My Favorite Performances of 2018
/Performances are far and away my favorite part of any film. What actors commit to, what they do from behind a camera is a strange magic, and at the height of its power can alter your own connection to reality. Causing any one of us to temporarily lose the sense of the real and our grasp on discernment, like confusing the character on screen with the actor behind it. This year was one of my favorite in film, and much of that was due to a bevy of fantastic performances in some of my favorite films of the year. That being said, there were certain performances that rose above, that reached out grabbed me by the collar, looked me in my eyes and whispered simply…”Remember”. These performances mixed, technique, and skill, magnetism and charisma, authenticity, and risk, and created a concoction so powerful that when I thought about 2018, the year in full, the memory of them came tumbling out right along side my own actual highs and lows, achievements and disappointments, as well as memories made with friends , family, and lovers. I am thankful as an audience member and as an actor I was treated to every last one of them.
M'Baku Black Panther
Black panther was one of the most enjoyable cinematic experiences I've had in recent memory. Definitely the most enjoyable experience at the movies i've had this year. And while there were a number of fun, charismatic, performances In the film, none stood out to me as much as that of Winston Duke as M'Baku. Duke imbued M’Baku with more charisma than Boseman’s T’Challa, while having as much fun with it as Letitia Wright as Shuri, and crafted a better character than Michael B. Jordan as Kilmonger. In the movie, Duke”s tribe (The Jabari) worship the gorilla, and within duke's performance, you can see him take on the elements of the animal, not just in the barks, but in his physical gesturing, posturing, the way he engages with his opponent. Duke does interesting things with his cadence, with his eyes, and with the physical space around him. That's one of the reasons why what Duke did resonated with people so well. Consider that afterward something called the M’Baku challenge went viral. Wherein which people would record his now famous monologue right down to the cadence, and his purposeful and noticeable filler word “Hmm”. For people to be so moved and enamored with his work to perform his monologue? As an actor, I don't think there's any greater compliment. It was a beautiful thing for any actor, I think, to see and indicative of the greatness of Duke's performance in that scene and throughout the movie.
Anna Kendrick A Simple Favor
If there is any problem I have with comedic actors as compared to actors who engage in comedy, is that comedians tend to put the punchline, the gag, the joke, the funny over authenticity. This is the reason why I disengaged from a lot of what everyone else tends to love about certain comedic performances in films, especially when they are given by comedians. Anna kendrick's performance, in “A Simple Favor, is one of those that merges the most important aspects of being an actor with the important instincts of a comedian. The movie is such that it hinges itself, (much like “The Favourite”) on the performances of its stars, because a lot of the plot is going to be driven by them. Where you do, or don't think the plot is going is going to be based in what they do or don’t give you. The power of kendrick's performance is in it's ability to choose the complexity of both comedy and acting instincts so that she never strays too far from where she seems to have tethered her performance while clearly offering moments of inspired improv. When you're an actor and you’re discovering a character, there always has to be some kind of driving objective, a through line to return to to make sure that you're never moving too far, that your always tethered to something that motivates this character in almost every way. Every reaction, gesture, movement will flow forth from this well once you have located and internalized it. From there it becomes easier to make the right decision in combination with your instincts with your instincts literally glueing themselves to that objective, merging with that objective until they become one so that you get a whole new performance even while acting somewhat similar to the piece of you that remains present in all of your other performances. This is something that DeNiro and Denzel Washington do extremely well, and this is what Kendrick does in “A Simple Favor”. I wish I had the video in order to show a lot of the little, tiny things she does, especially when she's stumbling, or when she's bumbling for answers, or when she feels unsure about herself, but as a guide I will say her introduction to Blake Lively, and subsequently her drunk scene on the couch with Blake lively, where she tells the story about her brother were amazing work. The degree of difficulty involved with playing that character while trying to convey discomfort, being drunk and telling a lie while giving just enough for us to detect that something is off but not so much as to make it easily detectable cannot be understated. Her reactions to being prodded, her deflections….that scene right there is good enough for me to make it one of my absolute favorite performances i've seen all year.
Ethan Hawke First Reformed
I won't say much about Ethan Hawke's performance in Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed”, because it's the kind of performance that I think requires a lot of tape viewing, a lot of me checking it out over and over again, discovering the nuance of what he does well in particular scenes. What I will say here is that what Ethan Hawke did, and what I feel was so impressive to me about what he accomplished was his ability not to overstate understatement. In a role like this it’s easy to lose oneself in quiet verisimilitude, but Hawke gives a very impassioned performance, while remaining quiet and mostly still almost the entirety of the movie. This is important because his character is a metaphorical active volcano. We must sense that something is going on the inside, sense the rage, while barely being aware of it all aesthetically. Again, complex emotions are the most difficult for any actor to relay on screen, and the fact that you or I relate to this character so much is not just an idea of the fact that we all understand that feeling of losing faith in various things, not just in religion and our conception of God but in people, systems, and so on, but also that Ethan was able to reach an almost otherworldly sense of hyper realism. To the point that I began to arrive at a place where I felt like I was watching something beyond even a documentary, rather than a performed reality. That doesn't happen very often, even in other great roles that Ethan Hawke has performed, like Boyhood for instance. I’m always aware of the performance aspect and that's not always a negative thing, merely that there's always something when a person disappears so far into that world, into that connection into that place, where they become almost indistinguishable from who it is that they are , a performance of being.
