Casey Affleck (best actor) gives a “master class in submerged feeling” in Manchester by the Sea as Lee Chandler, a handyman trying to comfort his teenage nephew while coping with grief over his brother’s death and an unresolved tragedy from his past.    .”  Emma Stone won the best actress award for her role as Mia in La La Land (late April release), an aspiring actress who juggles her career ambitions with her love for a struggling jazz pianist.  The New Yorker  syas that “all the movie’s charm emerges from Stone’s performance.” The supporting actor roles wen t to Viola Davis, as Denzel Washington’s long-suffering wife in Fences and Mahershala Ali on Moonlight (on order), who plays a drug dealer that becomes a surrogate father to a bullied youngster.  Alis “mere presence brings a world of experience to life” while “what Viola does can’t be learned. It can only be experienced.”