It’s time once again for my fashionably late film retrospective, and as always, I’m capping things off with my favorite performances of 2023. These were the actors who dazzled, moved, and haunted me well-nigh two years later, and I’m ever grateful to them.
As with previous years, I’ve made my current list consistent with categories that match the Oscars. This is not an attempt to avoid talking about actors who do not identify as male or female (I consider all performances in a given year) but rather to match my own version of the awards with current award shows. I also want to ensure some level of equal representation in my list. That said, I’m still keeping the door open for a gender-neutral list in the future.
As per usual, these are preferential as opposed to “best” performances. For the fourth year in a row, I’m eschewing a ranked list for five nominees, with one “winner” representing my favorite. Each category will have five honorable mentions appearing in alphabetical order. We start with…
My Favorite Supporting Actresses
Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):
Erika Alexander as Coraline / Miss Carmen, American Fiction / Earth Mama
Patricia Clarkson as Eugenia, Monica
Zoe Lister-Jones as Mona Wassermann, Beau Is Afraid
Montserrat Marañon as Nuria, Tótem
Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Mary Lamb, The Holdovers
*NOMINEE*
Hong Chau as Jo Tran
Showing Up
I’ve been impressed by Chau’s versatility in the past, and her turn in Kelly Reichardt’s latest quotidian gem shows her mastering a more realistic mode. She infuses Jo with a specific kind of energy that’s at once playful and practical; she’s the kind of person who can put her heart and soul into an art installation and still find time to impulsively install (and utilize) a tire swing. Her interactions with Michelle Williams’ Lizzy position her as a counter to Lizzy’s consistent curmudgeon—typified in her knowing smile, a deft rebuttal to Lizzy’s constant pout. But there’s an offbeat kindness there too; she can empathize with Lizzy’s seriousness and still see a different path for her own life.
*NOMINEE*
Lee Hye-young as Ms. Kim
Walk Up (Tab)
Once you realize Hong Sang-soo’s laconic chamber piece is a time travel movie (of a sort), Lee’s performance is even more breathtaking. As we move through various periods of her life, we see her totally in control as a walk-up apartment proprietor, charming and relaxed, and then utterly vulnerable as a put-upon property manager, with all the warm reception of a tax collector. But even in these disparate phases, we can see the ebbs and flows of Ms. Kim’s world-weariness and insecurities, glimpsed through moments of awkward appeasement or a desperate need to impress. Even as the phases are marked by striking differences, Lee makes the transitions between them effortlessly smooth.
*NOMINEE*
Julianne Moore as Gracie Atherton-Yoo
May December
A veteran of Todd Haynes’ informal repertory company, Moore plays notes she’s never had the chance to before in his latest masterwork. Gracie’s affected levelheadedness is a weapon she can wield to transcend the scandal of her past and serves as an f*** you to anyone who would dare judge her for it (even as it brings Hollywood to her doorstep). Moore’s scenes with Natalie Portman, as the actress seeking to play her, showcase a palpable tension that doesn’t overspill into outright contempt or vitriol but hangs in the air like a toxic gas. Although Gracie’s control does slip—especially in later scenes with Charles Melton as her husband. We see at last how she’s had to deny so many of her own faults to maintain the illusion of normalcy.
*NOMINEE*
Judith State as Csilla Szabo
R.M.N.
As a defiant bakery owner in Cristian Mungiu’s bleak portrait of racism and xenophobia in rural Romania, State possesses an instant sense of conviction on-screen as her character defends the immigrants working at her establishment. Still, it’s far from the savior archetype we’ve come to expect, and State is just as honest about her character’s ineffectual nature to oppose the community’s actions. Note the film’s signature long take at a town hall, with Csilla’s body collapsing inward even as her cogent arguments are drowned out by sheer volume (if not superior logic). It’s a tragic arc for an intelligent character trying to do the right thing, but it speaks to a realism missing from too many of these kinds of stories.
