On opening
night of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, audiences were thrilled by Damien
Chazelle’s “Whiplash,” a film that is a virtual lock to win an Oscar this month
for Best Supporting Actor for the great J.K. Simmons. I’m not sure there’s a
single performance from the 2015 Sundance Film Festival with that kind of brute
force to carry it all the way from Park City to the Academy Awards. However,
that’s not to say that there weren’t great, memorable turns—pieces of work that
I expect will make my personal acting ballots at the end of 2015. I asked our
writers to submit their top three performances of Sundance 2015, the ones that
you really need to watch for this year, and I had a very difficult timing
narrowing my list down to three myself. Here are the combined 9 best performances
from Sundance 2015, alphabetically. (Brian Tallerico)
Christopher Abbott in “James White”
For film
fans, Christopher Abbott’s work in Josh Mond’s stunning drama about youthful
irresponsibility halted by the illness of a parent might be a total revelation.
Even fans of HBO’s “Girls” will be startled at the range displayed between that
character and this one. Although viewers of HBO’s underrated “Enlightened” won’t
be quite as startled as Abbott gave one of the most memorable one-episode turns
of the last decade in the second season of that show. Here, he finds a deeper
reservoir of pain to capture a young man who has stunted his emotional
development and degree of responsibility through addiction. James White is
arguably the most fully-realized character of Sundance 2015, someone who Abbott
thoroughly defines in just a few scenes, setting up the façade that will
crumble when his mother’s cancer returns from remission. And yet that
description may make Abbott’s work sound more melodramatic than it is. What’s
so remarkable about this performance is the numerous opportunities that it
presents a young actor for scenery-chewing—addiction melodramas about dying
parents aren’t always known for their subtlety—and how many of them he avoids. (BT)
Karren Karagulian in “Tangerine”
In
“Tangerine,” Karagulian plays Razmik, a taxi driver and husband who lives a
double life. At night, a family man. In the afternoon, a horny cabbie
traversing the commercialized streets of LA looking to pick up prostitutes.
Besides comically delivering in spots, Karagulian plays his character with
unbridled curiosity. We’re not exactly sure why Razmik does what he does, but
we’re always fascinated. (SF)
Zoe Kravitz in “Dope”
The
child of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, Zoe blends the talent of her respective
parents in “Dope,” a coming-of-age dramedy in which she plays Nakia, a resident
of Inglewood looking to jettison the hood and go to college. Obsessed with 90s
hip-hop, writer/director Rick Famuyiwa creates a powerful character in Nakia—a
woman born into violence and eager to leave it behind. Kravitz imbues this
young woman with charm, intelligence, and seduction. There’s no breaking away
from the allure of Nakia when Kravitz releases that wicked smile. (SF)
Thomas Mann in “Me and Earl and the
Dying Girl”
Mann played the
awkward teenager before in supporting parts (“Fun Size”) and even
leads (2012’s “Project X“), but those were mere auditions for
“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.” As the “Me” of the title,
Mann plays Greg, trying to get through high school without making enemies, or
even friends. When he is coerced by his mom to hang out with the classmate just
diagnosed with leukemia it is the beginning of a journey to confront previously
unused sentiments and a friendship that will kickstart the rest of his life.
