As always, I’m sure there are a number of performances missing from my list due to the simple fact that I have yet to see them, performances such as Timothée Chalamet’s role in Call Me by Your Name or Gary Oldham’s portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. I’m sure that these two specific performances, along with others not mentioned here, will be discussed and praised sufficiently that their lack of inclusion will be overlooked.
However, here is what I did see and what I think to be the standouts from 2017 (in no particular order):
DANIEL KALUUYA and LIL REL HOWERY in Jordan Peele’s Get Out
NOÉ HERNÁNDEZ in Emiliano Rocha Minter’s We Are The Flesh
ERWIN VAN COTTHEM in Kazik Radwanski’s How Heavy This Hammer
DANIEL CRAIG in Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky
TERUYUKI KAGAWA in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Creepy
JARED ABRAHAMSON in Kevan Funk’s Hello Destroyer
BENE COOPERSMITH in Dustin Guy Defa’s Person to Person
ROBERT PATTINSON and BUDDY DURESS in the Safdie’s Good Time
SYLVIO BERNARDI in Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney’s Sylvio
JASON MITCHELL and GARRETT HEDLUND in Dee Rees’ Mudbound
TAKUYA KIMURA in Takashi Miike’s Blade of the Immortal
MARK PROKSCH in Carson Mell’s Another Evil
NELSAN ELLIS in Rob Meyer’s Little Boxes
MATTHEW SHAW in Theodore Collatos’ Tormenting the Hen
FRANK MOSLEY in Cameron Bruce Nelson’s Some Beasts
ADAM SANDLER in Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
BARRY KEOGHAN in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer
JON HAMM in Michael Almereyda’s Marjorie Prime
PREVIOUS MALE PERFORMANCE OVERVIEWS: 2016 || 2015 || 2014 || 2013
Another fantastic list Kevin and I couldn’t agree more with your picks. I would add Timothée Chalamet (I know you mentioned him at the top), Michael Stuhlbarg for The Post, The Shape of Water, or Call Me By Your Name because he’s amazing in all three, and Paul Walter Hauser for I, Tonya. Sebastian Stan was pretty great in that as well.