Actors' strike has dimmed the spotlight on some best performances

Here are some of the standouts you might have missed during the SAG-AFTRA work stoppage

By AP

Top Stories

UAE announces 2-month grace period for residence visa violators

UAE announces fee refund for tax service charges from August 1

Paid parking in Dubai: Residents face up to Dh4,000 extra yearly costs when new rates kick in

Gael Garcia Bernal in a scene from "Cassandro". — AP

Published: Fri 27 Oct 2023, 11:06 PM

The fallout from the actors strike, now past 100 days, has been widespread throughout the film industry. Movies large and small have postponed. Sound stages remain shuttered. Adjacent industries have been devastated.

Another effect is that some great performances haven’t gotten the attention they deserve. For most movies, actors haven’t been able to promote their work.

As the strike pushes into Hollywood’s awards season, it’s increasingly muting the reception for some of the best performances of the year. With so many out of work due to the strike, no one should cry for muzzled Oscar campaigns. But actors deserve the chance to take a much-deserved bow.

Interim agreements have permitted some of the fall’s standouts – among them Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall and Cailee Spaeny in Priscilla – to hit red carpets and bask in standing ovations. And two of the year’s biggest hits – Barbie and Oppenheimer, both likely to be Academy Awards heavyweights — debuted as actors walked out.

Hopefully, the strike will end in time for some of the stars of upcoming releases to get the attention they deserve, among them Andrew Scott in All of Us Strangers, Aunjanue Ellis in Origin, Emma Stone in Poor Things, Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction and Carey Mulligan in Maestro. Negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and the studios have continued this week.

Stay up to date with the latest news. Follow KT on WhatsApp Channels.

But to give the best performances of September and October a little shine, here are some of the standouts you might have missed during the SAG-AFTRA work stoppage, and where to watch them.

JaNae Collins, Lily Gladstone, and Cara Jade Myers in a scene from "Killers of the Flower Moon".

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon boasts some of the best work in years by a pair of longtime Scorsese collaborators in Leonardo DiCaprio (as the easily corrupted Ernest Burkhart) and Robert De Niro (as the venal local power broker William Hale). But this is Lily Gladstone’s movie. As Mollie Kyle, she’s the preternaturally calm and graceful presence amid a churning hive of 1920s criminality. Some could fairly wish the film was more given over to Mollie’s perspective, but Gladstone’s gentle power in Killers of the Flower Moon doesn’t need to assert itself. It’s self-evident.

Dominic Sessa in a scene from "The Holdovers". — AP

Choosing just one performance to isolate in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers is a fool’s errand. First, there’s Paul Giamatti. In his second film with Payne, following Sideways, he plays a curmudgeon instructor at a 1970s boarding school tasked with staying over Christmas break with a handful of students. Sessa, in his first film, is among them. Randolph, the school cook whose son has died in Vietnam, is there, too. Each is stellar in radically different ways but ultimately the same one: They comically and empathetically imbue their characters with humanity.

Jamie Foxx in a scene from "The Burial."

Jamie Foxx has a ball playing a flamboyant personal injury lawyer who sounds more like he’s preaching from the pulpit than cross-examining a witness in Maggie Betts’ The Burial. Foxx’s attorney takes a case out of his comfort zone in defending a mild-mannered Mississippi funeral home owner (Tommy Lee Jones) against a corporate chain buying up local businesses. Foxx and Jones prove a surprisingly well-suited duo in this crowd-pleasing, throwback courtroom drama.

Annette Bening as Diana Nyad, left, and Jodie Foster as Bonnie Stoll, in a scene from the film "Nyad."

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s Nyad is first and foremost a showcase for Annette Bening, who gives a tenacious, vanity-free performance as the marathon swimmer Diana Nyad. But so much of what makes Nyad a touch more than a conventional sports drama is Jodie Foster’s supporting turn as Bonnie Stoll, Nyad’s close friend and trainer. Nyad is often less about its namesake than how the people in Nyad’s life respond to her obsessive drive. Foster, a rare presence on movie screens these days, has seemingly only grown more confident and at ease as an actor.

Cassandro, another sports biopic with a courageous queer protagonist, chronicles the scrappy rise of Mexican American luchador Saúl Armendariz, a.k.a. Cassandro. Bernal pours himself into the inspirational story of the groundbreaking wrestler. It’s among Bernal’s most nimble transformations — not just physically in the ring but in embodying the sheer joy and undaunted spirit of a natural performer.

Eve Hewson in a scene from "Flora and Son."

You may have noted Eve Hewson, daughter of Bono, in ensembles like Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick or in the Irish comedy series Bad Sisters. But John Carney’s Flora and Son, a charming movie about music and rebirth, gives her centrestage. Hewson stars as a working-class single mother in Dublin whose online guitar lessons (Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the instructor) transforms her life and her relationship with her 14-year-old son (Orén Kinlan). Just as Carney’s Once was a breakthrough for Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, Hewson is a revelation in Flora and Son.

Colman Domingo has long been a powerhouse on screen. (Among many other things, he was the menacing pimp of Zola.) But George C. Wolfe's Rustin, a biopic of the civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, gives Domingo the kind of grand, historical platform that can define an actor. The film is set mainly during the run-up to the 1963 March on Washington, which Rustin was the architect of. Rustin was a complicated figure — a dedicated activist and an openly gay man — yet Domingo's layered, astute performance captures him fully.