Year in Review: Top 10 Performances of 2017

It still fascinates me, after years of writing for this site and even longer studying acting and cinema, how much of performance is communal. Great performances seem to come from the push and pull of great actors driving one another ever higher in the search for truth or meaning or whatever else they seek. Six of the below performances come from just three films, pairs of actors working in congress to bring to life worlds known and unknown to us. It is a wonderful thing to watch and the 10 performances below, plus six honorable mentions, are evidence of just how important it is to be part of a community experience.

Before we get to the list, six more performances I could not ignore: Allison Janney in I, Tonya; Diane Kruger in In the Fade; Jennifer Lawrence in Mother!; Laurie Metcalf in Lady Bird; Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour; and Michael Stuhlbarg in Call Me By Your Name.

Last Cinema Standing’s Top 10 Performances of 2017:

10. Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

We shouldn’t like Officer Dixon. In point of fact, we should hate Officer Dixon. He represents everything the hero of Martin McDonagh’s black-comic thriller is fighting against. He is uselessness, abuse, and ineptitude all rolled into one. To his credit, Rockwell does not try to make you like his character. That would not be appropriate for the film. However, through empathy and commitment, Rockwell forces the audience to understand the character. You don’t have to agree – really, you shouldn’t – but you are damn well going to know where he stands and why.

It is a near-impossible task in McDonagh’s magic trick of a movie. The audience believes all along, through action and implication, that Officer Dixon is the antagonist of this story, then the rug is pulled out from beneath that belief. Were it not for the performances Rockwell and his co-star (more about her farther down this list), viewers would be left adrift, wondering where to turn and what to think. However, because Rockwell has so perfectly played all facets of his character, the audience is quickly grounded in the new reality of McDonagh’s film, and what a marvelous reality it proves to be.

9. Willem Dafoe for The Florida Project

Dafoe is known for a lot of things, and in a career spanning decades, it makes sense he has brought to life a wide range of people from all walks of life and experiences. However, softness has never been a word much associated with Dafoe. He surely has a soft touch as an actor, delicately inhabiting the lives and worlds of his characters, but tenderness and vulnerability have rarely been the hallmarks of those performances. Well, leave it to the 62-year-old Dafoe to find a new side of himself to show us.

As Bobby, the exasperated but caring manager of a motel just outside Disney World, Dafoe strikes a balance between kind-heartedness and practicality that any businessman must have when operating on the margins of society. There is a moment in the film – featured heavily in the trailer – when a resident yells after him, “We love you, Bobby!” He turns, without breaking stride, and shouts back, “I love you, too!” And your heart breaks for the sense he wishes he could do more for these people but knows he cannot.

8. Brooklynn Prince for The Florida Project

Prince is 7 years old, but she is an old pro at this. Having been on the covers of magazines essentially since she could stand, it does not seem as though anything fazes her. In interviews, she is eloquent and unflappable. What once might have been referred to as star quality, she has it. But none of that is what makes Prince so impressive. All of that can be taught or learned or, in some cases, ingrained. What is so impressive is the way all of that disappears in her performance. All the sheen of a young starlet in the making washes away, and the audience is left with a single remarkable character.

Writer-director Sean Baker did not craft the children in his film to be wise beyond their years, to be too clever by half like so many kids in movies. He has crafted a film that is about the wonder of childhood but set against the backdrop of crushing poverty. Moonee, as portrayed by Prince, is the epitome of this dichotomy. She is precocious, joyous, and celebratory, diving into new adventures at the drop of a hat, without regard for her circumstance. But when the real world arrives to interrupt the idyll of her childhood, she breaks in a way few actors of any age could convey, and there is not a dry eye in the house.

7. Michael Shannon for The Shape of Water

This will sound negative, but I mean it as a compliment, so bear with me. I have lost the ability to be surprised by Shannon. His level of talent and skill has been so consistent over the years that I now expect greatness. I see his name and I settle in for something exciting and wonderful and that I have never seen before. He never disappoints, and of course, he sails past any expectation I might have anyway. So as Richard Strickland, the self-righteous embodiment of government oppression, Shannon once again delivers something wholly unique and, yes, surprising.

