5 Best Film Performances of the 21st Century

[SonicKoala]

OK, someone help me out here.

What was SO great about Daniel Day Lewis' performance in "There Will Be Blood"? The man doesn't do too many movies and I tend to think his portrayal of Bill the Butcher in "Gangs of New York" was much better than the oil tycoon in "There Will Be Blood".

That's the reason - he deserved the Oscar he got for those last 10 minutes alone. Then again, his entire performance was literally flawless; just as was the case with Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, Day Lewis was literally the only thing one noticed when he was on screen - he was so captivating, and had such an incredible range. I've seen a lot of movies, but Day Lewis' performance in There Will Be Blood remains one of my favourite.

If you don't see what's so great about it, then that's your thing, and me, nor anybody else, is going to convince you otherwise. Or maybe you just have ulterior motives for not liking his performance - perhaps Day Lewis drank your milkshake, and you're a little bitter about it?

 

[Nouw]

Sam Rockwell in Moon. My god that is a beautiful film.

 

[Valagetti]

Heath is certainly racking them up. I'm not surprised, still can't get over his acting.
I liked him in Casanova too! Though it was a silly brainless fun film.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

How is DiCapprio not on that list? (I know it was just Inception that made him more awesome but he played Tom Cobb REALLY well.)

What? He was the epitome of blandness in that movie. Inception had strengths, but its characters were not one of them.

Philip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche, New York
Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises
Daniel-Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood
Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler
Danny Trejo in Machete

 

[Tanakh]

Wall-e should be there mate.

Thank GOD I wasn't going to be the first person to say that.

He is kind of a cheater though. Learn a lot of his moves from Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin and the like.

However he managed to personalize em, must be due being silicon based.

 

[Aetera]

Christoph Waltz's performance as Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds HAS to be on this list. He was phenomenal. I was also very impressed with Michael Fassbender's portrayal of Magneto in First Class. Those are the two that really stand out in my mind.

For the other three... Heath Ledger as the Joker, obviously, Alan Rickman as Snape, and Brad Pitt (also)from Inglourious Basterds.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

My picks:

Heath Leger in The Dark Knight (Natch)
Sharlto Copley in District 9 (and that was, like, his first acting role ever)
Sean Astin in Lord of the Rings

And these are only the ones I can think of right now...

 

[Monty McDougal]

Leonardo Di Caprio- Catch Me if you can

I think the guy playing the FBI agent chasing him did a better job.

That was Tom Hanks, He was great also.

 

[Monty McDougal]

I forgot about the bad guy from No Country for Old Men.

 

[lovest harding]

The only person I thought of when seeing this thread was Ivana Baquero, the little girl who played Ofelia in Pan's Labyrinth.

EDIT:

Ivana Baquero - Pan's Labyrinth

Can't believe I wasn't the first. xD

EDIT: EDIT: There was a least one more mention of her (although it wasn't actually included in a top list). So. Yay for acknowledging a very talented girl in a phenomenal movie!

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Spoiler: Shia LeBouef in Transformers: Dark of the Moon Natalie Portman in Your Highness Ryan Reynolds in Green Lantern Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Russel Brand in Arthur

 

[mikeli4194]

Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Aviator"
Sam Rockwell in "Moon"
Jeremy Renner in "The Hurt Locker"
Robert Downey, Jr. in "Tropic Thunder" (I'm not kidding)
Natalie Portman in "Black Swan"

 

[Casual Shinji]

Javier Bardem - No Country for Old Men
Daniel Day Lewis - There Will Be Blood
Haillee Steinfeld - True Grit
Russel Crowe - Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Adrien Brody - The Pianist

 

[brinvixen]

In no particular order

-Kate Winslet in The Reader and Revolutionary Road (I can't pick just one, she did so good in both!)
-Alan Rickman in the Harry Potter series, with special mention to his performance in the last two movies. He brought a certain humanity Serverus Snape that not even JK Rowling herself captured in her books.
-Andrew Garfield in The Social Network
-Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada
-Stanley Tucci in The Lovely Bones (while I didn't quite like the movie itself, I found his character to be effectively creepy, which was such a turnaround from the last movie I saw him in: Devil Wears Prada)

And to extend it to 10, but still in no particular order

Emma Stone in Easy A
Annette Bening in The Kids Are Alright
Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind
Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind
Jesse Eisenburg in The Social Network


Just my input, but mainly because I already agree with most of the performances that have already been posted, so I thought I add a couple of different ones that I also enjoyed. Also, there are so many others, that this list could go on forever. But I figured I'd put the ones down that I remembered the most (which is probably why most of them are recent films, lol)

 

[OldKingClancy]

Although I love Natalie Portman in Black Swan and Christian Bale in The Fighter I'm going to try and pick less common films.

Paddy Considine - Dead Man's Shoes
Amy Ryan - Gone Baby Gone
Jeremy Renner - The Town
Kayvan Novak - Four Lions
Min-Sik Choi - Oldboy

Honourable mention goes to the two female leads in 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.

 

[WashroomBolshevik]

Honestly tough to narrow it down.
Some of my personal favorites, in no particular order.
Probably not the most conventional choices but oh well.
And yes I'm going with more than five.

Christian Bale - The Machinist
Barry Pepper - Unknown (2006)
Peter Stormare as Satan - Constantine
Tom Waits as Satan - The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
Charlie Hunnam - Green Street Hooligans
Joseph Gordon-Levitt - Brick
Morgan Freeman & Ben Kingsley - Lucky Number Slevin
David Bowie - The Prestige
Christopher Waltz - Inglorious Basterds
Cary Elwes - Saw
Michael Sheen - Unthinkable
Aaron Eckhart - Thank You for Smoking

I guess I should really stop at twelve. But I could go on for days.

Narrowly missed by two years but I really need to say that Sean Gullette was fantastic in Pi as well.