As we continue our week-long salute to what the cinema had to offer us in 2016, today we focus on our favorite performances of the past twelve months. There was a nice, wide range of favorites as selected by the mxdwn staff. A few of our favorites are clearly awards-bound as we barrel through yet another Oscar season, yet a few others are names absolutely nowhere in sight on terms of end of the year plaudits. With a salute to a terrific year of acting behind us, let’s celebrate the performances that made a deep impression. Take a gander.
Casey Affleck, MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
Read our review.
Casey Affleck’s performance avoids histrionics as he created a tortured and utterly internal characterization. He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders through his eyes and we felt his pain. Affleck and the young Lucas Hedges are wonderful together and created one of the most memorable duos of 2016.
-Matthew Passantino
As much as I wanted to highlight a lesser-seen performance (like Jodie Whittaker’s in Adult Life Skills), there simply was no way not to hand this to Casey Affleck. His role as Lee Chandler is not only the defining performance of his career, it’s liable to go down as one of the best performances in modern cinema. That’s not hyperbole, that’s just how good the performance is. Masterfully nuanced and beautifully subtle, its a performance that’s guaranteed to break your heart.
-John Wedemeyer
Viola Davis, FENCES
Viola Davis’ deeply heartbreaking and loving performance puts on display her wide range as a performer. She is a mix of maternal love, no-nonsense resolve and toughness that shakes you to the core. When her world is rocked by her husband’s infidelity, Davis summons further deeper that owns the latter half of the film.
-Nathaniel Mathis
Rebecca Hall, CHRISTINE
Read our review.
Hall is uncanny in her portrayal of real life news reporter Christine Chubbuck. Hall transforms into this odd, socially awkward, and emotionally troubled woman and imbues an unquestionable empathy and humanity into her core. She is at times creepy, and at times cringing in her cluelessness while remaining a resourceful and rational woman dedicated to human interest. Hall tells her story with utmost respect and clarity, celebrating the life of Chubbuck while acting out the final tragic chapter of her life with strength and vulnerability.
-Rachel Lutack
Tom Hanks, SULLY
“America’s Captain,” Tom Hanks is calm and powerful in his performance as Charles “Sully” Sullenberger, a man who’s professional demeanor saved everyone onboard Flight 1549. Tom Hanks is excellent and the only choice to play this role.
-Rick Rice
Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes, MOONLIGHT
Read our review and discussion.
This may be a bit of a cheat, but since Barry Jenkins’ exquisite and masterfully evocative Moonlight so powerfully and succinctly breaks down cinematic conventions, standard rulemaking need not apply. Anyhow, it would be difficult – if not outright impossible – to break apart the superb individual and masterful combined efforts that Hibbert, Sanders and Rhodes bring to Chiron, the lead character of this expertly modulated mood piece. Chiron’s transformation from timid young boy to inquisitive teenager to hardened adult was so palpably felt, progressed so naturally and performed with such grace and ingenuity, the cummulative effect was simply staggering. Hollywood, take notice.
-James Tisch
Sunny Pawar, LION
Pawar’s performance as the young Saroo was astoundingly real; he’s a natural!
-Karen Earnest
Chris Pine, HELL OR HIGH WATER
Read our review.
For an actor typically used as a happy-go-lucky pretty boy, Chris Pine’s performance in Hell or High Water – playing a reluctant bank robber – was nothing short of masterful. He comes across like the greats of old school Hollywood of yesteryear, eight miles high amidst a sea of worthless false manhood.
-Raymond Flotat
Natalie Portman, JACKIE
Read our review.
Portman does what many actors and actresses struggle to do: take a well-known figure and create more depth and interest than the public has seen before. Her accent, her body language – all exemplify the Jacqueline Kennedy that many know while providing a view into some of the most intimate moments of her life.
-Katherine Sanderson
Although I can’t stand Jackie Kennedy’s accent, audiences will truly get over it after they witness Natalie Portman’s fantastic performance. Blowing all the competition out of the water, Portman truly embodies Jackie in every essence, successfully capturing a wide variety of emotions and difficult experiences that the First Lady endured in the direct aftermath of her husband’s assassination. Portman offered a surprising amount of depth and gravitas to a complicated role and rightly did not portray Jackie as simply a martyr or innocent wife nor a savvy politician — she was a combination of all of these in a real human way. Her performance in Jackie makes her Oscar win for Black Swan look like an audition for a local theater production.
-Kristen Santer
Margot Robbie, SUICIDE SQUAD
Read our review.
The character of Harley Quinn is so hard to nail down — especially in live-action form. Yet somehow, Margot Robbie was able to find the craziness, child-like qualities, and everything in between that Harley has. She was wild yet thoroughly relatable at the same time. She was by far the best part of Suicide Squad and I look forward to future installments with her.
-Henry Faherty
Emma Stone, LA LA LAND
Read our review.
Though it seems that no actor or actress would ever be able to maintain the glamour, talent, and star-quality quite like Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, Carole Lombard, or Vivien Leigh, Emma Stone is as close as one comes to a true Hollywood starlet. Stone, who has always been charismatic, shines in this role like no one else could. She is truly honest, believable, beautiful, and capable. Though she is not naturally a strong dancer or singer, her fluidity in every movement is lovely to watch and her natural voice is full of emotion.
-Alyssa Merwin
Emma Stone is one of those actresses who really knows how to make you fall in love with her characters and she succeeds once again in La La Land. Playing Mia Dolan, an barista/aspiring actress who hopes to make it big in Hollywood, Stone soon falls for an aspiring jazz pianist played by Ryan Gosling in a style one would affiliate with the cheesy-yet-lovable romantic tales of old. In its second half, however, the film takes a more melancholic twist and this is where Stone really shines. Facing more than just the struggles of her romantic life, Stone questions whether or not she is cut out for the career that she has chased for so long in a manner that makes one sympathize with her struggle. These feelings all culminate in a solo performance – “Audition(The Fools Who Dream)” – that stood out to me as just as the best scene in the entire film, and one that brought a tear to my eye.
-Ben Wasserman
Anya Taylor-Joy, THE WITCH
Read our review.
A colonial-era, atmospheric horror movie movie with period-appropriate language could easily fail or seem like a pretentious film school exercise, but against all odds The Witch avoided those trappings and became one of the most memorable and unsettling horror movies in recent memory. While a great deal of the credit has to go to the surety of first-time director-writer Robert Eggers, you also have to acknowledge the cast who actually sold the unfamiliar dialogue and cadence. The main standout is relative newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy (soon to be seen in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split) as the sorely put upon eldest daughter Thomasin. She was the center of the movie, and there was no way it could have worked without her pulling off the role.
-Brett Harrison Davinger
Agree? Disagree? Sound off in the comments.
Also be sure to check in all week for continued Best of 2016 coverage. Previously covered:
The Most Surprising Films of 2016
The Most Disappointing Films of 2016
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