Shannon digs into Strickland with his usual ferociousness, but what makes it so compelling and remarkable is the way the actor gives shape and nuance to a character meant mostly as a fairy tale villain. There is never a question that Strickland is evil, but Shannon’s performance allows us to get at the root of that evil. He is what the society around him demands he be, but he is not oppressed by it. Rather, it enlivens him, empowers him. He revels in it. That is his madness, and that is what Shannon so well communicates.

6. Vicky Krieps for Phantom Thread

It takes something truly special to out-crazy a Daniel Day-Lewis performance in a Paul Thomas Anderson film, but witness Krieps’ pulsing, obsessive, rigidly mannered muse, Alma, and know she has pulled off that something special. Phantom Thread is Anderson’s strangest film, operating on a wavelength few films before ever have known. Krieps pitches her performance to that wavelength perfectly and never allows herself to drift into either self-seriousness or parody. It is a high-wire act of the highest magnitude and it is a thrill to watch.

The German actress will be mostly unknown to American audiences when she glides onto screen here, but the impression she leaves won’t soon be forgotten. Like so many great performances, this begins with Krieps’ eyes, so deep and still, communicating a thousand things at once with the flicker of an eyelash or a long, unbroken stare. Krieps takes Alma from passivity to control so subtly you might miss it, but when it hits you, it does so with the force of a truck. It sneaks up on you. It shocks you. It makes you yearn for more.

5. Barry Keoghan for The Killing of a Sacred Deer

I can promise you one thing: You have never seen spaghetti eaten like this before. Keoghan, who also appeared in this year’s Dunkirk in a wildly different role, tears into this part with the fire and intensity of a ravenous dog fighting for scraps. The character Martin is more than a villain, as Keoghan plays him. He is barely human. He is the harbinger of doom shrouded in a white cotton T-shirt. He is impenetrable, invulnerable, unstoppable, but Keoghan carries the weight of this as if it were a feather, embodying this other-worldliness as if it were only natural.

The wonderful Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos always pitches his films a few degrees left of center, and you are either okay traveling there with him or you are not. More than travel there, Keoghan seems like that is where he has always been, where he was always meant to be. Lanthimos intends for The Killing of a Sacred Deer to be a play on classic Greek mythology, and Keoghan comfortably embraces the mythic nature of his character to cast a strangely hypnotic spell over the film.

4. Frances McDormand for Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

Mildred Hayes is an instantly iconic character, and one it feels like only McDormand could have brought to life. The Academy Award-winning star of films such as Fargo, Almost Famous, and North Country, she has the experience, the wisdom, and the guts to portray the fiery sword of vengeance meant to pierce the heart of this film. Mildred comes off initially as a loaded weapon, full of righteous anger and ready to unleash hell on those in her path.

But McDormand – and, it must be said, McDonagh – is not interested in the tawdry revenge that provides the surface of Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. She is after something deeper, exploring the soul of a grieving woman who somehow has not lost sympathy for a world that has none for her. She battles both the literal and figurative flames alone because if she did not, she cannot be sure where her grief would take her. McDormand finds the heart at the center of Mildred’s anger, and once she makes us see it, we wonder how we ever could have missed it.

3. Timothée Chalamet for Call Me By Your Name

Two things must be said right off: First, what a year for the 22-year-old Chalamet with his breakout role in this film, his wonderful turn in Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, and his smaller but no less impressive work in Scott Cooper’s Hostiles. On the basis of these three performances – all as different as colors in the rainbow – Chalamet should have a long, impressive career ahead of him. Second, I do not think Call Me By Your Name is a good film. I happily exist in the minority with this opinion, and over the next two months, I will likely find myself writing about this film often as a major Oscar contender.

The saving grace in a film that is otherwise vapid, empty, self-indulgent, and tone deaf is its cast. Armie Hammer, Stuhlbarg, and in particular Chalamet take this frothy curio and make it, if not worth watching, at least less of a waste. Chalamet takes the clichéd, boring role he is given and infuses it with vulnerability and longing that exists nowhere in the text of the film. Chalamet somehow pieces together a banquet of life from the table scraps of character director Luca Guadagnino’s film provides. It is a miracle of performance that tests the young actor’s every skill. He deserves better in the future than to have to rescue a mess of a film like this.

