Movie Performances That Are Practically Flawless

She may not be the titular character, but make no mistake: the star of Mad Max: Fury Road is Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa. She is the heart and soul of George Miller's gorgeous post-apocalyptic road war movie. Credit where it's due: Miller gave Theron stellar material to work with. That being said, the character would fall flat in the hands of an actor less capable than Theron.

Furiosa is, in Theron's hands, every bit her name, a woman of determined fury hellbent on freeing Immortan Joe's brides from lives of torment. She's the kind of character that an actor wouldn't usually give as much care as a traditionally prestigious role. Theron clearly wasn't content with that though, and instead she creates a true modern icon out of Furiosa, embellishing her determined fury with a quiet empathy that shines through in some of the film's calmer moments. As Furiosa finally achieves her ends and kills Immortan Joe, she grunts what's come to be the defining line of the film: "Remember me." We have, and will continue to do so for years to come.

Even the best films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are often marred by bland, unmemorable villains with vaguely-defined goals and personalities. There's little difference between Ronan the Accuser from Guardians of the Galaxy and Malekith from Thor: The Dark World and both are equally forgettable. There are occasional exceptions like Loki (we're partial to Daniel Bruhl's underrated turn as Baron Zemo, too), but for the most part, Marvel villains are uninteresting. That changed when Michael B. Jordan hit screens as Erik "Killmonger" Stevens, the antagonist of Black Panther. 

Jordan melds swagger with terror, painting Killmonger as a sympathetic character who's just a few adjustments away from being the film's protagonist. His background as a poor kid in Oakland, CA feels all too familiar, so much so that the audience is more likely to relate to him than to T'Challa's royal upbringing. His shortcomings, namely his inability to distinguish justice from aimless violence, are all the more heartbreaking not only because of how close he is to being someone we love but because of how much worse they seem in light of  that. Jordan's charming recklessness and seething hatred make for a character who feels doomed from the moment we meet him, yet seeing him finally meet his tragic end still hurts tremendously. In the end, Killmonger did win in his own way: thanks to Jordan, he's far more likely to be the character audiences walk away thinking about than T'Challa. That's a sly victory in and of itself.

We feel firmly in the right in saying that motion captured performances are just as impressive and important as live-action ones. When it comes to motion capture, there's nobody better in the industry than Andy Serkis, and his role as ape revolutionary Caesar in the rebooted Planet of the Apes trilogy is not only the best of his career but the best motion captured performance of all time.

It's first imperative to point out that Serkis plays a Caesar we see grow and evolve, both as a character and literally, over the course of several years. He's effectively playing different characters at any point in time, with the Caesar we meet early on in Rise of the Planet of the Apes bearing little to no resemblance to the one who greets us in War for the Planet of the Apes. Serkis's performance is soulful, resonant, and all too (appropriately) human. He takes the character on a journey from a young ape confused by his place in the world to a grizzled, unbreakable leader of a new nation, his performance never once faltering along the way. Yes, the special effects crew does a stellar job in transferring that performance to animation, but at its core is tremendous work done by a true pioneer in motion capture.

Before we talk about the role that won him an Oscar, we feel it's important to give an honorable mention to J.K Simmons' role as J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man trilogy. It's of the best instances of comic book casting of all time. Simmons' Jameson seems to have been ripped directly from a classic Spidey comic and we think it's pretty obvious why neither of the Spider-Man reboots have dared to recast him.

That being said, we have to give the nod to Simmons' magnum opus, his role as Terence Fletcher in 2014's Whiplash. Fletcher is the jazz professor from hell, a maniacally focused and demanding conductor who berates and abuses his students until they achieve brilliance or go insane. His simultaneous mentorship and relentless antagonism of Miles Teller's Andrew is both engrossing and repulsive. Simmons strikes the perfect balance of mania, never going so over the top as to ruin the audience's suspension of disbelief. There's a humanity Simmons gives to Fletcher when he easily could have been a cartoonish monster. There are plenty of great iconic movie antagonists, but Fletcher's realism (and uncanny resemblance to real-life coaches, art school instructors, and directors) makes for one that will haunt any young artist's deepest insecurities.

There's very little to say about Quentin Tarantino's masterclass in filmmaking, Pulp Fiction, that hasn't already been said. It's arguably the most quotable movie of a generation and a hefty percentage of those quotes are spouted out with righteous vigor by Samuel L. Jackson's iconic Jules, a hitman who finds himself in the midst of an existential crisis over the course of the film. Jackson is extremely prolific as an actor and has appeared in a number of Tarantino films, but it's his turn as Jules that stands out as one of his finest hours as an actor.

