15. Geraldine Viswanathan as Kayla in “Blockers”
This year we were peculiarly blessed getting, in “Game Night” and “Blockers” not one but two studio comedies that didn’t makes us want to rip our own scalps off. And the great strength of the latter, the debut film from “Pitch Perfect” writer Kay Cannon that deals with three teenage girls who make a pact to lose their virginity on Prom night and the parents who want to thwart them, is that it has proper, profound respect for the teens, letting them be funny precisely because they’re not clueless. Viswanathan is the particular standout, with the Australian-Indian actress bringing a really unusual, laid-back wit to her role as the level-headed daughter of John Cena’s overprotective dad, coolly earning the laughs that her older castmates have to caper around butt-chugging beer to generate. She promptly landed another high-school role, but this one very highly coveted — she’ll next appear in the “Election“-esque “Bad Education” alongside Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney, for “Thoroughbreds” director Cory Finley.
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14. Zain Al Rafeea (& Boluwatife Treasure Bankole) as Zain (and Yonas) in “Capernaum”
WC Fields‘ old adage about never acting with children or animals, as they will effortlessly upstage you, is proven beyond a doubt in Nadine Labaki‘s Cannes Jury Prize winner. Indeed for some of us, the frustration of this harrowing drama about child abandonment and endangerment on the streets of Beirut is that, having captured lightning in a bottle with these astonishing child performers, Labaki forces the film into a standard tear-jerking melodrama format instead of following where they lead. Zain, the streetsmart kid who sues to “divorce” his neglectful and abusive parents, is a revelation, a pint-sized Lebanese James Dean, conning and grifting his way around the city, never having experienced tenderness so not expecting to find any. But he does, and when fate conspires to leave him in charge of baby Yonas (Boluwatife Treasure Bankole) the film finds its real heart and its real, perilous stakes. The connection between the two is palpable, with Bankole delivering an almost impossibly characterful turn as a fricking baby, and every interaction between them is a small miracle of naturalism that throws the film’s contrivances into even higher relief.
13. Jessie Buckley as Moll in “Beast”and Rose-Lynn in “Wild Rose”
Of all the routes to an acting career, surely placing second on a TV talent show to find castmembers for a West End production of “Oliver!” has to among the least promising. And yet Irish actress Jessie Buckley did manage to parlay that 2008 start into a theatrical career, that then led to TV (she appeared in 2016’s “War and Peace” miniseries as well as in 2017’s “Taboo“). But it’s a pair of very different film performances that have really lit her 2018 on fire and shown her incredible versatility. As the troubled Moll in Michael Pearce’s “Beast” she gives a terrifically deep-rooted, wary performance that almost wholly sells the film’s more unlikely psychological maneuvering. And in Tom Harper’s “Wild Rose” she not only gets to showcase her fabulous singing voice, she gets to amp up from slow burn to supernova as the Glaswegian ex-con with dreams of becoming a Nashville country star. It’s a good thing we like her: she’s going to be everywhere in the next couple of years, appearing in the Renee Zellweger-fronted Judy Garland biopic “Judy“; the Robert Downey Jr-fronted “The Voyage of Dr. Doolittle” (though not clear if it’s a voice-only role); a HBO series dramatizing the accident at “Chernobyl“; Cuban Missile Crisis spy movie “Ironbark” with Benedict Cumberbatch; and the intriguing sounding “Misbehaviour” alongside Keira Knightley, Lesley Manville and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Phew – and we haven’t even managed to catch up yet with the BBC‘s “The Woman in White” miniseries, in which she also starred this year.
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12. Cynthia Erivo as Darlene in “Bad Times at the El Royale” and Belle in “Widows”
Like Jessie Buckley, British actress and singer Cynthia Erivo has been well-known in theater for some time now, so the idea that she came out of nowhere to conquer 2018 at the movies is a little ill-founded. Still, with her eye-catching leading role in Drew Goddard‘s funhouse “Bad Times At The El Royale” landing on screens just a couple of weeks after the premiere of her feature debut in Steve McQueen’s “Widows” it did suddenly seem like Erivo was ubiquitous. It’s no mean feat to stand out with a small role in a cast that includes Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, and Michelle Rodriguez, but damn if the other heist in “Widows” isn’t Erivo stealing almost every scene she’s in, as the pragmatic beautician/babysitter-turned-getaway-driver Belle. And in a complementary but highly contrasting turn, she got to showcase a softer side as well as her drop-dead-gorgeous singing voice in ‘Bad Times’ as the aspiring Motown star whose unlikely friendship with Jeff Bridges‘ roguish fake priest roots the film’s antic, cartoony violence in something real and rather touching. Erivo will next appear in a pair of promising-sounding sci-fi movies — Doug Liman’s “Chaos Walking” and John Ridley’s “Needle in a Timestack” — but is also currently filming Kasi Lemmons‘ “Harriet” in which she plays Harriet Tubman and which looks from here to be her best shot so far at completing her EGOT (she’s only an Oscar away).
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11. Elsie Fisher as Kayla in “Eighth Grade”
Bo Burnham’s miraculously well-observed feature debut is remarkable for many things, not least of which is that anyone who wasn’t ever a teenage girl himself could possibly understand the mortifications of that age so well. But this superb act of empathy would be worthless if he hadn’t also found such a brilliantly nuanced and immensely courageous actress for the role. Fisher’s Kayla is an extraordinary creation because she is so ordinary, while at the same time embodying the awkwardness of feeling like the weirdest loser on the planet. Her surliness and self-delusion are so nakedly relatable that it can be almost painful to watch, but the absolutely vanity-free performances here (Josh Hamilton is also outstanding as her father) pay immense dividends in an ending that packs probably the biggest emotional wallop of the year, despite (or possibly because of) the inarticulacy and clumsiness of the characters. Fisher is something close to a veteran, having TV credits dating back to 2009, and having been a voice actress in the first two “Despicable Me” movies and in the upcoming animated “The Addams Family,” so it’s a bit surprising that Ken Kwapis‘ “The Shaggs,” about the ’60s all-girl rock band of the same name, is the only upcoming live-action role she has been announced for. We can only assume there are a dozen other projects pending, because there is no mistaking the blazing, indomitable talent of this new star. Anyway, it’s not like she doesn’t have time — she is 15. Years. Old.
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