From ‘Ma Rainey’ to ‘Minari’: A year of best performances

Even in a fraught year for moviegoing, terrific actors came blazing through to remind us how enlivening movies can be. Most of us watched our films at home, so it’s particularly fortunate that a good performance – as opposed to, say, cinematography or production design – can best survive the downsizing from big screen to small.

It may even be that the smaller screen made these performances seem more intimate for us. Instead of gazing up at actors 30 feet tall, we connected to them in a more relatable way, as a refreshment of our homebound lives.

Almost none of the year’s movies were intended to be seen in this way;

Best actorBest supporting actorBest actressBest supporting actress