Greatest Christian Bale performance ever (until now)??

I'm not sure about greatest - The Fighter maybe......American Psycho....... but my favorite and the one I voted for was The Machinist and specifically it shows where his critics (and on this board there are a bunch) are wrong or they were wrong here anyway.

Usually people who criticize him it's for being a "stunt actor" ie shape-shifting his body in lieu of characterization acting.......but The Machinist is specifically NOT that in any way at all. He's a human ghost and his shocking weight loss ties into the script......he's nothing, he's disappearing before our eyes. The weight loss is not "the performance" it's merely where the performance starts.

Maybe this boards most underrated major actor imo - how the fnck did we do a poll on "Best Actor of the 2010s" and he was THAT low ?!?!? - .....people carved out a position on him early I think and often refuse to say they maybe misjudged him or what he's capable of .....Ford Vs. Ferrari was another one where he gave a genuine movie star performance - sexy, charismatic, funny, which you maybe wouldn't think he had in him at all.

1. American Psycho
2. The Fighter
3. The Machinist

Like a lot of stuff hes done, but The Fighter is the only thing that needs to be earmarked in history.

Empire of the Sun which is certainly among the grestest child performance I've ever seen, if not the top one.

Ford v Ferrari, def. Better than all the Lead nominees that year, it's incredible he missed bc it's such a full and exciting perf that covers what usually draws. To me it's not only a resounding perf from Bale, his best, but a surprise too in what we see from Bale that we hadn't really seen prior. Deeply felt fatherhood, buddy chemistry with Damon, he's sort of the comic relief, and I mean he's never been so loose and charismatic, and he doesn't narrow the complex temper of the character to win you over either, yet he does.

The Flowers Of War is his best performance for me, with The Machinist and Empire Of The Sun closely behind.

Nice choice! He's so good in that and it rarely gets discussed.

I think the issue with Bale when compared to those two is his best work is so completely aligned to the process of physical transformation.  He's literalized that aspect of acting more than maybe anyone, but often stumbles to me when he takes on roles of a more purely imaginative transformation (where stuff like projecting charisma or being arresting can't work through a novel physical appearance).   It's like he can go very deep with what he does, but has trouble approaching acting from another angle (I give him credit for his work in Public Enemies though, where he was good in a way atypical for him, even though the movie was awful).   

Given nothing else changes, Bale, Leo, and Wock will remain the golden male trifecta of this age of Hollywood. They are incomparable to anyone else and they are incomparable to each other.

All three have taken entirely different routes, with different approaches, strategies, methods or whatever, but they have secured their places due to the immenseness of their personal talents. Only Leo has been lucky filmography-wise. But performance-wise, it depends on what you prefer in the actor. And this board has always sided with favorite directors. 

Not only that all others on that Best of 2010s polls fall short when comparing to these at same ages, it is likely that these three will keep adding to their individual rosters of tour de force performances in their own ways like they always have. Even while the other actors catch up, the distance will remain the same, unless someone else dials up in a major way and then keeps it up with a humungus consistency- not likely to happen. 

Even up to 5 years ago I fully expected names like Oscar Isaac, Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling and Jake Gyllenhaal to grow bigger and bigger, but objectively speaking... they have gone shorter not bigger (at the very least status quo may be...). Honestly, I do not expect any one of them any more to reach these levels. My only hope is with Robert Pattinson who has the best similarities with both Leo and Bale in his career so far, but even then is a big question mark and the generation gap will remain even there. 

Even Depp has pretty much shot his career into the ground. 

Whatever biases this board may have against Bale - he is so totally out of the box actor in so many ways, so this response is never surprising to me at all - all those names represent flavors of the decade, and every decade has had a bunch. 

Only the next decade will tell if any of those can rise above the fray...

He pulled off an all timer performance like Patrick Bateman at only 26 years old.
Legend.