With the year half over, it's time to look back on the first six months and what treasures they brought us. Here are the 18 performances by actresses we treasured most at the movies thus far this year. We've previously shared the biggest hits in multiple categories at the box office and 18 fav performances by male actors. We hope you'll sound off on these and share a few of your own in the comments... and we hope this list serves as a reminder to Oscar and Globe and SAG voters that amazing performances can happy at any time of the year. Why wait til December to start considering your "Best of" ballot?
Disclaimer: before we begin I should note that there were a few key bits of actressing I have not yet seen that might have factored in like performances from Game Night, The Seagull, or Hearts Beat Loud.
Okay here we go...
6 LEADING ACTRESSES
(Jan 1st - June 30th releases)
Toni Collette as "Annie" in Hereditary
What can we add to the already robust conversation around her brilliance? The nuanced construction is a marvel: she's giving you a portrait of an artist's idiosyncractic point of view and convictions, an adult child's contemptuous grief and anger about her parents, and, best of all, her own not always pleasant relationship to mothering. She does all of that while peppering in alarming details that prepare you for the climax. And the crescendo of this star turn! Movies are shot out of sequence which makes this performance even more of a wow.
Rachel McAdams as "Esti Kuperman"
and Rachel Weisz as "Ronit Krushka" in Disobedience
McAdams is in fine form as a woman who's repressed her sexuality for years and surprises with sharp glimpses into the woman that could have been or once was in younger form. But Weisz is holding the whole picture together with a complex take on a more self-actualized woman who nevertheless struggles with intimacy and with reconciling the first half of her life (religious) with the second (secular). It's right up there with her work in Constant Gardener and Deep Blue Sea as the holy trinity of her career.
Michelle Pfeiffer as "Kyra" in Where is Kyra?
I had a strange experience with the reviews of this film. I wanted to be happy that Pfeiffer was receiving so many 'revelatory' or 'best of her career!' citations but all I could think was 'has everyone forgotten how brilliant she's been since, oh, 1983?' Perhaps the long time away from the screen had dulled communal perceptions of her gift? At any rate she's terrific here, fully committed to this despondent portrait of an unemployed divorced woman. Kyra matters to approximately no one and her whole future empties out when her only tether to stability, her elderly mother, dies near the beginning of the picture.
Amy Schumer as "Renee Bennett" in I Feel Pretty
This sneakily wise if occassionally conflicted comedy was unfairly dismissed, if you ask me. It had something to say and the role proved a perfect fit for Schumer's often hilarious sexual confidence. As with Trainwreck before it, Schumer's giving an overarching magnetic romcom star turn with amusing physical comedy and character work details.
Charlize Theron as "Marlo" in Tully
"Mommy, what's wrong with your body?" gets one of the biggest laughs in the movie but the emotional truth of this performance suggests a different answer: there is nothing at all wrong with this mommy's body. It's just another tool in Theron's considerable arsenal as she dives deep inside this fascinating woman whose most obvious attribute is the weariness she wears like a heavy extra layer, pulling her posture down as she unflatteringly slumps at the table in her undies. Theron is so excellent as this exhausted mother, yearning for the vitality, freedom, and vast possibilities of her youth, that you can even sense an 'I just thought there would be more' monologue brewing for the character in 15 years (Thanks, Boyhood). That Theron plays all this so specifically (there's no easy scapegoat to what ails Marlo like an Unhappy Marriage or Post Partum Depression that a lesser picture would blame) while remaining funny and spontaneous and never dragging the audience down with Marlo's significant malaise is a true marvel.
P.S. Why can't Reitman (Director) Cody (Screenwriter) and Theron (Star) work together every single goddamn time? Between this and Young Adult it's clear that they bring out the best in each other's gifts.
11 SUPPORTING ACTRESSES
Nadia Alexander as "Melissa Bowman" in Blame
Most micro-indies end up lost in an ocean of other titles in our streaming world but this debut feature from 23 year old writer/director/lead actress Quinn Shephard is worth finding. There could be big careers ahead for many of the actors. Alexander plays Shephards arch-enemy in this merciless look at teenage sexuality, identity-shuffling, abuse and lashing out. Alexander's Melissa reads at first glance like your typical Queen Bee vlllain but Alexander is not phoning it in and the result is a character arc and reveal that's brutally honest and discomfiting.
