Michael Ward on Sunday, January 12

THE BEST PERFORMANCES OF 2019

"Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.” - Martin Scorsese

2019 was a strong year for film and a tremendous cinematic end to our decade. As naysayers looked at the slate of film offerings for the year and saw sequels, prequels, and franchise extenders and finishers, pessimism understandably entered the conversation. With the move by Disney to own seemingly everything by year’s end, and the studio landing 7 of the 10 biggest grossing films of the year (as well as each film in the Top 5, with usage rights to Spider-Man, a theatrical property released by Sony), the monopolization of our cinematic experience felt undeniable and suffocating.

However, then the movies started arriving, all those from the House of Mouse, and everyone else. Though January got off to a rather slow start (as is often commonplace each year), animated films like How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World and The Lego Movie Part 2: The Second One made February a lot of fun. While Marvel/Disney’s Captain Marvel dominated the month of March, near the end of the month came Jordan Peele’s Us, which was another groundbreaking horror/science-fiction hybrid from the twisted mind of the Academy Award-winning writer/director of 2017’s Get Out.

Once Avengers: Endgame dominated April and May, movies like Booksmart and Rocketman started to catch the critical eye. And once the summer arrived, it felt like if you just peeked underneath the main card of blockbusters and tentpoles and franchises, adventurous cinema was finding just enough buzz to be part of the conversation. Films like Ari Aster’s Swedish vacation trip-on-acid, Midsommar, Joe Talbot’s gentrification drama The Last Black Man in San Francisco, and throwback popcorn flicks like Crawl found smallish audiences who became passionate and loud supporters on social media.

We had The Beatles and Bruce Springsteen see their greatest hits played loud in the cineplex, as musicals Yesterday and Blinded by the Light found clever ways to integrate iconic music from the rock-and-roll hall-of-famers, and introduced their music to new ears for the first time.

The 9th (okay, technically the 10th) film from Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood became his second biggest box office success and a frontrunner for the Academy Awards almost instantly upon its July/August release.

And then Joaquin Phoenix and Joker became the biggest grossing R-rated film of all time. Frozen II took the box office crown for animation away from Toy Story 4, and the critics swooned over more than a dozen fall releases - all of which hope to hear their name called come Oscar nomination morning.

Netflix put no less than four films in the Oscar race this fall. And while reports were all over the map about how many people actually saw Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, Fernando Meirelles’ The Two Popes, and Craig Brewer’s Dolemite is My Name, each film received a short 2-3 week theatrical run, before living in perpetuity on the ubiquitous streaming platform.

Women filmmakers saw their work in the Top 100 grossing films of the year grow from 4.5% in 2018 to 10.6% in 2019. That’s major growth, but woefully inadequate in the overall marketplace. Greta Gerwig’s Little Women caught box office fire after Christmas and is set to become a big financial hit in the first couple of months of 2019.

Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers not only grossed over $100 million in domestic box office receipts, but it made the possibility of Academy Award Winner Jennifer Lopez no longer a myth, but a potential reality - if that nomination comes through this year.

Hustlers, Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet, Melina Matsoukas’ Queen & Slim, and Marielle Heller’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood all found their names thrown about in awards season conversation, but largely for individual reasons and not in celebration of any of the films as Best Picture hopefuls. Only Gerwig’s Little Women and Wang’s The Farewell have remained potential Best Picture nominee hopefuls come Oscar time, and even then those films have seen their momentum wain in the precursors handed out before Oscar nominations are announced.

If anything, 2019 proved unpredictable. Whether audiences watched a South Korean film about capitalism (Parasite), took a look at, but ultimately turned away from visual effects-laden films like Alita: Battle Angel and Gemini Man, or made films like Hustlers, Ford v. Ferrari and Knives Out surprise $100 million grossing films - you cannot say there was not something for everyone in the world of film in 2019.

At the end of the day, the work is what connects with us. Martin Scorsese’s quote above speaks to why this list below exists, and why so much time and effort is spent in coming up with a list of the best performances on screen (and off) in a given year. Having watched nearly 200 films in 2019, I am again left to wonder what defines a great performance in the films I watch and review and discuss with friends, family, and colleagues.

Is it an actor who makes us release emotion? An actor who makes us laugh uproariously? Is it a persona or character we relate to? Is it a director, a screenwriter, a composer, and/or a technical crew who make the impossible possible, escapism a reality, possess the ability to place us in the lives of others and allow us to understand what it means to be different from ourselves?

I suppose the answer to all of those questions is “Yes.” And that is what makes film, and art, such a powerful medium. We are able to project, internalize, and share our reflections and feelings and even, when reaching common ground, discover that those reactions remain singular and wholly our own.

And so…without further adieu, these are 20 "performances" that left a resounding impression upon me in 2019, and will be moments and memories I carry forward for a long, long time. At one point, this list was nearly 50-60 items long. and painfully, I pared it down to a final 3̶0̶., 35 (because I couldn’t cut the Honorable Mentions from 15 down to 10 this year.)

The Top 20 (in alphabetical order) will be presented with the words of the the artists themselves, or from those who had a hand in creating the stunning work they put out into the world. A slideshow will give you a glimpse at 15 more outstanding performances from 2019 that nearly made the cut.

Note: Hover over the image to see more information about this particular list.

SPECIAL RECOGNITION
FLORENCE PUGH

Florence Pugh in Fighting with My Family (Top-L), Midsommar (Top-R), and Little Women (center).

Florence Pugh in Fighting with My Family (Top-L), Midsommar (Top-R), and Little Women (center).

