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In theory, awards season is a chance to celebrate the best of the best that Hollywood has to offer. As anyone who's ever rolled their eyes at a list of nominees could tell you, however, it never quite works out that way in practice.
Fortunately, that doesn't mean wecan't praise those who were unjustly overlooked.
SEE ALSO:Here are all your 2018 Oscar nomineesBelow are some of our favorite performances of 2017 that were snubbed by the major awards – by which we mean the Oscars, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Golden Globes, the Indie Spirits, the BAFTAs. (We are not counting critics' awards, festival awards, or audience awards.)
In no particular order ...
Michael Stuhlbarg, Call Me By Your Name
Stuhlbarg is actually pulling off the rare and unusual trick of co-starring in threeBest Picture nominees without netting a single nomination himself – he's also in The Postand The Shape of Water. But his third-act monologue in Call Me By Your Nameseems like it should be worth a nomination in itself.
Betty Gabriel, Get Out
Gabriel plays a character at war with herself – she's both the Sunken Place and the one trapped inside the Sunken Place – and it's to her immense credit that we see that tension all over her face, even when her expression is perfectly pleasant and placid.
Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman
Diana was an impossibly tall order. She had to be both otherworldly and down-to-earth; purely good without being totally dull; sheltered and innocent but never naïve or stupid. Gadot filled all those andimbued Diana with a warmth made her impossible not to love.
Adam Sandler, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
Sandler's work as an overlooked son and affectionate father in The Meyerowitz Storiesis so good, it's almost infuriating. It's a reminder of just how excellent he is when he tries – which emphasizes just how rarely he does.
Jack Black, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Black is playing a teenage girl in a middle-aged man's body, and he's so convincing it's easy to forget we're notactually watching a teenage girl. Moreover, he manages to pull off that trick without ever once tipping over into caricature or mockery – even when his character is at her most obnoxious.
Chadwick Boseman, Marshall
We've been waiting since 2016 or perhaps since the beginning of time for Black Panther, but Chadwick Boseman managed to find time in between to portray former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in a biopic. The young Marshall is idealistic but firm and – perhaps a cinematic liberty – possessed of a charismatic sarcasm. And it helps that he has a nose for justice. – Proma Khosla
Cate Blanchett, Thor: Ragnarok
In typical Marvel fashion, Thordidn't give its villain nearly enough to do – but Blanchett took what she got and ran with it. She delivers her lines like she's savoring every vowel, and struts like she knows the entire world is watching. In short, she looks like she's having the time of her life vamping it up as Hela, and we had the time of our lives watching her do it.
Luke Evans, Beauty and the Beast
Even by cartoon standards, Gaston is larger than life. Luke Evans is not. Or at least we didn't think he was until we saw Beauty and the Beast, in which he demonstrated that – though he may not have the animated Gaston's thick neck – he can project a swagger that's roughly the size of a barge.
Rebecca Hall, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
All of Professor Marston's most deeply felt conflicts play out across Hall's expressive face – she's a proudly unconventional woman who's scared to break the rules, a brilliant thinker who goes under-appreciated in her time. On a lesser actress, those contradictions might play as inconsistencies. On Hall, they feel like messy reality.
Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip
Awards voters rarely know what to do with a comedy, so perhaps it's not all that surprising that Haddish wasn't nominated. That doesn't make it any less disappointing. She was one of thebiggest breakouts of 2017, and it's thanks to her unforgettable demonstration that we'll never look at a grapefruit the same way again.
Jason Mitchell, Mudbound
Mudboundis an all-around acting powerhouse, and Mitchell deserves special recognition for his work as Ronsel. He's alternately tender and tough, seething with righteous fury and weighed down with regret, and he says as much with the words he can't say as the ones he does.
Jason Sudeikis, Colossal
In Colossal, Sudeikis took his slightly-douchey-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold schtick to a new level as the ultimate manifestation of the toxic Nice Guy. The genius of his performance lies in its subtlety – he's never a cackling villain, just an all-too-recognizable regular dude who thinks the world owes him far more than he got.
Dafne Keen, Logan
In a film filled with dusty, hardened men, Keen was the spark of life that made it all seem worthwhile. Her ferocious intensity is what gets you to sit up, but it's her quiet vulnerability that keeps you paying attention. Even more impressively, she conveys all of this without a single word for much of the film.
O'Shea Jackson Jr., Ingrid Goes West
Jackson first rose to fame playing his dad in Straight Outta Compton, but it was Ingrid Goes Westthat proved he had more than a famous name. He's utterly winning as a boy next door with an intriguingly odd edge. That thousand-watt smile helps, too.
Florence Pugh, Lady Macbeth
If you didn't know who Florence Pugh was before, you're not likely to forget her after you see Lady Macbeth. Throughout the course of the film, she swings from meek terror to insolent sensuality to ice-cold cruelty – hers is a sly, slippery turn, in the best possible way.
Zac Efron, The Greatest Showman
Truth be told, The Greatest Showmanis a hollow Christmas ornament of a movie. But you'd never know it from watching Efron, who elevates every scene he's in. He's effortlessly charming in the song-and-dance numbers, and surprisingly soulful in his romantic subplot with Zendaya.
Adam Driver, Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Driver gave one of the most indelible performances of 2017 as the conflicted Kylo Ren, adding heartbreaking nuance to the character without ever losing sight of his darker side. (And only occasionally losing track of his shirt.) It's just a shame that the one thing the Academy disdains more than laugh-out-loud comedies is big-budget blockbusters.
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