**WINNER**
Patti LuPone as Mona Wassermann
Beau Is Afraid
Renowned for her adept stage presence, LuPone reminds us that the screen is just as grateful for her in Ari Aster’s waking nightmare. Mona’s grip over her son Beau is tenacious, and her thousand-yard glare threatens to incinerate the screen. Even LuPone’s voice on the end of a phone line has undeniable verve and heft, as if to disobey her is to risk endless perdition. How impressive, then, for LuPone to avoid the danger of a one-note performance, as she lets grief, betrayal, love, and real fear creep in. LuPone’s face captivates with wide-eyed wonder as these obstacles proceed to catch Mona off guard. As our ostensible “final boss,” LuPone manages to commit both to the film’s pervasive strangeness and its grounded horror.
My Favorite Supporting Actors
Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):
Thom Green as Adam, Of an Age
Paul Mescal as Harry, All of Us Strangers
Aaron Pierre as Francis, Brother
Souléymane Sy Savané as Father Patrick, Our Father the Devil (Mon père, le diable)
Teo Yoo as Hae Sung, Past Lives
*NOMINEE*
Jonathan Majors as Damian “Diamond Dame” Anderson
Creed III
*I want to preface this by saying I am aware of Majors’ domestic violence conviction. My thoughts below reflect purely on Majors’ acting and not on his character.*
There’s a furious vengeance driving Majors’ “Dame,” one that may make him the most challenging opponent in the career of Michael B. Jordan’s eponymous boxer. It comes through in Majors’ body language as a kind of swagger, flying in the face of the years that have been stolen from Dame, and we perceive his ultimate goal as less redemption arc than mission of spite. Majors has a cutting tone to his invective when he calls out Donnie’s pampered existence or reminds him how easily their roles could have been reversed—all the more cutting because we know Dame is probably right. He makes for a redoubtable villain, a hardened dynamo with layers of self-made armor, submerging the frightened little boy he once was.
*NOMINEE*
Charles Melton as Joe Yoo
May December
Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore have received rightful plaudits for their work (look no further than this list), but without Melton to complement them, I’m not sure Todd Haynes’ tonal balancing act would break our hearts as much as it does. Melton portrays Joe as a man who struggles to process his unconventional life—the implications of his marriage, the loss of a childhood he can never reclaim, and the trauma that has calcified into something almost mundane—yet he appears stuck in time. The scenes with his children will sear your soul; he’s a parent wanting the best for them while feeling more like one of their peers. He may not be a marquee name, but Melton makes the cost of such a lurid, soapy scandal undeniably human.
*NOMINEE*
Mark Ruffalo as Duncan Wedderburn
Poor Things
Thank goodness for Yorgos Lanthimos’s eccentric fantasia, which gives Ruffalo the chance to indulge in outright slapstick as the wonderfully named Duncan Wedderburn. A foppish dandy of a man, Wedderburn allows Ruffalo to be funny in ways that challenge his typically naturalistic screen persona. As an overbearing man who fancies himself an arbiter of cultural taste, Wedderburn simpers, preens, and overenunciates like a discarded Oscar Wilde character. But when his quarry, Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter, dares show anything approximating intelligence, learnedness, or agency, he retreats into the fetal position, succumbing to powerlessness. Ruffalo’s scene in an asylum, weeping with wild abandon, is what great farce is made of.
*NOMINEE*
Luis Zahera as Xan
The Beasts (As bestas)
One of 2023’s outright villains, Xan, as played by Zahera, embodies a small-minded, wounded figure of masculinity. But it’s imbued with something more: caustic spite that has reached the point of monomania. Every act of sadistic machismo cannot help but reveal a naked helplessness, even in Xan’s moments of cool calculation. When Xan tries to explain himself and his situation, Zahera considers the words carefully, letting a human being come into view, before yanking it away in the form of a cold doubling down. We’ve seen people like Xan in the real world, scary as that is, but Zahera makes us understand why they pick the victims they do—they can’t (or won’t) confront the larger systemic forces that actually beset them.
