Hi. These Are Some Good Performances
We're a few weeks away from movie bedlam. Let's appreciate what we have so far.
Way too much of my life revolves around movies.
If someone tells me where they live in New York, I use my knowledge of the city’s movie theaters to pinpoint their location. I’ve had to choose between dates and movie premieres in the past. I once thought about going to deep Brooklyn to see a film that had a runtime shorter than the commute.
In the same vein, my yearly calendar is marked by movies coming and going with the pinpoint precision of the world’s best darts players. We’re a week away from the beginning of an awards push of sorts. I’m seeing Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City next Monday and then blockbusters and indie darlings will start dropping like flies. The Tribeca Film Festival is around the corner. Next thing you know we’ll have Barbie and Oppenheimer and then we’ll have potential awards fare in August like Passages and Problemista. Next up will be the film festivals: Telluride, New York, Toronto and its ilk. Then, the Oscars race will truly start up. New Martin Scorsese, new David Fincher, Dune: Part Two. Natalie Portman’s back. The prestige foreign dramas will be here. Wow, everything’s happening. It’s going to be 2024 in a second and it’s only June.
With all that said, I wanted to give a shoutout to what we have so far, which has actually been pretty good (even great sometimes). I know that we’re a season or two away from Awards Season, but I feel like a solid way to round everything up is by looking at the best performances so far. This (almost certainly) won’t be the top five of these four categories at the end of the year, for awards bodies or me personally, but that doesn’t mean we can’t give them a tip of the cap.
There are quite a few movies here that have multiple actors, and that’s just the way it goes. I also left these in the order I thought of them, as I don’t want to alphabetize them. Do you have better picks? Start your own goddamn newsletter.
Let’s begin.
Best Supporting Actor
Brian Tyree-Henry, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
John Magaro, Past Lives
Bill Skarsgård, John Wick: Chapter 4
Glenn Howerton, Blackberry
Jason Schwartzman, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
There are technically only two animated characters on this list, both from Across the Spider-Verse, but one can argue that there are actually four. Schwartzman and Tyree-Henry give incredible performances as Spot and Jeff Morales respectively, but Skarsgård and Howerton are also giving larger-than-life parts that walk the line between cartoonishly evil and menacing. John Magaro is giving a drastically different performance than the rest, a bit more understated, but still spectacular in his own way.
Best Supporting Actress
Ritu Arya, Polite Society
Mia Goth, Infinity Pool
Alyssa Sutherland, Evil Dead Rise
Rachel McAdams, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Viola Davis, Air
Of all of the names here, the only one that is most likely going to last into the 2024 awards season is Davis, and yet, the other four are equally as talented and show-stopping in very unconventional ways. McAdams has always been a favorite and she’s able to play a doting mother who wants her own life without coming off as mawkish. Ritu Arya as older sister Lena in Polite Society is a pleasure as the swept-off-her-feet damsel who also is able to sweep villains off of theirs. The other two, Sutherland and Goth, are critical pieces of two of my favorite horror movies of 2023 so far. Sutherland used all of her physical wiles to seem as if she’s been possessed and Goth is remarkably threatening despite her casual appearance.
Best Actor
Christopher Abbott, Sanctuary
Alexander Skarsgård, Infinity Pool
Keanu Reeves, John Wick: Chapter 4
Chris Pine, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Joaquin Phoenix, Beau Is Afraid
This is honestly probably the weakest category of the four. I found moments of brilliance in Beau Is Afraid and Dungeons & Dragons but certainly didn’t connect to them as much as the first three. Phoenix and Pine are never worse than very good though. Reeves is a constant in the John Wick franchise, but that doesn’t make his run any less impressive. Skarsgård (No. 2) plays a target of sorts for the wealthy and does so with such unpretentiousness that you almost feel bad for him despite his horrific nature. I’m not totally sure if Abbott is a lead but he’s half of the dynamic two-hander with Margaret Qualley in Sanctuary, which is my favorite movie of the year thus far. And he’s incredible in it. So I’m keeping him in this top five.
Best Actress
Margaret Qualley, Sanctuary
Greta Lee, Past Lives
Park Ji-min, Return to Seoul
Abby Ryder Fortson, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Sydney Sweeney, Reality
We’re only six months into the year and yet I’d be perfectly fine with this group of five in a Best Actress race. Qualley, my favorite of the bunch, is able to be both unhinged and perfectly cogent in a doozy of a performance as a dominatrix at the end of her rope. A similar madness could be said for Park Ji-min and Sydney Sweeney’s roles as both get into turbulent situations while trying to keep on a happy face. The ability of the two to show the layers underneath is what makes their acting transcend. Fortson is the youngest of the bunch at 15 and is still perfect in this very difficult role in which she has to play naive, wise beyond her years and constantly curious without coming off as twee. Greta Lee is also unreal in Past Lives; she plays the center of a romantic love triangle that crosses continents and fate and does so with humor and deep pathos.
Anyway, those are 20 performances I really appreciate from this year so far. If you have anything else you want to add, yell at me on Twitter @gott31 or just reply in the comments below. Thanks for reading, or at least scrolling through the names. I’ll take what I can get.