Best Performances of 2019
The face of films has always been the actors. Through them, we are exposed to a world of different characters, perspectives, and ideas where we can empathize with situations completely unlike our own. They breathe life into the written word, taking an ordinary role and transforming it into something all their own. They can bring the heat, turn on a dime, and provide a soft touch all in one go while making it look easy along the way. From masters of the trade and new entrants alike, these actors deliver performances that are truly exceptional. As chosen by our writing team, these are our favorite performances of 2019.
Little Women
Florence Pugh as Amy March
As the best film of the year, Little Women is full of stellar performances, but the standout is by far Florence Pugh as Amy March. Taking the “younger sister” role previously associated with being a brat, Pugh made Amy a dazzling, multidimensional woman. That isn’t to say she misses out on the riotously petty sibling moments, as seen by her retaliation when Jo and Meg exclude her from tagging along. Her relationship with Jo is especially fiery, but not so polarizing that the audience is forced to take a permanent side. As the two go head to head in stubbornness, Pugh is responsible for some of the best controlled emotional cornering in recent cinema. She’s always sincerely human, expressing every feeling to its fullest. With the gift of Greta Gerwig’s non-linear structure, we are given the chance to contemplate how Amy matures. We watch as she grows into a woman who understands her place in the world, a world built for first and foremost for men. She’s aware that the dignity of her family rests on her shoulders alone, a massive burden of expectations that would crush anyone lesser. Though, her grace never crosses into aloofness; she is constantly bursting with energy and commanding every scene found within. Her desires flash in her eyes, from her lofty artistic ambitions to her longing for a true love all her own. Amy wants greatness or nothing, and Florence has achieved this greatness.
-Megan Bernovich
Uncut Gems
Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner
Evoking the name Adam Sandler in casual conversation doesn’t elicit thoughts of Howard Ratner in Uncut Gems. For the lay person, it’s a combination of Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, and any number of comedic roles Sandler has let define his career. So much so that when I recommend Uncut Gems to my coworkers, half of them won’t even entertain the idea because of the deservedly poor reputation he earned for himself in recent years, but even Sandler will acknowledge that his role as the skeeziest diamond dealer in New York, “is a shocker for many, many Americans.”
Seeing is believing, and when the audience first emerge from Howard’s colon at the start of the film, we know this isn’t your usual Sandler affair. What ensues is a transformative performance that sees the 53 year-old actor adopting a New York accent, early 2000s attire, and a penchant for risky deals in an effort to peddle an Ethiopian black opal and strike it big. Howard’s manic behavior is impressively dangerous, and it’s in large part to Sandler’s efforts that we can find ourselves sympathizing with someone so flippant with his own wellbeing. As noted in my review, his charm buys currency in pacifying his debtees, often emitting equal parts confidence when things go his way and desperation when a deal is about to fall through. It’s hard to believe that someone who actively makes so many bad comedies is capable of transcending his own star status to concoct an iconic role like this. Though Howard is the one who owes a debt, we owe a great deal to Sandler for gifting us this performance, even if the Academy won’t recognize it.
-Greg Arietta
The Lighthouse
Willem DaFoe as Thomas Wake
Willem Dafoe is an enigma. In the best of ways, he neither looks nor acts like a man born on this planet let alone a small Wisconsin city. I mean, he was kicked out of high school for making a (somewhat) pornographic film. The Village Voice once described his face as “the pallidly beautiful embodiment of pure evil.” He frequently works with both Lars Von Trier and Wes Anderson type directors on both sides of the cinematic spectrum. Let’s just say the man is eclectic and leave it at that. So when he was cast as an aging lighthouse keeper who slowly goes insane in Robert Eggers The Lighthouse, it was intriguing.
Then the film was released.
Now, Dafoe has earned Academy Award nominations for playing Vincent Van Gogh (At Eternity’s Gate), a motel manager (The Florida Project), Nosferatu (Shadow of the Vampire)and a Vietnam sergeant (Platoon), but when we first see him and his co-star Robert Pattison emerge from a gale, obscured by darkness and sea spray, it washes any thought of those iconic roles tainting his turn in The Lighthouse. His creased face mirrors the craggy rocks you imagine he’s spent the majority of his life near, his voice is hoarse with a lifetime of sea shanties behind him, and I could almost smell his rotting teeth over the aroma of popcorn and butter. All this crossed my mind before he spoke a line. Then he utters so many — some of which are, admittedly, unintelligible — with a thick seaman accent. It’s fortunate, though, that Egger’s picked the only man willing to have dirt shoveled into his mouth while giving a nautical diatribe. In a career that lists 134 (!!!) credited roles on IMDB, it’s wild to think that this might be his most memorable, and we’re all better for it. HARK!
-Kevin Conner
THE LIGHTHOUSE
ROBERT PATTISON As Ephraim Winslow
If nautical nonsense be something ye wish, look no further; The Lighthouse showcases not just one, but two of the best performances of the year. Robert Pattison disappears into the character of Ephraim Winslow, a troubled soul with an old Bostonian accent thicker than sea fog. A ‘wickie’ in training, he is subject to backbreaking, thankless labor, and the repulsive habits of his senior partner, Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe). The solitude of the lighthouse island where he finds himself trapped in his own personal hell wears on him immediately. He is being punished physically and psychologically, as he scrambles to right a wheelbarrow full of coal and as the wind sweeps a latrine bucket into his face. The horrible secret he hides weighs on his conscience, and his sexual fantasies become indistinguishable from perverse waking nightmares. As his salty resentment for Wake festers, Winslow’s paranoia becomes our own. When he gives into the bottle halfway through the film, the performance goes above and beyond. He delivers one of the best depictions of drunken lunacy on screen to date, a deliciously inscrutable storm of camaraderie and folie à deux. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone else who could make the act of beating a seagull to death so hypnotically entertaining.
