There were quite a few strong ensembles this year, many of them true ensembles, where no one really stands out from the crowd.
Runners-Up: Baby Driver has a great cast, yet they were still in danger of being overshadowed by all of Wright’s pyrotechnics – but they do not allow it. The Big Sick is a terrific comedic ensemble – everyone plays off of each other brilliantly in a way that enhances the comedy. Blade Runner 2049 has Gosling as a well-cast lead, Ford as damsel in distress, and several fine roles for women – Ana De Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Mackenzie Davis and Carla Juri in particular – making it more than just another blockbuster. The Disaster Artist has a large, and very committed cast, who get on the right wavelength from the start. Dunkirk has a large, excellent cast – and even if some of them seem interchangeable, that’s by design, and helps to show the epic scale – and lets those few that do stand out (like Rylance) do so all the ore. It has a mostly young cast, and they are more than convincing as friends, and really deliver the emotional wallop the story needs. It Comes at Night has a cast whose paranoia gets ramped up the longer they are trapped in their together – a definite example of the sum being even better than the individual parts. Lady Macbeth has a terrific central performance by Florence Pugh – but there is so much going on, mostly quietly, in the supporting cast. Logan Lucky has a mostly great cast, having a hell of a lot of fun, in Soderbergh’s heist film. The Lovers has two terrific leads in Tracey Letts and Debra Winger – and everyone else supports them nicely. mother! Requires everyone to get on the same bat shit crazy level – and it’s a miracle they all do. Novitiate has an almost all female cast, who as young nuns (and those ones supervising them) who create a wonderful atmosphere, of faith and love – and confusion about both. Okja has probably the most international cast imaginable – and they all go for broke, which is kind of required in this one. The Shape of Water has a very specific sense of style, and yet the performances never get lost under Del Toro’s style – something that usually happens. Thor: Ragnarok had a lot of people in it – even for a super hero movie – but everyone gets their moment, and everyone gets on the same wavelength.
Mudbound’s ensemble cast is interesting to watch work – mainly because the story of two families sharing the same land, is essentially one of matched pairs – like the mothers play by Carey Mulligan and Mary J. Blige, who have a lot in common with each other, but never directly discuss it. It’s interesting to see the ways these people are so similar, and so far apart – and it’s something the cast innately gets, and subtly underlines in the way they perform their lives. I love the way Jason Clarke delivers “suggestions” that sound friendly, but carry the weight of commands – or how Garret Hedlund and Jason Mitchell, the two WWII vets, get each other, but say little. It is a great ensemble cast – doing great work, so that no one performance stands out over the others. That is what great ensembles do.
9. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) - Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Elizabeth Marvel,
Emma Thompson, Grace Van Patten, Candice Bergen, Rebecca Miller, Judd Hirsch, Adam Driver.
It can be difficult to gather a cast of celebrities, and then get them to play a convincing family unit – but it’s a trick that Noah Baumbach and his cast pull off in The Meyerowitz Stories. Dustin Hoffman gives his best performance in 20 years as the self-centered patriarch – an artist who is a master in own mind (but no one else’s) – and the trio playing his kids – Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller and Elizabeth Marvel – all do a great job of showing the effects of having someone like that as your father (Sandler has the best role, and reminds you how good he can be when he wants to – Marvel is so good, I wish she was given more to do). The film is filled out with nice work by Grace Van Patten, as a sheltered millennial, Candice Bergen, as a Hoffman ex-wife, and Adam Driver as an ego-driven celebrity in one great scene. The sign of a good ensemble is when you can say that Emma Thompson is your weak link (not her fault) – and mean it.
8. Good Time - Robert Pattinson, Buddy Duress, Benny Safdie, Taliah Lennice Webster, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Barkhad Abdi, Necro, Peter Verby, Saida Mansoor, Gladys Mathon.
What immediately stands out when you watch Good Time is Robert Pattinson’s great performance in the lead role – he is essentially the center of every scene in the movie (except the first and last), and he delivers a career best performance as the slippery con man criminal, using everyone around him. It’s one of the very best performances of the year. Yet, we shouldn’t forget the rest of the cast, who create full characters, often with just a scene or two – like co-director Benny Safdie, as Pattison’s disabled brother, or Buddy Duress, who wakes up in a place he doesn’t know and doesn’t know how he got there, or Jennifer Jason Leigh, so desperately trying to hold onto her only friend, or Barkhad Abdi, just trying to do his job. Best of all of them is Taliah Lennice Webster, who plays the teenage girl whose house Pattinson hides out in – thinks she builds a real connection with him – right up until her truly sad final moment in the film. Good Time is a great movie – and while Pattinson gets the bulk of the credit on the acting end – he’s far from alone there.
7. The Post – Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce
Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Jesse Plemons, David Cross, Zach Woods, Pat Healy, Michael Stuhlbarg.
The ensemble cast is one of The Post’s biggest assets. There is no doubt that Streep is far and away best-in-show here – it’s her best work in a decade or more – and she anchors the movie brilliantly, with an able assist by Tom Hanks, twisting his nice guy-ness just enough. The supporting cast has to do quite a bit of heavy lifting as well though – especially since the (overall strong) screenplay sometimes hits things a little too hard with the dialogue – yet the cast never flinches away from it, and sells it brilliantly. This is one of those movies in which nearly every person you see is a famous character actor – and they all do exemplary work, mostly together, which is what an ensemble is supposed to do.
6. Get Out - Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel, Lakeith Stanfield, Stephen Root, LilRel Howery, Richard Herd, Erika Alexander.