The same could be said of Mann, who also narrates the film with just enough
snark to make him likable and relatable to anyone who ever turned to the
comfort of pop culture over the high school hierarchy. Director Alfonso
Gomez-Rejon accurately frames Greg throughout the film, but Mann is not let off
the hook with easy edits to find the performance. Though the climax is a
melodic mélange of sound, images and emotion, its power is derived from the
reluctant feelings bubbling to the surface that Mann has kept just behind his
eyes for 90 minutes. (EC)
Ben Mendelsohn in “Mississippi Grind”
Despite a 30-year
career, Mendelsohn only really broke as the calculating criminal in 2010’s
“Animal Kingdom.” Since then he has played a string of shifty
supporting roles from “The Place Beyond the Pines” to even “The
Dark Knight Rises.” As good as he has been at times (and even great in last year’s little-seen
“Starred Up“), he has found his meatiest role to date in Anna Boden
& Ryan Fleck’s “Mississippi Grind.” No longer just a side player,
this time he’s being supported (by an also terrific Ryan Reynolds in one of his
best performances). Mendelsohn inhabits the role of Gerry, the addicted
gambler, as if he had been preparing for it his entire life. Desperation has
been captured before in gambling epics, but the quiet expectation of accepting
loss is what Mendelsohn does so well here. It is a painfully sad journey to
witness, but Mendelsohn carefully never lets Gerry slip into an unredeemable
void even as he draws us into his spiral. There is a breathless appeal to
watching him go for it and an even more winded feeling the bigger the stakes
get. They have never been higher for Mendelsohn. (EC)
Bel Powley in “The Diary of a Teenage
Girl”
Few
films deftly capture the simultaneous excitement and anxiety behind one’s first
sexual experience quite like “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.” That Marielle Heller’s
directorial debut does so is entirely because of Bel Powley, the gifted actress
behind Minnie, a high schooler who loses her virginity to Monroe, a handsome
30-something who is also her mother’s boyfriend. Reading Minnie’s diary aloud,
Powley effortlessly guides us through this teenager’s first sexual odyssey. It’s
a performance that could’ve been overdone, but Powley —like the film—takes
Minnie’s carnal confusions seriously. (SF)
Saoirse Ronan in “Brooklyn”
I had high
hopes for Ronan coming into Sundance 2015. Her performance in “Atonement” is one
of the best by a young performer in the last decade and her work in Joe Wright’s
“Hanna” is woefully underrated. Having said that, she had made some ill-advised
career decisions recently, including the execrable “The Host,” and I was
worried she’d soon be taken in by the Hollywood machine that so often wastes
young talent on inferior films. The first full day of Sundance 2015 saw the
premiere of “Stockholm, PA,” which also stars Ronan as a young woman returned
from the captivity of a kidnapper to a world she doesn’t really understand.
Ronan is the best thing about that film, a work I liked a bit more than most
critics in Park City but less than enough to recommend. And then there’s “Brooklyn,”
a beautiful, stirring, old-fashioned romance, driven entirely by Ronan’s
grounded, fantastic leading turn as Eilis, an Irish immigrant who goes from
girl to woman over the course of John Crowley’s film. Watch Ronan’s body
language. Just look at her downward glance in the early scenes, afraid to
assert her own desire to leave Ireland for the States. Contrast that with the
head-high Eilis of the final act, finding her own willingness to make her own decisions.
It’s the best performance of her career. (BT)
Jason Segel in “The End of the Tour”
Sundance
usually produces a performance or two that falls into the “I Didn’t Know He Had
That in Him” category. The one I heard that most about this year was Jason
Segel’s work in James Ponsoldt’s unique telling of a five-day interview between
David Lipsky and David Foster Wallace in “The End of the Tour.” At first, Segel
worried me here. The opening encounter between the Davids, as Wallace awkwardly
shows the journalist around his non-descript home, featured a few actorly tics
like Wallace’s unique vocal cadence and aw shucks Midwestern demeanor. It takes
some getting used to, but it’s not long before one sees something much deeper
here. Segel imbues Wallace with a notable undercurrent of melancholy and
uncertainty, which isn’t difficult, but doesn’t allow those characteristics to
overtake the performance. It’s never showy, always balanced in the way it captures
multiple aspects of a complex character. It may not be exactly who David Foster
Wallace was in real life (I would never suggest any actor could perfectly
replicate a real person) but it’s a performance that’s right for the movie. (BT)
Cobie Smulders in “Results” & “Unexpected”
There may have been
no more instantly recognizable leap into the next phase of a career as there
was for Cobie Smulders. Headlining a major role in not one, but two well-respected
films, Kris Swanberg’s “Unexpected” and Andrew Bujalski’s
“Results,” you can sense that she is going to be a staple of Park
City projects for some time to come. As the newly-christened mother in Swanberg’s
film, she drives the story by putting a confident face on her own insecurities
in order to guide one of her students on a similar path. But as Kat, the
fitness-obsessed trainer in “Results”, Smulders projects a different
kind of confidence—the one that filmmakers will remember when searching for
their leading ladies. Smulders plays Kat as someone who feels off-kilter when
her vulnerabilities are exposed and feels more at home when she has a project
to fulfill. Watch her take command against the waitress that overcharges her
and a friend for lunch and how it is less about common sense and justice as it
is knowing the person she is protecting can be a better version of themselves
if they just try. This is Smulders at her most confident and assured, proving
that sitcom work is a thing of the past and her future in film looks bright
indeed. (EC)
