As a film critic who sees upwards of 200 movies a year, I am often asked how I survive such a marathon. Aside from having a massive love of moviegoing, the answer is that I have an outlandish love of good acting. Even the most dubious of films often features a performance or a cameo that hits home. Lying in wait for this work is what keeps me, and I suspect many others, in a happy state of expectation. I look forward to being astonished, and when I am, all – well, almost all – is forgiven.
The Oscars, airing March 2 on ABC and streaming live on Hulu, will offer up kudos for some of these astonishments. But some of the most commendable work went unnominated.
So, per my annual custom, here are my musings on some of the standout acting nominees, as well as a few of the best performances of the year that went unrecognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Why We Wrote This
Our film critic loves a great performance. His top acting picks for 2024 include stars who are up for Academy Awards – and those who he argues should be.
Best actress
I would single out for highest honors Fernanda Torres’ performance in “I’m Still Here” as the defiant matriarch whose husband was “disappeared” during Brazil’s military dictatorship. It would have been all too easy to portray the real-life Eunice Paiva as an outwardly grieving sufferer. Paiva certainly did suffer, but Torres emphasizes the woman’s indomitable pride in keeping her family together. Without a hint of histrionics, she bares Paiva’s soul. This is the most difficult kind of acting.
The other nominee I most admire is Mikey Madison as Ani, an exotic dancer in a New York “gentlemen’s club” in “Anora.” Ani’s knockabout marriage to the spoiled son of a Russian oligarch could have been played strictly for laughs. Instead, Madison brings a dazzling mix of tones to the role. Street-smart, flummoxed, flattered, she is the engine of a madcap Cinderella fantasy that slides into sadness without a hitch. Madison brings unrelenting vigor to the sort of character who is normally marginalized or sensationalized on the screen. Ani comes across as nobody’s fool – except, perhaps, her own.
Of the remaining three nominees, I thought Cynthia Erivo in “Wicked” lent impressive green gravitas to a movie that otherwise felt like being locked inside a Vegas Cirque du Soleil act for almost three hours. Demi Moore in the body horrorfest “The Substance” has the sentimental vote but gets upstaged by all the gore on display. Karla Sofía Gascón, the first transgender actress to receive an Oscar nomination, is effective in “Emilia Pérez” but ultimately is done in by a role that tries for too many wildly disparate things – cartel boss, savior, avenger, feminist. (In any case, Gascón’s recently surfaced racist social media posts about, among other things, immigrants and Islam, will undoubtedly sabotage any chance of her winning.)
Courtesy of Simon Mein/Thin Man Films Ltd
The gravest injustice in this category is the absence of Marianne Jean-Baptiste in “Hard Truths.” She won the best actress award from all three major critics’ groups in the United States and was not even nominated for an Oscar. As Pansy, a London housewife at furious odds with herself and the world, Jean-Baptiste brought stunning poignancy to what might otherwise have been a one-note rant. She gives Pansy’s anguish a seething humanity.
Best actor
I thought Colman Domingo, nominated for his role as John “Divine G” Whitfield in “Sing Sing,” gave the year’s best performance in this category. In the past, in such movies as “Rustin” and the remake of “The Color Purple,” Domingo’s outsize theatrical presence could seem almost too much for the camera. But in “Sing Sing,” playing the leader of a prison theater troupe, Domingo and his larger-than-life aspect are a perfect fit. He is equally powerful in his quietest moments, when Divine G’s despair at being incarcerated shuts him down completely. His stillnesses are as dynamic as his eruptions.
The other four nominees have their moments. As the Hungarian immigrant architect and Holocaust survivor in “The Brutalist,” Adrien Brody does his best work since “The Pianist.” The fact that his performance sometimes summons up that film is no reason to discount it. Ralph Fiennes’ papal priest in “Conclave” is a marvel of underplaying in a cast otherwise prone to scenery-chomping. As the young Donald J. Trump, Sebastian Stan makes the best of a near-impossible assignment in “The Apprentice.”
And then there’s Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown,” a likely winner in this category. My problem with the movie is that its title sums up its approach to the singer-songwriter. We end up where we started – Dylan the enigma. But at least Chalamet doesn’t try to soft pedal Dylan’s surliness and careerism, and his vocal re-creations are mostly spot on.
Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures/AP
Best supporting actress
With the exception of Zoe Saldaña as the hyperintense Mexican attorney in “Emilia Pérez,” my best picks for this category are not in line with the Oscars’ choices, worthy though some of them are. (For the record, the rest of the nominees for best supporting actress are Isabella Rossellini in “Conclave,” Monica Barbaro in “A Complete Unknown,” Felicity Jones in “The Brutalist,” and Ariana Grande in “Wicked.”) Tops for me is Michele Austin as Chantelle, the exasperated but deeply caring sister of Jean-Baptiste’s Pansy in “Hard Truths.” It’s a performance of surpassing empathy. Chantelle tells her sister, “I love you. I don’t understand you, but I love you.” No other actor this year delivered a line with more sorrowful force.
I would also single out Jurnee Smollett as Dolores, the protective mother of a young boy in the crime-ridden Chicago projects in “We Grown Now.” “How am I supposed to keep you safe?” Dolores wails. Her cry speaks for all parents who have ever feared for their child.
Best supporting actor
Kieran Culkin, as Benji, the distressingly overbearing cousin of Jesse Eisenberg’s David in “A Real Pain,” is the Oscar favorite. It’s a marvelously free-form performance, full of sharp edges and grace notes.
But by all rights, Culkin should not be in this category. He is a co-lead with Eisenberg and probably has more lines. Oscar category switcheroos like this happen all the time as a way to boost an actor’s odds of winning. That doesn’t make it legitimate.
I was also high on the other Oscar nominees in this group – Edward Norton as Pete Seeger in “A Complete Unknown,” Guy Pearce as the flamboyant tycoon in “The Brutalist,” and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s mentor, in “The Apprentice.” He gives iniquity a human face.
Perhaps best of all is Yura Borisov as the thug with a heart of gold in “Anora.” He does more with his eyes than most actors do with their entire bodies. I’ve admired this actor ever since I saw him as a moody Russian miner in the Finnish-Russian movie “Compartment Number 6.” Let’s hope he graces Hollywood again.
Peter Rainer is the Monitor’s film critic.