There's a calm, controlled intensity to Jules that lingers throughout Jackson's performance. He calculates everything and he always has the upper hand. This is why his near-death experience in the film shakes him to his core. Jackson makes this experience less an unraveling and more a crossroads for the character. It makes his encounter with petty criminals Ringo and Yolanda all the more riveting and pivotal. The simultaneous controlled rage and desperate empathy with which Jackson delivers the line, "But I'm trying, Ringo. I'm trying real hard to be the shepherd," is stunning. In a film filled with memorable characters and performances, Jackson's stands out as the definitive performance in one of the great modern American films.

Even the most stellar of ensemble films will have one or two primary characters. Pulp Fiction has Vincent and Jules. The Usual Suspects is very much Verbal's story. It's very rare for an ensemble cast to have no true standout, the star of the film being the ensemble itself. The Breakfast Club distinguishes itself as the best of this sort of movie. It's impossible to pinpoint a single performance amongst the main cast as the best, not only because they're all so good but because were one removed, the rest would falter.

Filmmaker John Hughes' masterpiece tells the story of five kids from different social circles who find themselves in Saturday morning detention. The film's magnificence comes in the cast's palpable chemistry. A veritable who's who of '80s teen stars make up the titular Breakfast Club, including Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, and Ally Sheedy. Nelson's brash Bender is perhaps the loudest (and therefore most memorable by default) but to say any single character is better than the others is selling the talented cast short. Each performance works in tandem with the other four to create magic. Every character receives equal focus and equally compelling arcs. There's no lead, no standout actor. Instead there's something far rarer: an ensemble creating a collective performance that works flawlessly.

There are few films that feel as primal as Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. It channels a righteous anger like few are able to. Lee's film meditates on the complexities and frustrations of race relations on the hottest day of the year in Brooklyn. He wrote and directed the film, which would be impressive enough, but he also stars in it, turning in an audacious performance that shakes you to your core.

Lee's Mookie is a man adrift throughout the film. He's just trying to get by day to day and make some money working at a local pizzeria owned by a racist Italian family. It puts him occasionally at odds with his friends Buggin' Out and Rakim, both of whom are more aggressive in their disdain of racial tensions perpetuated by their white neighbors (specifically the aforementioned Italian family). While managing his directorial duties, Lee also performs Mookie with a powerful frustration. He takes the character on a journey from selfish passivity to furious activity that cannot be suppressed, channeling the character's anger and slowly building towards a breaking point. Lee's turn as Mookie is as powerful today as it was when the film was first released. 

As one of the biggest stars of the New Hollywood movement, few actors can ever hope to be as influential as Jack Nicholson. After getting his start in the old Hollywood studio system in the days of the Hays Code, Nicholson emerged as a force to be reckoned with as he helped usher in a time of momentous cultural and cinematic change. His participation in this movement began with his supporting role in the cultural touchstone, "Easy Rider," in 1969, but it was his lead role in the following year's "Five Easy Pieces" that turned him into a full-fledged star and one of the most impactful voices of his generation.

Nicholson's performance as a blue-collar working man who fled a privileged upbringing made him a counter-culture icon and the face of the rebellious spirit that was coursing through society at the time. With a callous exterior and tragically relatable interior, Nicholson brought a complex character to life in a way that changed the game for Hollywood performances and set the tone for American cinema of the 1970s. Nicholson earned his first lead actor Oscar nomination for the role, his second of 12 overall nominations, and three wins.

Brad Dourif is an underrated character actor who never received the level of respect and acclaim that he was due. These days, he is best known as the voice of Chucky, the killer doll from the "Child's Play" series, but Dourif's closest brush with mainstream stardom actually arrived with his very first role. In the seminal best picture-winning, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Dourif played Billy Bibbit, the young mental hospital patient with a stutter who eventually takes his own life.

With bright-eyed innocence but insurmountable turmoil below the surface, Dourif's performance serves as the real heart of a film packed with phenomenal performances from the likes of Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher, who both won Oscars for their performances. Dourif's performance is less prominent and perhaps a bit less showy than the film's two leads but is no less impressive or impactful. For his first film, Dourif earned the one and only Oscar nomination of his entire career for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Dourif has given many other excellent performances over the years in projects like "Deadwood," "The Exorcist III," "Mississippi Burning" and plenty of others, but none that have stacked up to the accolades of his first outing.

