The 10 Best Performances Of 2016 (So Far)

Because of how the cinematic calendar is laid out, it tends to be that many of the best film performances come in the second half of the year. Studios and the distributors just love to get in on the end-of-year awards season race, and the best way to do that is to release the Oscar contenders in the usual peak September to December period. This means that, come the end of 2016, this list of 10 Best Performances will undoubtedly look very different. The big awards movies complete with attention-grabbing, Oscar-baiting acting - primed to bag some silverware - are mostly all still yet to come. That doesn't mean that the year so far has been bereft of great turns, however. Already there have been standout performances, in smaller movies that never had the money to get in on the awards race, and in genre efforts that normally don't get much love come trophy season. So, on that note, here are the 10 best performances of 2016 so far. 10) Toby Jones – Tale Of Tales Matteo Garrone's Tale of Tales is a fairytale like no other, a portmanteau of sex, gore and grim fantasy that finds Salma Hayek devouring the heart of a sea monster, and a randy Vincent Cassel romping his way through a magical realm of crones turned into beautiful young women. Arguably the best of the film's three strands though is that which stars Toby Jones, as a bored manchild king rearing a flea until it's of gigantic proportions. It's Jones, in his overgrown toddler naïveté, who so elevates the Highmountain segment of the movie. It's a blackly comic turn that gets Garrone's comedy-horror approach better than no other in the (impressive) cast. The apologetic look on Jones' face when an ogre wins his King's daughter in a competition of his own design is priceless. 9) Agyness Deyn – Sunset Song Critics can be snooty about folks famed for things other than the cinema using their celebrity to have a go at an acting career. There are, understandably, just so few good examples: great musicians or particularly striking models aren't necessarily going to have much acting talent just because they're used to performing on stage for their own respective professions. At least we can say Agyness Deyn proved in 2016 she is one of the few to successfully make the transition from the catwalk to in front of the camera. In Terence Davies' WWI-era drama Sunset Song, Deyn is often the sole source of warmth, a woman of nothing but good intentions callously isolated in a world of seemingly endless misery. The film's a tough slog, but Deyn is, along with her equally impressive co-star Kevin Guthrie, undeniably heartbreaking. 8) Casey Affleck – Triple 9 Though he'll never be a star on the level of his lantern-jawed brother, Casey Affleck has in recent years become the go-to guy for any filmmaker looking for an offbeat leading man. Unlike his Oscar-winning sibling, Affleck the Younger isn't traditional movie star material: the voice is high, almost grating. He has a baby face - still, aged 40 - and an uneasy grin that can be both appealingly awkward and downright threatening. Such features, however - along with unmistakable acting ability, and a talent at subtle transformation - are the reason Affleck is so eminently watchable, even in his more slender roles. John Hillcoat's gruesome crime thriller Triple Nine is imperfect, and Affleck's cop Chris Allen may not be a character with much personality on the page, but he makes a meal of the role anyway, playing the part with uncharacteristic toughness and charisma. 7) Jack Reynor – Glassland Hollywood might not have figured out what to do with Jack Reynor yet - so far, he's been a prop for Michael Bay in Transformers: Age of Extinction and thanklessly played one of Vince Vaughn's many children in Delivery Man - but back home in Ireland he continues to be an at-times shockingly talented performer. This year we've already had two further reminders of that: Sing Street, and Gerard Barrett's Glassland. As in his breakthrough movie What Richard Did three years ago, Reynor is savagely affecting in Barrett's addiction drama. As a young taxi driver made old beyond his years by a mother who can't shake her alcoholism (Toni Collette, also great in a small role), Reynor once again proves why he's one of the most exciting new actors around. No move, no line seems rehearsed; with Reynor it feels like we're watching life unfolding. 