This will be the first year that the Oscars have a Best Casting category, and it’s long overdue. The films that have made the shortlist are pretty good, though I think I would have included Black Bag, Companion, Splitsville, and maybe even One of Them Days. You will find many of the movies in the Best Casting category represented here.
Odessa A’zion
Her mother Pamela Adlon and her sister Gideon Adlon are actors, too, and maybe you remember her as Daisy Edgar-Jones’ friend in Fresh Kills or one of the victims in Until Dawn last spring. She came into her own in Marty Supreme as the married neighbor who gets pregnant by Marty and, rather than pine away for the man who’s busy playing table tennis, decides to make her own arrangements. Her quiet resolve takes the spotlight from glitzier co-stars.
Miles Caton
Hard to believe that Sinners was his first ever film role, but sometimes newcomers really do hit it on their first try. He gave a fine performance as the blues musician who’s determined to make his own way no matter how his preacher father or his twin cousins might try to dissuade him. Then, of course, there’s that performance of “I Lied to You” that rips open the heavens. Ryan Coogler’s movie had a number of other terrific performances (notably Delroy Lindo’s), but Caton stood out.
Jacob Elordi
He finally left Nate Jacobs behind when he portrayed the monster in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. He isn’t the first actor to find pathos in the creature artificially brought to life, but he did give emotional weight to a film that might otherwise have been a series of pretty tableaux. After a number of film roles that he didn’t quite connect with, he came good here.
Ariana Grande
Glinda is a harder role to play than she first appears, and if the filmmakers gave the character a bit too much leeway in Wicked: For Good, that takes away little from the pop singer’s turn as a witch who eventually grows into her self-appointed role as Oz’ savior. Like the song says, because she knew Glinda, she was changed for good. (Giles Keyte)
Sally Hawkins
We’re not talking enough about her performance in Bring Her Back. The British actress portrays an Australian mother in the Philippou brothers’ horror film, and she holds back until just the right moment when we find out that her bereaved mother is in league with demons because she’s so desperate to find a replacement for her drowned daughter. Her horrific actions are motivated by love, and that makes a pitiable monster.
Nina Hoss
The German star of Phoenix is familiar to English-speaking audiences from her roles in The Contractor and Tár, and she gave the performance of her career in Hedda. As a gay, gender-flipped version of Ibsen’s scholar, she provided much of that movie’s fireworks as Hedda Gabler’s alcoholic ex who sees her life’s work go up in smoke and falls off the wagon while giving into despair.
David Jonsson
If you read the book version of The Long Walk, you know that his character dies in it. It was worth it to change that just to have his performance as the last young man standing, when the tortures of the walk and the loss of his buddies combine to break him inside. His speech telling Cooper Hoffman not to choose vengeance is beautiful, but it’s one that he himself can’t hold to in the end.
Amy Madigan
Um, yeah. So you can complain about the one-dimensional nature of her role in Weapons, but you can’t complain much about the execution. How about that “Oh, no” that she gives out when the little boy breaks her curse?
Paul Mescal
I think his performance as the ghost of Hamlet’s father in the play within Hamnet would be enough to put him on this list. Of course, we don’t get that without his portrayal of Will Shakespeare as a bereaved father who pours all his grief over his lost son into his writing and those lines “A most instant tetter bark’d about / Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust / All my smooth body.”
Sean Penn
I could have just as easily put Benicio del Toro’s cool-as-a-paleta resistance fighter on this list for One Battle After Another, but Penn is the villain and carries more weight in the story. His spitting anger at all the people with dark-colored skin makes him particularly vivid as well. Underneath all that, Penn shows us that Steven J. Lockjaw is just a pathetic, lonely man whose inability to admit to his sexual preferences makes him and everyone else miserable.
Amanda Seyfried
The Housemaid isn’t the kind of movie that Oscar voters are going to pay close attention to, but who cares? If it weren’t for The Testament of Ann Lee, there’d likely be more people stumping for her performance as the mentally unstable and possibly murderous housewife, which is more carefully considered than it first appears. Even saddled with a ton of labored voiceover narration, she still dominates the movie. (Daniel McFadden)
Stellan Skarsgård
If the Academy voters vote for his performance in Sentimental Value as a de facto lifetime achievement award, I won’t mind a bit. The Norwegian film also featured terrific performances by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning, but the Swedish actor who has been on our radar since Breaking the Waves did great work as a world-renowned artist who towers over his family even in his absence.
Honorable mention: Chris Evans, Materialists; Ana de Armas, Eden; Ana Sophia Heger, She Rides Shotgun; Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg, The Roses; Natalie Morales, My Dead Friend Zoe; Jack Quaid, Companion; Margaret Qualley, Blue Moon; Adam Sandler, Jay Kelly; Jake Weber, Self-Help; Jeffrey Wright, Highest 2 Lowest.