Robert De Niro is one of the finest actors of his or any other generation. He is continuing to do great work in projects like Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman" even as he approaches 80 years old. But, De Niro was in his absolute prime in the '70s and early '80s when he made movies like "Mean Streets," "The Godfather Part II," "The Deer Hunter," "Raging Bull," "The King of Comedy," and of course 1976's "Taxi Driver."

As the dangerous taxicab driver turned deranged vigilante, Travis Bickle, De Niro captivated audiences with a magnetic performance that spoke perfectly to the times while also becoming timeless. This complex character demanded an intense physical transformation from De Niro while also requiring nuanced psychological work that rewards repeat viewings of the film with a seemingly limitless supply of little subtleties that make an already staggering performance even more impressive.

De Niro earned his first lead actor Oscar nomination for the role after taking home the best supporting actor Oscar for his previous film, "The Godfather Part II." Scorsese and De Niro are one of the ultimate cinematic dream-team duos and have collaborated on nine films over the years. They will be working together for the tenth time on the upcoming "Killers of the Flower Moon."

There are numerous Philip Seymour Hoffman performances worthy of being labeled as one of the all-time greats. His performances in films like "The Master," "Synecdoche New York," "Punch Drunk Love," "Capote," "Owning Mahowny," "The Savages," and plenty of others are all contenders for the top of the heap, but his work in the somewhat underappreciated "Before the Devil Knows Your Dead" has an intangible X-factor quality that helps it rise ever so slightly above.

"Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" was the final film from director Sidney Lumet, who had previously made timeless classics like "12 Angry Men," "Network," and "Dog Day Afternoon" amongst dozens of others. The plot follows a pair of brothers, played by Hoffman and Ethan Hawke, as they deal with the fallout of their failed attempt to rob their parents' jewelry store, which ended in tragedy.

The simple crime thriller premise is drilled so deeply into that the tension becomes nearly unbearable as the brothers dig themselves into a worse and worse situation, with Hoffman delivering the most manic, desperate, and intense performance of his infinitely impressive filmography. Who knows how many more of the best performances of all time Hoffman would have given if not for his sad early passing at the age of 46.

2016's "The Handmaiden" is a Palme d'Or-nominated and BAFTA-winning film from South Korean director, Park Chan-wook, the same man behind international hits like "Oldboy" and "Decision to Leave." With a two-and-a-half-hour runtime, "The Handmaiden" packs a lot of twists and turns into a story that seems relatively straightforward at first. The whole cast turns in excellent performances, but Kim Tae-ri and Kim Min-hee stand above as the romantic coupling at the core of the story, and Kim Min-hee shines the brightest with the most complex character to sink her teeth into as Lady Hideko.

She pulls off the difficult feat of appearing both fragile and powerful, sometimes simultaneously, all while remaining elusive in her true goals throughout most of the twisty narrative. Kim Min-hee and Kim Tae-ri both won for their performances at the Blue Dragon Awards, the Director's Cut Awards, and the Cine21 Awards, three of South Korea's biggest film awards programs. At all three awards shows, Min-hee won best actress while Tae-ri won the best newcomer prize since "The Handmaiden" was her debut feature film.

In the first full decade of his career, the 1970s, Al Pacino had already secured his legacy as one of the top dogs of his generation. The two "Godfather" films alone turned him into one of the world's biggest movie stars but that was far from being all he had on his plate throughout the decade. While Pacino was unforgettable as Michael Corleone, the best performance of his career may have actually been in his direct follow-up to "The Godfather Part II," 1975's "Dog Day Afternoon."

This unorthodox heist film was directed by Sidney Lumet, whom Pacino had already collaborated with two years prior on "Serpico." Lumet came from a background in theater and had a reputation as a director capable of bringing out the absolute best performances from his talented casts, and he certainly succeeded with Pacino. Going against the grain, Lumet decided to only stick to the script's structure while allowing the cast to improvise much of the dialogue, resulting in performances that feel as spontaneous, natural, and authentic as could be. Pacino earned Oscar nominations for both of his collaborations with Lumet, and "Dog Day Afternoon" forever remained one of the most manic and intense roles of Pacino's long and illustrious career.

Steve McQueen had a reputation as Hollywood's king of cool, and nowhere was his screen persona better utilized than when he played Captain Virgil Hilts aka the Cooler King in "The Great Escape." Released in 1963 by director John Sturges, "The Great Escape" tells the mostly true story of a massive escape attempt by captive soldiers from the Allied countries from a WWII POW camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. The film is divided into thirds with the first act providing the setup, the second act showcasing the escape in exacting detail, and the third tracking the movements of the escaped soldiers as they attempt to evade re-capture while fleeing the country.