Get Out does just about everything right and the cast is often overlooked – but it shouldn’t be. The lead, Daniel Kaluuya gives one of the best, understated performances of the year – not being quite sure what to make of the micro-aggressions he faces on the weekend to his girlfriend’s parents. The supporting role are all perfectly filled – Allison Williams is the perfect “good liberal” white woman, playing off her own images, Bradley Whitford does something similar with his West Wing image, and Catherine Keener is creepy and effective. Then every small role – Lakeith Stanfield, scared throughout his small role, Betty Gabriel, heartbreaking as the family maid are particular standouts. Jordan Peele deserves credit for so much of Get Out – the writing, the direction is perfect – and part of that is getting great performances out of the entire cast.
5. Lady Bird – Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Beanie Feldstein, Timothee Chalamet, Lucas Hedges, Lois
Smith, Jordan Rodrigues, Odeya Rush, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Marielle Scott.
The ensemble cast of Lady Bird is one of its great strengths – particularly because of how each of the larger cast relate, in different ways, to Saoirse Ronan’s title character. Yes, Ronan is at the center of the movie – and she is brilliant as always – but I loved how her mother, played by Laurie Metcalf, has an agonizing, push/pull relationship with her daughter, how Tracy Letts tries to remain the good guy – and hide his own pain – or the perfection of the teenage female friendship with Beanie Feldstein. Even the two idiot teen boys in her life play off of her perfectly. Some ensembles are great because there are lots of scenes with lots of people – this isn’t that – it’s more of a series of two handers, but each perfectly sketches their relationship with the main character – and brings out different sides of her.
4. The Killing of a Sacred Deer – Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan, Raffey Cassidy, Bill Camp, Sunny Suljic, Alicia Silverstone.
The degree of difficulty for an ensemble cast has to be increased when working with a director like Yorgos Lanthimos – who wants his cast to speak mostly in a flat, affectless, monotone voice – and yet, still convey something to the audience. It’s not something every can do – or at least not well. We already knew that Farrell could do it – he gave a career best performance in The Lobster last year – but the rest of the cast here also does a lot. Nicole Kidman continues to be one of the most risk taking of actresses around – and she is chilling at times here – and Barry Keoghan, as a little psycho, is perfect. Also great though is young Raffey Cassidy, as a teenage girl in love (her singing a pop song is maybe the most haunting moment of the year) – and even Alicia Silverstone, who completely nails one scene. When a director requires this kind of dedication and commitment from his cast, it can go wrong. Here, it’s the reason this bizarre film works.
3. The Beguiled - Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Oona Laurence, Angourie Rice,
Addison Riecke, Emma Howard.
Colin Farrell in another lead role in this ensemble category – and he is utterly great in the film, charming and sexy, and creepy and evil, all at the same time – he outdoes Clint Eastwood, in what was one of Eastwood’s least characteristics roles. And yet, when it comes to the ensemble of The Beguiled – it really is about the women – from young Oona Laurence, in love with Farrell as only a young girl can be (and heartbroken like one as well), to Elle Fanning, who damn well knows what she’s doing, to Kirsten Dunst, who is heartbreaking here, and the MVP, Kidman, who brings less crazy, more control to the role than the great Geraldine Page did. You feel the energy from that house, from the opening scene, to its last. I don’t think this is Sofia Coppola’s best film – but it may be the best ensemble cast she has ever had.
2. The Florida Project- Willem Dafoe, Brooklynn Prince, Valeria Cotto, Bria Vinaite, Christopher Rivera, Caleb Landry Jones, Macon Blair, Karren Karagulian, Sandy Kane.
The bulk of the acting citations that Sean Baker’s The Florida Project are getting seem to be centered on Willem Dafoe and young Brooklynn Prince – and there is good reason for that, since both are great. Dafoe, who more often than not, has played various creeps and psychos, here is deeply empathetic, as the manager of a low rent motel, who truly does want to help out all those who “live” there – but has limits – it’s those limits that sadden him. And Prince gives one of the greatest child performances I have ever seen in a movie – precisely because she gets to act like a child. But really – the entire cast is great (and probably bigger than I list here), because they all build a sense of community in the film – a messed-up, sad, dysfunctional community, but one just the same. From Bria Vinaite, as Prince’s mother, struggling to survive, to even one scene wonders – like Macon Blair, as an angry man who thinks (rightly) that he’s been scammed – the cast doesn’t hit a false note.
1. Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri - Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Peter
Dinklage, Caleb Landry Jones, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges, Clarke Peters, Zeljko Ivanek, John Hawkes, Brendan Sexton III, Nick Searcy, Sandy Martin, Amanda Warren, Darrell Britt-Gibson.
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri is a dark movie about flawed, violent people – who little by little, show incremental growth. It is also a vicious comedy, in which Martin McDonagh’s snappy, profane dialogue has to be delivered at full speed for effect. The cast for the film is virtually perfect – from McDormand as the righteously angry mother of a murdered girl – who by the end has perhaps gone too far to ever come back, to Sam Rockwell, a vile, violent cop, who has a sort of Biblical awakening, and moves to undo some of the pain he’s caused, to Woody Harrelson, as a cop who really is just trying his best. The supporting cast is wonderful – Peter Dinklage is hilarious as a man in love with McDormand, Caleb Landry Jones does his creepy, slimy thing (well this time – he doesn’t always) – and the likes of Lucas Hedges, Clarke Peter, Zeljko Ivanek, John Hawkes and Brendan Sexton III all have memorable moments. Yes, this is the type of film that is made for ensemble awards – but that doesn’t mean that this one doesn’t deserve it.
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