Countdown to the Oscars: Best Supporting Actor

Welcome to this year’s edition of Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, where we will break down each of the 23 categories, analyze the films, and make some guesses at their awards prospects.

Best Supporting Actor

The nominees are:

Sterling K. Brown in American Fiction

Robert De Niro in Killers of the Flower Moon

Robert Downey Jr. in Oppenheimer

Ryan Gosling in Barbie

Mark Ruffalo in Poor Things

Sterling K. Brown in American Fiction

In American Fiction, Brown plays Cliff, brother of the uptight protagonist Monk (Jeffrey Wright). We spend so much time with the buttoned-up Monk that when we meet Cliff, it’s like a breath of fresh air. Finally, someone willing to let loose and just be himself. Cliff has his own set of personal issues, as well, but compared to his brother, he’s a picture of enlightenment. First-time nominee Brown also imbues the character with such heart and humanity that we are able to look past the flaws and see the wounded but loving person underneath it all.

Robert De Niro in Killers of the Flower Moon

As remarkable as it may seem for someone widely considered one of the best, if not the best, actors of his generation, I think we may be at a point where we’re undervaluing De Niro. Now, to some degree, he did it to himself. Years of crummy studio comedies and nondescript thrillers with names like Heist and Killing Season have not helped him maintain an A+ credit rating in the minds of viewers. But, with good material and a good director to motivate him (how about good friend Martin Scorsese?), De Niro can absolutely still reach into his bag and pull out a performance you’ve never seen before.

In Killers of the Flower Moon, he plays, for all intents and purposes, the devil. He fashions William Hale, the mastermind of the Osage Reign of Terror, as a man of fake beneficence, masking a calm, calculated menace. It’s the darkest kind of evil, and De Niro plays it so subtly, so masterfully that you could almost mistake it for charm. It is some of the best work the actor has delivered in the latter section of his career.

This marks De Niro’s eighth career Oscar nomination, which actually seems low for a performer of his caliber and renown. It’s tied for 10th-most all time. He has five nominations for Best Actor and one win for Raging Bull and three nominations for Supporting Actor along with one win for The Godfather Part II.

Robert Downey Jr. in Oppenheimer

As depicted in this movie, Lewis Strauss is the perfect antagonist to J. Robert Oppenheimer. He’s a career bureaucrat with aspirations of political power who sees Oppenheimer as a means to an end. He uses him, betrays him, and discards him, all with a smile. Downey is one of the best actors in the business at killing with a smile, and he puts that power to great effect here in one of his finest dramatic roles.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 31 years since Downey received his first Oscar nomination for playing Charlie Chaplin in Richard Attenborough’s Chaplin. He’s lived multiple lifetimes since then, seeing his star rise and fall and rise again amid a battle with addiction. He became the face of the superhero boom that has lasted the better part of the past 15 years. He scored his second Oscar nomination in 2008 for Tropic Thunder at just about the last moment in history you could be rewarded for a performance in blackface. It’s been a helluva ride, and it appears the next stop on that journey is the Oscars stage.

Ryan Gosling in Barbie

There has been a lot of talk about Gosling’s Ken stealing the movie from Barbie. I wouldn’t go that far. Margot Robbie has the incredibly difficult task of holding the emotional center of the film together, while Gosling can mostly go for broke, getting the biggest laughs of the movie. This is not a knock on the performance, which is stellar, but it’s important that the record reflects: Robbie and Barbie own the Barbie movie. Gosling is just Ken. And, that’s more than Kenough.

This is Gosling’s third career nomination. The first two were for Best Actor for Half Nelson and La La Land. It’s been thrilling to watch Gosling avoid the pitfalls that come with Hollywood stardom. After The Notebook, he could easily have become the next big romantic lead, playing the hunky guy in a bunch of middling fare that would go straight to Netflix these days. Instead, he has made it a point to choose daring projects with exciting directors, and we’re all better off for it.

Mark Ruffalo in Poor Things

Ruffalo now has four Academy Award nominations, all for Supporting Actor. It’s a fascinating niche he has carved for himself in Hollywood. He could, of course, lead movies and has been a great leading man as recently as Todd Haynes’ Dark Waters in 2019. But, when you need an actor to take over one portion of a larger narrative and to do so with depth and nuance and gravitas, well, he’s your man.

