Every one of them is liable to knock your shoulders back.
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Maybe its an actor or actress youd previously dismissed, surpassing what had once seemed like their limitations.
Maybe its a veteran movie starrediscovering their fastball.
Maybe its someone completely new to you announcing their presence in spectacular fashion.
Some brought their star power to bear ongrandiose characters, letting audiences delight in theirunrestrained peacocking.
Others played peopleretreating into themselvesto escape pain or rejection.
Others had their sights on afat diamond ring.
The following 17 performances represent a fascinating year for the movies.
Every one of them is liable to give you goose bumps or knock your shoulders back.
Her eyes widen, her spine stiffens.
She whisks us away in a little pink tornado of pure comedy.
This includes and is perhaps particularly targeted at her own family.
As unlikely as it seems,Babygirloften feels like the movie Kidmans been building toward for nearly 40 years.
In that way, its a performance in concert with his guilt-stricken version of Oppenheimer.
He couldnt have picked a more opportune time to become cinemas elite bearer of the weight of the world.
Hunter Schafer,Cuckoo
It was a good year for performances in horror movies.
(Just go with it and try not to think of Scientology.)
In the movies final scenes, Bonello hands Seydoux the reins.
Theres nothing like a performance that sneaks up on you, and this one does.
Smith dials into his characters hope and fear and the desperate war theyre waging inside him.
(How else to describe his turn as Donald Trump inThe Apprentice?)
Stan spends the first half ofA Different Manunder a significant amount of prosthetic makeup as a man with neurofibromatosis.
Stan is incredibly funny playing this downward spiral, even as he holds on to Edwards essential pathos.
Denzel Washington,Gladiator II
Now Do a Silly One: The Movie.
Ridley Scotts long-awaited sequel to his Oscar-winning 2004 epic turned out to be kind of … well, dumb.
It is a hoot of a performance an icon using his unrivaled star power to spin straw into gold.
Or Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler as a mother and daughter constantly sizing each other up inJanet Planet.
Or Austin Butler giving alabaster psychopath inDune: Part Two.
Its Julio Torres making peculiar sense of the bureaucratic hell of America inProblemista.
ItsJune Squibb taking on the scammers at age 94 inThelma.
