I'm thankful for the many breakout stars of 2019

Booksmart

I love your old school A-list movie star as much as anyone else. For instance, I was and am probably way too excited to see Harrison Ford back in action (albeit alongside a poorly rendered CGI dog) in the upcoming Call of the Wild, but I also love seeing new stars organically emerge and thankfully, this year -- a banner year for cinema -- there have been a bunch of great breakout performances worth celebrating.

Here are some of my favorites from this year's crop:

Ana de Armas in Knives Out - Let me start with the most recent one. Ana de Armas already turned heads for her sexy turn in Blade Runner 2049, but in Knives Out she has a lot more to do and she's truly the hero of Rian Johnson's politically charged whodunit. As I've said before her performance could have been a thankless one (and she was reportedly skeptical about it based on its description) but she's funny, sympathetic and very charismatic in the part that should make her a bonafide star.

Winston Duke in Us - This big stud certainly turned a lot of heads with his badass, scene-stealing performance in Black Panther as the warrior M'Baku, but that's what made his lovable, dorky role in Us such a wonderful surprise. Lupita Nyong'o rightfully has earned the lion's share of attention for her remarkable dual character performance in the film, but Duke's comic relief in the role of her affable but also immature husband is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the movie. I think he will only continue to grow into being a versatile leading man.

Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever in Booksmart - Olivia Wilde's feminist and raucously funny coming-of-age comedy may have been the most criminally underseen movie of this past year. These two gave fully realized, emotionally compelling performances in what could have been just another bawdy teen comedy. The fact that they aren't conventional leading ladies is besides the point, they are what the future of what leading ladies can and should look like. I hope they both at least get Golden Globe nominations so this great movie will get rediscovered.

Constance Wu in Hustlers - Hustlers proved her breakout success in Crazy Rich Asians was no fluke. Sure, she and pretty much everyone else on screen gets blown away by Jennifer Lopez's career best performance, but arguably J-Lo's star turn wouldn't work if you didn't by the awe and eventually resentment she inspires in Wu's newbie stripper character. She reminds me a lot of Julia Roberts during her early string of hits, she has that likable it factor which suggests that she can be a durable star for years to come.

Julia Butters in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Florence Pugh in Midsommar- At the time of this writing, I haven't seen Little Women, and reportedly Pugh is a surefire Oscar nominee for that film, but she would have already had my vote for Ari Aster's trippy horror film Midsommar. She delivers a harrowing portrait of grief and an empathetic look at a woman who is trying to keep a relationship alive with a partner who clearly wants to nothing to do with her. She has the kind of expressive face that can really hold the screen.

Julia Butters in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - This precocious 10-year-old more than holds her own opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in one of the most interesting and surprisingly moving vignettes in Quentin Tarantino's loving look back at the end of an era of macho moviemaking. Butters represents the future -- she's a feminist Method actor. But instead of coming across as obnoxious, she stands out as the voice of reason in a movie dominated by insecure men. If Butters is this good now, there's no telling what heights she can still reach.

Da'Vine Joy Randolph in Dolemite Is My Name - This funky and very funny biopic of blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore is Eddie Murphy's vehicle through and through, but Randolph does give the most resonant supporting performance in it as his tough girl sidekick. There's a scene towards the end of the film, where she sincerely thanks Murphy's character for providing her with a platform to be in the movies that is one of the most moving moments I've experienced at the movies this year.

Jimmie Falls and Jonathan Majors in The Last Black Man in San Francisco - Perhaps you're noticing a trend here? All of these performers are women or people of color. That's not a coincidence. These are the people who are emerging as the bright future of movies. One last case in point is this duo for the quirky gentrification comedy-drama The Last Black Man in San Francisco. It's a challenging movie in some ways and these non-conventional leading men are striking to watch. They both have an aura of mercurial mystery to them -- and the movie they star in also hard to easily summarize, but again I think that's a hallmark of what Hollywood will become, especially when it comes to the growing competition between the traditional filmgoing experience and the streaming one.