I am finally doing it. This is my site, and no one can stop me. For years, I have adhered to the strictures of the standard “Top 10 Performances of the Year” column. I have offered my subjective take on the 10 best performances of a given year and ranked them, without regard to the films in which they appear. In some years, this has been fine. In others, it has led to a distressing lack of variety in the represented films. Last Cinema Standing exists to celebrate the art of movies, and the more movies we get to talk about, the more we get to celebrate.
Had I published this column in 2018 – a year I skipped because it coincided with my most recent move across the country – I would have been compelled to name the triumvirate of Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz the top performance of the year for their work in The Favourite. So inextricable is each performance from the others that to choose among them would have been unfair and disingenuous. The other option would be to choose among them and place them at Nos. 1, 2, and 3, thus limiting the number of movies included on the list.
Of course, this is all silly, but it’s also fun, and at Last Cinema Standing the policy is: more films equals more fun. And, this is the year we embrace that, the year that broke the old system. I searched my heart, and I believe that seven or eight of the best performances of the year come from the same three films. That’s not going to cut it, so we’re going to go with a more is more approach this time around. You are getting the top five ensembles, the top 10 individual performances not mentioned among those ensembles, and a couple other special categories.
Yet, even with all these extra spaces, I could not honor all the great performances of 2023, so here are five more hanging just outside the list:
First, I need to call out the excellent ensemble of The Iron Claw. Zac Efron, Holt MacCallany, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Maura Tierney, Lily James, and Stanley Simons come together to create the family at the center of this tragic tale. You believe every inch of their love and struggle, and your heart breaks all the more for it.
Tilda Swinton’s two scenes as an assassin at the end of the line are the best part of the otherwise disappointing The Killer. Gael Garcia Bernal is wonderful in the criminally underseen luchador biopic Cassandro. Sterling K. Brown’s wildcard of a performance in American Fiction is a perfect complement to Jeffrey Wright’s buttoned up writer/professor. And, Danielle Brooks is a light that guides the way out of the darkness in The Color Purple.
Awards of special merit
Best performance by a child actor: Milo Machado-Graner in Anatomy of a Fall
In my review of Justine Triet’s remarkable Palme d’Or winner, I called Machado-Graner’s performance as Daniel one of the greatest child actor performances you will ever see. So great, in fact, that I had to call it out again here in a special place. The entire final act of the film hinges on what Daniel believes and how he communicates that belief. The young performer, who was just 13 when cast in the role, carries that weight effortlessly. In speech and in manner, we see the toll this case has taken on him and how it will affect him long after the verdict is read.
Best debut performance: Dominic Sessa in The Holdovers
The winner of this category is actually Fantasia Barrino, but we’ll get to her more below. For now, I want to single out Sessa’s work standing toe to toe with the great Paul Giamatti and the seemingly Oscar-bound Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Alexander Payne’s film is an interesting flip on a familiar premise. In most films, the wise old teacher helps a student learn tough lessons about life and the real world. In this film, it is the student who teaches the professor. But, that requires us to believe the young man is capable of teaching Giamatti’s craggy teacher anything. With Sessa, you never doubt it for a moment.
The Mia Goth Award for most unhinged performance: Mia Goth in Infinity Pool
One of the best performances of 2022 was Goth in Pearl. She has perfected a certain brand of acting that involves walking right up to the edge of the cliff, looking over the edge, then jumping and giving yourself over to the abyss. No one is doing the things she is doing. She has a smaller role in Brandon Cronenberg’s otherwise undercooked Infinity Pool, but she makes a meal out of it. A three-course dinner, really. To describe her work here would not do it justice, but suffice it to say, if Goth is in it, you must see it. I look forward to her defending her title in 2024’s MaXXXine.
Top 5 Ensembles
5. Barbie
Outstanding cast members: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrara, Kate McKinnon, Simu Liu, Issa Rae, Michael Cera
I know for a while there it seemed like all of Hollywood would end up in Greta Gerwig’s film. More Barbies and Kens were added every day, and that is not to touch on the “real-world” characters in the film. In truth, the cast is limited only to the kinds of actors who could inhabit this universe. It is no easy task to embrace the intentional plasticity of the characters in Barbie Land, yet everyone in this film makes it look effortless.
