Best Supporting Actor 2017

05. Benny Safdie in Good Time - Sure, he may not say many words in the course of the movie, and he may only be heavily featured in the beginning and end, but Safdie still makes a hell of an impression on this film. In a sense, he sets the tone for the entire thing. As the mentally handicapped brother of the bank robbing main character, he is essentially the heart and soul of the whole thing. Without him somehow making the audience care about him, then none of the movie works.

04. Adam Driver in Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Typically when you think 'Star Wars movie,' you don't necessarily think 'good acting' (and in the case of the prequels, you think the exact opposite of that), but Driver is easily the best thing about The Last Jedi (just like he was consistently the best thing about the super-uneven Girls). With Kylo Ren, Driver creates a complex villain, and while you are not sure you can ever trust a word he says, you want to believe everything that comes out of his mouth. He is compelling and sometimes ruthless, but maybe he can still be saved, maybe there is a lost heroic boy in there somewhere. Driver's performance is so good that it really elevated the material and all the acting around him.

03. Mark Rylance in Dunkirk - I know, I know. Dunkirk is a great, big, exciting spectacle of sight and sound. It's epic and it's larger than life and it's riveting and it's everything a great blockbuster can be. And while the entire cast is wholly impressive (Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy), it's Rylance's sweet and heroic boat captain who makes the biggest impact. He isn't a general or a fighter pilot or a soldier, he is just a man, trying to save his family and make a difference, however small, and his presence certainly makes a difference on this movie, finding a way to humanize the whole great big spectacle of it all.

02. Tracy Letts in Lady Bird - Sometimes a performance doesn't have to be big or showy to be special, and Letts' sweet father in Lady Bird is proof of that. While Lady Bird and her mother fight and scream and fight some more, Letts is quietly holding it all together. He creates a character that ultimately is the kind of father I wish I had - someone who stands by you no matter what, supports all your crazy ideas and even when his son interviews for the same job as him, offers a smile and a good luck hug instead of any anger or bitterness. It's a performance that will probably fall by the way side thanks to the kick ass ladies in this movie, but it's important none the less.

01. Will Poulter in Detroit - It's been six or seven months since I saw Detroit, but no performance this year has stuck with me the way Will Poulter's racist cop has. His performance is so riveting, so staggeringly explosive, so evil and ferocious and frightening, I find it difficult to believe that I am the only one talking about it at this point in the year. This performance may be hard to watch at times, it's timely depiction of racism in America may hit way too close to home, showing how very little has changed in our country over the last 50 or 60 years, but this performance is next level. It pulls no punches and it is unrelenting. It's simply unforgettable.