In this case, it’s the middle section of Bella Baxter’s (Emma Stone) journey, during which Ruffalo’s Duncan Wedderburn represents both the freedom of a larger world and the repression of social graces. Ruffalo is perfect as a man who thinks he has his world all figured out, then falls apart as soon as anything disrupts this assumption. The performance is sexy and strange and volatile in ways we have rarely seen Ruffalo on screen.

The final analysis

There’s really no second choice here. It’s Downey all the way. At the beginning of the season and throughout the critics awards announcements, it seemed like there might be a bit of a race among Downey, Gosling, and even Ruffalo. But, once the major industry awards kicked off, Downey took the lead and never looked back.

Downey is very good in Oppenheimer, but this is undoubtedly a career achievement award, an opportunity to reward a beloved actor who has been in the game for 40 years and experienced all the ups and downs Hollywood has to offer. Sometimes, it’s just your time.

Will win: Robert Downey Jr. in Oppenheimer

Should win: Mark Ruffalo in Poor Things

Should have been here: Jamie Bell in All of Us Strangers

A note about my favorite snub: This could just as easily have been Paul Mescal for me from the same film as he is magnificent as the protagonist’s love interest and potential lifeline, but I give the edge to Bell. The former child star who won a BAFTA for best actor at 14 years old is stellar throughout the film but truly shines in a moment of reconciliation when he admits he, too, would likely have bullied his gay son had they known each other in school. The scene ends with a hug that just shatters your heart, and Bell plays it perfectly.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actor

Casey Affleck is nominated for Best Actor for his role in Manchester by the Sea.

Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day leading up to the ceremony for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories and more.

Best Actor

The nominees are:

Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea

Andrew Garfield for Hacksaw Ridge

Ryan Gosling for La La Land

Viggo Mortenson for Captain Fantastic

Denzel Washington for Fences

In the past three years, 12 of the 15 Best Actor nominees have been for characters based on real people. Each of the last four winners has played an historical figure. Some assumptions about the Academy’s tastes are demonstrably false and used only as a satirical baton to swing at the organization. However, in this realm, the cliché has absolutely been true. This year, however, expect the Academy to break free from the mold.

In some ways, voters already have by nominating four performances that portray fictional characters. The frontrunners sprang entirely from the minds of two of America’s preeminent playwrights. Real or imagined, though, every one of these characters is brought to vibrant life by the five nominated actors. They are war heroes and everyday heroes, artists and philosophers, fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons. For everything else they are, fictional or not, they are deeply moving portraits of the human experience.

Denzel Washington for Fences – I am already well on the record as calling Fences one of the best films of the year, the play one of the best things ever written, and Washington’s performance the single best of 2016. Mick LaSalle, film reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle, called it one of the best self-directed performances of all time, and I would certainly put it up there with Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, Laurence Olivier in Hamlet, and Charlie Chaplin in City Lights.

While I would not quite place Washington on the same level as those directors, it is time, if we have not already, to start calling him one of the greatest actors of all time. If this sounds to you like hyperbole, consider the facts, which are titled: A Soldier’s Story, Glory, Cry Freedom, Malcolm X, Philadelphia, Crimson Tide, Training Day, American Gangster, Flight, and Fences. Put those 10 performances up against 10 performances on any other actor’s résumé in this era or any other. You will not find many comparable.

Troy Maxson is a perfect character for Washington, and the actor never missteps in bringing one of August Wilson’s greatest creations to life. He is a bitter, broken down old drunk who holds a grudge for the failings of a racist nation, but he is also a hard-working man who deserved a better hand in life than the one he was dealt. About that much he is correct, but the way he allows his resentment to curdle is what makes him the man he becomes. In a career of great roles, Washington has never had one like the retired baseball player turned garbage man Troy. It is a perfect performance that belongs in the history books of cinema.

Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea – By my estimation, Affleck should already be an Oscar winner for his nominated work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. That was the first time I really remember seeing him deliver the kind of insightful, contemplative work that has come to define his career. Since then, I have followed everything he has done, and he has never been anything less than stupendous in movies such as The Killer Inside Me, Gone Baby Gone, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, and Out of the Furnace. Manchester by the Sea is not Affleck’s greatest performance, but it is of a piece with the great work he turns in consistently.

He portrays Lee Chandler as a tower of grief just waiting to implode. Lee has done his best to hide himself away from the pain and anguish of his past only to have it brought into full view by the death of his brother. As much as he wants to be a stronger person, more resilient, more capable of confronting the deep sorrow he has experienced, the despair is often too much for him to take. The beauty of Affleck’s performance is in the way he portrays grief, not as an expressive burst of roiling emotions but as a chilling numbness. It is too much to feel, so he feels nothing.

Two days ago, we spoke in depth about the trespasses of Hacksaw Ridge director Mel Gibson, and it would be disingenuous not now to mention the allegations of sexual harassment leveled against Affleck by the female crew members of films he has worked on. If the allegations are true – and I think we owe it to the potential victims of harassment to believe them first – then Affleck’s actions are despicable and indefensible. If true, it means Affleck has been an amazing performer in his career, but he has not been even a passable citizen. I do not believe these allegations will have any bearing on the Oscars, but hopefully, a conversation can begin in the industry to address these very important, very real concerns.

Andrew Garfield for Hacksaw Ridge – For my money, Garfield is nominated here for the wrong performance this year, not because he is not excellent in Hacksaw Ridge but because his work in Martin Scorsese’s Silence is the more nuanced, all-encompassing performance. The role of Desmond Doss has only one mode through most of Hacksaw Ridge, quiet heroism, and Garfield plays it for everything it is worth. In Silence, Garfield is able to portray a much wider range of experiences and emotions, but Scorsese’s film was underappreciated by the Academy, while Hacksaw Ridge caught on. Such is the way it goes sometimes.

Garfield is a magnificent young performer who burst onto the scene in David Fincher’s The Social Network but quickly thereafter became mired in superhero land, playing Spider-man in a pair of not highly regarded films. One hates to say it, but the failure of the Spider-man reboot was probably the best thing that could have happened to Garfield. Since his last time portraying the web-slinging crime fighter, Garfield has appeared in three remarkable films (99 Homes, Hacksaw Ridge, and Silence) and delivered three remarkable performances of great depth and understanding.

He portrays Desmond as quiet, solemn, and devoted. He wishes to serve his country’s military during World War II because he believes he has a moral obligation to do so, but he refuses to kill or even carry a weapon, also in keeping with his moral obligations. When the film hits the battlefield, Garfield’s performance turns wondrously physical as we watch Desmond endure the bodily torment and emotional exhaustion of the war. Regardless of what film Garfield should have been nominated for, his status as an Oscar nominee is unimpeachable, and I cannot wait to see what he does next.

Ryan Gosling for La La Land – I think Gosling is wonderful actor, but I also think sometimes performers get swept up in the Academy love for their films and land nominations that otherwise would have seemed unlikely. Gosling’s performance in La La Land is not among the five best lead actor performances of the year, not while work by the likes of Colin Farrell (The Lobster), Michael Fassbender (The Light Between Oceans), Peter Simonischek (Toni Erdmann), and David Johns (I, Daniel Blake) is out there. This is not meant as a knock on Gosling but more on the Academy.

As jazz pianist Sebastian Wilder, who dreams of opening his own music club someday, Gosling nails the smugness he has in previous efforts while providing just enough softness to make the audience root for this guy. He is fantastic musician, but when we meet him, he refuses to budge even an inch on his artistry, even if to do so would allow him to pay his bills. Many of us have known people like this, and certainly members of the Academy have – or they have been people like this.

Gosling, who is a weaker singer than co-star Emma Stone, excels at playing the film’s romantic elements, deploying his weathered charm and delightful excitability to great effect. However, because the movie revolves around Stone’s character, Gosling is used more like a plot device. Of course, leading women have been playing plot devices in male-driven films for 120 years, but it still leaves Gosling with little to play and little depth to explore. Gosling, who was previously nominated in 2006 for Half-Nelson, will almost certainly return to the show again soon with a performance more indicative of his many talents.

