A STAR-MAKING revelation in a swoony gay romance, career-topping work from an 87-year-old stage vet, a Chilean transgender actress’ tour de force and more — The Hollywood Reporter film critics choose their favorite turns of the year as awards season kicks into high gear. Timothee Chalamet in ‘Call Me by Your Name’ You don’t immediately notice how extraordinary Timothee Chalamet is in Luca Guadagnino’s playful and profound coming-of-age masterpiece “Call Me by Your Name.” As Elio, a brainy, brooding boy of 17 who falls in love with Oliver, his father’s 24-year-old research assistant (Armie Hammer), in Italy during the summer of 1983, the actor at first comes off as an affably precocious but low-key teen. He toggles casually between English, French and Italian; plays piano with ironic panache; looks natural lolling about with a book in his hands, sunglasses and headphones on, or hunched over, pencil pressed to paper. But wait, this is a performance so subtle and unfussy that you don’t see it coming straight for your gut. Sam Rockwell in ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ From the moment her character, Mildred Hayes, strides into a local advertising agency with a plan to shame the town sheriff over what she sees as his department’s inaction in the investigation of her daughter’s rape and murder, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” belongs to the magnificent Frances McDormand. But another key performance in Martin McDonagh’s corrosively humorous drama sneaks up on you in different ways, wrapping dim-bulb ignorance, intolerance and hostility around a damaged core of human vulnerability and an eventual bid for absolution that’s surprisingly affecting. When Officer Dixon played by Sam Rockwell suffers a devastating loss, it breaks him in ways that allow the resourceful Rockwell, 49, to rebuild him piece by piece. The ache of grief and the sorrow of difficult reckonings ripple through this movie even as it continues to yield dark tragicomedy and invigorating hints of the absurd. Nowhere are those forces more at play than in Rockwell’s layered performance. Saoirse Ronan in ‘Lady Bird’ Two years ago, Saoirse Ronan reduced many of us to blubbering idiots with her intensely moving portrait of an Irish teenager in early-1950s New York in “Brooklyn,” and now she’s back superbly playing a very different kind of adolescent on the brink of independence in Greta Gerwig’s instant classic “Lady Bird.” By nature, era and circumstance, Ronan’s character in “Brooklyn” was proper and correct in language and behavior, and was faced, in the end, with a choice between two men and two countries. In “Lady Bird,” Ronan’s self-nicknamed Catholic high school senior, who has been severely let down by two guys (they can hardly be called men), must summon the fortitude to unshackle herself from her family ties in boring Sacramento and plunge into post-9/11 New York and college and whatever that may bring. Lois Smith in ‘Marjorie Prime’ There is no “Lois Smith type.” That’s the crucial beauty of her half-century of category-defying work. As a performer she’s not easily summed up, and neither are most of the characters she’s brought to thrilling, unpredictable life. From ’70s classic “Five Easy Pieces” to this year’s “Lady Bird,” Smith inhabits her roles so fully — and yet without a hint of actorly affectation — that she can infuse the simplest gesture with deep feeling, making each instant spontaneous and ephemeral. Daniela Vega in ‘A Fantastic Woman’ Daniela Vega’s career-making performance in “A Fantastic Woman” is something rare: a wondrously mature and sophisticated star turn from a young screen novice. Thanks to her, Chilean director Sebastian Cielo’s stylish thriller about the ostracism suffered by a recently bereaved transgender woman blossoms into a shattering and intimate portrait of loss, queer pride and grace under pressure. Vega’s performance is mostly a solo affair. She’s present almost every scene, usually alone, frequently in distress. Mostly framed in close-up, her face becomes a mobile canvas of minute gestures, microscopic flinches and wary sideways glances. (SD-Agencies) | 