VINCENT LINDON, ‘THE MEASURE OF A MAN’ If you don’t know Mr. Lindon by now, just picture an expensive dress shirt that you’re in no hurry to have pressed. Stéphane Brizé’s work of bare-bones realism casts Mr. Lindon as Thierry, a French factory worker who hasn’t had a decent job in over a year. The beauty of Mr. Lindon’s acting comes almost entirely from how much time he has to sit while managers and administrators talk at him. I’ve never seen listening performed with this much clenched absorption. That tension is all over the rest of his body, too. One climactic scene just involves him walking away from the camera in resignation. But Mr. Lindon’s grip on Thierry’s moral despair is so tight that he makes you newly aware of everything it means to watch someone’s back. (Read the review)  TAYLOR MAC, ‘A 24-DECADE HISTORY OF POPULAR MUSIC’ For two months, I’ve been thinking about his October all-day, all-night fantasia, still amazed that Mr. Mac did it, still miserable we had to go home after he did. It wasn’t just that he sustained his theatrical virtuosity that was so exhilarating. It was that he kept sharing the virtuosity of others: the Detroit power singers Steffanie Christi’an and Thornetta Davis well after midnight, the Brooklyn United Marching Band blasting through Curtis Mayfield’s “Move on Up” at the crack of dawn, the guitar shredding of Viva DeConcini for nearly the whole thing. Meanwhile, Mr. Mac practiced live criticism of and empathy for 240 years of mostly American popular music, changing clothes, wigs and makeup, while baring his chest, his butt and his soul. (Read the review)  LAURIE METCALF, ‘HORACE AND PETE’ Louis C. K.’s mostly extraordinary 10-episode web series, set in a Brooklyn dive bar, sensed the polarized, racialized national mood. The third episode is a masterpiece of monologue. Ms. Metcalf sits at a table and delivers a confession of seduction and cross-class lust. The 22 minutes she takes to get the story out amounts to the time most sitcoms last without commercials. The longer Ms. Metcalf goes on — in a tremulous rhapsody of disbelief, want and shame — the nearer she drew my face to the laptop screen. (Read the review)  ‘THE PEOPLE V. O. J. SIMPSON: AMERICAN CRIME STORY’ POWER RANKINGS  10. Cuba Gooding Jr. as O. J. Simpson  9. Steven Pasquale as Detective Mark Fuhrman  8. Kenneth Choi as Judge Lance Ito  7. Connie Britton as Faye Resnick  6. John Travolta as Robert Shapiro  5. David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian  4. Bruce Greenwood as Gil Garcetti  3. Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark  2. Sterling K. Brown as Christopher Darden  1. Courtney B. Vance as Johnnie Cochran  PHYLICIA RASHAD, ‘HEAD OF PASSES’ Stage actors do what they do eight times a week. They’re card-carrying professionals, but Ms. Rashad’s card must weigh a ton. She starts Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play as the matriarch in a high-energy family sitcom of gentility and secrets. But in the second act, something alarming happens, first to the set and then to her performance, which goes from impressive to impossible. Ms. Rashad descends into an aria of rage, regret, spittle, tears and snot, while wading in floodwater. What was so astonishing about it was the emotional stress of being her witness. Forget about the character. Would the actress survive? With some stars, that kind of kitchen-sink acting is stunt work. With Ms. Rashad, you wanted to stand up and cheer — then call her an ambulance. (Read the review)  RIHANNA AND DRAKE They’re the Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway of Bajan-accented pop. The Ross and Rachel of awards-show acceptance-speech banter. The ketchup and mustard music-video wink-wink. He tries to keep her good. She definitely makes him better. This year, in two narcotically addictive songs (“Work” and “Too Good”), a couple of hot videos and some are-they-or-are-they-not shtick at the MTV Video Music Awards, they were near their best together.  HARVEY SCRIMSHAW, ‘THE WITCH’ You’re not supposed to tell anybody that so-and-so died in a movie. But who this year kicked the bucket with as much oomph as this kid? “The Witch” is set in puritanical Salem, where everybody is paranoid about Satan. Mr. Scrimshaw plays Caleb, the doomed middle child of this movie’s exiled family, and, in his final scene, all he does is lie there and sputter. But that’s like saying all a John Singer Sargent does is hang there and loom. The horrid elegance he applies to agony is perversely enchanting. You aren’t sure whether to save Caleb or follow Mr. Scrimshaw into the beyond. (Read the review)  More highlights from the year, as chosen by our critics:  Movies, Television, Pop Albums, Pop Songs, Classical Music, Dance, Theater, Art and Podcasts  A version of this article appears in print on December 11, 2016, on page AR22 of the New York edition with the headline: Acts of Stamina and Slyness. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
This list includes feats of acting and core strength, performances that made the author happy even when they raised his blood pressure or made him cry.