by Adam Riske and Patrick Bromley
Adam: I’ll start by saying (as I do every year) that I’m trying not to include performances here from movies that will be on my top 10 list. Here I’ll be highlighting some of my favorite performances of 2025 from movies I liked, and in some cases was mixed on.
My first pick is Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon, a movie that has a chance of making my top 10 if the remaining movies I need to still see this year don’t blow me away. For long stretches of Blue Moon, Hawke is the whole show and he’s certainly the dominant force throughout. The movie feels a lot like a play, with long monologues that Hawke makes feel effortless. He’s deep in the character here as past-his-prime, hard-drinking lyricist Lorenz Hart, who was one half of a very successful collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers before Rodgers turned the page and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein. The rest is history. The movie portrays a night on the precipice of that history, with Hart’s soul and dignity self-destructing over the course of 100 minutes. It’s a beautiful, sad film with a great performance by Hawke who is equally amusing, desperate, prideful, wounded, and embarrassing. This is a weird comparison, but Hawke reminded me a lot of Danny DeVito’s Oswald Cobblepot in Batman Returns. He disappears (under a lot of makeup) into this sad, bitter man and it’s a joy to watch. What’s your first pick, Patrick?
Patrick: As of this writing, Blue Moon is still on my to-watch list but your enthusiasm for it has me much more excited about it than I was. I love the direction Ethan Hawke has taken in the last 10-15 years, always choosing interesting projects and being great in them. He must be protected at all costs.
I’m going to try and do the same as you (this year and every year) and highlight performances from movies outside of my own list, which gets a little tricky to do. I’ll start with Keanu Reeves in Good Fortune, which is a movie I pretty much only saw because of his involvement and JB’s recommendation in his column. It was a very pleasant surprise for a lot of reasons, chief among them being Keanu’s performance as an angel in charge of saving people from texting and driving accidents who has to learn to be human for a while and falls in love with things like dancing and laughing and tacos. Keanu is perfect in the role: sweet and open and winning and with his trademark off-kilter line delivery that makes him feel Not Entirely of This Earth. What could be stunt casting becomes the movie’s best character thanks to Keanu’s performance and Ansari’s screenplay, which is smart enough to give the role things to do and places to go.
Adam: Nice choice! I just watched Good Fortune this week and really liked Reeves’s performance too. I appreciate that he is almost always funny in comedies but rarely seems to go for the joke. His funny moments are in character, and he lets the comedy come to him as opposed to pushing for it.
My next pick is Lucy Liu in Presence. The thing I like about this performance is there’s A LOT of creepiness about her character’s personality that is underplayed by her. She comes across mostly as an A-personality type on the surface but underneath there’s something almost diabolical. Liu has been really good in other movies before, but those movies usually take her (and I mean this in a nicer way than it will sound) coldness and use it for cool girl points and here it’s weaponized into something much more sinister. This is up there with her performance in Kill Bill, which is saying something because she’s incredible in that movie. I rewatched Presence thinking it might make my top 10 and, while I liked the movie less on repeat viewing, my appreciation for the Liu performance only grew.
Patrick: I may need to rewatch Presence because I wasn’t picking up on any of that! I was just seeing what you describe as the Type A thing and missed all the notes of evil. I thought she was really good in the movie but you’re convincing me she was even better than I realized.
My next pick is kind of a toss-up, but I’ll go with Keke Palmer in One of Them Days. I know her co-star SZA has been getting a lot of the attention for her performance, and she’s good! But I also think there’s a little bit of that “Oh, I didn’t realize she could act too” thing informing her accolades, whereas Palmer is expected to always be good because she’s been a star since she was a kid. It might not even make sense to single out just one of the lead performances because it’s the chemistry that Palmer and SZA have and the friendship they convey that makes the movie work so well, but it’s Palmer’s work as an upwardly mobile waitress trying to score a new job and some rent money that has stuck with me since seeing the movie early in 2025. She’s very funny but much more grounded than her often manic demeanor would suggest and has a challenging role as the movie’s heart and conscience. One of Them Days is one of the year’s most underrated surprises, Keke Palmer’s performance even more so.
Adam: I love that pick and I’ll have more to say about it on a future podcast. I’ve grown to really like Keke Palmer over the years. She’s super funny when you just let her go but she is a good actor in her own right and can play grounded characters and not need to be the whole show. For example, I was thinking she’s underutilized in Good Fortune, but I also admire that she can fold so easily into an ensemble.
My last “main” pick before I name honorable mentions at the end of the column is Jai Courtney in Dangerous Animals. Here’s the thing with Jai Courtney: he’s inherently unlikable, but I don’t say that as a putdown. In movies like Terminator Genisys or A Good Day to Die Hard it’s a hard sell to get me to want to root for him. He seems standoffish at best. But if you make his character unlikable, that’s where he really shines and becomes likable as an actor because he’s unlikable in a fun, intended way. I’m talking about in The Suicide Squad or Jack Reacher. He reaches his full scummy form in Dangerous Animals in a career-best performance to date. He’s captivating on screen as basically a psychopathic Paul Hogan who likes to kidnap people and feed them to sharks. It’s an interesting premise for a horror/thriller, but what makes Dangerous Animals memorable is Jai Courtney, an actor totally in his element having a lot of fun chewing up the scenery.
Patrick: Such a great pick, and not just because I had it on my list too. I love it when an actor who has otherwise become an online punchline shows not just that they can be in on the joke, but that they still have the goods when it counts. I think Courtney turned a lot of people around with his performance in Dangerous Animals and I hope it opens the doors for more work like this.