**WINNER**
Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson as Ragnar
Godland (Vanskabte land)
No stranger to my performance lists, Sigurðsson plays his character in Hlynur Pálmason’s dark pilgrimage like a troll—and I very much mean the modern, figurative kind. Sparring with the Lutheran missionary he’s been tasked with escorting through the Danish territory of Iceland, Sigurðsson is a wily but subtle jester, expressing his animosity toward the colonial movement through jabs and japes. At the same time, we also sense the genuine respect Ragnar has for the unforgiving landscape (both its beauty and poised lethality), and the surly frontiersman reveals a soulfulness that might be the fuel for his trickeries. In a stirring confession, Sigurðsson shows a self-awareness that unfolds new multitudes, all the more stirring for how it is cut short.
My Favorite Lead Actresses
Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):
Oksana Cherkashyna as Irka, Klondike (Klondaik)
Marina Foïs as Olga Denis, The Beasts (As bestas)
Lily Gladstone as Mollie Burkhart / Tana, Killers of the Flower Moon / The Unknown Country
Laura Paredes as Laura, Trenque Lauqen
Joanna Scanlan as Mary Hussain, After Love
*NOMINEE*
Leonie Benesch as Carla Nowak
The Teachers’ Lounge (Das Lehrerzimmer)
If İlker Çatak’s school-centered tale were an inspirational drama, it would be easy to see Benesch fitting perfectly into the Mr. Chips role. But as the protagonist of a thorny thriller, she portrays a teacher with the best interest of her students at heart forced to confront bureaucracy and power run amok, a far more challenging exercise. She builds rapport with us quickly in Carla’s sense of genuine goodness, slowly revealing the character’s naive tendencies and her decisions that may be expedient but only wrest the situation further from her control. It’s Benesch’s ability to balance hard-earned wisdom and well-intentioned misjudgment that makes Carla someone to root for even when all hope of resolution appears lost.
*NOMINEE*
Greta Lee as Nora Moon
Past Lives
Taking on the heroine of Celine Song’s haunting reverie, Lee impresses with how much she withholds, the external restraint suggesting an internal immensity. She is ever watchful but doesn’t betray everything that troubles Nora: memories of the country she left, the person she might have grown to love, and the stubborn tenacity of a life left unlived. The subtle tremor in her voice, the knowing wit that obscures a depth of feeling, the silent look that sees her transported to another universe—it’s time travel without the machine. All this builds to the ultimate moment of grief (but blessed release) as Nora sobs into her husband’s arms, finally free as reality brings her back to the present. It takes a talent as patient as Lee’s to make that moment work.
*NOMINEE*
Natalie Portman as Elizabeth Berry
May December
Portman may have found the role of her career in Todd Haynes’ unnerving psychodrama. As an actress committed to her craft, Elizabeth appears invested in telling the kind of story that does justice to its real-life counterparts. She appears respectful, a thespian taking her job seriously, doing her due diligence and research. But as the film winds on, Portman acts as one under a spell, pursuing an acting method that puts aside all ethical qualms for the sake of nailing the part. She doesn’t so much become her characters; you start to believe she may be possessed by them, all in the name of verisimilitude. That eerie thrall reveals sinister sides to Portman we’ve never seen, especially in a spectacular act of betrayal, with Portman delivering the film’s most cutting line.
*NOMINEE*
Emma Stone as Bella Baxter
Poor Things
Stone’s second Oscar-winning performance works so well because of its completeness, her character taking life in at every moment but in different ways as she rapidly matures. Having just been brought to life by thoroughly absurd means, Bella is wide-eyed and frank to the point of hilarity. Stone smartly modulates the character’s idiosyncrasies, understandably toddler-like at the beginning, into something believably more mature, which still considers the various contradictions and challenges she faces. There’s a consistency of character even as the shifts between stages are seamless. By the end, we have seen her earn a trove of knowledge about the world, helping her recognize the limitations and potential of others better than they ever will.
**WINNER**
Sandra Hüller as Sandra Voyter
Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute)
Hüller has a tricky role in Justine Triet’s courtroom mystery, as her character stands accused of murdering her husband. It means Hüller must be sympathetic enough for us to see Sandra’s innocence and enigmatic enough to leave room for the possibility of guilt. But Hüller accomplishes it by keeping us off-balance—just when we think we have our bearings, a performative smile or long-winded explanation makes us doubt again. In so doing, she illuminates the film’s larger questions: Are we ever knowable enough for others to pass judgment? How do we define a person beyond a trial’s rather pat conclusion of innocent/guilty? As the human need for order insists on an answer to everything, Hüller challenges that very premise: Sandra is vivid and fully realized while resisting a tidy summation.