What begins as a claustrophobic one-setting prison-camp movie becomes even more claustrophobic as the characters descend into tight underground tunnels before finally widening to an epic scale as the escapees all scatter in different directions and attempt different methods of escape and transportation. With a runtime of nearly three hours long, the film packs in a ton of story and characters.

"The Great Escape" utilizes an ensemble cast of stars like James Garner, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, Richard Attenborough, James Coburn, and more, but McQueen outshines them all with his effortless charm and incomparable charisma. The Cooler King is the pinnacle of the laid-back rebel archetype that McQueen often portrayed and went down in history as his finest work.

"A Separation" is an Iranian film from internationally renowned writer, and director Asghar Farhadi, the same filmmaker behind the Oscar-winning "The Salesman" from 2016 and the highly acclaimed "A Hero" from 2021. This earlier 2011 drama also took home the best foreign language film Academy Award. The vital work done by the cast was overlooked at the Oscars, but that is unsurprising as the Academy rarely honors performances given in languages other than English.

The plot of "A Separation" follows a troubled married couple going through, you guessed it, a separation. While they deal with all of the messiness that a disintegrating marriage with a child in the mix entails, they must also navigate the troubles of an elderly parent with Alzheimer's, a caretaker with a terrible secret, and the potential theft of a monetary sum from the family home. The film plays its cards close to the vest and offers few concrete answers, instead allowing the story to be interpreted through the subjective points of view of its various characters in a way not dissimilar to Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon."

Leila Hatami and Sareh Bayat deliver stellar performances, but it is Payman Maadi who stands out the most as the family patriarch being pulled apart at the seams by everyone else in his life. His character's frantic search for answers and desire to resolve potentially irrevocable interpersonal conflicts without compromising on his own values leads to plenty of juicy dramatic scenes, and Maadi makes the most of every last one of them.

Filmmaker Mike Leigh utilizes a unique directorial process that places full emphasis on improvisation. Rather than going to his actors with a script, he instead starts working with them from a blank canvas. Leigh and the actors form the characters together before engaging in elaborate improvisations that run for several hours at a time over the course of multiple months prior to shooting. The story of the film that follows is built entirely from the improv performed by the actors in rehearsal, ensuring that every single line of dialogue is 100% natural and grounded in character.

Leigh's directorial process frequently brings career-best performances out of his actors, and Imelda Staunton entered the all-time greatest performances pantheon for her work in Leigh's 2004 drama "Vera Drake." Though she wasn't credited as a co-writer, Staunton was intrinsically involved in the creation of her character — an unassuming housewife who secretly performs back alley abortions in a time when the practice was outlawed in the U.K. — and worked alongside Leigh to devise the entire story of her life leading up to the start of the film, let alone improvising all of her own lines.

Staunton's performance is as naturalistic as any actor could possibly be, and it is heartbreaking to watch her character's life be destroyed for simply doing what she knows to be right. For her performance, Staunton was nominated for the best performance by an actress in a leading role Oscar in addition to winning the BAFTA.

In her 2016 film "Fences," Viola Davis was at the top of her game and managed the impressive feat of outshining even Denzel Washington, who also delivered one of his finest performances in the film. Though both stars did phenomenal work, Davis walked away as the film's sole Oscar winner for her performance in the supporting actress category.

"Fences" is a heavy drama set in the 1950s and is mostly contained to the familial conflicts unfolding in a simple backyard. With a grounded and character-driven plot, "Fences" is packed with wall-to-wall dialogue and allows the performances to take 100% priority. The bulk of the film's dialogue is between Washington — who also directed the film — and those in his orbit. Davis's character, who displays a subservient personality for much of the film, has a tendency to fade into the background for stretches of the narrative, but it is done knowingly in order to best build-up to her big, showstopper moments where she tears the roof down.

"Fences" was first performed on the stage and was written by playwright August Wilson, who wrote the play that was eventually adapted into "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," which Davis also starred in. Davis and Washington had previously performed their roles in "Fences" on Broadway before bringing the story to the big screen. Davis won a Tony Award for the play, but she always felt like there was part of the role she didn't quite crack on the stage. She viewed the film as a second chance to get it right, refining her already-acclaimed performance to a point of perfection.