'Room' is remarkable: My top 10 child actor performances

Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson in Room

Room is a remarkable new film (based on a best-selling novel) about a woman held in captivity with her 5-year-old son. I wouldn't dare spoil the plot, because I want as many people as possible to see this deeply moving film, but I will say that it's one of the best movies I've seen this year and it very well will make my final top 10.

It's one of the most unabashedly emotional movies I've seen in quite a long time and it handles its sensationalistic premise with lots of care and nuance. The film's greatest strength is it's performances, chief among them Brie Larson as the mother -- who is virtually assured a best actress Oscar nomination (hopefully alongside Lily Tomlin for Grandma) and the brilliant Jacob Tremblay, who is only 9 years old.

Larson if obviously up-and-coming and a new critical favorite, but Tremblay who was presumable only 8 when he made Room is a revelation. He is just a naturally gifted actor, he doesn't even seem to be acting at all for much of the movie and yet he gives such a powerful and believable performance that he too may get nominated for Hollywood's highest honor.

I don't know if you can attribute this to the editing, directed or Tremblay himself but he wisely plays a child as a child, he doesn't try to imbue his character with wisdom and tics beyond his years like so many earnest child actors do. Here are ten more movies where "tykes" got it right (with the caveat that I've yet to see some highly regarded movies out there, like Christian Bale's acclaimed performance in 1987's Empire of the Sun).

The 400 Blows

Kramer vs. Kramer: The secret weapon in this Dustin Hoffman-Meryl Streep tearjerker about the dissolution of a marriage is the 8-year-old Justin Henry. He was nominated for an Oscar for giving one of the most natural and honest child performances I've ever seen. He is particularly an ideal scene partner for Hoffman, with whom he develops a quiet and endearing rapport. Justin Henry breaks your heart in this movie and gives the project its soul.

The Exorcist: At age 12, Linda Blair -- aided by make-up and special effects that still hold up -- pulled off an incredible physical performance as an innocent little girl who gets possessed by a demon.

Blair allegedly didn't fully understand some of the gruesome behavior she acted out, but she is a big reason why this 1973 is still considered one of the greatest horror movies of all time. Blair's vulnerability early in the film makes the terror more tragic.

Beasts of the Southern Wild: This surreal little 2012 indie made a household name out of the pint-sized Quvenzhane Wallis. At age 5, she projected so much inner strength and grace in the role of an impoverished little girl who has to, at times, take care of her ailing father. The film may have divided some audiences who didn't know what to make of its ramshackle narrative, but I thought it was a beautiful little story and Wallis was what made it work.

Taxi Driver: Jodie Foster has always seemed so grown up as an actress that it's hard to fathom that she was really just a child when she played a prostitute opposite Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel in this Martin Scorsese masterpiece. Not only is this one of my favorite films of all time, it's one of the most fascinating to me -- in part because of the subplot involving Foster's naive and spaced out hooker. She was nominated for an Oscar and was never really perceived as a child star for the rest of her career.

The Sixth Sense: Now that this movie has been endlessly parodied, it's easy to discount what an impact Haley Joel Osment had when he played a sweet child who "sees dead people." Everyone sort of forgets that this was ostensibly a Bruce Willis movie, but it was really Osment who powered the narrative, which director M. Night Shyamalan never was able to quite surpass. Osment's almost eerie maturity worked for this movie and to a certain extent in A.I.: Artifical Intelligence.

E.T. The Extra Terrestrial: And speaking of Spielberg, I gotta give it up for the leading actor in his beloved box office hit E.T., Henry Thomas. This adorable and plucky little guy gives such a winning performance that is both heartwarming and comedic in this classic adventure. Thomas plays Elliott, something of a neglected outcast who forms an incredible friendship with an alien accidentally left behind on Earth by his family. This is Spielberg's picture first and foremost, but Thomas elevates the material instead of detracting from it.

Henry Thomas

Paper Moon: A spunky Tatum O'Neal, starring opposite her father Ryan O'Neal, won an Oscar for stealing this period, black and white comedy directed by Peter Bogdonovich during his incomparable early 1970s hot streak. It's a rare buddy comedy- road picture to feature a grown male lead and young woman that really succeeds as both an homage to classic Hollywood and a nod to the changing social statuses of the decade in which it was actually made. And Tatum O'Neal was damn funny in it too.

The Shining: Danny Lloyd was a child actor plucked from obscurity by director Stanley Kubrick in part because of his ability to stay focused during endless takes on a grueling shoot on what became, in my mind, the greatest horror movie ever made.

The Shining will always be remember first for Jack Nicholson's star turn and Kubrick's iconic camerawork, but Lloyd is the quiet center of the storm, creepy and haunting in equal doses.

The 400 Blows: This beautiful Francois Truffaut film is one of my favorite foreign movies of all time, and even though it takes place in France and was made in the late 1950s, it really resonated with me as a young person. The disaffected and lonely Antonie Doinel (played by a young Jean-Pierre Leaud) would be Truffaut's muse for three more films, but he was never more effecting than he was here -- especially in the movie's ambiguous final shot.

The Kid: One of Charlie Chaplin's most charming silent comedies features his iconic Tramp with a surrogate son played by Jackie Coogan, who makes an adept physical match for the master of slapstick with soul. This 1921 film firmly established Chaplin's status as the biggest star in movies and showcased that the most touching relationships on film are often between a child and an adult.