-Megan Bernovich
Marriage Story
Scarlet Johansson and Adam Driver as Nicole and Charlie
Crucial to Noah Baumbach’s tale of divorce are the two leading performances by Scarlet Johansson and Adam Driver as Nicole and Charlie. Engaging in a cut throat legal battle that sees them at the opposite ends of a court room, both Driver and Johansson provide the opposing friction that makes Marriage Story’s separation so effective. On one hand, you have Johansson portraying an actress who has been a muse for someone else, never finding herself nor leading a fulfilling life. On the other, you have Driver playing a director grappling with what went wrong, desperately trying to keep up with the shifting legal whoas. Together you have a contentious duo that poignantly conveys the degrading effects of divorce and separation.
As both Johansson and Driver burrow deeper and deeper into the emotional lockbox of hostility, so too does Nicole’s and Charlie’s actions towards each other. Amicable separation turns into an all out war of attrition, and the two people we were introduced to at the start are no longer the same, culminating in a powerful depiction showing just how far they’ve fallen. While both have individual scenes to shine and even if Driver has the slight edge here for his boisterous rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s “Being Alive,” to forgo one in favor of the other would be a great disservice to either actor. Their performances are intertwined, proven essential to one another by their ability to elevate the other, and turning a relationship drama into an emotional devastation.
-Greg Arietta
Honeyboy
Shia LaBeouf as James Lort
Honey Boy walks a tightrope between reality and empathy and both are contingent on Shia LaBeouf. Not so secretly based on the actor’s chaotic upbringing as a child star, Shia makes the risky decision to co-write and play his own alcoholic and abusive father. It’s a risk that pays off in spades as any lesser a movie could have come off as self-indulgent or myopic. Instead, we are treated to a meta-testament to therapy. Merely a bandana and wire rim glasses are enough for the audience to divorce themselves from Shia the actor. In his place, we are met with a troubled and criminal man exploiting his child’s acting career for all that it’s worth. But the film is not just concerned with illustrating the hardships of its creator. LaBeouf the writer allows us to accompany him on a catharsis about his upbringing while LaBeouf the actor shovels empathy on a toxic fire of a father who caused it. This is a potent mixture that leaves Honey Boy with the kind of intimacy other films long for. With every stammer and guffaw that escapes LaBeouf’s lips, there is a newfound infectious appreciation for his father that strikes a universal note for all to see.
-Kevin Conner
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Jonathan Majors as Mont
Sometimes performances come along in films that feel so real and exceptional that they come to define the entire film. One such case is Jonathan Majors in The Last Black Man in San Francisco as Montgomery, a playwright, artist, and best friend of lead Jimmie Fails. Together they skate to the Fillmore District to fight the rising tide of gentrification by reclaiming Fails’ ancestral home. Mont is a quiet observer of the world, with an expressive softness and a wistfulness beyond his years. He perceives beauty that others don’t necessarily bother to pay attention to, providing rich descriptions of a film for his blind father (Danny Glover) and drawing inspiration from the people around him for his plays. With acute empathy, he reenacts their mundane words and mannerisms as something artful. Majors’ own keen, yet nonjudgemental work is visible beneath. It’s the trademark of a truly talented actor, or creative of any kind, to take their surrounds unbiased, and mirror them with authenticity.
Complementing the role is Mont’s relationship to Jimmie, a rare example of platonic tenderness on film. The two are at total ease with each other, sharing space and a range of emotions. Their friendship stands in contrast to the constant roasting and hardness of other men in their community. Mont and Jimmie are caught on the outside, looked down upon, and yet Mont treats the men who ridicule him with a serene patience. Majors has a firm grasp on how his character relates to these men, even improvising a moment of directing the other men as they ‘perform’ their masculinity. Mont’s climactic play at the end of the film is a tidal wave of emotion, an assembly of all he has observed. It’s a poignant elegy for one of the men who had mocked him, but died from the same masculinity he flaunted. It’s also a confrontation with Jimmie, stripping away the lies he’s told himself his entire life about his house and his identity. There’s a righteous anger to his conviction, but all of it is born out of a place of empathy. Everything that Jonathan Majors gives as Mont makes him unforgettable, and worthy of being considered among the best.
-Megan Bernovich
The Farewell
Awkwafina as Billi
Much like Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner, Awkwafina’s performance as Billi in The Farewell stands in stark contrast to her reputation. Known in popular culture for her rapping career and her comedic relief characters in Ocean’s 8 and Crazy Rich Asians, it came as a surprise to see her take on a dramatic role and nail it as well as she does. As Billi she plays a twenty-something who has to keep her grandmother’s terminal diagnosis a secret without letting her emotions get the best of her. There’s an emotional vulnerability that Awkwafina taps into, one that shows a reluctance to accept a changing familial landscape and her own personal growth. Talking with Nana, you see a visible conflict in her expression that longs to tell the truth while at the same time expressing the desire to keep things as they were when she was younger and things weren’t so difficult. Walking that fine line throughout the film is no small feat, but it’s to Awkwafina’s credit, and to the shock and awe of many, that she can pull it off.
-Greg Arietta
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