Florence Pugh is not listed below, but she delivered three unique, distinctive, impressive and wonderful performances in 2019. She played WWE wrestler Paige in February biopic Fighting with My Family. In June, she led Ari Aster’s nightmarish hellscape Midsommar, and then was a crucial emotional anchor to the ensemble in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. Her range as an actor proves exceptional and this trio of films, could not be more different, nor showcase that Pugh exhibits a vast array of range and talents we will likely benefit from watching for years and years to come.

THE 20 BEST PERFORMANCES OF 2019

1. AWKWAFINA, ZHAO SHUZHEN | Billie (Awkwafina), Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) | THE FAREWELL

With news that the family matriarch is terminally ill, a Chinese family balances tradition and truth when they stage a wedding to spend time with Nai Nai, the only family member unaware of why everyone has actually come together.

(Shuzhen): “Initially, she (The Farewell director Lulu Wang) was just telling me about her grandma. She told me about her actual grandma’s life and she told me stories. I could feel a real sense of love and sincerity that Lulu has for her family and for the story material. I knew that the sense of love, the sense of appreciation she has for her family, clearly just ran very deep. I was very moved and very touched, when she first communicated about the part and about the story to me.”

(Awkwafina, on working with Zhao Shuzhen): “It was very emotional for me at some points. I was constantly calling my grandma because I am a grandma’s girl. [Shuzhen] is an incredible actress. Such a powerful actress. What she said, it really does come from a real place. My scenes with her, she really sparked a lot of that emotion, just feeling her energy, feeling her performance.

I think some of the things that were a little difficult for me were, emotionally, saying goodbye to her. It was a very difficult scene. Then, I think, that scene where I find that you are really getting into Billi’s head and understanding where a lot of this comes from. But she made it very easy to get in that spot. She’s incredible."

(Shuzhen): “…oftentimes what’s happening in China is that a benign or a good lie…often yields positive results. I’ve had friends who had been diagnosed with illness, but because they didn’t know what was going on, they were happy. They were not burdened psychologically with thoughts of death or mortality. They actually ended up living a happier life; in some cases, a longer life. The illness did not exacerbate, or did not get any worse.

Sometimes miracles like that do happen. Sometimes, when people in China, when they do find out the reality or what’s actually happened to their body, when they do find out that they’re ill, oftentimes they just fall apart. So, for me, this benign lie, the lie that we see in the movie, is something that I can accept. It’s something that I could see the purpose for.” - Deadline, December 6, 2019

2. ANTONIO BANDERAS | Salvador Mallo | PAIN AND GLORY

With his health suffering, and on the eve of a revival of one of his most beloved films, a legendary director finds his past and present-day life reconnecting in unexpected and emotional ways.

(Banderas on working with writer/director Pedro Almodóvar for the first time since 2011’s The Skin I’m In): "I've known Pedro for four decades. But our friendship always was in a universe that is very specific and it has certain boundaries that I never trespass. Pedro is a very, very, very private person. I always respected those boundaries. I never went in that area so we were just in our space for friendship. It surprised me to see in the script that I didn't even know about him. It was shocking the way he talked to his mother. I met his mother. I know how much he worshipped her. For me, seeing that he has to come terms with her even after she has been dead for a number of years, to say to her things he probably had never said. It was surprising for me. Surprising to see how he wanted to apologize to actors, somehow.” - Thrillist, October 4, 2019

(Almodóvar): “At least when I started, I didn’t know that it will become so personal as it is. There was a moment in the middle of writing the script — when I discovered that really the reference of the main character was myself — I hesitated for a while. Because I am very shy…this was the first time that reality was my reality. Once I grew comfortable with that situation, for me it was mixed up with fiction. So I felt completely distant from the material. And when I was shooting, I never had the feeling that I was just shooting my autobiography; it was a movie.” - L.A. Times, October 4, 2019

(Banderas, on preparing to play Salvador Mallo): “I had a heart attack 2½ years ago, and it helped me understand this character. Almodóvar himself said, ‘Something changed in you since you had this cardiac event.’ I told him, ‘I know exactly what you mean.’ And he said, ‘Well, don’t hide it. ... There’s something interesting in there that has to do with vulnerability and another perception of reality.’ Things you might’ve thought were important before vanish, and you realize the only thing that is really, really (definite) is death – everything else is relative.” - USA Today, October 1, 2019

3. BONG JOON-HO | as Director, Co-writer, and Co-producer | PARASITE

An unlikely relationship forms between a destitute family (The Kims) and a wealthy family (The Parks) in present-day South Korea.

"If you think about it, my films are always based on misunderstanding—the audience is the one who knows more, and the characters have a difficult time communicating with each other. I think sadness and comedy all come from that misunderstanding, so as an audience member, you feel bad—you want to step up and reconcile them. As a filmmaker, I always try to shoot with sympathy. We don’t have any villains in Parasite, but in the end, with all these misunderstandings, they end up hurting each other.” - The Atlantic, October 15, 2019

(on the way the wealthy Park family sees their place in the world): ”This family (The Park family), they want to show that ‘We do have money, but we're also sophisticated. We're not ostentatious, we're not cheesy about it.’ That’s why they're living in this house designed by a famous architect. They want to be like, ‘I know art. I have artistic taste.’ They want to confirm it every moment, that they're not like cheap rich people. But what they really want, and this is something Mr. Park says in the film, is they [draw] a line over their sophisticated world and they don't let anyone cross it. They're not interested in the outside world, the subway and people who might perhaps smell. They want to push everyone outside of that line and they want to remain safe behind it.” - GQ, October 8, 2019