Viggo Mortenson for Captain Fantastic – As a person who tends to see everything, or at least as much of everything as I can, I hesitate to say I studiously avoided this movie. Even in the trailers, its tone felt off, its story treading familiar territory in a manner I would find irksome. For this piece, though, I watched it, and I can say, now having seen it, I found it worse than irksome. It is condescending, mean-spirited, and self-satisfied. The plot is inert and the story structure inept. I found it offensive on every possible level – human, artistic, political, cultural, etc.

Mortenson plays Ben Cash, the leader of a cult – sorry, father of a family – that lives outside of society in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. They read books by firelight and kill deer with their bare hands. They self-righteously declaim American society while doing nothing to change what they correctly identify as systemic inequality and the corrupting influence of big business. Instead, they stand apart from it, above it, looking down on everyone else, identifying problems without offering solutions, which is the worst kind of moral superiority.

Is Mortenson good in the role? Sure, he is fine. Previously nominated for his role as a Russian gangster in Eastern Promises, Mortenson brings to the role the right combination of end-times survivalist crazy and university lit professor sanctimony. Like the film in which he appears, the character is mostly insufferable, but that has nothing to do with Mortenson’s performance and everything to do with writer-director Matt Ross’ script. Ben is also dealing with the death of his wife and the possibility his children will be taken away from him. In these rare human moments, when Ben is more than just a sketch of a person, Mortenson shines.

The final analysis

I want to believe Washington will win this award, and his triumph with the Screen Actors Guild offers some hope. However, that is not the way the season has looked like it would go. Affleck was the critical darling. He beat Washington to the Golden Globe and won the BAFTA, where Washington was not nominated. Washington is also a two-time winner already, while Affleck’s consistent brilliance is of the kind the Academy likes to reward when a performance such as this comes along. I will root for Washington, but Affleck’s win will not be undeserving.

Will win: Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea

Should win: Denzel Washington for Fences

Should have been here: Colin Farrell for The Lobster

Tomorrow: Best Picture

New movie review: The Big Short

Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling star in director Adam McKay's housing crisis comedy-drama The Big Short.

“We’re going to see a dead kid. Maybe it shouldn’t be a party.” – Gordie Lachance in Stand By Me

Screw the people who did this to us. You may recall the housing market crash of seven or eight years ago that essentially flattened the planet. We have a pretty good idea of every individual at the top of every corporation responsible and all their underlings who helped. They are easy to find because instead of ending up in prison, where they rightly belong, they are mostly still running other companies. Those who are not are living secluded dream lives on their millions and millions of dollars. So, yeah, screw ’em.

Co-writer-director Adam McKay’s The Big Short is a snotty, acid-tongued rebuke of all the people and systems that got us into this mess. The film is often a little too smart ass for its own good – perhaps to be expected from the director of Will Ferrell comedies such as Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers – but it is punk-rock, activist filmmaking of the highest order, a grimy, angry takedown of all the liars and bastards who tanked the world economy.

Finn Wittrock and John Magaro in The Big Short.

Written by McKay and Charles Randolph, based in part on the book by Michael Lewis, the script has the notable distinction of having no heroes. There are people you could choose to root for – Michael Burry (Christian Bale), Mark Baum (Steve Carell), Charlie Gellar (John Magaro), or Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) – but let’s not kid ourselves. Regardless of how much concern they show, every main character in this movie is trying to get rich off the destruction of the housing market. It is simply a question of how much guilt will be associated with all that cash.

For a guy like Baum, the answer is a lot of guilt. Baum hates the high-finance world and would dismantle the whole thing if he could, while he also harbors guilt over the suicide of his brother. Gellar and Shipley are two young guys with a small company who see a way to make some money and get in way over their heads. The deeper they go, the darker things get, and the harder the load is to bear on their souls. Burry is an analyst who saw the crash coming from a mile away and just wants his investors to acknowledge he is right so he can make them a lot of money.