It all starts with producer-star Robbie, of course. The casting of Robbie as Stereotypical Barbie is the kind of no-brainer slam-dunk that seems perfect on paper from minute one. In practice, it’s better than perfect. Robbie is transcendent. Meanwhile, Gosling’s Ken, whose job is “beach,” gets many of the best comedic moments in the film, flowing richly from the character’s hunky dimness. The other Barbies and Kens (and an Alan and a Midge) who fill out this world provide depth and richness in ways lesser performers could never.
Then, there is Ferrara, as the real-life person who gets mixed up in all this madness. Much has been made of the big monologue at the end of the film and her delivery, but in fact, Ferrara is excellent throughout the picture, never striking a wrong note. Remarkably, none of this cast hits a wrong note, like a well seasoned orchestra performing Gerwig’s Rhapsody in Pink.
4. Killers of the Flower Moon
Outstanding cast members: Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Cara Jade Myers
Let me get this out of the way so I can focus on the big, important thing here: DiCaprio is great in this film, continuing a run of films and performances that is unassailable; De Niro delivers for Martin Scorsese once again in one of his most terrifying roles to date, made all the scarier by the fact that his malice comes wrapped in beneficence; Jade Myers is a revelation in her film debut, adding just the right touch of manic energy to Scorsese’s stately film; and the rest of the ensemble raises its game to the heights necessitated by the project.
Okay, now the big thing: Gladstone. This is shattering, breathtaking work from a performer most folks first saw in Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women back in 2016. That early role was magnificently rendered by Gladstone and should have brought her waves of new opportunities. It didn’t. That an indigenous performer was not given the chance to break out further into the cultural consciousness is hardly surprising. Nevertheless, Gladstone has continued to deliver stellar work in the indie film world, lying in wait for the moment and the movie that would catapult her to stardom the way she has always deserved. Here it is.
As Mollie Burkhart, Gladstone is the soul of this film. She is its beating heart. She is the special ingredient that makes it live and breathe and sing and dance. Even when an illness sidelines Mollie for much of the second half of the film, the impression Gladstone leaves is so great that she hovers over the rest of the story anyway. She stares down DiCaprio and De Niro and never blinks. She carries the weight of history on her shoulders and never falters. In a word, she is stunning.
3. Saltburn
Outstanding cast members: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Alison Oliver, Richard E. Grant, Archie Madekwe
Leave it to Emerald Fennell to roll up on 2023 with the most divisive film of the year. Love it or hate it, though, there is no denying that this entire ensemble is bringing something truly special to the table. It all starts with Keoghan, who year after year and performance after performance proves how rare it is to see such pure talent come along and what a gift it is when it does. An interloper in the vein of a Tom Ripley, his Oliver Quick is an enigma, letting us see only the parts necessary to keep the game going, and no actor working today is more enigmatic than Keoghan.
And, fighting out of the other corner, we have the Catton family, along with Cousin Farleigh. There is Elordi, perfect as the naive product of privilege who would seem just as at home in the Barbie universe as Aristocrat Ken. Pike and Grant are otherworldly as the heads of a clan that cannot conceive of the loss of power nor that there could ever be a threat to that which they possess. Madekwe, who appears in four 2023 movies and is exceptional in the racing picture Gran Turismo, has perhaps the trickiest character of all, straddling the line between poverty and wealth. The actor pulls it off without breaking a sweat.
The discovery of the film for me, however, is Alison Oliver, making her feature film debut. The Irish performer holds her own against countryman Keoghan in two of the finest scenes of the year, each a seduction in its own way and each leading to very different results. Whether catatonic with grief or exploding with rage, there appear to be no lengths Oliver will not go to bring the inner life of her character to the fore.
2. May December
Outstanding cast members: Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Charles Melton
I should note that all of the performers in Todd Haynes’ latest melodrama are superb, but Moore, Portman, and Melton are operating on a different level. Not only that, but each of the three performances is so intertwined with the others that they become impossible to separate. They are inextricably linked, which in many ways, is the text of the film Haynes has made.
Let’s start with Portman. In recent years, she has alternated between delivering tremendous performances in dark, contemplative films like Annihilation, Vox Lux, and Jackie with her continuing obligations to the Thor movies and the MCU. May December finds her in her best mode as a mediocre actress obsessed with finding the truth of her character – or is she just looking for proximity to the lurid thrills of the real-life story she intends to portray. It’s shifty work that’s hard to pin down, but Portman absolutely nails it.
