as Arthur Fleck, the troubled New Yorker who will become Batman’s archnemesis, would be more persuasive if his brand of ragged unease wasn’t still so magnetic. The complaints that Phoenix was merely recycling a familiar onscreen M.O. Happily, he’s since righted the ship, resulting in a string of critical successes ( The Master, Inherent Vice, You Were Never Really Here) - and then came the commercial colossus of Joker. Once upon a time, Joaquin Phoenix risked becoming a parody of the self-serious artiste. Image Credit: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP/Shutterstock Unfortunately, The Slap eclipsed, if not erased the nuance Smith brought to the role - you can’t divorce the movie from what happened on that Oscar stage. The star had played inspirational true-life figures before, but in King Richard he’s not afraid to make Richard’s dedication border on unhealthy, actively questioning whether this driven father wanted his girls to succeed for themselves or to satisfy his own fragile ego. Smith is compelling as Richard Williams, the blue-collar Compton father convinced his daughters Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton) are destined to be tennis champions - even though he lacks the financial resources their peers enjoy. But forget, for a moment, the controversy and the perhaps-permanent stain to his reputation. Will Smith’s infamous overreaction at the 2022 ceremony, resulting in the Slap Heard ‘Round the World, left him as something of a pariah in an industry he once ruled. But here, he’s delivering pure movie-star fireworks, which is its own kind of feat. Flight, Malcolm X, He Got Game – Washington has had plenty of more nuanced, devastating performances. Training Day can be awfully ludicrous - a bad-cop drama cranked to 11 - but it’s Washington’s cocksure turn that almost sells the whole thing, the actor’s mega-watt intensity keeping us pinned in that car with this menacing street marauder. Washington has always been a powerfully charismatic onscreen presence, but with this thriller he twists that charm into something that feels dangerous, unpredictable: We know to be wary of this man, but we’re not sure just how deep the corruption goes. But what made Denzel Washington’s performance so gripping is that, like Ethan Hawke’s impressionable cop, we keep thinking we can get a bead on the guy the longer we hang out with him. We suspect that we can’t trust Alonzo Harris, an LAPD detective who hasn’t met a line he’s not afraid to cross. Yes, it’s a movie about clichéd virtues like perseverance and the triumph of the human spirit, but the actor’s skill at making those banalities resonate makes Everything work. As a result, The Theory of Everything has a thorny, brittle poignancy to it, with Redmayne becoming more and more of a distant and complicated figure as the movie goes along. Instead, his Hawking is a cocky genius in the midst of discovering himself and finding his soul mate, just as he learns he’s about to have everything stripped away from him because of a crippling condition. It’s the sort of performance that’s easy to dismiss as Oscar-bait, but the actor’s portrayal pushes past mimicry or disease-of-the-week niceties. Related: Best Actress Oscar-Winners Since 2000, Ranked Worst to BestĮddie Redmayne captured the terror of losing control of one’s own body in this drama about the complicated love affair between Stephen Hawking (who was diagnosed with ALS in his early 20s) and his wife Jane (Felicity Jones). A couple things we learned in the process: 1.) Playing a real person (or being mauled by a bear) helps your chances of nabbing an Oscar and 2.) Your odds go up immeasurably if you happen to be Sean Penn or Daniel Day-Lewis (they’ve both won two Oscars this century). So in honor of the 95th annual Academy Awards, we wanted to look back at the Best Actor champs of the 21st century to date, ranking them in order of greatness. Others … well, nobody’s perfect, especially Oscar voters, who often pick their winners for reasons that are unfathomable to the rest of us. Some of those performances already seem guaranteed to stand the test of time. The past two decades have seen a wide variety of performers claim this particular prize, everyone from French comic actors to veteran American stars, newcomers to established Hollywood names resurrecting their careers. On March 12th, five men will square off at the Academy Awards for Best Actor - only one of them is walking away with the gold.
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