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 (2018) - It's Challenge Day Scene Subscribe To FilmVerse For More ➤ http://bit.ly/2l5ySn0 Movie Info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825683/ Blu-ray: Film Description: After the death of his father, T'Challa returns home to the African nation of Wakanda to take his rightful place as king.

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.


Toni Collette Hereditary

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Toni Collette’s work in this film is an all-time great feat of acting. It’s the best performance this year period for me. The Levels, the transitions from one emotion to the next, the complexity, its truly a marvel. Pay attention to her reactions, especially those in the now infamous dinner table scene, or the instantaneous shock that sets in once she tells her son “she never wanted him”, or the progression of the body language in the gym scene, the way each facial expression, each accompanying gesture explicitly relates to a complicated emotion. Her character Annie, does not want to be there, she does not want to talk, but she needs to talk, it almost erupts out of her, she cannot help herself, and Collette’s body reverberates, and it reiterates that to us. It’s a performance so lived in, so organic, so natural, it borders on seeming like possession. It is a cavalcade of unique choices, and expressions singular to Toni Collette, the kind that usually make for the rare occurrence where a role finds the one actor meant exactly for it same as Viola. All Toni Collette did in this film was create in Annie Graham, one of the great women in horror, and one of the greatest horror performances ever. It’s a performance dipping in genius, and mastery, and it is for me THE performance of 2018.





Sam Elliott A Star is Born

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Sam Elliott is a national treasure in my eyes. He has always been one of my favorite actors out there, especially as pertains to character actors. Elliott definitely belongs to that group of character actor where in general it is thought they are playing upon some aspect of, some version of themselves. That statement has always been a gross oversimplification but it is not necessarily all wrong. Every actor to some degree brings some portion of who they are to a role. We don't magically transform into someone else, we take who we are and funnel it through our imagination twisting and conforming it into something that can be recognized as the other through a number of techniques. Actors like Elliott just have more recognizable traits and qualities so that in the process it always seems to be as simple as “They’re just playing themselves. Nevertheless, there is a verifiable, undeniable, magnetism to what Sam Elliot does on screen. The low growl, the knowing glare, the drawl, and the steady cadence that I don't think it's possible to pull off by very many actors not named Sam Elliott. He is the type of actor everything he says just sounds ike its worth listening to, so that if he were to say “You know a door only opens when you turn the knob” you’d be like “Wow Sam you’re so wise”. There is some part of us actors that recognizes that it becomes our job to give the audience what they want of us, not what we don't want them to see about us,and a great deal of actors who do character work learn to perform their character. Sam Elliott feels like a man who is always willing to just give us exactly who he is, unafraid to stand straight and tall in front of that camera and proclaimed this is who I am, take it or leave it. In “A Star is Born”, Elliott steals the show because once again it's one of those cases where a character seems so tailor made for a certain actor that it's uncanny, but also it's a case of Elliot doing something more than even i've seen him do in previous films of his. He starts to give us things that may even be beyond him, things that I think come with age, whereas I felt like before he was always willing to give a straight up version of who he is, I feel like the difference here now is that he evolved, and he gave that to us. Once again, it takes the best of what Sam Elliot does puts him in the best situation to allow him to give us something we haven't seen before, something that up to date is new to us. And then allow us to watch the fireworks. With no shade to the performances of Bradley Cooper and Gaga.

Glenn Close The Wife

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This image from this scene captures all that is so magnificent about Glenn Close’s Performance in “The Wife”. If in my mind there is any significant competition for Toni Collette, it is Glenn. Close walks a wonderfully fine line between high flying grandiosity and grounded veracity. Again this was another performance that was vital to the plot, if Close over plays her hand the plot is revealed, or we are at least very much so on the trail. If she under plays it the reveal may seem unearned, and ridiculous. Close plays it just right, and through her uncanny ability to convey a bevy of emotions in just one look, (think the ending of Dangerous Liaisons) she sets up the film, and the arc of her character in a way that informs the audience that something is amiss but only that. Close builds on her characters tendencies throughout the movie, burning the rope just a little bit as she sheds through each layer of her tether to the composure, and the nuance of her hurt and shame. Its a gorgeous bright, big, bold, sure, and genius performance reminding anyone watching of Glenn’s undeniable brilliance.

Greetings from Planet Glenn

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Greetings earthlings, we here on the planet Glenn Close prime have been monitoring you for quite some time. As such we have become irritated, unnerved, perturbed, and vexed at the manner in which you have treated our benevolent and supremely talented Queen Glenn whom we beamed down to your planet on a donkey in a manger so that acting may have eternal life. Yet, over the years we have watched time and time again as you looked over her in favor of *ahem…Lesser talents (Okay Not really, but certainly lesser works). We pondered; had your feeble two-hemisphered brains (HA! pathetic, Glenn has 6!!) escaped that horse paddock you call a head when you gave the gold plated G.I. Joe that we scientifically knew to be hers to someone else?! Our High Priestess made the otherworldly work of making a very lame character fly in “The Natural” look like flicking on a light switch and you gave it to a woman named Peggy? Had the regrettably last bit of sense you own left you suddenly for more greener pastures in regal creatures like …Badgers, and Manatees?? Is that why you gave 1989’s Oscar to some Jodie creature after we specifically armed our Queen with eye lasers, two more vertebrae to increase her posture levels to “Bitch I wish you would” and some of our finest threads to make exactly this kind of embarrassing loss impossible!!! We are here to let you know that we have just about had it with your ignorant, petulant, pathetic attempts at trying to prove your own superiority in acting - something Glenn clearly invented!.

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BUT…we Glenn Closians are merciful bunch if nothing else, and though a great deal of us had decided that we should beam Glenn’s long suffering ass right back up to our planet and shoot one ginormous side-eye ray right down that receding hair line you call the polar ice caps, thereby rapidly running doomsday clock you already started on your planet…*breathe…Our better Michelle Pfeiffer's, (one of our other higher forms of intelligence) decided against it. So in short you have now been given one more chance to rectify this very serious dishonor against our very existence, our family , and our Shaolin Temple ( which we also invented). This year when the Oscars are unveiled, we forbid anyone other than Glenn to win. Not Toni (Though we really do think her work is actually equal to Glenns’ we admit this) not Viola, and damn sure not Gaga. Not Gloria, Gladys, not Glenn Oaks, or Shady Glen, or GlennGary/GlennRoss, just Glenn Close for her measured, engrossing, perfect portrait of restraint, resentment, and long suffering (similar to her Oscar treatment) in this year’s “The Wife” got dammit. If our very simple demand is not met, just know it will be the very last thing you see…. after the Best Picture is revealed, and the Vanity Fair after party, but definitely after that. ….NOW we ask you are we not merciful?……

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