As for Moore, she is incapable of giving an uninteresting performance. This is particularly true in her collaborations with Haynes, with whom she has worked before on Safe, Far from Heaven, I’m Not There, and Wonderstruck. The partnership has been fruitful for both, with Haynes giving her the kind of roles actresses crave and Moore giving him the kind of performances of which directors dream. Here, Moore goes all in as the kind of quiet, self-absorbed monster all too common in the real world. Every bold choice the actress makes is a window into this character’s dark soul.
Before this film, I had never seen Melton in anything. I missed his previous features, and I don’t watch Riverdale or American Horror Story. But, this performance immediately pegs him as one to watch for me. Melton is heartbreaking as the victim of a crime who has spent 20 years hiding from the fact of his victimhood, only to have it come crashing down upon him in one the year’s most brutal sequences. His journey of self-discovery and -actualization is the core of the film, and Melton brings us along for every moment of this harrowing ride.
1. All of Us Strangers
Outstanding cast members: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, Jamie Bell
I cannot write about these performances without revealing the wonderful secrets contained within Andrew Haigh’s beautiful film, so I would urge you, if you have not seen it, to watch the film before reading this section. Your experience will be that much richer with little to no foreknowledge.
With the exception of a waitress who appears late in the film in a single scene, there are only four speaking roles in All of Us Strangers. They belong to Scott, Mescal, Foy, and Bell. Their collective work in this project is one of the towering ensemble achievements in film history. Each delivers some of the most subtle, moving work committed to screen in quite some time.
Scott, whom many will know as the Hot Priest in the television series Fleabag, gives the best performance of the year as Adam, a writer locked in a cycle of despair that causes him to push away any human connection. As the film goes on, we see his shell gradually crack open, revealing the wounded soul inside. The truth is that he is desperate for love, but the wounds of his past must be healed before he can build a future. In every word and gesture and facial expression, Scott invites us to feel what Adam feels, to understand what it is to be him, and to grapple with the difficulties inherent in learning to love oneself. Thanks to Scott, we already love him.
Foy and Bell play Adam’s parents, affectionately known as Mum and Dad. You will note they are eight and 10 years younger than Scott, respectively. They are his parents at the age they were when they died. The magic of the film is in seeing them interact with their grown son as equals and in discovering all the ways that parents and their children can never be equals and that’s okay. Mum is a woman of her time, coming to grips with the idea of having a queer son. Dad, meanwhile, must reckon with the knowledge that he was never there for Adam when he needed, nor is it likely he could have been. Foy and Bell are lovely in the ways they portray the push and pull of the people we are and the people we want to be.
Finally, we have Mescal, who had his big break in 2022 with an Oscar-nominated turn in Charlotte Wells’ well regarded Aftersun. His star surely will rise higher in 2024 when he appears as the lead in Ridley Scott’s long-awaited Gladiator sequel. Whatever “it” is, Mescal has it, and it is on full display in his tender, soul-stirring turn as Adam’s neighbor, Harry, another lost person longing for love. The film doesn’t work if even one of these performances is slightly off. Well, I can tell you the film works, and these performances are about as close to perfection as it may be possible to achieve.
Top 10 Individual Performances
10. Franz Rogowski in Passages
Think of the worst person you know. Now give him a little bit of money and a little bit of power. That approximates the level of emotional terrorism inflicted by Tomas, the main character of writer-director Ira Sachs’ latest indie drama. He moves like a serpent through the lives of others, poisoning everything he is given the chance to strike at and recoiling when anyone dares strike back. Rogowski embodies this predator, mind, body, and soul, leaving vanity at the door and embracing the villainy of morbid self-interest.
9. Colman Domingo in Rustin
Domingo has always been a chameleon in prominent supporting roles, whether as the menacing pimp in zola or as a beat-down jazz musician in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. At last, with Rustin, he gets a showcase for the full breadth of his talents. As civil rights hero Bayard Rustin, who begs, borrows, and steals to organize the 1963 March on Washington, Domingo never steps wrong. A Broadway star, Domingo knows how to deliver a big speech to the back row, but he is just as good in moments of quiet sadness as he struggles with his identity and a movement that wishes he would sit down and shut up.