My Favorite Lead Actors
Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):
Michael Fassbender as The Killer, The Killer
Glenn Howerton as Jim Balsillie, BlackBerry
Kwon Hae-hyo as Byung-soo, Walk Up (Tab)
Josh O’Connor as Arthur, La Chimera
Peter Sarsgaard as Saul Shapiro, Memory
*NOMINEE*
Denis Ménochet as Antoine Denis
The Beasts (As bestas)
Menochet has cut an intimidating figure in films like Custody or Beau Is Afraid, but his turn in Rodrigo Soroyen’s patient potboiler is far more subdued (though no less fascinating). His character’s passion for simple pleasures—a ripe tomato or pastoral hillside—reveal a man seemingly content with a hardscrabble agrarian life. It’s when events in his less-than-idyllic community escalate that we begin to recognize Menochet’s sense of control. He escalates Antoine’s acts of reprisal in a neighborly feud so steadily that we can barely see the line of no return. And yet we empathize with Antoine’s anger and understand his strange logic, even as he treads a dangerous path for himself and his family.
*NOMINEE*
Andrew Scott as Adam
All of Us Strangers
Scott’s intensity as an actor will be familiar to anyone who’s seen his take on Moriarty in Sherlock, which is what makes the gentler, more internal performance here all the more intriguing. His intensity doesn’t explode outward but rather cascades inward, with Scott registering palpable anxiety and uncertainty in the midst of a new romantic opportunity. As Adam wrestles with the specter of unresolved family issues, even though no effects are added, we see him regress to childhood in his body carriage and mannerisms. Scott shows us a man who appears to stand right on the precipice of life itself but clings just tightly enough to its unfulfilled promise. He boasts the potency and presence we expect from Scott, and a light touch we might not.
*NOMINEE*
Jeffrey Wright as Thelonius “Monk” Ellison
American Fiction
Cord Jefferson’s drama/satire deserves a versatile performer at its center and finds one in Wright’s hunched, pent-up personage. His natural likability shines in Monk’s considerable charms, but they’re often buried under layers of rock, what with family tensions and a snobbishness that threatens to alienate even his closest friends. Wright finds a great sense of would-be literary rebel in Monk’s unwavering tenets as well as a rich vein of humor as he seeks to impersonate his own satirical creation. But we also buy Monk as a probing artist—when we get to his final work of art, we believe it’s come from this man, who has certainly absorbed and—dare we say it—learned from his experience.
*NOMINEE*
Kōji Yakusho as Hirayama
Perfect Days
Yakusho’s performance as Hirayama in Wim Wenders’ meditative vision reminds us that the greatest actors can command our attention even with the most humdrum behavior. His expressiveness is such that the flash of a smile or shock of surprise leaps off the screen. He’s so key to making the trickiness of Wenders’ film work: With Hirayama committed (even married) to the notion of a simple life, well…life doesn’t always conform to that idealistic maxim. Watch how he reacts to unexpected developments, unearthing new layers and forcing us to see his earlier proclivities in a new light. It culminates in a tour de force close-up, as Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good,” blares, in which our seemingly placid hero engages with still roiling emotions.
**WINNER**
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer
Thomas Jefferson has long been referred to as the “American Sphinx,” although Murphy convinces us that Oppenheimer may also deserve that distinction. With his elastic face and formidable presence, Murphy burrows so deeply into the torrid miasma of Oppenheimer’s conscience that it threatens to overwhelm the screen (helped in no part by Christopher Nolan’s insistent close-ups). Even his moments of submission feel like grandmaster plans, regardless of whether anyone else recognizes them. At turns aloof and charismatic, cold and emotionally perceptive, Murphy’s Oppenheimer appears intent on his goals, capable of ruthless efficiency while mercilessly aware of his faults. Never has the weight of the bomb (and all its consequences) played out in such beautiful contradictions.
What a crop of talented performers in another extraordinary movie year. I’ll have my Top 10 Films of 2023 next. I promise!