By Searchlight Pictures/Everett Collection.
Emma Stone, Poor Things and The Curse
Over the last 15 years, Stone has evolved from affable teen star to Oscar-winning starlet to the person we find her as now: a nimble, surprising artist with fine taste. In 2023, Stone played both a lurching Frankensteinian creation and a calculating wannabe lifestyle guru with equal daring and aplomb. In Yorgos Lanthimos’s new coming-of-age epic, Poor Things, Stone is tasked with mapping decades’ worth of personal growth over the course of a little more than two hours. She does so with keen physical affect and verbal agility, creating a character who’s frightening and lovable at once. Stone does another magic trick on Showtime’s The Curse, revealing ever more layers of an aspiring HGTV star as selfishness and ambition clash terribly with what’s left of her conscience. These are two shrewd, inventive, bold, decidedly grown-up performances from an actor who has now fully announced herself as much more than just a movie star. —R.L.
By Focus Features/Everett Collection.
Teyana Taylor, A Thousand and One
It’s never easy to like Taylor’s Inez, from her confident and combative stride through the streets of Brooklyn after she’s released from Rikers in the film’s opening moments to the devastating embrace that closes the film. But liking her isn’t the point; Taylor’s performance in A.V. Rockwell’s stunning debut feature makes Inez come alive in all her complexity, a ferocious striver whose mistakes transform the lives of those around her, for better and for worse. A singer-songwriter whose previous acting roles had mostly relied on her beauty, Taylor proved herself capable of so much more in A Thousand and One. We can only hope Hollywood found her as unforgettable as we did. —K.R.
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The Three Stooges, Survivor
In a game that demands constant performance, Yam Yam Arocho, Carolyn Wiger, and Carson Garrett proved that authenticity actually can be a winning strategy. The Three Stooges alliance came together early in Survivor season 44—though editing tricks (see: Wiger asking a producer how confessionals work) made the outcasts seem as if they wouldn’t outlast their competition. Their collective strength, both in challenges and amidst shifting social dynamics, proved otherwise. Beyond the game itself, the threesome’s commitment to one another supplemented magnetic personalities, giving the season such moments as Garrett’s half-hearted encouragements, Arocho’s skepticism over a fake-idol ploy, and Wiger’s tribal council sass. Performing as nothing but their whole, unabashed selves, the Three Stooges carried one of Survivor’s best cycles yet. —Tyler Breitfeller