(on the overwhelmingly positive audience reaction to the film): “…overall I feel that American and European audiences laugh more. They seem to enjoy the film more as a genre film. But I think for Korean audiences, the film feels like things have happened around them on a daily basis. People know friends who have gone through similar things, people who have actually lived in the semi-basement homes (the Kim family lives in one in the film) themselves. So I think they can feel more heavy-hearted after watching this film. I screened this film in Cannes, Sydney, Germany, Telluride, Toronto, New York, and even Texas and I had the opportunity to watch the film again with the audience at some of the screenings and overall I noticed that generally the responses are very similar. This film is ultimately about rich and poor, so no matter which country it is, every country, we’re all living this one giant nation of capitalism.” - Film at Lincoln Center, November 19, 2019

4. ROGER DEAKINS | as Cinematographer | 1917

Assembled as if to resemble one continuous take, 1917 documents the journey of two young British soldiers tasked with personally delivering a message that could save as many as 1,600 fellow soldiers during World War I.

(Deakins): "The film is conceived as a single take, rather than as a series of related shots. That was not something I had experienced before. It meant [I had to be] both considering where the camera should be at any particular moment—which is just the normal practice on any film—but then to connect those moments together in a coherent and fluid way”- Backstage, December 5, 2019

(Director Sam Mendes on the decision to present the film as a single shot): “It was fundamentally an emotional choice. I wanted to travel every step with these men—to breathe every breath with them. It needed to be visceral and immersive. What they are asked to do is almost impossibly difficult. The way the movie is made is designed to bring you as close as possible to that experience.” - Vanity Fair, September 30, 2019

(Deakins): “We rehearsed a lot. And then the second day, we got a lovely cloud cover and we shot two days work in one day. So that's how it went during the shoot when the sun was out. We wouldn't shoot. We'd rehearse and rehearse and just wait. And a lot of time was spent watching the sky, waiting for a cloud to come along that was long enough that we could do a shot under. There was a lot of technical work just working out [the actors’] moves in relation to the camera. But once they got that down, they could get into the character - they could actually be that character for eight minutes, or up to eight minutes, knowing that there wasn't going to be a cut. I think they really enjoyed it.” - WBUR, December 26, 2019

5. LEONARDO DICAPRIO & BRAD PITT | as Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Pitt) | ONCE UPON A TIME IN…HOLLYWOOD

A fading Hollywood actor and his loyal stunt double navigate changes to their careers and personal lives in 1969 Los Angeles.

(DiCaprio, on his initial thoughts on Quentin Tarantino’s script): "I don’t think there’s been a Hollywood film like this—and by that I mean a film set in Hollywood and about Hollywood—which gets its nails dirty, getting into the everyday life of an actor and his stunt double. 1969 is a seminal time in cinema history as well as in the world. Rick and Cliff, they’re part of the old guard in Hollywood, but they’re also trying to navigate this new world of the hippie revolution and free love. I loved the idea of taking on this struggling actor who is trying to find his footing in this new world. And his pal who he’s been with through all these wars in Hollywood. Quentin so brilliantly captures what’s going on in the changing of America but also through these characters’ eyes how Hollywood was changing. It was captivating when I first read it. The characters had the imprint of Quentin’s immense knowledge of cinema history."

(Pitt): “I had growing-up flashbacks, because the flavors were all there. For instance, in the movie, Cliff lives next door to a drive-in theater. In Missouri, I grew up a few streets over from the drive-in theater, and I would go hang out at my friend’s house so we could watch movies from his backyard. It’s just a lot of crossovers for me. I think it has something to do with Quentin’s writing. Surely it must. Cliff’s close to my father’s age. A little older. He’s at peace with his mac and cheese. Even if he doesn’t have milk. He’s content with his place in life. Pretty thrilled just to be alive that day. I just felt like he would be all right wherever he landed. He would figure it out. He isn’t asking for that much.”

(Tarantino on the personal nature of the film): “This film is the closest thing I’ve done to Pulp Fiction. (Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood is) probably my most personal. I think of it like my memory piece. Alfonso [Cuarón] had Roma and Mexico City, 1970. I had L. A. and 1969. This is me. This is the year that formed me. I was six years old then. This is my world. And this is my love letter to L. A.” - Esquire, May 21, 2019

6. ADAM DRIVER & SCARLETT JOHANSSON | as Charlie Barber and Nicole Barber | MARRIAGE STORY

A couple enters into what they believe will be an amicable divorce, but parenting, attorneys and living on different coasts makes things increasingly complicated.

Johansson (on working with writer/director Noah Baumbach): "By the time we had made the film, I was in a more settled place. But obviously I had my own fresh perspective on the story. When Noah (Baumbach, the film’s writer and director) first came to me, he hadn't written the script yet, but it was clear that we would be kind of collaborating and work together. He wanted to kind of build this character out of something that came from a real place and so we talked a lot about, not just our experience with divorce, but we talked a lot about all kinds of intimate relationships. We talked a lot about our families, our own parents. We talked a lot about our past relationships. Nicole is a sum of all of those parts. She's an amalgamation of all of those things." - The Hollywood Reporter, October 5, 2019

