by Nathaniel R
Remember all those years ago when the Mystic River (2003) team was trying to fight Lord of the Rings for the Oscar and trying a variation of “actors are the best special effects” as its campaign angle? That’s always been true even though those Hobbits deserved the win (if you think those movies would have been half as good without Elijah Wood’s purity and awe or Viggo’s resigned gravitas or Sir Ian’s commanding wit think again). In 2019 Avengers Endgame wouldn’t have obsessed the world so much if the core group of actors hadn’t spent the last decade building-up the love and squabbles of this superpowered chosen family. Similarly Captain Marvel benefitted early in the year from a fun chemistry between Brie Larson and Samuel L Jackson, the actress bringing out a new, or at least revived, energy in Jackson’s umpteenth return to Nick Fury. Sometimes animosity is its own kind of chemistry, setting off dangerous sparks. Don’t you wish there were more scenes of Al Pacino and Stephen Graham as mouthy rivals in The Irishman, ice cream sundaes and all?
Chemistry is the magic and impossible-to-fake ingredient that elevates any human interaction to its most evolved form, including the fictional ones. Our “best onscreen chemistry” list begins with fascinatingly lop-sided relationships...
FAVOURITE EXAMPLES OF CO-STAR CHEMISTRY THIS YEAR
Honorable Mention: Even imbalanced relationships required a true connection between the actors to sell them well. They have to read as connected but with a layer of intangible remove, one side either too romanticized, enigmatic, or unresponsive to the other...Constance Wu’s idolization of mentor Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers, or even Matthew Rhys’s vague disbelief to slow conversion to Tom Hanks in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. are good examples but our favourite in the lopsided sweepstakes is...
09 Sophie Okonedo & Jessie Buckley in Wild Rose (employer-friend / employee-narcissist)
What an intricate dance this was between the actors with a wealthy bored wife playing patron/employer/fan to her very own project-employee-lost-cause. Between this and the streaming series Wanderlust we're beginning to think that Sophie Okonedo can do anything with complex but mysterious bonds between people. (Of course it helps if the other actor is also brilliant as was the case with Toni Collette previously and Jessie Buckley here.)
08 Florence Pugh & Jack Reynor in MidSommar (lovers, trainwreck division)
Would MidSommar’s true nightmare-fuel topic (toxic relationships) have been half as effective if you couldn’t totally believe that Dani & Christian had a) been a couple for a few years but had b) always been wrong for each other and c) never been in love and d) were both too immature, lethargic, or unstable to move on? That’s a rhetorical question because the answer is "hell no". Their perfect anti-chemistry is chemistry in a neat subversion.
06 [TIE] Brad Pitt & Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood / Jimmie Fails & Jonathan Majors in Last Black Man in San Francisco (buddies)
Melancholy 'end of an era' moods eventually weigh down both of these onscreen friendships though one leans towards comedy and the other to sobering drama. Both pairs of actors impress as extremely different friends who are nonetheless exceptionally comfortable and/or comforted by each other's presence.
05 Carol Duarte & Julia Stockler in Invisible Life (sisters)
Invisible Life’s moving melodrama of endlessly separated sisters wouldn’t wring as many tears if Duarte and Stockler didn’t spend the first act making such a convincing case that Euridice and Guida were sisters with disparate temperaments but true devotion to one another.
04 Antonio Banderas and Leonardo Sbaraglia in Pain & Glory (former lovers)
That scene, my god.
03 Kaitlyn Dever & Beanie Feldstein in Booksmart (best friends)
A private shared-joke delight from our first glimpse to the finish, they're their own perfect party for two.
02 Adèle Haenel & Noémie Merlant in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (lovers, meant-to-be division)
The fire is evident from that very first meeting, chilly wind whipping around them at the cliff. It only burns hotter from there.
01 Awkwafina & Zhao Shuzhen in The Farewell (granddaughter & grandmother)
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Which examples from this list really did it for you? Who else do you think deserves to be on such a list?
Previously on our 'Year in Review' Celebration:
- Filmmaker Interviews
- 10 Style Icons
- 7 Stocking Stuffers
- 10 Best Horror Performances
- Mainstream Box Office Hits
- 50 Biggest Documentary Hits
- 11 Awesome Animals