A gentle TV icon, and a fading TV Western star. A Wall Street stripper with a heart (and watch) of gold and a midtown Manhattan jeweler with balls of brass. A poet with a penchant for partying, and a divorce lawyer who hates losing. A Columbian mob wife, a couple of French lovers, a South Korean con man and an Israeli ex-pat. Two, two, two Lupitas for the price of one! 2019 was the year when a handful of the usual suspects and a whole lot of unexpected names popped up on our Best Performances list. (If you had told us back in January that Jennifer Lopez and Adam Sandler would be generating so much year-end love, we’d have suggested hospitalization.) It was also a great year for double acts, in which actors—some odd couples, some old hands at team-ups—each provided one half of a stunning pas de deux. Here’s our picks, unranked, for the greatest screen turns we saw at the movies this year. Whether or not they win awards or walk red carpets is ultimately irrelevant. They reminded us that film-wise, few things are as powerful as a person opening themselves for the camera.
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