The film output of 2024 was full of performances so nice, we had to run this feature twice. The wonderful contributors to this site have already weighed in on sixteen of the best performances of the year—starmaking turns from unknowns, A-listers demonstrating their dominance, character actors finally getting their moment in the spotlight. But the hits keep on comin’, so we’ve got another fresh crop of sixteen wonderful roles to celebrate.
In this back half, we’ve got more welcome surprises and head-nodding favorites: little-discussed lead turns in smaller indie horror, at least two “Star Wars” alums honing their skills in knottier roles, teen heartthrobs growing into homicidal murder-dads, the list goes on. Read on, and see who else thrilled us in front of the camera in 2024.
Adam Driver as Cesar Catilina in “Megalopolis“
Great performances tend to be associated with great movies—or at least with movies that, in some commonly agreed-on sense, work. But sometimes you see a great performance in a movie that either doesn’t work or that reasonable people can disagree about. Francis Ford Coppola’s thirty-years-in-the-making, self-financed science fiction fable “Megalopolis” is that kind of movie. And if indeed you believe (as I do) that it works in any meaningful way (if only as an expression of its director’s mercurial, stubbornly personal approach to the art form), it’s because of the way that Adam Driver plays the main character and Coppola’s avatar and appears in nearly every scene.
“Megalopolis” is the story of a visionary urban planner named Cesar Catalina—imagine Robert Moses as a character in Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis“—struggling to assert his will and vision in New Rome, which is an amalgam of New York City, Rome, and a lot of other fictional spaces. Cesar is at odds with the city’s mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), and its power elite over how best to use their resources in reconstructing the city after a disaster. But really, he seems to be at odds with everyone, including himself, to some extent. He’s brilliant and arrogant, but (the film seems to argue) has earned the right to a certain arrogance because of his brilliance.
The character would probably seem like an insufferable, half-baked, self-canceling caricature if played by anyone else but Driver, who excels at playing difficult men and is one of the few modern American leading men who is equally believable playing hyper-verbal geniuses and guys who are so dumb that they take a ruler to bed to see how long they slept. He makes no apologies or special pleadings on behalf of Cesar to try to compel sympathy for him, instead playing him completely straight even when the dialogue is at its most self-conscious, verging on camp. He somehow splits the difference between naturalism and stylization, making all the movie’s other performance modes, from almost-Kabuki clowning to whispering subtlety, seem to meld rather than clash.
It’s as much of an architecture job as anything Cesar himself would get involved in. The character has the mystical ability to stop time, and when you see Driver’s wizardly effectiveness, you believe it’s a power he brought to the set. He seems to see everything that everyone is doing and thinking at any given moment, and he’s somehow figured out how to put it all together into a cohesive role. At times, it’s as if he’s subliminally directing the performances as much as Coppola was probably doing it on set. – MZS
Daisy Ridley as Fran Larsen in “Sometimes I Think About Dying”
In Rachel Lambert’s “Sometimes I Think About Dying,” Daisy Ridley plays an introverted office worker named Fran, whose routine at work often gives way to dreams of her dead body splayed in various settings. We gaze at sandy beaches and forest floors before watching as she snaps back into reality, hand over her mouth and eyes darting to ensure her coworkers haven’t noticed. Slowly, Ridley allows the coils of Fran’s inner workings to unwrap, exposing her soul bare for the audience. Almost all of this is done in silence, with Ridley only having dialogue in quick or frenzied bursts.
Subdued while also staggeringly physical, Ridley portrays a woman who haunts her life like a ghost; each time she’s on screen, it’s painfully clear how Fran is a woman confined to a body and an experience from which she is blatantly disconnected. It’s a peculiar thing for a character as afraid of themselves as Fran to command the audience’s gaze, but it’s a performance that is impossible to not feel grasped by. At the end of the film, Fran confesses–voice wavering ashamedly–to her burgeoning love interest Robert (Dave Merheje) that she often looks outside of the office window and dreams about hanging from a crane that idles outside. With this admission, carried so severely by Ridley’s gasping whisper, it’s impossible not to think you’re watching someone’s career begin again. – Kaiya Shunyata
Natasha Lyonne as Rachel in “His Three Daughters”
As I grow older, I find myself growing weary of the breathless hyperbole of what is too commonly, and often inaccurately, described as “Method Acting.” Real acting, we’re so often told, is disappearing into the role, a chameleonic immersion requiring physical transformation, a graduate course of research, and/or dramatic refusals to break character on set.
