Oscars 2019: 13 Biggest Acting Snubs

Every year it seems the Academy Award nominations are inherently a little disappointing.

This isn't a slight against the Academy, it's just a fact. There are so many great movies made each year that it is literally impossible for them to honor all of the ones that are deserving of it. This year was made all the more difficult by the fact that 2018 was an incredibly stellar year for film.

With so many excellent films and performances and only five slots available for nominations, a whole lot of truly incredible performances got left out in the cold, for better or worse. From shockingly-excellent comeback performances from former stars, to breakthrough performances from young performers who are just getting started, to performances that changed the entire way audiences thought and felt about the given performer.

These were the best performances of 2018 that weren't nominated for an Oscar but absolutely should have been.

After decades away from the franchise, Jamie Lee Curtis returned to the town of Haddonfield and the role of Laurie Strode to deliver what was, unquestionably, her best performance ever as the character and also her finest acting turn in at least two decades.

Curtis took full advantage of the new film's retcons, distancing herself from the more trite and familial aspects that had defined her relationship to Michael in prior films. She instead leans heavily into the new concept, painting Laurie as a woman scarred by an act of random malicious violence forty years ago who has been attempting to cope with a fractured psyche ever since. She proves once again why she's the definitive Scream Queen, fully-investing herself in the sequences of suspense and delivering some of the best material for reaction shots of any actress this year.

But the parts of her performance where Curtis truly shines are in the quieter moments, such as her emotional breakdown at dinner with her family or the subsequent shot of her contemplating running into on-coming traffic. She works wonders here, managing to condense the entire forty years' worth of story into single frames and selling Laurie's grief and pain in these heartbreaking vignettes.