All the major awards shows give their acting awards based on the size of the role, the gender, and the stature of the actors who performed them. They also, although it’s not officially one of the rules, almost always go to “important” movies, i.e. one’s without The Rock. CraveOnline doesn’t make these distinctions, and this year, we’re making our own individual lists, and even though most actors on my Ten Best Performances of 2013 list come from independent or foreign films, it opens and closes with studio fare. Also, there is a lot of cocaine. It might be known as a helluva drug. Apparently, it makes helluva performances, too.
Honorable Mentions:
Cate Blanchett, in Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock, in Gravity
Pauline Burlet, The Past
Bradley Cooper & Louis CK, in American Hustle
Matt Damon, in Behind the Candelabra
Will Ferrell, in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
James Franco, in Spring Breakers
Nicole Kidman, in Stoker
Olga Kurylenko, in To the Wonder
Matthew McConaughey, in The Wolf of Wall Street
Sam Mendelsohn, in The Place Beyond the Pines
Ryan Gosling, in The Place Beyond the Pines
Simon Pegg, in The World’s End
June Squibb, in Nebraska
Alfre Woodard, in 12 Years a Slave
Read William Bibbiani’s picks for the Best Performances of 2013.
Read Witney Seibold’s picks for the Best Performances of 2013.
Read Fred Topel’s picks for the Best Performances of 2013.
Brian Formo is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel. You can follow him on Twitter at @BrianEmilFormo.
Brian Formo Picks the 10 Best Performances of 2013
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10. Dwayne Johnson, Pain & Gain
It was a close call between The Rock and James Franco for Spring Breakers. I went with The Rock because he’ll probably never be so perfect for a role and Michael Bay will probably not attempt a film as gonzo serious as this one anytime soon. Johnson flexes all of his acting muscles. Don’t laugh! He’s really great. There’s another coked out performance on this list, but something about The Rock, sniffing and grunting while jonesing during a neighborhood watch meeting just tickles me.
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9. Adele Exarchopoulos, Blue is the Warmest Color
From a homophobic muscle mass, to a girl’s first gay relationship… Exarchpoulos uses her features so well in this coming of age, coming out French film. By features, I don’t mean her nude body (although it is brave for a first timer to dive in so readily), her mouth is always wide, weather she’s eating or not; her eyes always a little lost – in love, in thought, in lies; her hair is often a tossed up mess. Exarchpoulos has to carry a film more than anyone else on this list and she fully engages for the entire three hours, never once ringing false.
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8. Miles Teller, The Spectacular Now
Teller has charisma to spare. While he struggles with a poorly written opening (writing a college essay), Teller routinely makes the film better than it probably deserves to be with just his smile, brow and laughter. Usually in teen films when someone is well liked by everyone it just seems like a plot device, or some printed out algorithm of popularity. As Sutter, Teller makes it entirely believable.
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7. Brie Larson, Short Term 12
Casting folks: can’t afford Jennifer Lawrence? Please get Larson. She’s a reaction starlet – in Rampart, Don Jon and The Spectacular Now she elevates each scene she’s in by how she reacts to her co-stars. In those films she’s not on screen for very long, so she’s always a pleasant pop-up. In Short Term 12 she gets to carry a movie. Her performance, again, is very strong in reacting to her co-stars, but since these are at risk teens, that’s important. She will listen but not coddle. She’s steel, but not impenetrable. I hope this opens up a lot more opportunities for her.
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6. Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke, Before Midnight
I enjoyed Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, but they felt a little too indie fairytale. Before Midnight is the real deal. Hawke and Delpy are a couple now. With children. They joke, argue, talk of jealousy and body issues; they bend but don’t break. The previous films had a sort of time bomb feeling. There was an inherent vacation romance untruth in the previous films, and by Before Midnight, perhaps they’ve spent a little too much time together. It’s been a decade. We deserved this unlikely third entry from Richard Linklater, Delpy and Hawke. Their relationship has gotten more difficult but that’s just because it’s real; it's no longer just an ideal fantasy to return to when desired. Hawke and Delpy sell all these nuances. They’ve been stripped of trying to impress and can just be indie real people.
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5. Suzanne Clement, Laurence Anyways
If titular Laurence (Melvil Poupaud) is the voicebox of director Xavier Dolan for a new generation of tolerance, then Fred (Clement) is the heart. Make no mistake, Poupad gives a very good performance as a man breaking the news to his girlfriend of multiple years that he’s going to become a woman, but it’s Clement who imbues the film with every ounce of joy and heartache. Like Blue is the Warmest Color this film charts a lengthy LGBT romance, and is perhaps overlong (unlike Blue this one has some gorgeous music video worthy sections, clothing falling from the sky and all) but Clement hits every up and down with ferocity.
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4. Elle Fanning, Ginger & Rosa
Ginger (Fanning) becomes obsessed with the idea of nuclear war. Curiously her obsession starts when her 17-year-old best friend (Alice Englert) begins sleeping with her father. It’s fascinating to watch Fanning hold in her own ticking bomb. Older radicals take her in, but she’s no activist: she’s a teenager escaping a secret. When she releases it, Fanning nails perhaps the best single scene from a performer that I’ve seen this year. The film hinges on her ability to keep the secret and her ability to sell how painful it is to reveal to her family. Fanning is truly remarkable.
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3. Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis
Isaac walks a character tightrope in Llewyn Davis. He has shades of a selfish egocentric, but he genuinely does try to make things right. Well, it seems like he will. Isaac and the Coen Brothers are in on a timing trick that flips the movie on its head, and Isaac is able to sell the storyline to one that appears to be in tune to one foot in front of the other. Instead, it’s all a stumble.
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2. Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street
I might not have been won over by The Wolf as a movie, but I cannot deny that DiCaprio is simply amazing. DiCaprio was giving a very good, thorough performance, but there were two scenes that pushed him into another stratosphere and the performance into the DiCaprio Hall of Fame (trophy filled with cocaine). First, is a friendly chatter feeler with an FBI investigator (Kyle Chandler) where a turned down bribe leads to DiCaprio passive aggressively raining “fun coupons” ($100 bills) on the investigator. The second has to be seen to be believed: DiCaprio contorts to a drugged rag doll that cannot stand up. The fear on DiCaprio’s face when he encounters stairs and the joy when he encounters cocaine to pick him back up is, well, unlike we've ever seen from him before. Damn. I just wish I liked the movie. I’d take the DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort Greatest Hits, though.
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1. Joaquin Phoenix & Scarlett Johansson, Her
These two are together because, for the high concept to succeed, the whole film depends on the believability of their interplay. And Johansson wasn’t even on set. That speaks so much to the greatness of Phoenix’s performance as a professional letter writer who falls in love with his personal data device. We haven’t really seen Phoenix like this: creating joy tics, being in awe. He’s charming and he’s funny. However, for the film to work as well as it does it requires him to fall in love with a device in his ear (voiced by Johansson, who last minute pinch hit replaced Samantha Morton in post production). Johansson, stripped of her body, is coy, sexy, playful and smart without it. Replacing Morton with Johansson is a move of genius. It allows Johansson to be more than she’s been perceived to be (or allowed to be), thus far in other films. Man, Theodore missed out, though.