6) The Entire Cast – Everybody Wants Some You could fill this list up entirely with actors from Everybody Wants Some, Richard Linklater's college-set semi-sequel to his bittersweet classic Dazed and Confused. There's Tyler Hoechlin, aggressively cocksure as alpha male McReynolds; Glen Powell, charming and self-deprecating as group leader Finnegan; and Wyatt Russell, cosmically comical as the spaced-out Willoughby. Of course, there's also the quietly charismatic Blake Jenner as our lead, Jake, and Zoey Deutch, easily naturalistic as the object of his affection, Beverly. It’s impossible to separate them all and pick just one. As in the movie, they're a team, each complementing the other. All together they're the reason why Everybody Wants Some is the feelgood movie of the year, and an all-time great hangout film (to borrow Quentin Tarantino's descriptor). 5) Mary Elizabeth Winstead – 10 Cloverfield Lane Before Smashed in 2012 - in the likes of Final Destination 3, The Ring Two, The Thing - there wasn't much of a clue as to how formidable an actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead could be. These were bad (and badly-directed) films, and movies such as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter ever exactly showcases for great acting. Smashed finally showed the world what Winstead could do though. Since then, the quality of project has improved for Winstead, but it was in returning to her horror roots this year that the actress shone brightest. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a taut, character-driven horror movie, and Winstead is by-turns mercilessly resilient and convincingly horrified in the face of a monstrous (and similarly rarely-better) John Goodman. Sometimes genre films feature Oscar-worthy performances - 10 Cloverfield Lane is a shining example. 4) Ben Foster – The Program The Program - a based-on-truth biopic about disgraced former American icon Lance Armstrong - was clearly designed to be an Oscar contender. Unfortunately, it was dumped this year on VOD and select few cinemas, in the middle of March. As strongly hinted by its release fate, the overall film is flimsy. Ben Foster, meanwhile, still very much deserves awards recognition for his transformation into the cunning world champion cyclist. Sometimes, Foster's method intensity can be ill-advised and even unintentionally amusing (see: Warcraft). In The Program, however, his dedication 100% pays off. He doesn't just imitate Armstrong (the look, the body language and speech cadences are spot-on), he disappears into the part and convincingly becomes the man, to an almost creepily accurate degree. 3) Luke Evans – High-Rise Luke Evans has been wasted in blockbusters. Until now rather bland and forgettable in the Hobbit and Furious franchises, and in costume epics like Immortals and Dracula Untold, Evans' first starring crack at an independent film - Ben Wheatley's High-Rise - sees the actor unleashed, like some gnarling beast with his constraints removed for the very first time. High-Rise, a dystopian satire based on a JG Ballard novel, proved predictably divisive. Almost everyone appears to agree on one thing, however: that Evans is a revelation in the film. His Wilder doesn't walk but swagger, doesn't talk but yells, oftentimes so hard he produces a shower of spittle as he boils over into full-on rage. Evans brings to the part a dangerous kind of animal magnetism, stealing the show from under leading man Tom Hiddleston. 2) Alden Ehrenreich – Hail Caesar! It takes a certain kind of confidence, insouciance and sex appeal to play Han Solo. In the Coen brothers' screwball comedy Hail Caesar!, the future captain of the Millennium Falcon, Alden Ehrenreich, displays none of that. His Hobie Doyle, a minor star of cowboy pictures, is no emblem of cool but a naive, lovable doofus that can't even manage to nail down one line of the new period drama he's working on. Ehrenreich may not be Han Solo material in Hail Caesar! (he's a versatile actor: elsewhere, in the likes of Tetro, he's proved he has the goods to headline the solo Solo movie), but he nonetheless gives perhaps the comic performance of the year in it. Always believable despite the character's outrageousness, it's a testament to Ehrenreich's skills that in a cast including George Clooney, Ralph Fiennes and Scarlett Johansson he's the inarguable standout. 1) Ralph Ineson – The Witch The Witch comes complete with several breakout stars, not all of them human. Young newcomers Harvey Scrimshaw and in particular Anya Taylor-Joy never fail to keep up with the unfolding horror, despite being run ragged by writer-director Robert Eggers, as well as his villain Black Phillip, an initially innocent-looking ram that's actually pure, unmitigated evil. Ralph Ineson, as William, patriarch of The Witch's 17th century New England family, is somewhere between man and animal. He has monstrous qualities, like the booming baritone and rough physicality, that Eggers plays up here, but Ineson is also painfully human, wrecked by questions of faith and afraid for the family he might have put in jeopardy. No actor so far this year has been so impactful - and in a supernatural shocker with a killer goat, of all things.