his sexuality, Eliza Hittman’s second feature may not measure up to Moonlight. It is a smaller story and its secondary characters are not nearly as well-defined. But in the lead role, Dickinson is a splendid blend of swagger and uncertainty.
Kyle Mooney in Brigsby Bear
Brigsby is sweet and weird and ephemeral and Mooney captures it all as its central man-child. He has been good for years in quirky supporting roles. Brigsby gives him the spotlight and he knows just how to fill it.
Robert Pattinson in Good Time
“Film Comment” magazine just named the Safdie Brothers’ movie as the best of the year and despite an excellent supporting cast, much of that credit goes to Pattinson, proving once again that he is far more than a pretty face in this urgent, dangerous, thoroughly-committed performance.
Justin Chon in Gook
Chon wrote, directed, and starred in one of the most overlooked movies of the year. Its B&W cinematography is magnificent. Its story is vital, and Chon supplies the fragile strength at its core.
Menashe Lustig in Menashe
It is hard to tell whether this is remarkable acting, or just Menashe being Menashe in front of a camera. It doesn’t matter. The kind but schlubby Menashe is just a guy trying to do his best in the highly-regimented Hasidic community in New York. I prefer this to the bravely-filmed documentary One of Us, which has been shortlisted for an Oscar this year. If you have a particular interest in this subject matter, both movies are worth a look.
Levi Miller in Better Watch Out
15 year-old Miller has a very hard role to play in this suspense/horror. Suffice to say, he nails it, and saying anything about how he does so threatens to spoil all the fun.
Lucho Caceres in One Last Afternoon
I’m giving Caceres a “non-eligible” slot here for this Peruvian spin-off of Richard Linklater’s “Before” movies. He walks around with his soon-to-be ex-wife for about 90 minutes and he is always fascinating to watch, whether he is being calm and restrained, or revealing explosive anger.
BEST ACTRESS
Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project
I’m not sure why young Ms. Prince is not on Thompson’s list of contenders. She is at the center of the best American movie of the year and she virtually walks off with the movie. I suppose since she was only six years old when filming began, some might undervalue her performance. I will gladly put her on my list.
Audrey Plaza in Ingrid Goes West
I admit it. I was beginning to worry that Plaza had become locked into the snarky, bored and angry teen she had played to perfection on Parks and Rec and then burnished in movies like her other 2017 release The Little Hours. But Ingrid reveals the depth and disquiet lurking beneath that hard outer shell.
Florence Pugh in Lady Macbeth
This is the best performance by a lead actress that I saw this year. She builds her young heroine slowly and carefully, at first eliciting sympathy, then cheers, and finally fear at what she has grown into. It is a tour de force of acting.
Anne Hathaway in Colossal
It’s a fabulous premise, a mess of a movie, and Anne Hathaway’s best performance ever.
McKenna Grace in Gifted
If Brooklynn Prince is too young to win this kind of award, perhaps at 11, Grace is old enough to qualify. After all, she has more than 40 credits on TV and film already, and in 2017 alone, she was quite good in How to Be a Latin Lover and I, Tonya. She handles both comedy and pathos effortlessly in Gifted. Her delivery of “Good morning, Mrs. Stevenson” is one of my favorite lines of the year.
Bel Powley in Carrie Pilby
You know those stories where rich white people complain about their problems? You know how annoying they usually are? (I’m talking to you, Paris Can Wait.) Well, Powley transcends that and makes this movie watchable.
Sally Hawkins in Maudie
She will be nominated, and may well win, for The Shape of Water. But don’t overlook this story about artist Maud Lewis, a brilliant blend of fortitude, physicality and pathos.
Alexandra Borbely in On Body and Soul
Another non-eligible selection, Borbely’s quirkily-mesmerizing performance as an Hungarian quality inspector in a slaughterhouse is glorious. This unlikely setting for a love story is bolstered by Borbely’s sweet, sad and bitingly funny portrait of a borderline personality in search of intimacy.
