The Ten Best Performances of 2023

December 29, 2023 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged All of Us Strangers, American Fiction, Andrew Scott, Barry Keoghan, Emma Stone, Jeffrey Wright, Margaret Qualley, Mark Ruffalo, Molly Gordon, Paul Giamatti, Poor Things, Rosamund Pike, Saltburn, Theater Camp 2 Comments

It has already begun: the long march towards coronating a new quartet of actors whose performances are deemed the finest of 2023. And while the Oscars, Globes, and flurry of other guild awards tend to recognize the same handful of actors over and over again, here at Silver Screen Riot, we have our own version of who offered the best performances of 2023. So now that we’ve already gotten our way through the Ten Best TV Shows of 2023, and the Ten Best Movies of 2023, it’s time to move onto the Ten Best Performances of 2023.

Though it should go without saying, by “best”, I mean entirely my favorites so no need to send over an Excel sheet proving me why my preferences are wrong. From a year teeming with standout performances, several noteworthy ones made the greatest impact, though I could probably double this list and be more happy with it. But time is finite (mine and yours) and so here they are: Read More

Stunningly Mounted ‘1917’ A Towering Technical Achievement

December 11, 2019 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Andrew Scott, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Dean-Charles Chapman, George MacKay, Krysty Wilson-Cairns, Mark Strong, Richard Madden, Roger Deakins, Sam Mendes Leave a comment

Just when you think that there is no new angle for a war movie, English tag-team director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins come and shake the whole thing up. Deakins, who has shot such remarkable-looking films as Blade Runner 2049, Fargo, Skyfall, Sicario, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and No Country for Old Men among literal countless others, commands the aura of a film in a way that few other cinematographers can and paired with Mendes’ seamless one-take presentation of this WWI epic, 1917 amounts to a striking piece of capital C cinema, and one that presents a unique ground-level take on war. Set against countless wowing technical merits, the WWI epic recounts a powerful personal journey through a hellish war-scape that will leave audiences gasping for breath. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN’

November 24, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Andrew Scott, Daniel Radcliffe, James McAvoy, Jessica Brown Findlay, Mary Shelley, Max Landis, Out in Theaters, Paul McGuigan, Reviews, Victor Frankenstein 1 Comment

There was never any hope that Victor Frankenstein, the latest in a string of hastily-produced re-imaginings of royalty free properties, would garner much critical acclaim, which meant that in order for it to have any real box office potency, it would need to play a very specific game of kowtowing to fans of this somewhat still existent genre. Look no further than the (relative) success of the Resident Evil movies to get an idea of what that should look like: buttloads of glossy, second-rate CGI, neck-break action that doesn’t usually feel the need to stop to think, limitless kills with limited blood. It’s no so much a formula for success so much as it is a formula for not failing miserably. Read More