2. Sally Hawkins for The Shape of Water

There is nothing easy about portraying Elisa, the deaf-mute heroine at the center of writer-director Guillermo del Toro’s fairy tale romance. By taking away voice, you have taken away 50 percent of an actor’s toolbox. Hawkins then must rely only on her physicality, her ability to wordlessly express the world of emotion swirling around in Elisa’s head as she embarks on a journey she could never have predicted. Hamstrung by the lack of a voice, she must then convince the audience to come along with her in falling in love with an amphibious humanoid creature in the film’s central romance.

So, the degree of difficulty is off the charts. Hawkins’ performance, however, stands out for how effortless she makes it all seem. From her first moments on screen, Elisa feels like a fully lived-in character, with a rich inner life she simply has trouble expressing to most of the world. But we see it because Hawkins allows us in, brings us with her to see the passionate, intelligent, strong person her disability has hidden too long. She is no ordinary fairy tale heroine, and Hawkins does not play her as such. In fact, there is nothing about this performance that is ordinary.

1. Margot Robbie for I, Tonya

There are few actors working now who can match the fearless bravado of Robbie. She burst onto the scene for most in 2013 with her scene-stealing work in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. She proved to be one of the only good things to come out of the dreadful anti-hero comic film Suicide Squad, so much so the studio was essentially forced to center a film around her character. Now, with I, Tonya, Robbie finally gets a leading role worthy of the energy, ferocity, and brilliance she has displayed in everything else she has done.

Robbie’s greatest accomplishment is to take someone we all think we know – Tonya Harding – and transform her from the caricature she became in the media back into the person she was and is at heart. Robbie embraces all the twists and turns, contradictions and convolutions of Tonya’s life and rediscovers the humanity of the person standing at the center of the storm. She walks along the knife edge of insanity, and every time she appears ready to fall into hysterics or histrionics, she ascends, taking the audience to another level understanding and empathy. It is what screen performance, at its highest level, was always meant to be.

Check back tomorrow for Last Cinema Standing’s Top 10 Quotes of 2017 and all week for more Year in Review.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Live Action Short

Sarah Adler stars in the Best Live Action Short nominee Aya.

Each day as we make our way to the Academy Awards ceremony Feb. 22, Last Cinema Standing will take an in-depth look at each of the categories, sorting out the highs, the lows, and everything in between. Check back right here for analysis, predictions, and gripes as we inch toward the Dolby Theater and that world-famous red carpet.

Best Live Action Short

The nominees are:

Aya

Boogaloo and Graham

Butter Lamp

Parvaneh

The Phone Call

Among my favorite things each Oscar season are the three shorts categories for live action, animated, and documentary short films. Every year, these pictures show the kind of ambition, energy, and poignancy that truth be told, is often lacking in their long-form brethren. The international scope of these categories opens up the field to vital new voices from around the cinematic globe and gives viewers the chance to see the world from a different perspective, if only briefly.

The live-action shorts in particular have always been a hotbed of interesting ideas and innovative approaches to filmmaking. The Academy Awards have recognized some of the brightest stars in this category, as well as some of the most promising newcomers. Walt Disney himself won this award six times in his remarkable career, including four consecutive times from 1950 to 1953.

Famed producer-director Hal Roach, known for his work with Harold Lloyd, as well as for producing the Little Rascals and Our Gang shorts, won the first incarnation of this award in 1932. Taylor Hackford, director of An Officer and a Gentleman and Ray, won for his short Teenage Father in 1978. More recently, Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights) and Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths) launched their feature-film careers with wins in this category in 2005 and 2006, respectively.

Of course, there is no guarantee this year’s filmmakers will enjoy similar success, but it will not be for lack of trying or lack of talent. As much as either of those, timing and luck play a major part in who makes it and who does not in the movie business. An Academy Award, however, will hopefully serve as the necessary encouragement to press on in the face of any obstacles. I, for one, will be first in line for the next feature film by any among this talented group.

The Phone Call (directed by Mat Kirkby) – You are probably looking at your winner here. Starring Academy Award nominee Sally Hawkins and Academy Award winner Jim Broadbent, The Phone Call stands out as feeling the most like a big Hollywood-style production, and it benefits from having the most straightforwardly emotional storyline. Hawkins plays Heather, who works at a crisis hotline, and Broadbent plays “Stan,” who calls the center. Deceptively simple, the plot plays out like a ticking-clock thriller as Heather senses she may have the chance to save a life.