Driver (on drawing parallels between his parents divorcing when he was 7 years old): "It feels very familiar. Just trying to wrap your head around your parents not being together anymore—and not only that but you’re moving to the Midwest. Like, the first time seeing my father cry, as we’re leaving. It’s just all those very raw feelings that stick with you that you don’t articulate. Something I thought about all the time was the things that my dad didn’t do that this guy does in (the) movie. The fighting to get custody … was moving to me. My dad didn’t do any of this. He didn’t put up a fight.” - The New Yorker, October 21, 2019

(Baumbach, on the work of Driver and Johansson): “These scenes are very personal for them, in performance, and that's the greatest thing to get as a director; to see that it makes it easier to watch my own movie. I mean, you watch your movie so many times over the course of editing it and finishing it and color timing and sound mixing and checking the prints and making sure, and you get pretty sick of your own movie at a certain point, but I can watch these scenes in this one because of what they're doing. What's so gratifying for me about working with these actors is, there's a line that someone said about poetry that it provides your own thoughts and feelings back to you with added majesty, and I feel like working with these actors does that for me. It's like these scenes, you know, these lines, I give them the guidance that I give them and the structure to work within and then they bring so much of themselves to it, and you feel that in the movie.” - Sky News, December 9, 2019

7. TARON EGERTON | Elton John | ROCKETMAN

Elton John’s rise to fame, fall from grace, and return to the top of the music world is chronicled in Dexter Fletcher’s musical biopic.

(John, on his first thoughts seeing Egerton’s portrayal): “When I saw Taron, I was not looking at him — I was looking at me. And when I was hearing the voice, I was hearing me, but it wasn’t me. Everything about it was extraordinary.” - Indiewire, October 16, 2019

(Egerton, on his first time screening the film with John and John’s collaborator, Bernie Taupin): “To see [Bernie and Elton] watch the scene in which they meet in 1968 or whatever and be grabbing each other on the knee and smiling … and then at the end of the movie, Elton, about 15 minutes before the end, just absolutely broke down. And then this amazing thing happens: The lights come up and I’m very moved because Elton is moved, but Elton, because he’s an old pro, has managed to get himself looking immaculate again, whereas I am just melting with all these cameras on me!” - Rolling Stone, May 29, 2019

(Fletcher, on learning Taron Egerton’s was likely landing the role of Elton John): “When this came up and when I heard he was in line to play Elton I was like, well, I gotta get that gig, that's going to be great. And I think from what Taron achieves and what he went for in this film, in terms of how brave he is with that performance, I'm really proud of that. I feel he needed an ally. I think he feels he needs an ally. You know it can be quite a lonely place to play Elton John and sing his songs, it's a big responsibility and big ask. So to be part of that, as his friend as well as his collaborator, was really wonderful, and I think his performance is testament to that.” - Screen Rant, August 28, 2019

8. BEANIE FELDSTEIN, KAITLYN DEVER | as Molly (Feldstein) and Amy (Dever) | BOOKSMART

On the night before their high school graduation, two best friends and 4.0 students decide to do the one thing they have never done throughout their high school years - party - hoping to create a night they will never forget.

(Dever, on why Booksmart is different): "It's not a makeover movie. This movie is not about going after the guy—that was not our main goal for this night, to hook up with our biggest crush at school. The movies I grew up on, oftentimes the woman feels the need to straighten her hair to be accepted by her crush or change something about themselves in order to be accepted by society or the people at school that they're surrounded by.”

(Feldstein, on the depiction of Molly and Amy’s friendship): “I don't know why in film it's just a little bit behind, but we're so honored and deeply grateful to be a part of not just a female friendship on screen, but such an honest, real, intelligent one. It's not just one incredibly multifaceted complex smart woman, it's two and they're never competitive with each other. Ever! They're the opposite. They're, like, too obsessed with each other.Not really, but it’s still like, cool, I’m in a movie and people are talking about it, now I have to go and do my math homework. That stuff doesn’t change. So what does all of this mean to me? I don’t know. I’m proud of the film. I’m very thankful people are saying these things about me. But none of that defines who I am. I have to figure that out."

(Dever, on the film’s notable argument scene): "[The fight scene] was the only scene we hadn't rehearsed together and we read separately. That was something Olivia wanted us to do, just because we wanted to be able to see each other's faces in that way for the very first time. Which was honestly really scary and actually heartbreaking…”

(Feldstein): “In that moment, it's unbearable because you're tumbling down the hill and you can't stop, but you don't even like what you're saying anymore, and you don't like yourself for saying it. And that's what that moment really is—it's such a real moment.” - The Oprah Magazine, May 22, 2019

9. GRETA GERWIG | as Writer and Director | LITTLE WOMEN

In Gerwig’s updated take on Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel, four sisters balance the lives they want with the lives they have in 1850s Massachusetts.

(on the alternating timeline present in the film): "I realized once those girls are all separate as adults they are never going to be all together again. The thing they miss is already gone. They'll never get it back. I found that to be very moving, and it allowed the thing that they are looking back at and that they are yearning for in some way to be the thing that the audience is also yearning for. It was something that occurred to me also because there's so much doubling in the book between the first half and the second half. The most obvious one, the initial one that I was moved by was that, as a child, the magic of childhood is when Beth gets sick she gets better. In adulthood, when Beth gets sick she dies. I found doubling all over. When Meg goes to Vanity Fair, people at Vanity Fair call her Daisy, and when she's grown up and has kids she calls her daughter Daisy. When they are children, Amy burns Jo's book in a fit of rage. When they are adults, Jo burns her own writing because she feels it's not worthy. And this is all from the book. I'm not making any of this up. When I started finding all these doublings between childhood and adulthood, I started thinking what would happen if I just grafted these on top of one another. I found it to be this amazing experience of having your life explained to you by where you've been.

