The 10 Best Movie Performances Of 2023
The year that's about to end has been a good one for film: for real films, films that don't rely on existing intellectual property and don't attract audiences only interested in reruns of what they've seen and enjoyed. . But then again, every year is better for actors. Even if the film offering as a whole is disappointing, the actors never disappoint and for that we should always be grateful, not just at the end of 2023, the year in which writers and actors, the public focus. Art and entertainment on screen, had to fight to preserve human expression. It's impossible to love movies without doing what actors do, their ability to better reflect everything that makes up our everyday lives: our fears and insecurities, the joy we feel when we fall in love and the wonder of being able to be there, to find beauty in the ordinary. joy Here are my 10 favorite talks of the year, delivered by people who intuitively understand that human touch cannot be replaced.
Also read: Read TIME's list of the best nonfiction books, songs, albums, movies , TV shows , podcasts , and video games of 2023 .
Koji Yakusho, perfect day
Before the Internet, arthouse movies brought the world to us: Is this how American moviegoers saw Koji Yakusho, famous in his native Japan, in films like Tampopo and Shall We Dance? For seasoned viewers, Yakusho's appearance in Wim Wenders' excellent Perfect Days is a homecoming. His character, Hirayama, has withdrawn from the world or fully embraced it, depending on how you look at it: he's a Tokyo janitor who cleans public toilets and plays music in the car while driving from job to job. The cassette recorder is turned on to your transporter. . His daily companions include Patti Smith, Lou Reed, The Kinks and Nina Simone, artists who mark him as a music lover of a certain age but who unite the past with the present in an elastic embrace. Yakusho's play is a miracle of openness: Hirayama observes everything around him: the pattern of light on the ripples of the river, the pattern of the leaves of a tree that he sees every day, as if he is unconsciously taking it into the world with every breath. . , encourages us to do the same.
Virginie Efira in "Revoir Paris and the Children of Others".
Franco-Belgian actress Virginie Efira starred in two French films released in the US in 2023: Rebecca Zlotowski's Other People's Children and Alice Winokur's Rivoire Paris. The first case concerns a middle-aged woman, single and childless, who finds happiness in a romantic relationship that seems stable and lasting, although the most surprising development in this new life is her attachment to her young daughter, her husband. In Revoir Paris, she is a woman who survives a horrific terrorist attack in a Paris cafe, though she can barely remember it; The only way to return to the living world is to find other people whose lives are also affected by this event. These characters are women going through a period of intense change, and although they both find a sort of reconciled peace, there is no sudden revelation of resolution for either of them. Ephyra may glow like Botticelli's angel, but it's her genuine openness that turns you on. In both works she is a woman making her way through life, because having a plan is the surest guarantee that you won't get lost.
Also Read: 100 Best Movies of the Last 10 Decades.
John Magaro, Past Lives
In some ways, it's impossible to find a better actor than John Magaro, who plays the man with a romantic side hoping that his partner will realize he's the one for her : a bit more laid back than everything else Magaro does, as if he's shy of being too obvious. can't stand But his role as Arthur, husband of Greta Lee's Nora in Celine Song 's "Past Lives," a woman who reunites with a man who was a close childhood friend of hers in Korea, goes beyond the distribution norm. Arthur's love for Nora is sometimes expressed, and is understandable, in pettiness or childish complaints. Most of the time, though, he sticks around, trying to understand, trying to stay away, but hoping against hope that he won't lose the one he cares about most. At one point Arthur tries to explain to Magaro why he chooses to be with Nora. It makes the world bigger for him. "I wonder if I'll do the same for you," he asks aloud, but not in a way that suggests an answer. Instead, he is a deviant man, perhaps momentarily, perhaps not, waving at the shore, not crying out for rescue but simply hoping not to be forgotten.
Read TIME's review of Past Lives .
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Adapting David Grann's remarkable historical account of the murders of wealthy Osage Indians by greedy white men in Oklahoma in the early 1920s, Martin Scorsese shifted the focus from the white police officers who solved the crimes. But he also knew that the focus of his film was Molly Burkhart, an Osage Indian whose family was targeted by killers. What Lily Gladstone brings to Killers of the Flower Moon as Molly is unique and unusual: her watchful presence is the film's prevailing spirit, watching her fall - warily - into love with the man who will betray her (Leonardo DiCaprio's Ernest Burkhart). ). ) is a connection to the never-ending mystery of romantic attraction. There is deep trust in his eyes when he looks at her; Seeing a broken trust is like a solar eclipse blanketing the world with cold. This is a woman betrayed by the men around her and, more broadly, by a country that basically belonged to her more than anyone else. When Gladstone plays him, he's like someone you've met, walked, talked with: a neighbor, not a ghost or a metaphor, and someone whose tragedy resonates.
Read it all: Martin Scorsese still has a story to tell
Franz Rogowski, Passage
How is it possible that terrible people are sometimes incredibly charismatic? In "Transitions," Ira Sachs' half-funny, half-heartbreaking love triangle drama, Franz Rogowski plays Thomas, an egotistical director who represents something of an experiment for her sweet husband Martin (Ben Whishaw), clearly the more conscientious of the two. . the couple Martin follows his partner's mood swings and revulsion until Thomas plunges into a relationship with a young woman, Agatha (Adele Exarchapoulos), an experimental heterosexual adventure that excites him but ultimately brings misery for all. People around him. Rogowski is on a potentially shaky path here: Thomas' selfishness is a form of cruelty and unforgivable. But Rogowski lets us see behind it all a naked need so intense that we can't make any decisions about it. We want to love him too, but better from a distance.