SUPPORTING ACTOR
Lakeith Stanfield in Get Out and Death Note
It was quite a year for Stanfield, among the most exciting young actors we have working today. In addition to these roles, he had featured roles in several other releases and was a very strong lead in Crown Heights. These two roles stand out and show his remarkable range. His controlled tension helps generate the horror half of the comedy/horror Get Out while his playful idiosyncrasy enlivens the darker shades of the horror/comedy Death Note.
Buddy Duress in Good Time
Where did Buddy Duress come from? The Safdie Brothers cast him in their 2014 release Heaven Knows What. Then he was in jail for a while. But he was out in time to play Ray, a low-level hustler stumbled upon by Robert Pattinson’s Connie in the second half of Good Time. He seems almost too real to be in a movie.
Charlie Tahan in Super Dark Times
Not yet 20, Tahan seems to have been around forever. His goofy intensity strikes just the right balance of innocence and psychosis which makes Super Dark Times one of the year’s best horrors.
Caleb Landry Jones in Get Out, The Florida Project, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and American Made
As you can tell, Landry Jones rivals Stanfield as the most versatile and most exciting young actor at work today. The first three movies are likely to be nominated for Best Picture. He is a psycho in the first, a very ordinary guy in the second, and a minor character who was just too interesting to disappear in the third. But it may his work in American Made, in which he humanizes a potentially stereotypical fuck-up, which stands out the most. This is a formidable talent.
Dule Hill in Sleight
Hill plays what could have been your garden variety drug dealer in this grittier version of Now You See Me. But just as Mahershala Ali did last year in Moonlight, Hill transcends the cliché and makes Angelo both human and dangerous in equal measure.
Gil Birmingham in Wind River
A lot of people loved Wind River. I’m not one of them. But, man, did I love Birmingham as the wounded father of a murdered girl. This follows up on his outstanding work in last year’s Hell or High Water.
Jean-Louis Trintignant in Happy End
Some people love Happy End. I’m not one of them. But it’s impossible not to like Trintignant as the wounded patriarch of a dysfunctional family. This follows a lifetime of outstanding work.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Tiffany Haddish in Girls Trip
Haddish has already won awards for her stand-out performance in this comedy hit, including the prestigious New York Film Critics Circle Award. So, again, I am a little surprised she didn’t make Thompson’s list of contenders. As with Brooklynn Prince, I will rapidly claim her for my list.
Melissa Leo in Novitiate
Leo’s sternly devout Mother Superior struggles with her role in a changing church. Her story is better than the main plot about the young nuns in her charge.
Betty Gabriel in Get Out
Gabriel does not have a big role in Get Out, but her delivery of the repeated word “no” at a crucial moment is among the most riveting passages of the year. You don’t need a lot of screen-time to make a big impression.
Cicily Tyson in Last Flag Flying
Anyone ever tell you that you don’t need a lot of screen-time to make a big impression? Tyson has one scene in Richard Linklater’s latest movie and it is among the most heartfelt scenes in American film this year. Of course, Tyson has been doing this for so long, it’s easy to overlook. Don’t overlook it.
Elizabeth Marvel in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
Adam Sandler is also excellent in Noah Baumbach’s latest portrait of family dysfunction. He was my final cut amongst Supporting Actors. Marvel, in the quieter, less showy role of his sister, makes it. She brings remarkable warmth and humor to a character who knows she will never get the things she wants out of life.
Jennifer Connelly in Only the Brave
Connelly is pretty much the only woman of note in a movie filled with testosterone, and she stands up to the task easily.
That’s an arbitrary list of 27 actors and actresses, covering most genres. You’ll note most are from low-budget films, and though that was not intentional, it seems fairly obvious why this would be the case. Without spending vast sums on effects, filmmakers must invest their stories with great characters. And when a talented actress gets her hands on a great role, this is what you get. My favorite blog of the year.