(on the film’s commentary on women pursuing their dreams; specifically Jo (Saoirse Ronan), who hopes to become a writer): “The question isn't why are there no great women writers the question is why have women always been poor? Because they have been poor not for 200 years, but since the beginning of time.

When I looked at Little Women again, and then I looked at Louisa May Alcott's life, and I thought about women, and I thought about artists, and I thought about their journeys to have authorship and to have ownership, I thought, "Goddamn, this could have been written yesterday." This is all over it. And this is something that is fascinating to me. This question of great women artists as separate from women having economic freedom is a ridiculous conversation. So, yeah, I'm interested in this conversation because in many ways for female artists it is the thing." - Thrillist, December 23, 2019

10. ZACK GOTTSAGEN & SHIA LABEOUF | Zak (Gottsagen) and Tyler (LaBeouf) | THE PEANUT BUTTER FALCON

A 22-year-old man with Down Syndrome runs away from his assisted living facility and crosses paths with a fisherman, also on the run. Together, they set out to fulfill the young man’s dream of becoming a professional wrestler.

(co-writer/director Tyler Nilson on Gottsagen’s pitch to him and the film’s co-creator Michael Schwartz): “Zack expressed he really wanted to be an actor in movies and he came to a couple auditions with me for commercials and we talked about the possibility of someone with Down syndrome starring in a film,. (I was honest)…statistically speaking, (I told him) it’s probably not going to happen. It wasn’t because he wasn’t talented — it’s the marketplace. I don’t think people finance movies like that…but then Zack had an amazing, sort of bullish but brilliant idea. He asked, ‘You guys could make me a movie. Why don’t you just write it?'“

(LaBeouf, on his hitting ‘rock bottom’ during the shoot, and the inspiration he found from the film and his co-star): “I’m not Tom Hanks. Search my name on the internet and you’re going to find a list of scary things. So it was a risk for them. And I don’t know if you’ve looked at this motherf***er’s hands, but these are the most beautiful hands, and something about holding them calmed all my fear.

(LaBeouf, on what the film means to him personally): "This film is much more exposing than Honey Boy (LaBeouf’s film he wrote and co-stars in about his difficult childhood). (The) Peanut Butter Falcon feels like real time. Like watching myself through a window. Honey Boy is a history. It hits hard, but it has novelty. It’s less dangerous. It’s much more something you put on a shelf. Honey Boy explains my life up to this point. This film saved my life.”

(Gottsagen, on working with and becoming close friends with Shia LaBeouf): “I could tell Shia was a badass…I have been changing Shia’s life. That’s how I do things. And Shia has proved to himself he doesn’t have to act out. So I’m going to keep taking the chance of being close to him. A lot of people have come to me talking about Shia, and they always tell me: ‘Stay away from Shia.’ But I am not going to do that. My answer is: ‘No.’ Because people don’t understand the real Shia. And those people need to stop saying those things about Shia. And I don’t really care how people feel about that, because I can make my own decisions.” - The Guardian, October 18, 2019

11. THE CAST OF “KNIVES OUT”
(L-R Front): Jamie Lee Curtis, K Callan, Christopher Plummer, Toni Collette
(L-R Back): Don Johnson, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Michael Shannon, Jaeden Martell, Riki Lindhome, Katharine Langford
Not pictured: LaKeith Stanfield

Rian Johnson’s Agatha Christie-inspired murder mystery seeks to uncover the truth as to whether famed author Harlan Thrombey died by suicide or more nefarious means.

(Johnson on the idea for the film): "With this movie I was thinking about the form of the whodunit and the inherent weakness of that form, which is that it’s just clue-gathering leading up to a surprise. So the initial idea was as simple and abstract as putting a Hitchcock thriller in the middle of a whodunit, but still turning it back into a whodunit at the end. So I still get the pleasure of the denouement with the detective in the library. - Los Angeles Times, November 22, 2019

(on building his ensemble cast): “A big part of the inspiration was (Agatha) Christie movies that I grew up watching…And those were big, all-star-cast entertainments. That was something I really, consciously wanted to do with this thing. I said to my producer, ‘We want an all-star cast. We want that old-school, entertaining, we’re-putting-on a-big-show type feel.’

Fortunately, everybody wants to work with Daniel (Craig) — but also, he had a very brief window before he started the next James Bond movie. So once he said yes, we had like six weeks to put the cast together. It had to be really quick. So we accumulated this amazing cast, piece by piece. Because it's a big ensemble, you have to find actors that are so good that even if they have relatively little screen time, they can establish a real presence. I also think it takes a great actor to be able to give a huge performance like the ones in this movie. The performances never tip over into caricature, but they're always on the verge of that.” - GQ, November 26, 2019

12. ISSA LÓPEZ | as Writer and Director | TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID

Blending fantasy with reality, after her mother goes missing, a young girl, now homeless, is befriended by a group of orphaned children who are attempting to survive as an escalating drug war in present-day Mexico City rages around them.

(on the tone and feel of the film): "The entire tone of the movie is supposed to be the clash but coexistence of extreme realism with fantastical elements. It’s made to look and feel like a war documentary, but there’s a trickle of blood that follows you around the world, or a plush tiger that walks behind you, or a dragon that flies out of her phone and comes back into it. All of that has to coexist in this extremely real universe.” - Vulture, August 30, 2019

(on the personal connection to Tigers are Not Afraid): “I lost my mother when I was eight years old. And in a way, the movie is that story. It’s not my particular circumstances, because I think my particular circumstances pale to what children survive in Mexico today go through. And I felt that their story was so much more worth telling than mine. But still, the structure is there. When you’re eight years old, and you come home and your mother is not there, and you never had a chance to say goodbye, strange, sad, and interesting things happen to the person you become.

