I Forgot How Great an Actor Scarlett Johansson Is Until She Devastated Me in Jojo Rabbit

In Slate’s annual Movie Club, film critic Dana Stevens emails with fellow critics—this year, Bilge Ebiri, Karen Han, and Alison Willmore—about the year in cinema. Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, starring Driver and Jonathan Pryce, finally hit our shores this year, after more than 30 years of false starts, shady financiers, halfway-abandoned shoots, biblical floods, multiple dead actors, at least one ongoing lawsuit, and two strokes for its director. Anyway, back to the question at hand: “Is there another performer you can think of who holds such a sui generis place in the current movie landscape, at once a sex symbol, a kabillion-dollar movie star, and a serious performer who’s continuously unfolding new, complex talents?” I think the answer is staring us right in the face: Driver’s Marriage Story co-star, Scarlett Johansson, who this year was one of the few truly good things about the biggest movie of all time and starred in another Oscar-season hopeful, Jojo Rabbit. It’s been widely praised, of course—Banderas won Best Actor at Cannes, as well as from critics’ groups, and seems destined to be one of those rare foreign-language Best Actor Oscar nominees, which would be a not-unimpressive achievement in such a crowded year—but I still marvel at what he does here.