The 6 Best Movie Performances Since 2020

No matter what AI promises, nothing can sweep up a massive audience quite like a spellbinding performance in a motion picture, especially when projected on the big screen. The presence of countless great films from the last 6 years assures us all that the medium still has a place in our culture. While it’s never been easier to put on a performance or display theatrics with social media and other digital platforms, a transfixing on-screen turn by the finest actors in the world is an art form unto itself. Society has changed drastically, but the best-performing artists can still offer an evergreen sense of magic, as seen in these six film performances that represent the peak of acting in the 2020s.

6

Léa Seydoux – ‘The Beast’ (2024)

Image via Janus Films

Perhaps the most overlooked masterpiece of the 2020s, The Beast is a sight to be seen. Although Bertrand Bonello‘s hypnotic, time-traveling sci-fi romantic drama is a beguiling work of multiple timelines and inscrutable emotional registers, the film’s sheer ambition and audacity are a marvel in their own right. An arthouse French film with the scope of a Hollywood blockbuster, The Beast could’ve crumbled under its own weight without a miraculous performance, and Bonello was in good hands with his lead star, Léa Seydoux.

The French actor’s best work often comes from provocative movies by French auteurs that usually premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, but Seydoux’s frequent appearance in major Hollywood franchises such as Mission: Impossible and 007 have made her a familiar face. She’s also blessed with a striking face and presence to begin with, which are used to full effect in The Beast, a 2024 critical darling that follows the relationship between Gabrielle (Seydoux) and Louis (George MacKay) across three periods: 1910, 2014, and 2044. Gabrielle, who attempts to clear her memory in a dystopian 2044 where emotions are perceived as a threat, embarks on a journey through the multiverse unlike anything Spider-Man has experienced.

Everything we love about Seydoux in American films is maximized in The Beast, a staggering feat of screen acting that leaves viewers in complete awe. As Gabrielle, she captures the vast emotional range of being an artisan in early 20th-century France, a model in 2014 Los Angeles, and a lonely drifter in a dystopian nightmare. Through each chapter, she delivers yearning, swooning romance, and heartbreak with intense fury and vulnerability. The film’s climax, where Gabrielle faces a devastating realization regarding Louis’ memory of her, is the perfect capstone to Bonello’s profound psychological journey. Across three iterations of her character, Seydoux reflects the burning sensations that inspire and haunt us, even when advanced technology tells us to forgo our temptations.

5

Simon Rex – ‘Red Rocket’ (2021)

Image via A24

Talk about a performance that no one saw coming. Then again, one should expect unconventional brilliance from maverick indie filmmaker Sean Baker, who is known for telling stories about marginalized and disregarded communities with the use of real settings and non-professional actors. Despite his acting and performing experience, Simon Rex was perhaps the least likely candidate to be the star of Red Rocket, an A24 black comedy-drama about the failure of the American Dream and the new age of economic hustling in the Donald Trump era. Even more shocking, Rex gave one of the decade’s most striking and expertly crafted screen performances.

The rapper and MTV video jockey proved to be a suitable fit for Baker’s affinity for alternative tastes, as Rex gives a one-of-one performance in Red Rocket that goes beyond stunt casting. He plays washed-up adult entertainment star Mikey Saber, who returns to his small town in Texas to make ends meet and return to his glory days by beginning a sordid affair with a local teen, Strawberry (Suzanna Son). Since Strawberry is 17 years old, the film is ripe for many critical think pieces. However, Baker tackles this thorny subject with the honesty that’s made him such a fascinating cultural commentator, and he trusts that the viewer can express judgment and skepticism towards Mikey.

What begins as a deliriously comic performance and ends as a serio-comic demonstration of failed dreams and the predatory nature of an ambitious man, Rex gives a richly layered performance that feels documentary-like and stylishly heightened, which fits the film’s verismilitude and non-showy style. Mikey plays like an extension of Rex’s own career, which allows the character’s drive and determination to thrive as an inspiring character study, until his dark side slowly unfolds. Without leaning too hard into any critical direction, Rex lets his character be deeply complex, working on the viewer’s emotions, similar to how Mikey cons his way through life. Even at his most scuzzy, Rex carries himself with the luster of a true movie star in Red Rocket, and it’s about time more movies deploy this untapped resource.