(on finalizing the ideas present in the film): “ So I’m researching this story, and I’m talking to historians and journalists…the president at that point, [President] Felipe Calderón had decided—in a tremendous act of hubris—that he could declare that drug trafficking was over. So he started arresting people and taking people, and the only thing that that achieved is all the desperate lieutenants, younger and bloodthirsty and ready to do anything, started growing and exploding. And that created chaos. People started disappearing right and left.

And then he said, ‘Of course, those poor little children.’ And I just stood there like a deer in the landlights, and said, ‘What about the children?’ And he said, ‘Well, people are disappearing, single mothers are disappearing, who is taking care of the children?’ And he had people he knew in Juárez who were researching about it because it was out of control, simply the state has already failed in so many areas that they could not take care of this. And children were on their own, preyed upon by the cartels to become child soldiers…there were things that I learned in this research that, believe me, you don’t want in your head.” - Film Comment, August 20, 2018

13. JENNIFER LOPEZ | Ramona | HUSTLERS
A group of female exotic dancers, led by the maternal/sisterly Ramona, concoct a scheme to bilk wealthy Wall Street clients out of thousands and thousands of dollars, during the economic downturn in the late 2000s.

(on her initial thoughts playing Ramona): "I was terrified. I felt exposed. I was like, ‘I’ve never done anything like this. I’m going to be up there in f***ng dental floss. What is this? Who is this person?’ And then you get up there, and you have to have a ‘f*** you,’ empowered attitude. You have to take your power back. You have to be so bold. It’s almost like when you say you’re a rock star, you have to be arrogant to go up there in front of all those people or you crumble. You realize it’s the same type of balls that it takes to do something like that. And these women have that. They are tough, hard, vulnerable and damaged. It’s a great character to play.” - Variety, August 26, 2019

(director Lorene Scafaria): “I’ve been cheering for her my whole life. Working with her was more like going to the gym together, getting to spot a true athlete at the bench press, adding weight to the bar and then standing back and marveling at her strength and power and endurance. I couldn’t wait to see Ramona show up every day, rhinestone lighter in hand, two-toned hair, some days a jungle cat, other days a mama bear. Between watching from afar and seeing her up close, not much has changed. After all this time, I’m still in awe of Jennifer Lopez.” - Variety, October 1, 2019

(on the film being almost exclusively made by women, and serving as a producer): “I didn’t get paid a whole bunch of money for Hustlers- I did it for free and produced it. Like Jenny From the Block—I do what I love.”

It became a movement. This is our movie, where we run s***. They know it's all women producers, woman director, woman writer, all women starring in it. We've been watching men take advantage of women in movies for a long time, so it was a fun ride to see the tables turned." - GQ , November 18, 2019

14. THOMASIN MCKENZIE & ROMAN GRIFFIN DAVIS | as Elsa (McKenzie) and Jojo (Davis) | JOJO RABBIT

In writer/director Taika Waititi’s controversial satire, a 10-year-old boy, enamored with Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany near the end of World War II, learns that his mother is secretly hiding a Jewish girl in their home.

(McKenzie, on preparing to play Elsa): “Immediately when I found out I got the role, I started to research and I started to try to learn as much as I possibly could about what it was like living as a young Jewish girl back then. We wanted to make the point that of course Elsa is a victim, she’s going through this monstrous experience, but she’s also just a human being who has so many layers and so many things going on inside her head. She’s lived a full life up until this terrifying event. She’s going through puberty. She’s got a crush on a boy. She just lives her life doing all the things that a normal teenage girl will do, all the things that I did, all the things that you did. I think it’s important to remind people that being a victim isn’t what defines her.” - Indiewire, November 7, 2019

(Davis, on working with his co-stars and director Taika Waititi): “I thought it was [about] Peter Rabbit…I sometimes had to move my head off-camera to keep from laughing. I tried biting my tongue, but that didn’t help. I [also] tried kind of holding my nose [and] biting my lip.”

(Davis, on getting to say a certain expletive on screen in his first-ever film): “It was really quite fun, because Taika was directing me to say it in different ways: ‘For this one, try and rip it out. For this one, say it quite fierce. And this one, kind of give it a ring.’ We did a whole improvising scene where I just said the F-word loads of times!.” - Vanity Fair, November 27, 2019

(McKenzie, on the approach the film takes with very sensitive subject matter): “Although we were all so excited, you never know how the audience is going to react, no matter what you’re doing. It could be the safest film on Earth, and people could hate it. No one’s going to like everything. So, there was definitely a bit of apprehension and not knowing how people (would) respond, but despite that, the whole time I could feel that (this movie) was such a special project. I am beyond lucky to be a part of it.” - Phoenix Film Festival Blog, October 28, 2019

15. NOÉMIE MERLANT & ADÈLE HAENEL | as Marianne (Merlant) and Héloïse (Haenel) | PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE

In 18th century France, a female painter is tasked with creating a portrait of a young women about to be married.

