The 10 Best Performances of the Year
End of year lists! I love end of year lists!
I love end of year lists and I also never know when to post them. First, there’s the age old struggle of the “Oscar Movie” Release Calendar, which creates conditions such that every major publication has The Brutalist and Nickel Boys in their top ten—but none of us will be able to see them until January, at best. Second, and more importantly, there’s the matter of the “End of Year Mixtape” - a tradition on my podcast that will continue this year—which is ostensibly about music but really touches on all of my favorite media from the past 12 months. (Here’s last year’s.)
With the 2024 episode coming, I don’t want to give away too much of what I will yap about, and yet… I love writing lists! What to do? What a conundrum! Luckily, I found the answer. Below you’ll find my picks for the top ten performances of the year—pulling from a broad range of media.
Honorable Mention: Questlove - Yacht Rock
A good talking head interview can make or break a documentary. Yacht Rock, A “Dockumentary” from HBO and The Ringer, is legitimately great primarily because the interviews are so strong and so incisive. Who knew how much fun it was to listen to Toto’s Steve Porcaro? Very fun, as it turns out! And it’s surprising how many tricky needles this one manages to thread — especially Yacht Rock’s complicated (and ultimately very positive) relationship to the black community. Guys like Questlove were born to explain this stuff in clear, concise, and entertaining fashion.
Sonoya Mizuno - Am I OK?
I really loved this tiny little friendship comedy directed by Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne, which goes immediately into the tiny little friendship comedy Hall of Fame alongside movies like Walking and Talking and Frances Ha. Sonoya Mizuno, who I am told is on the Game of Thrones spinoff and who was very memorable in Ex Machina, was the breakout revelation for me here. Playing the Chief Friend in a friendship comedy is sometimes a tough gig, but she stood out — even against a very manic and funny supporting performance from Molly Gordon!
The City of Kyoto - Somebody Feed Phil
In many ways, a strong performance is about being yourself, right? And Kyoto represents itself beautifully in this episode of Somebody Feed Phil, a reliably sweet travel-and-food show that Netflix admirably keeps cranking out year after year. That my guy Phil Rosenthal has been allowed to keep doing this in the ruthless streaming economy is really something special.
This year’s episodes were an interesting mixed bag. In the Trump era, Rosenthal has used his platform to make gentle, no-nonsense political points — like “it’s good to appreciate other cultures” and “immigration makes us a better country.” This year he went to DC to ask, essentially, why we can’t all just get along, and it’s kind of telling that even something like that feels left-coded now. We’re in a weird place.
But then he goes to Kyoto and his light, silly show adapts an almost radical calm. It’s a wonderful hour of television for lowering your resting heart rate.
St. Vincent - All Born Screaming
Annie Clark’s last few records as St. Vincent have been a little confusing for her longtime fans. I mean, Clark is a god-tier guitarist and her lyrics are frequently emotionally annihilating, but for a while she pushed back against both — refusing to shred and singing weird, kitschy songs about how she was now a character named Daddy. I mean, OK. Listen, every hero’s journey needs a refusal of the call. The good news is that Annie Clark is back in true form for her 2024 record, All Born Screaming, which was also released in Spanish (for real) as Todos Nacen Gritando. This record has screaming guitars, pounding drums (courtesy of Dave Grohl), and very little posturing. And it rips. As it should.
Justice Smith - I Saw The TV Glow
Justice Smith I was not familiar with your game! I saw you in that Dungeons & Dragons movie (fine) and was bewildered by your stiff (no pun intended) performance in The Voyeurs, the Sydney Sweeney erotic thriller that only really works when the people are naked. But then I saw I Saw The TV Glow, which is the absolutely the best movie I’ve seen all year (spoiler alert for the pod, I guess). ISTTVG is quite explicitly a metaphor for the trans experience, but more broadly it’s a horror movie about denying your true self. What if the hero kept refusing the call? What would happen to her? Justice Smith’s performance is haunting and layered. This is such a great movie. And it has one of the best trailers ever. Just watch this. And then watch the movie.
Kristen Kish - Top Chef
As an avid follower of Top Chef I was captivated by the idea of who would replace Padma Lakshmi, the show’s long-running host. Would it be Brooke Williamson, the undisputed breakout star of the entire Top Chef project? Would it be someone like Eric Adjepong, a passionate and talented advocate for West African cuisine who altered the entire trajectory of the show’s approach to international food by sheer force of charm? Both of these chefs have naturally pivoted to stardom on the Food Network—so would that disqualify them? (I am also fascinated by the politics of Top Chef/Bravo vs. Food Network, and the efforts of some people, namely Guy Fieri, to seemingly attempt to either bridge the gap between the two camps, or drain the Bravo side of all on-camera talent completely. Guy Fieri is a fascinating figure.)