4

Marianne Jean-Baptiste – ‘Hard Truths’ (2024)

Image via Bleecker Street

A performance that seemed like a lock for a Best Actress nomination, Marianne Jean-Baptiste‘s astounding work in Hard Truths will stand as one of the most egregious Oscar snubs of the decade. However, this lead performance in Mike Leigh‘s hilarious and tender dramedy is so transfixing that all animosity towards the Academy will fade away. Jean-Baptiste, returning with the legendary British filmmaker nearly 30 years after Secrets & Lies, symbolizes the seismic magnitude of Leigh’s honest, probing, and striking dramas about the working class.Jean-Baptiste, who plays the abrasive and cynical Pansy, a woman living with her timid plumber husband and emotionally stunted adult son, is a quintessential Leigh protagonist, one that’s designed to make you laugh, sneer, and cry. Her closest confidant is her sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin), who must grapple with her own neurotic tendencies while trying to lift her husband and son’s spirits. There’s nothing out there in the world that doesn’t aggravate Pansy, and she holds no punches when expressing these grievances, whether it’s towards a supermarket clerk or restaurant server. As Hard Truths unfolds, Leigh trusts the audience to identify signs of anxiety and other depressive mental illness affecting Pansy, as the film depicts a post-COVID climate where the outside world appears threatening.

Whether in comedic or dramatic mode, Jean-Baptiste delivers the best of both worlds in Hard Truths. Few performances blur the line between farce and tragedy with such ease as Jean-Baptiste’s, who is given free rein to chew the scenery and use her face to express the rawest emotions difficult to articulate, thanks to Leigh’s actor-friendly direction. Every rant or revelatory psychological wound she delivers on-screen brings the house down, and she helps turn this intimate character drama into a work of epic proportions. Most actors would turn Pansy’s scornful rants into pure theater, but Jean-Baptiste makes her character feel remarkably lived-in, and she taps into a kind of family member or friend that everyone has. Pansy inspires both hatred and sympathy from everyone around her, which is more or less the nature of humanity and our social bubble.

3

Paul Mescal – ‘Aftersun’ (2022)

If you were wondering where all the Paul Mescal fever came from, you need to go back to Aftersun, the soul-crushing indie debut by Charlotte Wells, to understand the actor’s ethereal magic. Since his breakout role and first Oscar nomination for his performance as the somber dad trying to put on a good face for his daughter during a vacation, Mescal has been frequently miscast. Never forget what he’s capable of, as Calum in Aftersun is the performance of a lifetime.

“Devastating” doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling that hits you when watching Aftersun, one of the major cinematic breakthroughs of the 2020s, which follows Sophie (Frankie Corio), now an adult, as she reflects on a holiday she took with her father when she was 11. We watch this vacation from Sophie’s perspective, where we see the punishing ways in which Calum hides his depression and despair from his daughter in order to make this an extraordinary coming-of-age moment for her. Beautifully photographed and elegantly paced, Aftersun captures the feeling of watching a precious home movie and experiencing a dream that touched your most sensitive wounds. Despite this being her first feature effort, the film makes us believe that we’ve been tracking Wells’ life for the last 20 years.

Mescal’s performance in Aftersun is something that only rolls around once in a generation. With his monumental feat of stillness and agonizing internal angst, he upended all our expectations of modern screen acting and emotional expression. Mescal blurs the line between documentary and performance in Wells’ semi-autobiographical movie from A24. Despite all the deliberate and showy acting choices on the surface, Mescal immerses himself in Wells’ palpable memories and evocations seamlessly. He appears on-screen as a spiritual figure, only conjured up by indelible memories. While Calum was always present during the vacation, his soul left his body throughout the period, reflecting the demanding needs of a parent and the constant turmoil he underwent to make Sophie happy. Unbeknownst to him, his daughter could sense the unease in the air. Aftersun‘s touching but heartbreaking tribute to a father-daughter relationship is conveyed with the power of the sun by Mescal.

