The year’s weird performances

We’re in the middle of the movie award season. So Wesley Morris, our critic at large, decided to give out his own awards for categories that don’t exist at the Oscars. Among his picks:

Best Acting on a Landline: Matt Damon, Viola Davis and Chris Messina, in “Air.” The movie is set in 1984. Wesley celebrates the actors who neck-cradle the handset, hold it at a comical distance, screaming into it, and cuddle it close.

Best Theft of a Movie: Ryan Gosling, in “Barbie.” He goes so hard at the joke that Ken is supposed to be telling on men that the performance is bizarro: Strength is weakness, coolness is lame, knowledge is ignorance, Wesley writes.

Best Gonzo Performance: Emma Stone, in “Poor Things.” The movie — in which Stone plays a willful reanimated corpse — demands a comedian’s sensibility as her character moves from savant to simpleton to sophisticate.

Read Wesley’s full awards list.