Read TIME's review of "Passage."
Kylie Spany, Priscilla
Priscilla Beaulieu was 14 when she met 24-year-old Elvis Presley. He fell in love with her fast and hard because who wouldn't? In Sofia Coppola's "Priscilla," based on Priscilla Presley's 1985 memoir , Cali Spaney plays a woman who becomes the king's wife and enters into a relationship that turns into a prison of sorts. Elvis (played here by Jacob Elordi) wants to love her, but instead tries to control her: her kindness and sensitivity are a magnet for him, but he seems to be able to keep her treasure hidden. Spawny plays young Priscilla with an exceptionally grown-up spirit; He had no idea what he was getting into, but despite his naivety, he was never weak. We watch her grow up, become wiser and more independent, and walk with her through this strange Tiger Bit dream. Spaeny shows us another side of this dream without denying its charm. Young people don't always want the best for themselves and that's part of being young. Behind the glamorous mask of tousled hair and eyeliner, Spani brings this bittersweet truth to life.
Read Time Magazine's review of Priscilla.
Bradley Cooper, teacher
I've heard people express their disappointment that Bradley Cooper's teacher Leonard Bernstein didn't say enough about his career, his career as a principal conductor and composer, and a man who taught young (and old) the joy of music. . classical music. But Cooper's film, which focuses on Bernstein's complicated and sometimes tumultuous marriage to actress Felicia Montelegre (played by Carey Mulligan), is perhaps bolder and more compelling than any standard biopic, and Cooper's performance as Bernstein is Exhibit A. The initial debate revolved around artificiality. The nose that Cooper chose for the role (a calculation in which people took sides long before they saw the film) obscures the central point: by choosing to wear a nose, Cooper will not arouse any attention; It was a way of losing himself in the role, partially hiding himself so that the brilliant, selfish, energetic man Bernstein could emerge. What's surprising about this performance is the way Cooper doesn't play her role, but enters it: the way she sees Felicia Mulligan, a person who doesn't quite fit Bernstein's sexual orientation, reveals a truth that no one else does. knows It really doesn't matter to us. Knows how to love "with care". Sometimes her heartbreak is evident; Other times we see him taking action against what he perceives as restrictions on his freedom. It is a display of restraint and humility in the service of a real person who did not hold back.
Read TIME's review of "Maestro."
Greta Lee, Past Lives
In Celine Song's tragically moving novel Past Lives , Nora (Greta Lee), a Korean-born playwright who moved to Toronto with her family as a child and now lives in New York, reunites with her childhood sweetheart (Theo Yu), whom she represents. . . Among others. Things, culture he left behind. Her husband, also a playwright (played by John Magaro), is nearby as Nora processes her feelings for an old friend. "Past Lives" is a movie about how we can't always be sure what we want from life, even if we think we already have it all figured out. Lee perfectly captures Nora's sudden, unexpected transition: she's a woman she thought had happily let go, to some extent, of her Korean identity. But the story is also universal. Life offers many opportunities and being open to them is one of our motivations. Lee brings that heartbeat to the surface; His face is full of surprise and confusion, sometimes both at the same time. The changes we think we can't survive are often the ones that make us feel most alive.
Also read: Celine Gunn and Greta Lee on Past Life Memory and the Alchemy Between Art
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
What Cillian Murphy does in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a reminder that the mechanics of acting on the big screen (a very big screen, if you watch the film in IMAX) are as thin as a beetle's wing. Nolan knows he can't tell the story of the man often called the father of the atomic bomb without including several equally important stories: the story of how, when he no longer needed to, the United States government decided to use him and his loyalty to question its own morality. . . Concerned about the horrors he unleashed on the world. J. Robert Openhaima is a fascinating figure, but Marfi's performance brings him closer: the act of amazing intimacy. Murphy Oppenheimer's nervous fisherman was considered a young student in Cambridge as a homesic for America; His arrogant charisma as a wise-cracking Berkeley heartthrob; The role he played in the creation of a weapon was the signal of the world's end of his next concern (and still could). Marfi's skin is paper and transparent; As if he had revealed everything to us and realized that a man more intelligent than us still has the same network of veins, arteries and nerves that feed us all. In this way a large image for the big screen is immersed in depth: a portal opens between us and this figure, a light ray that compresses space between us and the younger old man.
Read the OpenHemer's review at TIME.
Kerry Muligan, teacher
Bradley Cooper's "Master", where Cooper himself played the role of director and composer Leonard Burnstein, is not really a biopic. More precisely, it is a marriage portrait that was considered radical at its time and probably today. With the opening of "Mystro" , Bernstein, who was gay or bisexual, met with Tejaswi young Costa Rican-Chile actress Felissia Monteregre (Kerry Muligan) and it was virtually love at first sight. The allegations between them are immediate and unacceptable. Felicia knows what Leonard is doing, but he still loves her: they start marrying and start a family and try to try their fate, though Leonard cannot help but lose its way. Muligan's performance is both elegant and naked, as bright as floating cigarettes in the dark. She also has the extraordinary ability to please Felissia, but she also knows her limits: Once you watch the Thanksgiving scene in the film, where Felissia reveals her husband's faults in a destructive (and probably deserves), you will never do. Forget. Muligan's Felicia seems to be a model of modesty, including his femininity and indispensable practices, until you realize that he started the film.
