India, Sept. 12 -- Vikrant Massey as Manoj Kumar Sharma. Massey played a small-town man who becomes an IPS officer despite poverty, failure, and countless rejections in 12th Fail (2023). It could so easily have been melodramatic. Instead, Massey's performance shows the cost of hope: The exhaustion of endless exams, the quiet heartbreak of missed chances. He picked up Sharma's mannerisms too, rare for a biopic of an everyman.

Cillian Murphy as J Robert Oppenheimer. OK, we've seen Murphy as Scarecrow in Batman Begins, as a gullible napper in Inception. But as the director of the Manhattan Project in Oppenheimer (2023) he seemed even more chilling. Murphy's Oppenheimer voice sounds like it carries the weight of the Manhattan Project itself....