8. Cailee Spaeny in Priscilla
I did not necessarily vibe with Sofia Coppola’s latest jewel box of a film. I found it chillier than her best work and a tad too removed from the heart at the center of the story. That heart is Priscilla Presley, née Beaulieu, and for whatever problems I had with the film as a whole, Spaeny’s performance in the title role is undeniable. Charting Priscilla’s journey from childhood to womanhood, Spaeny inhabits both roles flawlessly, exuding youthful exuberance in the early passages and knowing exhaustion in the later stages. If Priscilla is a bird in a cage, as the film argues, Spaeny gives her wings to fly.
7. Ilinca Manolache in Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Throughout Radu Jude’s masterful screed on the damaging effects of corporate greed, Manolache is the weary face of hustle culture. She inhales caffeine like air to get through her long hours as a PA on a corporate safety video, simultaneously to which she drives for Uber. All of her human interactions are transactional, even those you could consider romantic or sexual. There is no light in this life, and Manolache makes the choice to play this scenario not with pained longing but resigned indifference. This is the right decision, and in this resignation, she represents so many more of us than we would probably like to admit.
6. Fantasia Barrino in The Color Purple
I have never seen American Idol. I don’t listen to much popular music. I knew the name “Fantasia” before seeing this film. But, nothing could have prepared me for the absolute knockout turn Barrino delivers as Celie in this adaptation of the Broadway musical based on Alice Walker’s timeless novel. Barrino elevates good songs into showstopping numbers worth the price of admission alone. However, the pop star turned actress is more than the strength of her vocal chords. She brings strength, depth, and humanity to a character fighting to take back her life. She is a star, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.
5. Teyana Taylor in A Thousand and One
Despite winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance way back in January 2023, A.V. Rockwell’s astonishing debut feature A Thousand and One feels like it has been unfairly forgotten as time has gone by. A March 2023 release didn’t help. Regardless, the film is a burning ode to a mother’s love, and Taylor is the flame at the center of it all. Her Inez is tough, no-nonsense, and strong enough to withstand the blows of a society that has no room for people like her and her son. Taylor already is a wildly successful music artist, but let’s hope after this, she pays a visit to the world of film once in a while.
4. Noah Galvin in Theater Camp
It is a fun bit of meta narrative that in a film that features bigger names like Ben Platt, Molly Gordon, and Ayo Edebiri, Galvin steals the show. He plays Glenn, the overworked, underappreciated stage manager at the titular camp. “We’re theater people,” says Glenn. “We know how to turn cardboard into gold.” Well, Glenn is the one behind the scenes doing the actual labor of making gold out of cardboard (or fashioning a giant papier maché nose). But, he has the soul of someone who belongs on stage. When Galvin, as Glenn, makes his debut in front of the audience, it is one of the best moments of the year in film, and Galvin sells the hell out of every second of it.
3. Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer
It has been 21 years since I first saw Murphy on screen and became a fan for life. Give or take a Disco Pigs, most people got their introduction to Murphy in Danny Boyle’s modern horror classic 28 Days Later. In that film, the young actor was lithe, intense, and unpredictable. The energy was intoxicating. He carried that over into films like Wes Craven’s Red Eye, Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, and Boyle’s Sunshine. Amid all of these excellent performances, Murphy began the professional relationship that would prove most fruitful over the next two decades: He started working with Christopher Nolan.
He has not been in every Nolan film over the past 20 years, but he has been in all the best ones, appearing in all three Dark Knight movies, Inception, and Dunkirk. Now, with Oppenheimer, Murphy gets the big-screen showcase he has richly deserved for so long. He doesn’t waste one second of it. Much has been made of the fact that this blockbuster film about the building of the atomic bomb, filmed in IMAX, spends quite a bit of its runtime in closeup on Murphy’s face. There’s a reason for that.
Every story beat, every thematic thread Nolan is hoping to pull on, it’s all right there in Murphy’s sunken eyes and gaunt, angular visage. When you’ve got this, you don’t need anything else. The performance, however, is more than that thousand-yard stare you’ve seen a hundred times if you spend any time on the internet at all. It’s also in the frenetic energy Murphy brings to Oppenheimer’s moments of pure inspiration. It’s in the quiet confidence he displays as his world comes crashing down around him. It’s in every moment of the film. Oppenheimer is Nolan’s masterpiece because Oppenheimer is Murphy’s masterpiece.
