3. Abraham Attah, “Beasts of No Nation”: Idris Elba justly got a fair amount of attention for his turn as the Commandant in this film about child soldiers. But I hope folks also recognize the young Attah, who anchors the movie as Agu, one of the children who falls under the Commandant’s sway. If Jacob Tremblay did great work in “Room” as a child who was open and joyful despite circumstances that should have made him anything but, as Agu, Attah had to play a child withdrawing from childishness much faster than was natural or fair. They’re nice counterparts to each other.
4. Jada Pinkett Smith, “Magic Mike XXL”: I would pay an exceedingly large amount of money for a movie about Rome, the proprietress of a fabulously appointed Southern house of pleasure that caters to black women, former lover of the titular Mike (Channing Tatum); and also former lover of Paris (Elizabeth Banks), strip competition emcee extraordinaire. It was delicious to watch Smith get to embody the sort of steely sexual swagger normally reserved for men. Rome is a swashbuckler, and there should be many more women like her on film.
5. Audra McDonald, “Ricki and the Flash”: One of the great things about Jonathan Demme’s drama about Ricki (Meryl Streep), a wannabe rock star who returns to the family she’s abandoned after her daughter’s (Mamie Gummer) husband unexpectedly leaves her, was the way it played with race and class. Ricki is living paycheck to paycheck, working at Whole Foods and resenting the culturally liberal customers who pass through her queue. And when she comes back home, she clashes with McDonald’s Maureen, Ricki’s husband’s new wife. Maureen embodies the kind of upper-class liberalism Ricki despises, and Maureen feels she’s done the difficult work of parenting that Ricki blithely walked way from. McDonald is a more than worthy adversary for Streep, and their scenes together are among the best in the movie.
6. Adepero Oduye, “The Big Short”: You might have missed her in the big ensemble that populates Adam McKay’s drama about the financial crisis. But the star of “Pariah,” Dee Rees’s great film about a young lesbian finding her independence from her family, is very good in a small role as the liaison between hedge fund manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and the larger firm he works with. She’s a lovely foil for Baum’s harshness and social awkwardness. And “The Big Short” makes her a sympathetic representative of the big firms who trusted that the housing market would boom forever and then tried to get out when they were wrong. I’m glad McKay had the good taste to cast her. And I hope this is a sign of more work to come.