Honorable mention: Elsewhere on Broadway, Jonathan Groff is playing Bobby Darin in the bio-musical “Just in Time,” only a year after his Tony-winning performance in “Merrily We Roll Along.” The musical is also not a solo show, but it rests on Groff’s capable shoulders. Singing “Mack the Knife” and “Splish Splash,” he’s absolutely croon-worthy.
Michael B. Jordan in “Sinners”
Photograph courtesy Warner Bros.
Is there any challenge for an actor more delicious than playing identical twins? In Ryan Coogler’s vampire blockbuster, Jordan plays brothers nicknamed Smoke and Stack, who open up a juke joint in Jim Crow-era Mississippi and are set upon by soul suckers. Jordan infused his dual role—the practical Smoke and the wily Stack—with subtle variations on his megawatt charisma, clearly relishing the task. He’s both dapper and sleazy, heroic and menacing, laid back and full of fight. Like Stone and Lanthimos, he and Coogler have enjoyed a long collaboration, dating back to their breakout film, “Fruitvale Station,” in 2013, and continuing through “Creed” and the “Black Panther” franchise. By now, the director knows how to play his leading man like a fine-tuned instrument—say, a resonator guitar. So why not have two of him?
Honorable mention: In James Sweeney’s “Twinless,” a dark queer drama that made a splash at Sundance, Dylan O’Brien also plays identical twins—one straight and bro-y, one gay and sardonic—with such skill that he really seems like two different actors.
Paul Reubens in “Pee-wee as Himself”
Yes, Reubens died in 2023, and, yes, sitting for a documentary interview may not seem like a performance. But the way that Reubens toyed with the director, Matt Wolf, was as engrossing and layered as any role he’d ever played. By turns revealing and obscuring himself, Reubens would play games with the camera—you never quite knew if he was letting you in or pushing you away—as he narrated his life as Paul, as Pee-wee Herman, and as a pariah. One thing that he didn’t tell Wolf, perhaps owing to his relentless need for control, was that he was dying. In retrospect, Reubens’s looming mortality added one more facet to his half-confessional, half-facetious unburdening. In the end, it was impossible for a cutup like Reubens to sit in front of a camera and not perform for it.
Honorable mention: Also playing himself: Satan, who, by any measure, has had quite a year. But his appearance on the Trump-baiting new episodes of “South Park” was some of his best work yet. This Lord of Darkness is a melancholy beefcake carrying the demon spawn of his neglectful lover, President Trump, a rebound from his previous boyfriend, Saddam Hussein. Poor lug!
Jessie Buckley in “Hamnet”
Photograph by Agata Grzybowska / Everett