Viola Davis Widows
Viola Davis in “Widows” is powerful, she's funny, she’s callous, she’s heartbroken, and intelligent, but the part that interest me is the way she plays this characters grief under fire. As Veronica the new widow of Henry Rawlings, she's unraveling steadily, but she's holding onto the spool tight, trying to stop the momentum. Davis is special playing the quiet storm, the person who tries to hold up in the face of terrible circumstance. Its there in “The Help” or in “Fences”, or even “Doubt.” The difference here is she gets to let this quality reside in power. Its like she's funneling Aibileen Clark from “The Help” through Amanda Waller in “Suicide Squad”. You feel it in every gesture, word, and every movement. That many times she is just trying to hold on while giving the air of consistency, while reminding everyone that she is not to be played with and she will not go down easily. Her Breakdown as she tries to fix herself in the mirror, or in a pivotal scene during a visit to Elizabeth Debicki’s character’s house, where Debicki gives her character the opening to feel what she really feels, in their numerous meetings as she hands down orders, and its rarely one or the other emotively , its frequently all. This is one of the few performances where I feel I don't know that any other actress would have sufficed, the character tailor-made to the skill-set that Viola Davis embodies so well, and whenever the meeting of character and actor seems fated a great performance is never far behind.
The Trio of The Favourite
Although this movie is riddled with spirited performances like that of Nicholas hoult, the movie belongs to its Trio of actresses Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone. The film is my vote for the best ensemble of actors this year, and if I was listing my favorite actors this year I'd have to consider the trio at or near the very top. What these actresses do in this film is nothing short of olympian. Its full on no holds barred commitment. Present when Olivia Colman tells the young boy to close his eyes, in Rachel Weisz’s “I won’t stop kicking you until youre dead” showdown with Emma Stone, and in Emma Stone’s wildly funny and spot-on snort as her only retort to Rachel Weisz. It's in there body work, the interesting risks they're take, all memorable and integral because they act as signpost that tell us exactly who these characters are, and where they are in terms of evolution and power dynamics in each scene. As close to perfect as any acting performance can be, it was on display by these three actors work in the movie. I can not detect a false beat a wrong note throughout the entirety of this film. Olivia Coleman Queen Anne is a storm in the winds of her own windy temperament, and Colman tosses her about like ship at sea, splashing down on upon unsuspecting sailors trying to navigate her ire, capsizing at a Royal meeting. Everything from Rachel Weiss is posture and presentation. Her manicured cadence feels true to a character who conditioned herself to react and act in a certain way so as to protect themselves. Emma Stone does what Anna Kendrick did except for on a higher frequency, weaponizing her best comedic instinct into a performance full of duality, emotional range and the ridiculous, like her dastardly cry after she takes her own abuse. The Trio’s work in ‘The Favourite” is not just some of the best work i've seen this year, it is some of the best work i've seen in this decade.
Tom Waits The ballad of buster Scruggs
Tom Waits performance in the Coen Brother’s latest “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” may be the truest performance on this list. Especially as it pertains to isolation, to loneliness, and what it might feel like. The far away glare, his body language, and how he carries himself, world wary, bent but not broken, a life full of both tragedy and love. I could write a story about who this person is based completely upon the clues Tom waits gives us about this man without barely a word, a recognizable word that comes forth from his mouth. The point when I knew I was sold on how great a performance I was witness to, was when he would speak to himself. I've seen a lot of actors try and perform talking to oneself , ( and I mean perform it) in order to show the audience at this person is slightly off kilter that they are losing some bit of themselves and it is based in a narrow ableist idea of what that looks like. You can see some of it in even Brad Pitt's performance in “12 monkeys” (Which I actually think was one of his better performances) but there is still the air of performance in it. A realization of what I am doing here so I need to gesture out this idea of speaking to myself and what it might sound like to speak to myself, what it might be like to be to speak to myself to create an authenticity to myself. It's very hard as a person, as an actor to give oneself the appearance that you are talking to yourself in a genuine way. You really have to find something, you really have to find an anchor to hang otherwise it's noticeable in varying degrees, varying levels on the spectrum, but nonetheless noticeable that this is what you're doing. Waits on the other hand performs it less for the audience, more for him, which is what talking to ones self should feel like. Waits brings such an air truth that it was barely noticeable at all, if at all, that this was a performance, it felt as real as him talking to someone right next to him, it felt like wind, like air, like truth.