2. Emma Stone in Poor Things
Fearless is an overused word in describing acting performances. And, suggesting a word is overused only to turn around and use it because a particular performance necessitates it is an overused writing cliché. With all of that out of the way, Stone’s performance in Yorgos Lanthimos’ sci-fi fantasia is fearless. Few performers would be willing to go to the physical and emotional lengths Stone does in this film. Of those few, fewer still could pull it off with the feather touch Stone demonstrates here.
There is nothing studied about Stone’s take on Bella Baxter, which is important since Bella begins as a character unstudied in just about everything. The beauty of the performance comes in the joy of discovery. Bella lives in the here and now because as far as she knows, she has no past and the future is boundless. Stone makes us believe she is learning everything in the moment it comes to her – the freedom of dance, the pleasures of the flesh, the sting of inequality.
While Stone’s collaborations with Lanthimos will continue to be appointment viewing, it would be a disservice to the actress to suggest the director has pulled her along this path. Stone has always made bold, interesting choices, whether by starring in daring films such as Birdman or La La Land or by bringing added layers of interest and intrigue to otherwise conventional fare such as Cruella and Easy A. With Poor Things, the 35-year-old performer has planted her flag on the mountaintop. No doubt, there will be future mountains to climb and flags to plant.
1. Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall
As a thought experiment, let’s try to map out the next phase of Hüller’s career. As of this writing, she’s within a hair’s breadth of an Academy Award nomination, which I would call a more likely outcome than not. Apart from that, she was the star of the 2023 Palme d’Or winner at Cannes and the Grand Prix winner (second place) at the same festival. She will never have more power within the Hollywood machine than she will over the next couple months. That is, of course, assuming she wants anything to do with the Hollywood machine.
Compare Hüller to an actor like Marion Cotillard. Roughly the same age (Hüller is three years younger). Similarly brilliant performers. Multilingual. Beautiful but chameleonic. They came up around the same time, but their trajectories have varied wildly. In 2005, Cotillard won a Caesar Award for supporting actress for A Very Long Engagement. The next year, Hüller was nominated for a European Film Award for best actress for her breakout role in Requiem. The following year, Cotillard broke big with La Vie en Rose, winning an Oscar and reaching the upper crust of Hollywood stardom.
Hüller had to wait an extra 10 years for her breakthrough as the star of international sensation Toni Erdmann. Within that decade, Cotillard linked up with Christopher Nolan twice, co-starred in Woody Allen’s most financially successful movie in years, and earned another Oscar nomination for stellar work in Two Days, One Night. So, my question is: Where was Hüller’s chance at superstardom? Again, making the assumption that this is something she even cares about.
Make no mistake. Hüller has made excellent films, including 2021’s I’m Your Man. But, if she wanted, she’d be a great Bond villain – no, not just because of the accent. She could easily square off with Ethan Hunt as a rival spy in a Mission: Impossible flick. Her talent is obviously limitless, so where she chooses to take it is one of the most exciting questions of the coming years. That said, you won’t hear me complaining if she sticks to challenging European dramas that strike at the dark heart of humanity.
This brings us back to Anatomy of a Fall. I would be remiss not to call out her amazing work in Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, but it is the Justine Triet film that gives Hüller a showcase that must be seen to be believed. It is a masterclass in subtlety. In every frame she appears in, she commands the screen, daring us to empathize with someone who refuses to play by any traditional set of rules.
I have heard this character called cold. Some have suggested she is a sociopath. These are simplistic readings of a woman who will not be pinned down so easily. The script by Triet and her partner, Arthur Harari, is of course superb, but it is Hüller who makes every moment sing. The tension derives from the disconnect between what we see in this character, what we know about her, and what we can never know, and few actors are as capable of living in that kind of tension the way Hüller does here. Love her, hate her, that’s not the point. Because of Hüller, we understand her, and that is so much more interesting.
Top 10 Performances
If pressed to place all of these performances together into a traditional top 10, it would look something like this (and I still can’t believe I would have to leave out Natalie Portman in May December and Leonardo DiCaprio in Killers of the Flower Moon):
10. Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer
9. Claire Foy in All of Us Strangers
8. Paul Mescal in All of Us Strangers
7. Julianne Moore in May December
6. Jamie Bell in All of Us Strangers
5. Charles Melton in May December
4. Emma Stone in Poor Things
3. Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon
2. Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall
1. Andrew Scott in All of Us Strangers
Check back next time for Part IV of Last Cinema Standing’s Year in Review series as we take a look back at some of the most memorable quotes and moments of the year.
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