Daniel Kaluuya - Get Out [238 points / 25 votes]
"Get Out is a movie about a guy who quits smoking. OK, maybe there’s a little more to it than that. Some additional details: In Jordan Peele’s debut feature, Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya), an almost impossibly handsome young black man, is taken home by his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) to meet her parents at their country estate outside Mobile, Alabama. Thing is, she hasn’t told them he’s black. Not like she’s trying to hide anything, it’s just so not a big deal. Her folks are extremely not-racist. Her dad (Bradley Whitford) is even a little embarrassing about it, always trumpeting that he’d have voted for Obama a third time if he could have. Over the weekend, Chris is persuaded (more or less against his will) to give up cigarettes. And, well, it isn’t pretty.
"Those are the bones of the plot, but the real story, and the real drama, moment by moment, is what’s going on in Chris’s nicotine-deprived head. We follow that narrative by tracking the contradictory ideas and emotions that flicker across Kaluuya’s face as he tries to suss out what the hell is going on here — sorting through scenarios and responses, trying out each one briefly, then rejecting it for another when circumstances shift.
"Something is not right out here — and it’s not just a racial or generational or political or socio-economic thing. Sure, the outer über-burbs prove to be a land of unquestioned entitlement, populated by excessively genial upper-crust liberals who breathe deep the woodsy air of white privilege while bending over backwards to flaunt how hospitable and woke they are. That’s to be expected. The house has this basement door that’s closed off to contain a 'black mold' problem. Perfectly plausible and sensible. But what to make of the black servants who are always lurking in the background, so solicitous and pleasant (or are they taunting and passive-aggressive?) that they seem almost lobotomized? And what about those bizarrely mismatched couples, old friends of the late family patriarch, who show up en masse as invited guests at an afternoon cocktail party in his (and Chris’s?) honor?
"Chris’s face is the movie — simultaneously both screen and projector. Watch as he resists Rose’s hypnotherapist mom’s insistent attempts to question him about the night his mother died, and his vulnerability as she probes his feelings of guilt and regret. Witness his attempts to figure out if the handyman is being awkwardly friendly, or provoking and challenging him. Study his anger, frustration, fear, acceptance as it dawns on him why Rose can’t find the car keys. They say there’s nothing more cinematic than the human face, and Kaluuya is living proof of it." ~ Jim Emerson
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