#chishu ryu

Happy new year! If you're following me, you know that I watch too many movies. You also probably know that I love acting. A truly great performance feels, to me, like a magic trick. Of the movies I watched for the first time this year (excluding 2024 or 2023 releases), these are eleven of my favorite performances, in alphabetical order.

01. Ida Kamińska & Jozef Kroner, The Shop on Main Street (dir. Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, 1965)

Kamińska received one of the coolest Oscar nominations ever with her lovely performance in this shattering Czech drama as a nearly-deaf elderly widow, but Kroner, arguably the film's true lead, deserved equal recognition for his astounding performance as the shiftless man thrown into the cogs of fascism. They play off each other beautifully, and they are both perfectly keyed into the film's tonal tightrope act. Kroner is asked to carry much of the film, including much of its comedy, and he does so effortlessly, but it falls on Kamińska to sell the sharp pivot into despair at the end. The results are gutting.

02. Anders Danielsen Lie, Oslo, August 31st (dir. Joachim Trier, 2011)

Before he turned in a key supporting performance in Trier's The Worst Person in the World, Lie delivered one of the most essential performances of the 2010s in this film. Oslo rests entirely on his shoulders, and to say he delivers is an understatement: he commands the camera's full attention, giving the viewer a fully-realized portrait of a recovering addict with just his body language. This is a brutally sad film, but that Lie is able to find some semblance in joy in the buildup to its inevitable and crushing ending feels like a miracle.

03. Margo Martindale, Paris je t'aime (dir. Alexander Payne & others, 2006)

Paris je t'aime consists of eighteen short films, each with different directors, set in various arrondissements in Paris. Some of the shorts are stinkers, but the film is a charming experience overall. The final episode stands out above the rest: Payne gives Martindale free rein to shatter your heart into a million pieces. Playing an American woman on her first trip to Europe, she describes (in amateur French) what she loves about Paris. It's Payne at his very best -- funny, mature, human -- but it sings because of Martindale's soulful performance. If he had any sense, he'd give her a feature length movie.

04. Silvia Pinal, Simon of the Desert (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1965)

I went through a miniature obsession with the Sondheim musical Here We Are this year, which got me in the mood to scratch a Buñuel itch. While it's not one of the films the musical is adapted from, Simon of the Desert shares something with Here We Are: it exists largely as a fraction of what it was once intended to be, running only 45 minutes long. Still, it's a delightful film, and the star is the late, great Pinal, whose performance as (who else?) Satan is an entertaining, anarchic riot. I need to see more of her work ASAP.

05. Brad Pitt, Burn After Reading (dir. Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, 2008)

I could throw a dozen superlatives at Pitt in Burn After Reading. It's the actor's career best. It's one of the funniest performances of the 2000s. It's the blueprint for Gosling's Ken. Every line is a perfectly orchestrated head-empty-no-thoughts symphony. The way he drinks water like a hamster? The way he laughs and says, "You think that's a Schwinn"? The way he does his victory dance? Deeply stupid. Extraordinarily funny.

06. Kurt Russell, Big Trouble in Little China (dir. John Carpenter, 1986)

Like Pitt, this is an exquisite comedic performance. Everything about Big Trouble in Little China is dialed up to eleven, from the pulpy dialogue to the over-the-top action, and it's Russell, as the over-confident himbo sidekick deeply, truly believes that he's the hero of the story, who holds the film together. Every line he says in his sorta-kinda John Wayne impression makes me scream. I had never given Russell a second thought as an actor, but this performance instantly made me a fan.

07. Chishū Ryū, An Autumn Afternoon (dir. Yasujirō Ozu, 1962)

Even among Ozu's body of work, An Autumn Afternoon stands out as painfully sad. The final fifteen minutes of this film in particular are brutal, and probably the most devastating sequence I've seen in any of his movies. It was his final film, and as they had so often before, Ozu used Ryū as his leading man. He had one of the all-time great faces in film history, capable of conveying a deep, visceral ache with just a polite smile. The sadness of the finale comes through largely because of the beauty and the simplicity of Ryū's performance.

08. Harry Dean Stanton, Paris, Texas (dir. Wim Wenders, 1984)

I'm not in the habit of ranking the performances on these lists, but if I was, Stanton would be at the top. His performance in Paris, Texas -- also one of my absolute favorite new-to-me films of the year -- filled me with that rare warmth, that feeling that I'm watching a truly singular achievement in acting. Just like Chishū Ryū, if there was a contest for best faces in film, Stanton would be a finalist. Those deep eyes, the craggy skin. His performance is a masterclass in stillness and silence (he doesn't say his first line until nearly half an hour into the movie), communicating years of regret, heartbreak, joy, and longing with just a look. His journey begins in an unbearably lonely place and ends with a bittersweet reconciliation. To describe this performance as moving is the ultimate understatement.

09. Mink Stole, Female Trouble (dir. John Waters, 1974)

It feels wrong not to highlight the legendary Divine here. Female Trouble largely operates as a star vehicle for him, and he is genuinely terrific. Amazingly, though, in the face of Divine's hurricane of a performance, Mink Stole manages to steal the film as the obnoxious Taffy Davenport. As one of the core members of Waters' Dreamlanders, her keen understanding of his tone should come as no surprise, but that doesn't make it any less thrilling to watch her embody the film's deranged camp sensibilities. It takes a great actor to find the right balance in a film like this. Make no mistake: Mink Stole is a great actor.

10. Alfre Woodard, Crooklyn (dir. Spike Lee, 1994)

It's clichéd to describe a performance as the heart of the film, especially if that performance comes from a woman playing the mother in a coming-of-age movie, but friends: I've never claimed to be above cliché. Woodard is an American treasure, and she is undeniably the heart of Crooklyn, Lee's gorgeous look back home. Going toe-to-toe with Delroy Lindo (who very nearly made this list with Woodard), Woodard does richly layered work here, by turns commanding, funny, warm, and moving. It's a nuanced, lived-in performance from one of our greatest living actors.

This afternoon's film was Early Summer (1951) — the second in Yasujiro Ozu's loose trilogy of films starring Setsuko Hara as Noriko (a different Noriko in each film).

It's a beautiful portrait of family life and the bittersweet inevitability of change. Much like Late Spring (1949), Early Summer centres on Noriko as her family pushes her to get married. But this one feels like more of an ensemble piece than Late Spring. This Noriko has a larger family, including two young nephews who act as the film's comic relief.

(Fun fact: Chishu Ryu, who plays Noriko's father in both Late Spring and Tokyo Story, here plays her brother. Ozu often cast Ryu as older characters, but here he gets to look his real age!)