Lily Gladstone, “Killers Of The Flower Moon”
Some critics have accused Martin Scorsese of making a film about the Osage Nation and centering it on white people instead of the Indigenous natives. But Scorsese’s film is primarily about guilt, complicity, greed, and exploitation, and that is chiefly the domain of the powers of white supremacy in the film. Robert De Niro is chilling in the picture, and Leonardo DiCaprio is amazing, subverting the characters he usually appears as to play someone much more weak and spineless. But the heart of the film, its soul, belongs to Lily Gladstone, an Osage woman so engulfed in constant grief, the death of her sisters and mother she cannot see or doesn’t want to see the true nature of her loving, but spineless husband (DiCaprio), easily manipulated by his venal uncle (De Niro). “Killers Of The Flower Moon” is full of characters living a lie of self-deception or illusion. The conniving De Niro character believes he has the Osage’s best interest at heart despite his cruel actions, and DiCaprio’s character is too cowardly and stupid to see how complicit he is in it all. But Gladstone, wasting away from sickness, essentially a poison given to her by her husband, is the quiet, sad embodiment of a nation brutally conned at every turn. Still, the dignity she brings to it all simmers with depth, intensity, and a penetrating subtly not soon forgotten. – RP
Greta Lee, “Past Lives”
Celine Song‘s “Past Lives” is such a heartbreaking work of staggering dolor. With subtle references to similarly minded pop cultural touchstones like “Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind,” and Leonard Cohen’s masterpiece of heartache, “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye,” Song is pretty clear about the movie she’s making, full of ideas of romantic regret, dissolution, pain, and the bittersweetness of moving on. But as brilliant as the film is, none of these melancholy notions are fully realized without its cast, in particular Greta Lee at the center of it, as the lead character Nora. Nora’s always torn between two moments: the past, her childhood, and her life in South Korea that shaped her, and the boy who was her best friend and present day. And Lee captivatingly always expresses this lugubrious inner conflict, even if we’re not fully conscious of it. Her performance is delicate, intricate, and subtle, allowing her to look backward romantically but also trust in the future life she’s created, even when finally closing a chapter of her life is painful. And let’s not forget, so much of what she communicates is actually said without words. Lee and her beautifully expressive eyes are the heart of this movie, honest, vulnerable, and oh so painfully human. – RP
Andrew Scott, “All of Us Strangers”
To most of the world, Andrew Scott is best known as the “hot” priest from the second season of “Fleabag” or as the devious Moriarty on the BBC’s contemporary incarnation of “Sherlock.” But if you’re a connoisseur of British theater, you know that Scott has been a mainstay of the West End for decades (he’s even made his way to little ol’ Broadway) and a two-time Oliver Award winner. It’s questionable, however, if any of those roles were as personal as that of Adam in Andrew Haigh’s sublime “All of Us Strangers.” The publicly out Scott delicately portrays a (gay) man of a certain age who has the surreal experience of interacting with apparitions of his parents who passed away when he was a child. At the same time, Adam’s lonely bubble is pierced by a romance with a younger man (Paul Mescal) who also lives in his desolate apartment tower. Scott opens Adam’s eyes and heart with every passing scene. And gives you solace even when the fantastical events appear too good to be true. – GE
Rosamund Pike, “Saltburn”
Listen, Rosamund Pike knows camp. She took the role of Amy Dunne in David Fincher’s “Gone Girl” and delivered an iconic turn that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. And more recently she carried the Netflix-acquired indie “I Care A Lot” on her shoulders with a devilishly wink wink of a performance. In “Saltburn,” Emerald Fennel serves her the role of the rich and quite bored Elsbeth on a platter. And, boy does Pike eat it up. She plays Elsbeth as a woman who is almost a dear in headlights, except that’s just a society face she’s putting on. Elsbeth is aware of (almost) everything you think she isn’t. It’s a tragic character played for laughs in yet another brilliant turn from Pike. Can Tony McNamara, Greta Gerwig, Jordan Peele, or Kelly Reichardt write something for Pike next? We shouldn’t have to wait this long between great Rosamund moments. – GE
Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer”
Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” is many things: a race-against-time thriller, a historical WWII epic, and a courtroom drama, but also a moral story about a rich and complicated man and all the horrible things he has wrought. At its center is a complicated figure; J. Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant man haunted by his own man as a youth, a scientist so burdened by his ego and arrogance, he cannot see how it may boomerang, a philanderer of extra-marital affairs, and finally a man grappling with the ethical concerns of what he’s creating at the same time fully-committed to creating it first so he can do right by his country. There’s a lot to J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his contradictory multitude of layers are brilliantly made real, human, and fragile by Cillian Murphy. Murphy’s always been reliably potent in the past, but this deeply intense, internalized, and controlled performance of ambition, remorse, genius, and the painfully churning ethical struggle within is outstanding, his best performance ever and for the ages. – RP