However, I find myself more drawn to actors who craft a recognizable persona, and then do their most compelling work subverting it. For the actors of the studio system, that persona became their bread and butter (see Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, other actors who weren’t in “The Philadelphia Story”). These days, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Kristen Stewart fall into these rough parameters. And so does Natasha Lyonne.
We think we know what to expect when we’re introduced to Rachel, her character in “His Three Daughters”; the pot-smoking, tough-talking, sports-betting New York woman who has become the default caretaker of the dying Vincent (Jay O. Sanders) could easily be played in the same key as her brassy broads of “Russian Doll” and “Poker Face.” Instead, Lyonne goes inward, turning what could have been a caricature of gregariousness into a keenly observed study of preemptive grief. She’s witnessed her father’s descent well before her sisters arrive, and her throwaway line readings and inverted body language (she’s often literally eyeing the nearest doorway when thrust into a conversation) tell us more about this character than any searching, multi-paged monologue could. – Jason Bailey
Raúl Briones as Pedro in “La Cocina”
Lacking the authority of a captain, Pedro, an undocumented cook from Mexico, still pulls rank in the tumultuous ship that is the Times Square restaurant where he works among immigrants from around the globe. His facetious bravado, bordering on hubris and almost unbearable in its unpleasantness, collides with a mostly concealed vulnerability in Mexican actor Raúl Briones’ visceral performance as part of this reimagining of the stage play The Kitchen by director Alonso Ruizpalacios. Accused of stealing money from his employer and dealing with his workplace romantic interest and their unplanned pregnancy, Briones’ Pedro prepares dishes with a manic intensity while philosophizing about the unattainable mirage that is the American Dream. In one scene, Pedro rants about the perils of speaking English, still feeling like his voice isn’t heard. More than some of his coworkers, who are just going through the motions of a life of exploitation, he’s painfully conscious of his powerless position.
Near the end, Pedro unravels in a physically violent manner, as if his pent-up rage can no longer be contained inside his body. He’s visibly crushed by the weight of a capitalist system that only perceives his existence based on productivity and otherwise disposable. In that final outburst, one is almost convinced that Briones himself has been consumed by the frustration that overflows in the role. Briones, an actor of great emotional potency forged in the theater, laces the part with a sorrowfulness that beams from Pedro’s tired, sad eyes in quiet moments. With his range on full display here, his presence feels incandescent. – Carlos Aguilar
Cillian Murphy as Bill Furlong in “Small Things Like These”
I recall a filmmaker saying to me, “If you can see the performance, then it’s usually not a great performance.” You’d be hard-pressed to say you saw Cillian Murphy’s performance in “Small Things Like These.” All we see is the sincere honesty of a character whose traumatic past and fatherly love for his daughters collide to reveal his wounded soul and his enduring vulnerability. What’s striking, however, is how Murphy creates space for the audience to enter the film through his physical performance and his character’s guarded and discreet nature.
Murphy articulates the spirit of the film. “Small Things Like These” is a discreet work that relies on an unspoken fear. The scene when he wakes up in the dead of night, a fearful thought set loose in his mind, is brilliantly executed. We’re not seeing Murphy sitting up in bed, terrified of what he would be expected to do should his daughter get herself in “trouble.” No, we see a worried Bill Furlong. This, along with many of the other subtle moments in Murphy’s performance, constructs a world within a world—his internal and outer worlds. The space Murphy, director Tim Mielants, and screenwriter Edna Walsh create for the audience to enter the film is Bill’s internal world. Murphy draws the audience in and asks them to look into his soul to understand him. The fine performance contextualizes the past not as flashbacks but as memories—the film and audience inside the mind of its character. – Paul Risker
Anja Plaschg as Agnes in “The Devil’s Bath”
Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s “The Devil’s Bath” is based on the historical phenomenon of “suicide by proxy” in confessional states, which...
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