Oscars 2023: The Strongest Ensembles of the Year

The best ensembles have the actors connected with the same DNA as the director and screenwriter. Meaning that they understand what role they’re meant to play and they don’t try to be the one person acting in a different movie.

The strongest ensembles this year revolve around tight-knit families or communities. In Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, we see two career-best performances in Paul Dano and Michelle Williams, playing Spielberg’s parents. They’ve left an indelible imprint in Spielberg’s mind and he’s brought them back to life to help understand them and to celebrate them. The ensemble revolves around the Spielberg family and includes Gabriel Labelle playing the young Spielberg. Judd Hirsch is particularly good as an eccentric uncle who shows up, as is Seth Rogan as the man who steals the affections of Spielberg’s mother. The Fablemans is a portrait of the artist as a man coming-of-age amid conflict and divorce, but its heart and soul is with Dano and Williams. Spielberg is great with actors already, but he has clearly invested a different kind of care and attention to this story, which might be why the acting is so good across the board.

Martin McDonagh has brought Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson back together for The Banshees of Inisherin. The story centers on Farrell and Gleeson as friends who “break up,” but the heart of it is the relationship between Farrell and his on-screen sister, Kerry Condon, and his other friend, the doomed Barry Keoghan. Here, the ensemble had to speak exactly the same way since they’ve been stuck on a tiny island together. There is not a second watching this film that it doesn’t feel authentic to the time and place. Actors drive this film in perfect harmony with McDonagh’s satire. If it hits right with SAG, it will lead the nominations.

Every actor in The Daniels’ Everything, Everywhere All At Once had to be on point, to understand they were acting in different realms of reality. Even while being yanked around through time and the multiverse, they had to stay anchored to their characters. They become the throughline for the audience trying to keep up. Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephanie Hsu are all pitch perfect to match the rapid-fire action sequences. Ultimately, this film is about a traditional parent finally and fully accepting her daughter, in terms of her relationship with another woman, her physical appearance, etc. It takes her quite the journey to get there, but she ultimately gets there.

Women Talking was born for the ensemble nomination at SAG. With the look and feel of a stage play, the entire film is on the shoulders of the actors. They have to understand their role in their community, their role with their husbands, and what they’re really like when the men leave. What we see is behavior of an almost secret society of women who can’t express themselves freely otherwise. Each of them has their own story to tell and conflict to resolve, whether it’s Rooney Mara’s character loving the baby she’s carrying, even though it came from a rape, to Jessie Buckley finally summoning the strength to leave her abusive husband, to Claire Foy navigating her role as mother to a young male in the community, to the older, wiser women grappling with a major life change. Women Talking relies on its ensemble in nearly every way.

Empire of Light, which was unfairly bludgeoned by the critics early on, has one of the strongest ensembles of the year. Led by the two strong central performances of Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward, Empire also features wonderful supporting turns by Toby Jones and Tanya Moodie. Writer/Director Sam Mendes comes from theater and that makes his films always centered on the performances — this film is certainly no exception. Empire of Light is old school Hollywood by now because it dares to simply tell a great story. The problems of the characters can be solved by essentially running away from them and escaping into the dark theater. It’s the ultimate life hack.

The family at the core of James Gray’s Armageddon Time also has to understand time and place to pull off this intimate family story about a young man coming-of-age and seeing the difference between his fate and the fate of his childhood best friend. The strong cast is led by Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway but also has Jaylin Webb as Johnny, Banks Repeta as the young James Gray stand-in, veteran Tovah Feldshuh, and of course Anthony Hopkins as Gray’s grandfather. The film has been kind of a sleeper this season but the ensemble should be remembered.

Then there are the “rich people are bad/indulgent” movies, all of which feature brilliant ensembles. It’s a bit awkward for Hollywood, which is run by these same kinds of people, with films directed at these same kinds of people, attempting to distance themselves from these same kinds of people with films that condemns these same kinds of people. All feature talented ensembles of well-known actors that are essentially playing the role Hollywood has now taken in the lives of ordinary Americans.

The people left out or oppressed or somehow in the role of punishing the entitled few are generally racial minorities. Eventually, years from now, this will be a whole genre. Your enjoyment of them will depend on where you sit on the issue of teaching rich/privileged white people lessons.

These films seem to have taken their lead from the succession of HBO’s Succession. The director of the hit series is back with The Menu, featuring an ensemble cast led by Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy, with Hong Chau, Nicholas Hoult, Janet McTeer, Judith Light, etc.

Then there is Triangle of Sadness, with Woody Harrelson leading the ensemble cast of spoiled rich people who are about to be taught a lesson in social hierarchy. And finally, there’s Glass Onion, which probably has the strongest chance of becoming the fifth SAG ensemble nominee, given its strength at the box office and on Netflix. The acting is great across the board, of course. Glass Onion’s stand-out performance is Janelle Monae, where Triangle of Sadness has Dolly De Leon.

One of the best ensembles of the year is not exactly the kind of movie that will get a SAG ensemble nomination, and that is Top Gun: Maverick. If any one of the actors in that movie suddenly broke free from the story they were trying tell and the experience they were creating for their audience, it would have wrecked a well-oiled machine of actors who are all 100% on point — up to and including the film’s star, Tom Cruise.

But Jennifer Connelly is also great, hitting the perfect balance between charm and sass. She comes off as someone continually winking to the audience, as if to say “I know what you want and don’t worry, you’re going to get it.” If there is anything that describes the Top Gun experience, it’s that: they know what you want, and they’re going to give it to you. It’s true of the flight sequences, which are thrilling and unpredictable, it’s true of the love story between Cruise and Connelly, and it’s true of the friendship and fatherhood story between Cruise, Val Kilmer, and Miles Teller. But it’s also true of the crew who have to be taught by Cruise to fly the deadly mission.

On the farther end of the spectrum is Damien Chazelle’s Babylon. Even though the performances are over-the-top, they all act in the same movie. The film and the ensemble are at their best when they center on the mechanics of filmmaking back then. Like getting the shot at exactly the right moment, the “magic hour,” or working with sound for the first time. Watching the actors juggle the pace and extremes Chazelle is throwing at them is fun. This film relies on an ensemble more so than La La Land or Whiplash ever did.

Babylon is divisive, no doubt about it, but it has within it some of the best acting of year and specifically the best ensemble acting of the year. SAG nominating this film also means Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie show up, which would make it a much more exciting show, just saying.

There are two epics led by Black women, The Woman King and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Viola Davis heads up the strong ensemble cast in The Woman King, whereas Angela Bassett seems to be the best shot at a Supporting Actress nomination in Wakanda Forever. We know both aren’t likely getting in, and given that it’s an extremely competitive year, it’s likely only one or even neither will be selected by SAG. But both films are entertaining crowdpleasuers anchored by bravura performances across the board.

Who gets nominated at the SAG depends on which 2,000 members are chosen randomly for the nominating committee. That is what makes predicting them harder than it should be. We have no idea which members are going to be chosen. Although all of their 150K vote for the winners (including the AFTRA union), just the film branch are selected for the “nom com.”

Because of that, predicting them is nearly impossible. The SAG nominations will be here on January 11, along with the Directors Guild nominations. The Producers Guild nominations are a day later, the same day Oscar voting begins, January 12th.

We’ll have our predictions and a contest coming soon.