2

Mikey Madison – ‘Anora’ (2024)

Image via Neon

When Mikey Madison first appeared on the screen in Anora, everyone knew that a star was born. It’s no surprise that another performance directed by Sean Baker is here on this list, as his approach to working with professional and non-professional actors is ingenious. After a handful of minor roles in film and television, Madison turned into an instant screen icon with her Oscar-winning performance as Anora “Ani” Mikheeva, a sex worker in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. Baker’s miraculous Best Picture winner was a rousing, explosive, heartfelt, and dynamic showcase for Madison, someone who will hopefully be around for a while.

Anora was Baker’s culmination of his fascination with working-class and impoverished people living on the margins of society and sex work. The film, which earned its writer-director a whopping five Academy Awards to his name, is a serio-comic odyssey following Ani embarking on a Disney princess fairy tale with a client-turned-husband, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the slacker son of Russian oligarchs, only to have this fantasy collapse when she is entangled in a chaotic mess when Ivan goes missing and his family attempts to get the marriage annulled. Sampling raunchy romantic comedies, slapstick, thrillers, and bleak drama, Anora is a full meal of a picture.

Madison’s turn as the titular character, who refuses to adhere to her legal name, embodies Baker’s anarchic free spirit that touches on multiple genres and tones. Funny, sexy, tough, sympathetic, and aspirational—every complimentary adjective in the book applies to Madison in Anora, giving a five-tool performance that didn’t seem humanly possible. Whether she’s loud or reserved, proving to be wiser than anyone would give her credit for, Ani is the stuff of legends, a maverick who embraces the messy but strong-willed energy of New York. The character’s fashion and line readings have entered the lexicon for cinephiles everywhere, and she is representative of the new generation’s tastes. For Ani, the film is both the greatest and most tragic day, and that’s an unfortunate, topsy-turvy world that sex workers must undergo.

1

Cillian Murphy – ‘Oppenheimer’ (2023)

Image via Universal Pictures

When it comes to talking about the best cinematic achievement of the decade, Oppenheimer is bound to rise to the top of the heap. Christopher Nolan‘s Best Picture-winning magnum opus has the best of everything: craft, scope, storytelling, and depth. Naturally, it also features impeccable acting, and its deep, star-studded cast is led by a performance that belongs in the canon of great movie roles. Joining such heavyweight screen turns, such as Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia and Denzel Washington in Malcolm X, Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in Nolan’s eponymous historical epic redefined the meaning of “grand.”

From his breakthrough in 28 Days Later to his recurring supporting roles across Nolan’s filmography, Murphy was always a revered actor who was long overdue for a major role in a big-ticket studio project. At long last, the actor finally received his proper recognition as one of the best of his generation with Oppenheimer, which earned him widespread acclaim and an Academy Award. Playing the titular physicist responsible for creating the nuclear bomb dropped on Japan, which kicked off the never-ending global arms race, Murphy thoroughly captures his early days as a troubled student to his post-war years when he grappled with agonizing remorse. The performance is so immersive, detailed, and lived-in that Oppenheimer would’ve been a compelling character on his own, even removed from the historical backdrop.

Nolan’s identification with Oppenheimer as a historical figure and human being was imbued with grace, gravitas, and magnetic energy by his lead actor. Writing the titular figure as a man of many contradictions, Murphy sells you on the notion that Oppenheimer was a balanced force of good and evil. He was cursed with the ingenuity to build a bomb and subsequently wreak havoc on the world, but he was idealistic enough to believe that nuclear weapons would be deployed for the betterment of humanity. Murphy’s staggering performance was worth the price of IMAX admission alone, as his expressive, angular face elevated the weight of Nolan’s epic, and our relationship to his stressed, mournful, and endlessly theoretical eyes was essential to Oppenheimer becoming one of the signature moviegoing events of the 2020s.

Release Date

July 21, 2023

Runtime

181 minutes