It was clear that the choice needed to be a talented chef who was also hot, and so when Kristen Kish was announced, it made a lot of sense. She’s talented, funny, tall, attractive, and has rarely appeared on Food Network. (A really fun show she did on TruTV called Fast Foodies was claimed by Food Network during the Warner/Discovery merger. So it only sort of counts.) I was very curious how she’d do hosting her first season.
And as it turns out? She was great. She traded Padma’s icy-until-she-thaws style for something much more immediately openhearted and earnest — Kish’s voice cracked the first time she had to send someone home! And the guy was like a freegan dumpster diver! As a former winner of Top Chef, she also was able to bring a kind of gentle-but-persuasive big sister energy to the contestant pool that made for really compelling interpersonal dynamics. And true Top Chef heads know that’s where the show really lives. Not in the food or the reality TV product tie-in gimmickry, but in the storming and forming of the group, and the distance the judges choose to impose or not, and the sexual tension between Tom Colicchio and his hats.
Sean Fennessey - The Big Picture
Does a great man meet the moment or does he create it? I don’t know, but cinephiles are having a moment in the culture. How lucky we are, then, to have a movies-obsessed, physical media-hoarding weirdo like Sean Fennessey leading our army! As the host of my favorite podcast, The Big Picture, Fennessey articulates the current state of cinema in twice-weekly discussions and interviews that are by turn insightful, hysterical, and absolutely unhinged. A lot of credit there is also due to his cohost, Amanda Dobbins, and frequent third chair Chris Ryan, who to those in the know is regarded (correctly) as probably the greatest podcaster, any topic, to ever live. But this year, Fennessey has done a lot of solo recording—the hardest form of podcasting—and has doubled down on his many foibles. Listening to Fennessey slowly lose his mind over the course of a “movie draft” episode is one of life’s true pleasures.
Gabriel LaBelle - Snack Shack and Saturday Night
After his incredible, breakout turn in The Fabelmans, I bought up all of the available stock in Gabriel LaBelle. And let me tell ya, folks: business is BOOMING. 2024 brought us two great performances from LaBelle. He is both the anchor and the tornado at the center of Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, as Lorne Michaels. That movie didn’t do so well at the box office, with critics, or with general audiences, but I really liked it! I think especially once it drops on a major streaming service it will find new life.
But the real performance to write home about — in an underseen movie called Snack Shack you should seek out immediately — is LaBelle’s supporting turn as Moose, the lead character’s best friend and radical agent of chaos. A.J. and Moose are teenagers in mid-90s Nebraska, and when we meet them they are already amid several schemes. Their next caper involves running the snack shack at the community pool... until a girl enters the fray. As they are wont to do! Snack Shack is funny, weird, and surprisingly moving, and LaBelle is chiefly responsible for a lot of that.
Glen Powell and Adria Arjona - Hit Man
Listen. I am no prude, OK? I am an accepting and interested modern man. Nevertheless, there were scenes in Hit Man where the chemistry between Powell and Arjona was so visceral and intense, I found myself BLUSHING and LOOKING AWAY. This shit is radioactive.
Hit Man also contains the absolute scene of the year — the “Notes App” scene—that I wish SO BADLY I could have seen in a packed theater (the word is at festival screenings people were standing up and cheering). It is absolutely magnificent.
Emma Stone - The Curse
The Curse is such a staggering achievement in television that basically nothing else compared to it all year. It feels like so few people watched it that I still hesitate to talk about what happens! But suffice it to say the the finale of The Curse was the most terrifying hour of maybe anything I have ever seen, ever. I watched alone on a laptop, late at night, sitting bolt upright, neck tingling. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. But even before all that, throughout the season, I was frequently aghast (in a good way) at Emma Stone, and the depths of banal evil she was able to so capably summon. There is a darkness to this woman, gang.
Mikey Madison - Anora
I mean, duh. If you’ve seen Anora, you know that it’s a “star is born” moment for Mikey Madison, who absolutely grabs the frame and never lets go for two and a half hours. It’s a complicated, heavy movie that is also swooningly romantic, sexy, scary, and funny as hell. What’s amazing about Madison’s performance is that she doesn’t change even as her circumstances, and the movie itself, are constantly shifting around her. She endures, and then makes us really feel the weight of that endurance. She’s going to win an Oscar and it’s going to be great.