Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

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The decade has been filled with great, memorable movie performances. Here are the very best acting showcases from cinema across 2010-2019.

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Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

Here are the very best movie performances of the decade. A wide pool of performances have graced the big screen these last ten years, and now that the decade is nearing its end, it’s time to consider which ones stood atop the rest. Of course, assembling a collection of actors in any degree is an almost thankless task, especially when attempting to encompass an entire decade of cinema.

The 2010s will surely be remembered as an integral and progressive saga in filmmaking. The technical evolutions alone have, in turn, sparked cinematic revolutions: the placement and importance of comic book movies have redefined the production, marketing and exhibition of all types of films. And yet, within that chaos, not only has independent filmmaking managed to find its own young, growing audience, but cultural phenomenons – most prominently those brought on by the #MeToo Movement – have spurred the kinds of roles available to women.

This enlightening period in entertainment has been scoured by performances from some of the industry’s finest upcoming and established actors. Here are 13 movie performances from this decade which made an indelible impression on audiences around the world.

13. Daniel Kaluuya – Widows

Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

Daniel Kaluuya’s is one of the most brimming careers to emerge from this decade. Having impressed then-comedian, soon-to-be-auteur Jordan Peele with his memorable appearance on Black Mirror, Kaluuya soon helped change the landscape of horror and political cinema with Get Out. But while fans have debated the latter film’s place within the genre, anyone who witnessed Kaluuya’s turn in Steve McQueen’s Widows could no longer doubt the British actor’s ability to generate genuine, contemporary fear. As Jatemme, the brother and hitman under the bidding of shady politician Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), Kaluuya encompasses several urban horrors – pervasive greed, disabling power, and most importantly, spontaneous and heedless violence – in what is surely the most understated performance of his young career.

12. Lakeith Stanfield – Sorry To Bother You

Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

Like Kaluuya, Lakeith Stanfield’s role in Get Out, though minor, helped shed light on the horrors of passive American whiteness. But when the young actor and rapper from San Bernardino, California was given the opportunity to headline fellow rapper Boots Riley’s over-sensationalized, vibrant and satirical perspective on the capitalist, monopolized culture in Sorry To Bother You, he offered the perfectly strangest, yet balanced performance of his career.

In Sorry To Bother You, Stanfield plays Cassius (or Cash) Green, an unambitious telemarketer who, after being given the key, racial secret of the business, skyrockets up the corporate ladder. For those who haven’t seen the film, where that ladder goes is totally ludicrous, a not-far-off fairy tale land that is equal parts bonkers and poignant. Stanfield’s performance steers the audience through this stylish, high-brow wasteland with stark and apt bewilderment, demonstrating just how crazy things can get when you let your greed spill over your values.

11. Michael Keaton – Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

If Michael Keaton’s turn as the Dark Knight in Tim Burton’s gothic Batman films did anything, they molded the actor and his audience in preparation for his eventual role in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). In the film, Keaton plays Riggan, a washed-up actor, formally known for his starring role in a superhero franchise (sound familiar?), trying to reignite his career through a Broadway production of his own design.

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Not only is this role a slight caricature of Keaton’s own career at the time – the actor has since revitalized his career and delivered several, awards-caliber performances – but it also demonstrated his ability to course through a hypnotic story. As Riggan’s reality and fantasies start to clash, to the point where one is seemingly indistinguishable from the other, Keaton blends humor with dread on this altruistic journey of fame and fortune.

10. J.K. Simmons – Whiplash

Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

In this Oscar-winning performance, J.K. Simmons shadowed abuse beneath passion and determination. As the unofficial leader of a prestigious music school in New York City, he displayed an encompassing energy and an aura of prestige that made it somewhat understandable why so many ambitious musicians like Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) slaved over pleasing him. Damien Chazelle’s second feature, Whiplash, is simply catapulted by this iconic, and iconically brutal performance – almost like a chair.

9. Frances McDormand – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

Frances McDormand won her second Academy Award for playing the fiery social justice warrior Mildred Hayes in Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Radicalized by the vicious murder of her daughter and her local police department’s inability to solve the case, McDormand’s turn is defined by its rough, valiant exterior and the soft core lurking beneath it. The symphony of these two, juxtaposing beings is what plays out through Three Billboards, a film that reminds us how fierce a mother’s love can be.

8. Allison Janney – I, Tonya

Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

Another case of greatness-pursuing abuse, Allison Janney’s performance in the Margot Robbie vehicle I, Tonya is nothing short of harrowing. As the mother of the shamed, but otherwise brilliant ice skater Tonya Harding (Robbie), Janney sought to inspire determination through fear. Tonya may have her own opinions, but in the scenes in which Janney is required to stand up for her actions, the strange, almost nauseating blend of cigarette smoke, humor, horror, and frustration that ensues is wholly captivating.

