10 Actors Who Just Gave Their Best Performance Ever

Emma Seligman's Bottoms was one of 2023's best surprises, capturing the best and worst of the classic teen high school movie, and working it into a wacky, absurdist new package.

Set in a reality-adjacent absurdist world, Bottoms highlights the uncanniness of US teen comedy tropes and flips them on their head, layering in nineties and noughties references galore and going to town on the genre as a whole. "Ugly, untalented gays" PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edibiri) fall deep into a casual lie that sees them start a fight club in the school gym. Though the hope is to get close to the cheerleaders they're crushing on, and finally lose their virginity, they're soon in way over their heads.

Sennott is the film's blazing core, back together with her Shiva Baby director and firing on all cylinders. She effortlessly balances the film's self-referential, tongue-in-cheek humour with the kind of deadpan openness that really sells a satire like this. Untethered from the realism required for Shiva Baby, she is able to engage her full comedic range, diving deep into a role that is equal parts slapstick and irony.

Bottoms is very much a teen comedy for adults, and everything from Sennott's little Dutch boy outfits to her unflinching delivery of some Inbetweeners-esque lines squeezes juice out of every scene.