THE SAVAGES and Philip Seymour Hoffman

During my terrible, horrible cold last week, I watched seven or eight movies, on Netflix mostly. I watched MANHATTAN, great first montage and great last scene. HANNAH, geez Michael Caine stole the movie, the three Linklater movies with Hawke and Delphy--I liked the last one least, THE WORLD'S GREATEST DAD,  really spooky on so many levels, and ThE SAVAGES, one of my favorite PSH performances.

THE SAVAGES is the story of how a brother and sister cope with their father's final days in a nursing home.

The amazing thing about his performance in this film is how generous it is. In so many scenes, he does nothing to divert you from listening to Laura Linney, who has the splashier, needier role. (And Philip Bosco is also great).

In one scene where she storms into her father's nursing care room and blathers on about this and that, PSH just sits by the bed, paging through a newspaper and occasionally nodding.  He creates the role of the more passive brother and never breaks with that.

But he was great in every performance I ever saw him in including two plays TRUE WEST and DEATH OF A SALESMAN.

I think THE SAVAGES is my favorite performance.

But looking at the list on IMDB, there never was a bad one. What's your pick?