7. Willem Dafoe – The Florida Project

Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

Known for his trademark instability, Willem Dafoe effortlessly diffuses into indie filmmaker Sean Baker’s world of child actors and street performers in The Florida Project. As Bobby Hicks, the manager of a horrendously purple motel near the Magic Kingdom, Dafoe bears the arms of a working-class knight, a man who, despite his best efforts, must standby the realities of an unforgiving society. His sense of duty is compromised by his striking lack of power in any given situation, and though his motives are pure, Dafoe portrays Bobby’s ultimate inabilities with a sense of silent defeat, rather than vocal outrage.

6. Joe Pesci – The Irishman

Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

Joe Pesci was vacant from the moviemaking scene for the bulk of the decade, but when he decided to venture back into acting with some of his greatest collaborators – Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese – for The Irishman, the long-awaited return was majestic and magnificent. But not for the reason you would expect.

Whereas Pesci’s mobster roles in Goodfellas and Casino were dominated by a ferocious viscosity in his veins – men eager to pull the trigger or jab the knife – as Philadelphia don Russell Bufalino, there’s an equally terrifying aura generated by Pesci’s restraint. Bufalino’s words are chosen carefully; his actions are solicited through others; and he, playing a behind-the-scenes role, has a stare of death (the “it is what it is” look that Scorsese’s mobsters have always holstered). It’s, without a doubt, one of Pesci’s most inspired works, and a perfect conclusion to the three men’s gangster trilogy.

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5. Naomie Harris – Moonlight

Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

With only two major theatrical releases – Best Picture winner Moonlight and last year’s brilliant and criminally underappreciated If Beale Street Could Talk – Barry Jenkins has established himself as a character-driven storyteller, one who focuses on the grueling realities of marginalized and misunderstood communities. With Moonlight, a sprawling urban epic, he tells the story of a young African American whose boyhood and adulthood are manifested by those around him.

Unfortunately, his mother (played terrifyingly by Harris), the person who should be there for Chiron, is anything but. This harrowing depiction of domestic misfortune is one that illustrates how instrumental the home is in defining the individual. Chiron’s struggles to accept every facet of himself may, on the surface, appear to be an internal struggle; but when put into the context of his upbringing, where his crack-addled mother cannot help but run her life amuck, they’re understandable.

4. Casey Affleck – Manchester by the Sea

Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

How can one innocent mistake transform the rest of someone’s life? That question is what Casey Affleck and writer/director Kenneth Lonergan set out to answer in their grief-filled project Manchester by the Sea. Drowned by anguish, Affleck attempts to navigate through the death of his brother (Kyle Chandler) and the subsequent orphanage of his nephew (Lucas Hedges). But instead of offering an emotionally explosive performance, Affleck buries Lee’s self-loathing under countless layers of stalling barriers. The instances of leaked anger and depression in Manchester by the Sea are far more powerful than what are capable of any number of scream-filled scenes.

3. Natalie Portman – Black Swan

Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

The role becomes the actor. No, Natalie Portman did not really emerge as a feather-clad ballet dancer at the end of Darren Aronofsky’s psychosexual thriller Black Swan, but her demanding, obsessive turn soared the highest. In a decade filled with all-encompassing performances (Jackie, Annihilation, Vox Lux), Portman’s Oscar-winning portrayal of Nina, a sexually-repressed dancer at the height of her career, is persuasive, grueling, and, above all else, fearless. However, perhaps the actress’ greatest contribution to the film comes in her ability to reach for the stars without overacting – something that is hard to do against the backdrop of the theatrical nature of the film.

2. Daniel Day-Lewis – Lincoln

Best Movie Performances Of The Decade

Daniel Day-Lewis has always been associated with his ability to morph into the characters he has played – on and off the screen – for the majority of his decades-spanning, and unfortunately, closing career. But when given the opportunity to become one of the nation’s most prolific figures in Lincoln, the Last of the Mohicans and There Will Be Blood star reigned a performance of due diligence, encompassing the weighty circumstances of Lincoln’s term with his sense of leadership and his personal relation to the tasks at hand. History will only be able to gawk at this portrayal of one of its great patrons.

1. Joaquin Phoenix – The Master

You are a prisoner of someone else’s whim, and you always will be. That’s the daunting reality facing Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, and it’s a reality that Joaquin Phoenix’s character, Freddie Quell, wants to explode out of. Throughout most of this mind-bending production, Freddie is more animal than human; gnawing at his feral desires for freedom whilst under prisoner of the strange cultic rituals of “The Cause,” Phoenix protrudes sadness, isolation, humor, and fear. This well-rounded performance is not only the best the remarkably versatile actor has to offer, but it is the best you’ll see from this decade.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/best-movie-performances-decade-2010s/

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