For my last pick, I’ll go with the opposite of a maligned actor appearing in good trash: a respected, “serious” actor appearing in “elevated” genre material with (for me) incredibly mixed results. Ralph Fiennes screentime in Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later is far and away the best stuff in that movie, in part because he’s playing the most interesting character in a movie devoid of great characters and in part because he’s the best actor in a movie devoid of great actors (Jodie Comer innocent). I wish he was just relegated to the last third, because by then I was mostly out on 28 Years but he’s so compelling and good that he was able to pull me back in – not necessarily enough to get excited for The Bone Temple, but enough to rescue a movie I thought was just ok and turn it into something kind of good.
I’m sure I have way too many honorable mentions to remember them all, so I’ll call out just a few: Jennifer Lawrence in Die My Love, Valerie Franco in Spinal Tap II, Josh O’Connor in Wake Up Dead Man, Renate Reinsve in Sentimental Value, Elle Fanning in Predator Badlands, Kirsten Dunst in Roofman, Blu Hunt in The Dead Thing, Nicolas Cage in The Surfer and (especially) Gunslingers, and Pamela Anderson in The Naked Gun.
Adam: I love that last pick. Ralph Fiennes is so consistently good that I sometimes take for granted how much he can elevate genre material. I’ll have more to say about him and 28 Years Later on a future show! I love your honorable mentions. We shared Josh O’Conner in Wake Up Dead Man and Kirsten Dunst in Roofman. For mine, I’ll add Jack Quaid in Novocaine, Oluwunmi Mosaku in Sinners, the late Julian McMahon in The Surfer, Sydney Agudong in Lilo & Stitch (2025), Vincent Cassel in The Shrouds, Zoe Kravitz in Caught Stealing, Zoey Deutch in The Threesome, Riz Ahmed in Relay, Juliana Canfield and Pico Alexander in The Family McMullen, Guillaume Marbeck in Nouvelle Vague and Channing Tatum in Roofman.
Now it’s our readers’ turn! Leave a comment below with who you thought gave great performances this year.
Patrick: As of this writing, Blue Moon is still on my to-watch list but your enthusiasm for it has me much more excited about it than I was. I love the direction Ethan Hawke has taken in the last 10-15 years, always choosing interesting projects and being great in them. He must be protected at all costs.
Adam: Nice choice! I just watched Good Fortune this week and really liked Reeves’s performance too. I appreciate that he is almost always funny in comedies but rarely seems to go for the joke. His funny moments are in character, and he lets the comedy come to him as opposed to pushing for it.
Patrick: I may need to rewatch Presence because I wasn’t picking up on any of that! I was just seeing what you describe as the Type A thing and missed all the notes of evil. I thought she was really good in the movie but you’re convincing me she was even better than I realized.
Adam: I love that pick and I’ll have more to say about it on a future podcast. I’ve grown to really like Keke Palmer over the years. She’s super funny when you just let her go but she is a good actor in her own right and can play grounded characters and not need to be the whole show. For example, I was thinking she’s underutilized in Good Fortune, but I also admire that she can fold so easily into an ensemble.
Patrick: Such a great pick, and not just because I had it on my list too. I love it when an actor who has otherwise become an online punchline shows not just that they can be in on the joke, but that they still have the goods when it counts. I think Courtney turned a lot of people around with his performance in Dangerous Animals and I hope it opens the doors for more work like this.
For my last pick, I’ll go with the opposite of a maligned actor appearing in good trash: a respected, “serious” actor appearing in “elevated” genre material with (for me) incredibly mixed results. Ralph Fiennes screentime in Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later is far and away the best stuff in that movie, in part because he’s playing the most interesting character in a movie devoid of great characters and in part because he’s the best actor in a movie devoid of great actors (Jodie Comer innocent). I wish he was just relegated to the last third, because by then I was mostly out on 28 Years but he’s so compelling and good that he was able to pull me back in – not necessarily enough to get excited for The Bone Temple, but enough to rescue a movie I thought was just ok and turn it into something kind of good.
I’m sure I have way too many honorable mentions to remember them all, so I’ll call out just a few: Jennifer Lawrence in Die My Love, Valerie Franco in Spinal Tap II, Josh O’Connor in Wake Up Dead Man, Renate Reinsve in Sentimental Value, Elle Fanning in Predator Badlands, Kirsten Dunst in Roofman, Blu Hunt in The Dead Thing, Nicolas Cage in The Surfer and (especially) Gunslingers, and Pamela Anderson in The Naked Gun.
Adam: I love that last pick. Ralph Fiennes is so consistently good that I sometimes take for granted how much he can elevate genre material. I’ll have more to say about him and 28 Years Later on a future show! I love your honorable mentions. We shared Josh O’Conner in Wake Up Dead Man and Kirsten Dunst in Roofman. For mine, I’ll add Jack Quaid in Novocaine, Oluwunmi Mosaku in Sinners, the late Julian McMahon in The Surfer, Sydney Agudong in Lilo & Stitch (2025), Vincent Cassel in The Shrouds, Zoe Kravitz in Caught Stealing, Zoey Deutch in The Threesome, Riz Ahmed in Relay, Juliana Canfield and Pico Alexander in The Family McMullen, Guillaume Marbeck in Nouvelle Vague and Channing Tatum in Roofman.
Now it’s our readers’ turn! Leave a comment below with who you thought gave great performances this year.
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