10 Actors Who Gave Their Best Performances In Movies Nobody Saw

10. Oscar Isaac - A Most Violent Year

It truly is one of the Academy's great failings that J.C. Chandor's scintillating 2014 crime drama A Most Violent Year wasn't nominated for a single Oscar, especially not for lead actor Oscar Isaac.

Isaac, basically channelling the energy of '70s-era Al Pacino, gives a masterful performance as Abel Morales, a small business owner who struggles to expand his company amid the violent and expensive costs of doing business.

Perhaps the uncommon restraint of the performance, depicting a man desperately striving for legitimacy in a world that actively rejects it, caused the film to miss with awards voters and audiences alike.

Despite strong reviews, it recouped barely half of its $20 million budget at the box office.

Isaac became a considerably higher-priced commodity in the years that followed by appearing in Star Wars, though despite his fine work in that franchise and films such as Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Chandor's own Triple Frontier, he's never got close to matching the brilliance of his turn in this movie.