Despite the big stars and high production values, Kirkby keeps the visual tap dancing to a minimum, which puts the focus squarely on the two characters and the phone call. This is not to say there is not style to spare, but Kirkby has an innate feel for when to deploy a flashy camera move or cross cut and for when to step back and let his story and his actors carry the day. If this indeed wins the Oscar, it will make a handsome winner to be sure.

Aya (directed by Oded Binnun and Mihal Brezis) – That having been said, this is my favorite of the live action nominees. A two-hander in the truest sense, it reminds of Richard Linklater’s great Before trilogy or Abbas Kiarostami’s recent Certified Copy. Sarah Adler plays Aya, a woman whose life is unsatisfying in a way she cannot explain, but she holds out hope that at any time, anything can happen. And so, it does. By happenstance, she ends up posing as the hired driver for a stranger (Mr. Overby, played by Ulrich Thomsen) at the airport. She takes him to his destination, and they talk.

What they say is not nearly as important as how they say it, how they connect to one another, and how Aya’s passenger’s comes to understand just what it is she needs and might be missing from her life. These are lonely people but not because they are alone in life. Their loneliness stems from an inability to feel close to anyone or anything. Whether they know it or not, they both need this break in routine, this spontaneous connection to another human being.

Running 39 minutes, this is the longest nominee in the category by far, and it uses every minute to build the distance these two feel, not only from each other but from the world at large. The vast expanse of open land they pass as they drive only accentuates this feeling. They are stranded in an emotional desert and have nothing to cling to but each other. So, for this brief moment in time, two lost souls find what they need as they circle around each other until the gravity between them becomes too much, and they collide.

Butter Lamp (directed by Wei Hu) – A structurally daring experiment, the true subject of Hu’s minimalist Butter Lamp is not revealed until the awe-inspiring final moments. The premise is as simple as it is brilliant. A photographer sets up shop for families and community groups to come have their picture taken. His assistant shuffles through fake backdrops that place the subjects anywhere they want, from the Great Wall of China to a tropical beach.

The camera never moves, save for those last few seconds, and even then, it is a simple slow push in on an object of great importance, not to the story but to one of the characters. That is what makes Butter Lamp so beautiful. It is not about plot. It is about people and the importance of family, faith, community, and heritage. The photographer drops in only for fleeting moments of his subjects’ lives. The true depths of their experiences only exist outside the frame – a ready metaphor for filmmaking itself. He captures just the artifice, but within that, there still exists something real.

Boogaloo and Graham (directed by Michael Lennox) – The shortest of the set is also the most downright enjoyable. Set against the backdrop of Catholic-Protestant tensions in Northern Ireland in the late 1970s, Boogaloo and Graham tells the story of two young brothers whose father gives them a pair of chickens as pets.

The film is told entirely from the children’s perspective, which means the fully armed soldiers being trucked through town are just another part of the scenery. They represent the threat of real-world violence always lurking in the background, something the two boys would barely be able to comprehend, especially when their mother is threatening much more immediate violence against their beloved chickens.

Writer Ronan Blaney draws some interesting parallels between masculinity and violence, and there is a nice contrast between the boys’ kind-hearted soft touch of a father and their more hardened, pragmatic mother. The dialogue is funny, and the filmmaking is solid, though the overall effect feels slight when compared to the four other nominated films.

Parvaneh (directed by Talkhon Hamzavi) – Parvaneh is a teenage girl who could be from anywhere. She is shy, determined, and bright, but she is trapped by her circumstances. Living on her own in a transit center for asylum seekers in the Swiss Alps, she earns meager wages to send back to her family in Afghanistan but has no way to send the money. She overhears two men talking about a Western Union in Zurich where she can send money home.

When she is told she is too young, she enlists the help of a wealthy Swiss girl who seems to have problems of her own.They spend an eventful night together in Zurich and realize they have more in common than they might have thought. As lessons go, this is pretty well-worn territory, but the film is shot through with energy and empathy, crafting a well told story about two young people lost in a world that has neither the time nor the inclination to notice them.

The final analysis

The Phone Call has two major advantages simply by being in English and starring two Hollywood stars who already have Academy approval. Voters in this category tend to like films that pack an emotional punch, a quality The Phone Call has in spades. Boogaloo and Graham recently won the short film award from the British Academy of Television and Arts, but it was also the only one of these nominees also cited there. Ultimately, it would be surprising if anything but The Phone Call ends up with this award.

Will win: The Phone Call

Should win: Aya