(Haenel, on portraying Héloïse): "With Héloïse’s character, to me, it was like a rebellion. I just say, ‘OK, I will do what you want. But don’t you dare believe that you can get close to me.’ This is where I wanted to embody this rebellion, with the fact that my face would not be moving very much. And it’s not only about not smiling. Almost every emotion is very small. There’s not much that [registers] on my face.” - The Daily Beast, December 7, 2019

(Merlant, on conveying the emotional connection with co-star Haenel): “How you propose to look at her is something you decide, and she looks at me in a way that I don’t know, so it’s always something that we create together. I realized how I was connected to the male gaze—like I was thinking and acting [according] to this frame of the patriarchy. That is still so real…the movie connects us with this and that’s why it’s a vision [that is] really important”

(Writer/director Céline Sciamma, on comments previously made that Portrait of a Lady on Fire could “save the world”): “I think I said it once, really. The third day of shooting, shooting the scene on the beach where Marianne finds Héloïse and cries and says, ‘Your mother’s coming back,’ and they kiss. Suddenly, it’s this big, emotional thing. And the fourth take was like, wow. I called ‘cut’ and I turned to my DP and I told her, ‘We are saving the world.’ And she said, ‘We are saving the world.’ And that was the first time we said it. Sometimes we said it as a joke, like, ‘Are we saving the world?’ It was mostly a joke. But, of course, images…can change culture.” - Vulture, December 4, 2019

16. ELISABETH MOSS | Becky Something | HER SMELL

A former punk rock superstar struggles with newfound sobriety, while the cause-and-effect of years of abusive, bullying behavior of her friends and former band mates becomes an overwhelming present-day reality.

(on her character, Becky Something): “She's an incredible artist and she's an incredible singer and songwriter and has a vitality to her that's difficult to keep in a box. She's an addict, which has a huge effect on her personality and her life. And when we start the movie, she's at the height of her addiction and struggling to chase the high of the fame and adulation as well. It's not just the drugs, as she struggles to be as famous and relevant as she once was.”

(on the challenges of Her Smell): “I've done some really difficult things, challenging roles and challenging scenes. But this was the hardest thing I've ever done. It was not fun a lot of the time. It was hard to be in that head space, and hard to be in that person, with all that chaos and craziness. Some things are more fun to play than others. And this was difficult. At the end, I was incredibly fulfilled and happy that I'd done the role. But when we were shooting it, it was not easy. I've done four films this summer, and that was definitely the hardest one.”

(on being scared to play the role of Becky): “I had never played a role like that. It was scary and it was a lot of pressure. I also knew it was an incredible role and an incredible opportunity. So doing it justice and trying to live up to it was scary. And playing addiction with accuracy, honoring that journey and what it is like for somebody and being as realistic as possible, was scary. And the music side was vaguely terrifying. Doing the concert scenes was scary. I've never done that before, so having to go up there and pretend I knew how to play the guitar and sing and be a rock star was scary. But it was also really fun. I think all us, Gayle [Rankin] and Aggy [Agyness Deyn], after doing our first concert in the first scene of the movie, after the first take, we all said we want to be rock stars! Screw acting. Rock stars are who we are!” - The Hollywood Reporter, September 7, 2018

17. EDDIE MURPHY | Rudy Ray Moore (a/k/a Dolemite) | DOLEMITE IS MY NAME

Struggling performer Rudy Ray Moore adopts the persona of “Dolemite,” and turns a crude, outlandish comedy act into a successful movie career in the era of 1970s Blaxploitation.

(on how Rudy Ray Moore would be viewed today): ”Today, Rudy Ray Moore would be Tyler Perry. On the surface, [Perry] looks like he just popped up, but he was making these plays and doing Madea all around, so he had a grassroots following. That’s what Rudy did when he went, ‘Hey, I got this thing, I know what’s good, I believe in it and I’m going to go and work and sell it out of my trunk and get it going.’ Your belief and your volition gets you whatever you want. He doesn’t have any of this stuff that’s supposed to make you. He’s got a pot belly, and he’s not a good-looking guy. He’s got nothing and his stuff is super crude. And he went and got his act from homeless people in the alley.” - Indiewire, December 13, 2019

(on his approach to the character): “I think if you watch Dolemite, it’s pretty clear that I’m not tiptoeing around anything. I’m doing what I’ve always done and I don’t even think about the time period we’re in, and how thin people’s skins have gotten or anything like that. I’m the same guy I’ve always been, and I’m just always going to be that guy, always doing just what I do. I tend to have only constructive thoughts when I try to do something creative. How do I make it the best that it can be? How can we have the most fun doing it? That’s as far as my thought process goes. Not who might be offended and who’ll get bent out of shape. Because at the core of what I’m doing, I’m not trying to malicious, so I think it’s not going to come off that way.” - Deadline, December 20, 2019

(director Craig Brewer on Netflix’s green light getting turned on for the project): “Larry (Karaszewski) and Scott (Alexander, screenwriters) spent a week working on this pitch for Netflix. They went in and, literally, as they inhaled to pitch, Eddie walks in, does 20 minutes of Rudy Ray Moore, leaves, and they said, ‘Well, get to writing.’ They didn’t say a damn thing. They didn’t say anything. Just Eddie came in and did it and they were like, ‘Well, obviously, we’re making this movie. So, go off and do it.’ Larry and Scott didn’t say a damn thing.” - Collider, October 25, 2019

18. LUPITA NYONG’O | Adelaide/Red | US

A young girl’s past comes back to haunt her in the present-day, when her family is confronted and attacked by a family which looks just like her own.