Mackenzie Davis as "Tully" in Tully
It's no easy feat to play a concept rather than a character but also fill in the contours of a character without losing the purity of the idea of one. (Pfeiffer accomplished this last year in mother! but it's rare). Davis has an intricately lopsided chemistry with Theron, too, which was essential to pull off this complicated take on aging and parenthood. [More about this on the recent podcast.]
Ann Dowd as "Joan" in Hereditary
Sure, her recent two-fer of instantly iconic villains (The Leftovers, Handmaid's Tale) have taught us not to trust her, but nobody in Hereditary feels "safe" exactly so it's no distraction. Joan's initial neediness and happy missionary zeal about group therapy and private seances are about-faces from her recent characters. Is there any role or project that Dowd can't elevate?
Lola Dueñas as" Luciana Piñares de Luenga" in Zama
She's a blast of fresh air -- okay, a slight sticky breeze -- deep in the humidity and discomfort of this challenging film. She plays a decadent official's wife, long since left to her own devices with her slaves and the colonists at large. Dueñas entertains like the delightful ctress she's always been (see her work with Almodovar) while never shying away from this characters troubling self-centered depravity.
Jennifer Garner as "Emily" in Love, Simon
The role is tailor-made to have the audience go goo-goo eyed for her warmth and compassion. But Garner is keyed in enough beyond the big speech, to make you totally believe that Emily, a therapist and suburban mom, has had these thoughts brewing for years about her son but made a conscious decision to bury them, never wanting to make him feel like a patient, but protect his own journey.
Danai Gurira as "Okoye" in Black Panther / Avengers: Infinity War
Fierce, imposing, 100% believable as an Amazon warrior. And even a little funny, too. Her brief appearance in Infinity War sealed this placement, illustrating in one harrowing facial expression to what extent her sense of self is focused on her king's protection.
Anne Hathaway as "Daphne Kluger" in Oceans 8
Sending up narcissistic movie stardom -- her own? -- in a cheeky star turn while also looking like 150 million bucks to justify said narcissism. She's easily the MVP of this laidback heist film when the movie might have been sheer bliss had the other stars fought her more aggressively for that title.
Gillian Jacobs as "Helen" in Life of the Party
Wonderfully deadpan and instantly cool, despite or because of her embrace of the uncool. 'Coma Girl' steals this sisterhood show if you ask me (with Maya Rudolph not far behind but still being underutilized every time... even in comedies!)
Alexandra Shipp as "Abby" in Love, Simon
Wonderfully natural and radiating compassion. You totally buy that she'd develop these new friendships which feel like old ones despite being 'the new girl' in a senior year. Her empathy is such that you even believe that she'd warm to the disruptive new presence in the clique despite his forced humor and general obnoxiousness. Best scene: Every beat her face wears during Simon's coming out is a thing of beauty.
Michelle Williams as "Avery LeClaire" in I Feel Pretty
That baby doll voice is the big comic surprise... but no crutch; she's too good an actor not to fill out what might have been a one-joke role.
Letitia Wright as "Shuri" in Black Panther
What a tonic. While most of the cast is expertly conveying regal authority, she repeatedly punctures the potential stuffiness with refreshing candor, intellectual confidence, and adolescent familiarity -- delightfully bringing out different and lighter shades in Chadwick's otherwise noble-to-a-fault work as her big royal brother.
1 CAMEO OR LIMITED ROLES
Phoebe Waller-Bridge (voice only) as "L3-37" in Solo: A Star Wars Story
It's tough to imagine this political activist comic character working in the Star Wars films of old -- which favored rather vague REBELLION vs OPRESSION binaries. But the slightly irrevent and modern take is vital new blood for an old franchise. Plus, Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Crashing) knows from great romantic comic swerving and fun line readings.
P.S. ACK!
I forgot Candice Bergen for Book Club who was meant to be included in the Supporting Actress section. (And, note: I'm not even usually a Bergen fan but just loved her goofy self-deprecating commitment in that - particularly once she started dating) . But in the interest of not rudely cancelling somehow already honored above, I shan't adjust the list since this is only a fun list to serve as a reminder when we draw up year-end honors that performances and films from the year's first half do exist!