The 20 Best Breakthrough Performances Of 2016

Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in “Captain America: Civil War”
In a way it feels like a cheat to have Holland on this list, as the second he got cast as the new Spider-Man, on the back of his impressive turn in 2012’s “The Impossible” his breakout-star status was assured — you don’t get to anchor a new Marvel franchise without ending up a massive star, even were you to trip over your shoelaces in every scene and constantly flub your lines. But even with all that, and despite being surrounded by a deep bench of established A-list superheroes, Holland’s handful of scenes in the Russo Brothers’ “Captain America: Civil War” showed real charm, comic timing and a zippy youthful energy that feels refreshingly different from the Andrew Garfield interpretation. It was a risky gambit on Marvel’s part (and we’d argue the cameo hardly occurs organically) but the highest compliment we can pay is that once Holland showed up, our “Really? Again? Already?” attitude toward “Spider-Man: Homecoming” almost entirely dissolved. Meantime you also get to check him out when James Gray‘s “The Lost City of Z” opens next year, and he’s reportedly been cast alongside Daisy Ridley in Doug Liman‘s sci-fi “Chaos Walking” and in Shane Carruth‘s hotly anticipated (mostly by us, admittedly) “The Modern Ocean.”

Sandra Hüller as Ines in “Toni Erdmann”
As orchestrated by writer/director Maren Ade, “Toni Erdmann” is essentially a two-hander, and it feels slightly absurd to be leaving Peter Simonischek‘s fantastically bearish, bumbling but sharp-edged performance, as Ines’ well-meaning but inarticulate and often embarrassing jokester father, off this list. But absurd is right for this film, and Hüller in many ways has the more difficult task, as Ines has a more variegated arc of change, gradually losing the armor of the stiff, miserable, humorless corporate shill she is at the beginning, under the constant barrage of her father’s ridiculous schemes and practical jokes. In a musical, which “Toni Erdmann” is not, it often seems the more impressive task to be sung-at than to sing, and there’s something of that acting-is-reacting adage in Hüller’s turn at the start. But in Ines’ move from horrified onlooker to reluctant accomplice and eventually to architect of her own cock-eyed strategems, Hüller carries off one of the most impressive acting coups of the year by mining the excruciating physical comedy and plumbing the emotional depths of the character, but still making her feel, amid all the borderline surreal hijinks, like a real woman whose relationship to her father is exactly like everyone else’s in that it’s completely unique to them alone.

Kwak Do-won as Jong-goo in “The Wailing”
Typically, actors in Korean cinema tend only to become recognised internationally when they’re established stars at home, when they’re in constant collaboration with an established auteur such as Park Chan-wook , Bong Joon-ho or Kim Jee-woon and/or when they make the transition to Hollywood movies (see Choi Min-sik in “Lucy” or Lee Byung hun in “The Magnificent Seven“). But Kwak Do-won has managed the uncanny feat of landing on this list despite being more usually a supporting actor at home, and despite being under the directorship of the less well-known Na Hong-jin. Yet as surely as “The Wailing” deserves to raise Na’s profile internationally (his previous two features “The Yellow Sea” and “The Chaser” are also excellent), by rights it should also be a major platform for its star: Kwak Do-won’s role veers crazily from bumbling hangdog cop, to terrorized hauntee, to vengeful killer, to doting, griefstricken father and yet it’s impossible to see the joins in his fluid turn. A film that undergoes so many changes in mood needs a sympathetic everyman at its center, but Kwak goes much further, making the unprepossessing, lazy Jong-goo feel like a relatably tragicomic character trapped in a story that tends pitilessly toward horror.

Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven in “Stranger Things”
While television has gifted us some amazing performances this year, few shows had the instantaneous cultural impact of “Stranger Things” and none other showcased so many terrific young performers coming from basically a standing start. But amid the kids, who give off an collective vibe of beautifully Spielbergian ’80s childhood, Millie Bobby Brown’s arresting turn as the haunted, semi-feral runaway Eleven, or El, as she’s dubbed, is the focal point, and a remarkably difficult role for so young an actress in that it requires mute expressiveness, but also control and underplaying. Embodying her as somewhere between a female Pinocchio and a human-child version of E.T., Brown’s El is a completely magnetic turn, a soulful portrayal of a little girl bred to have no soul, and the tentative green shoots of friendship and socialization that gradually burst through her wounded, suspicious exterior are deeply moving. “Stranger Things” evokes those ’80s classics not just in its period setting but also in its simple faith in the goodness of children as yet unspoiled by the compromise of the adult world, and the dawning of an understanding of kindness and loyalty in Brown’s enormous eyes makes El the beating heart of the biggest new TV phenomenon of the year.

Markees Christmas as Morris in “Morris From America”
It’s been a good year for peculiarly touching coming-of-age films that put a fresh twist on a jaded genre, and while we very nearly went for Julian Dennison‘s adorable turn as Ricky Baker in Taika Waititi‘s lovely “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” he was just pipped at the post by newcomer Christmas in Chad Hartigan‘s “Morris From America.” This is mostly because Christmas has a really tricky role to negotiate in the film, which is a father-son relationship movie, a coming-of-age drama and a fish-out-of-water comedy all at once, and he also has to rap (in one of the most awkward but oddly triumphant moments of the year). Perfectly capturing Morris’ sulky isolation that masks a deep longing to belong, Christmas’ performance is exceptional in how unsentimentalized it is, in how little he and Hartigan openly court our sympathy, and how much of it we feel as a result. And even better than his main arc which shows him falling for one of the popular girls at his new school in Germany, are the scenes in which he plays off his screen father, played by a never-better Craig Robinson, in one of the most unfairly underseen supporting turns of the year.