(on playing both “the good” Adelaide and “the evil” Red): “I had to hold down both sides of the argument. I had to be the offender and the offended. It was about understanding the emotional landscape of each character but also having a very strict discipline to play both physically and mentally. This movie is an externalization of our monster. It’s a movie that explores who we think of as the enemy. Often times we’re very eager to paint people across the border, or from a different religion, or a different creed, or culture, as the enemy. It’s easier to project that. But what happens when we look at ourselves? What are the enemies within ourselves? For me, what I found I related to was that identifying with that inner monster inside me.” - Deadline, December 7, 2019

(on Us being something she had never seen before): “I think just having a black family at the center of the horror film is new, surprisingly so. I didn’t realize it at first, and then I thought about it and all the horror films I’ve experienced — granted that I haven’t experienced many, but it’s just not an image that comes to mind. So there was a refreshment with that, but also just the conceit of them being the all-American family. As you meet them, they’re dysfunctionally functional, and there’s something so familiar about their banter and quipping. And I love setting up that norm and what that does for other paradigms — what is normal and what is American — and then just totally devastating it with the nightmare of the untethering.” - Entertainment Weekly, March 21, 2019

(on her decision to work method when shooting scenes as “Red”): “I went a little more method than I usually do where I stayed in the vocal posture for the whole day and I would remain isolated in a room festering. It was technically very challenging. We're playing against ourselves. The way in which things had to play out was so specific. It took its emotional toll on me. I definitely had a moment of rupture while making this movie." - BBC News, March 22, 2019

19. JOE TALBOT, JIMMIE FAILS | Talbot as Co-Writer, Director, Producer and Fails as Co-Writer, Actor (as Jimmie) | THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO

A grandson, with the support of his childhood best friend, attempts to reclaim his grandfather’s home in a city that seems to have increasingly left his community and heritage behind.

(director Joe Talbot on movies emanating from the Bay Area): “There's a long history, political history, in the Bay Area. I think there is a real difference, even though it's so close, and even though we love our friends across the Bay, San Francisco has a very specific relation to what's happening with gentrification. The Mission, where we grew up, is ground zero for maybe the entire country for gentrification. It's like the blueprint for how to change a neighborhood, you know? With the influx of tech money, it's going to destroy the Latino neighborhood. So while there are similarities, Oakland and the East Bay have a different history and a different modern-day relationship to gentrification. We've been hit very hard. I don't want to say the hardest, but it kind of seems that way.” - Mubi, June 12, 2019

(Fails, on the approach taken to the story and the film as a whole): “People have been getting pushed out of San Francisco for decades now. What we tried to do with the film is show something that it feels like people are only recently starting to realize is happening, and what the ramifications of that are, through a historical lens.”

(Fails, on the deeply personal connection to the story): “When I lost my house, which is what happens in the movie, it wasn’t at all because of gentrification…it is about San Francisco changing, but that’s not what we set out to make a film about. The eviction was life changing for me, and I feel like I haven’t had much of a family since then. It’s like we all just kind of fractured and went our own separate ways.” - Indiewire, June 6, 2019

(Talbot, on the response the film has received): “…There’s that feeling, like you’re chasing ghosts in San Francisco. Going now, traveling with the movie to more cities than I’ve ever traveled to in my life, I’m talking to people, hearing stories that basically regional culture is being destroyed. Everywhere you go has avocado toast and Acai bowls, but there used to be regional accents and architecture that defined areas, and things very specific to the culture of the people that have been there for a long time. And it feels like now we’re going through this period. It feels like the loss of that.” - Consequence of Sound, June 14, 2019

20. RENEE ZELLWEGER | Judy Garland | JUDY

Looking to revive her career in London in 1969, legendary performer Judy Garland wrestles with emotional entanglements and personal demons.

“(on what Judy Garland had meant to her personally, prior to taking the role): “I took her for granted. She was always there in my house on the turntable. I’m sure you’ve heard the myth of network television where you had to be home to watch something in the dark ages. With the rest of America, I would sit down with my family and watch The Wizard of Oz every year at Easter time. I loved her. She set the bar; she’s one of the greatest vocalists of all time. Coming to understand what she had to overcome over and over just to perform on the levels that she did for such a sustained period of time—now I get it, and I appreciate her in a different way. She carved out a space for herself at the table of iconoclastic heroes in American history and to me rightly so.”

(on the role costumes played in helping bring Judy’s complexities to life): “…the armor of the clothes and how suddenly it’s a great day because you’re wearing this extraordinary gown with sequins, and it means celebration, power, performance, ownership. The juxtaposition of that with the true circumstances accentuates the emotional moment because it becomes a bit of a lie. It doesn’t properly represent the truth of a person’s experience and how painful it must be to zip up that dress at a time when the last thing you need is to have public expectations as a variable in your day. Which can sometimes be overwhelmingly difficult. Our costume designer fit the dresses to the posture that I would assume in the fittings, which was more representative of how Judy carries herself than my own sort of swayed-back physicality.”

(on performing the film’s final number, ‘Over the Rainbow’): “…there was the idea of what that song meant, the hope that’s written into the words and the notes in the way that she sings it. The idea of what it means to a child when she sings it the first time in The Wizard of Oz and that she’s carried that as a part of her identity. And what that song and the words have meant to her as she sang it at different times in her life and how powerful those words are in that moment when we know she’s grappling with insurmountable difficulties? In singing that song she’s refusing to quit having hope. It makes it overwhelmingly emotional.” - Vogue, October 10, 2019

AND 15 MORE PERFORMANCES WORTH SEEING FROM 2019..