Most of these guys are just stumbling their way through the world of Wall Street, trying to make money and come out the other side with their consciences clean – diametrically opposed positions, the film seems to argue. Such is not the case for Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling). He is a shyster who just happens to be right. He tells Baum and his group they can make a killing betting against the traditionally solid housing market, which is what Burry has already told his investors.

The engine that drives the film is the investigation as Baum and his team and Gellar and Shipley set out to determine just how precarious the market is. They put boots on the ground and head to Florida to meet the people hawking and taking these bad loans. They dig into the scary, tragic reality of bankers doing everything they can to undermine the system and prey on the most vulnerable groups of people. As the evidence mounts, it becomes increasingly clear this whole house of cards is set to tumble.

However, it takes a trip to a bankers’ convention in Las Vegas to convince Baum just how beyond repair the situation is. If the film has a soul – it could be argued that it does not – it is Baum, and Carell is magnificent at portraying a man who thinks of himself as fed up, but deep down, he maintains some kind of optimism. This scandal, this fraud, and these crooks are what finally rob him of his hope. By the end of the convention, he is ready to double down on the impending crash. After all, no reasonable person could meet the people at the helm of this ship and foresee any conclusion beyond shipwreck.

Gosling in The Big Short.

McKay and Randolph’s only major misstep is in the character of Vennett, who narrates most of the action. He is smarm incarnate, completely convinced of his own intelligence and shallowly unburdened by guilt or conscience. By giving the film over to this jerk – who it should be said is played to utter perfection by Gosling – the tone of the piece feels off, and the emotional beats the filmmakers work toward do not land the way they otherwise might.

It is commendable that McKay has made an enjoyable film out of a fairly dry topic. You will likely hear of the repeated gimmick of using popular or attractive celebrities to explain complex banking and investment terminology. Margot Robbie in a bubble bath is a particular highlight, as is Selena Gomez at the blackjack table. It is all well and good, and it sure is a lot of fun, but something about the approach just does not sit right with me.

The reality is people lost their homes, their pensions, and their lives. The entire world only now is starting to claw its way back out of the abyss. This was wanton destruction perpetrated by lowlife scum who got away with it because they did not use guns or knives but power and influence. They are the worst kind of criminal. By serving up its information with a side of humor, The Big Short hopefully will help a lot more people understand what really happened to the economy almost a decade ago, but I have trouble laughing along with any of it. The only thing I feel is anger.

See it? Yes.

New movie review: Lost River

Iain De Caestecker stars as Bones in Lost River, the directorial debut of actor Ryan Gosling.

Horror films have long gotten mileage from fear of the unknown. Terror is derived from monsters lurking in the shadows or hiding under the bed or from the creeping sense of dread for what may come or what is already here. Uncertainty is powerful, and sometimes, anticipation alone can be too much to bear. From one moment to the next, we can never be sure whether we are safe or whether something wicked is waiting for us just around the corner.

In some cases, however, the most frightening demons are standing in front of us and hiding in plain sight. Popular wisdom suggests you cannot fight what you cannot see, but what about the enemies everyone sees but refuses to acknowledge? It is hard enough to run from trouble, but escape can prove impossible if your obstacles sit directly in your path to safety.

Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut Lost River is about a great many things, but mostly it is concerned with the ways our lives, our loves, and our dreams can be stolen out from under us in full view of a world that would rather just look away. There is nothing to inoculate us against the menacing forces that seek to cause harm, and the only true security is that which we provide for ourselves.

Fairly or unfairly, there is nowhere in America now that better exemplifies this milieu than Detroit, where Lost River is set and was filmed. Gosling uses the ghosts of the real world to add gravity to the story of a family struggling to survive and desperately clinging to a dream that has clearly transformed into a nightmare for so many others. The opening scene of the movie features a man hurriedly loading his things into a truck and telling the film’s teenage protagonist to get out while he can – easy advice from a man whose bags are already packed.

Lost River tells the parallel stories of Billy (Christina Hendricks from Mad Men and Drive) and her son Bones (Iain De Caestecker of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). Single mother Billy, who has a toddler-aged son in addition to Bones, is trying to keep a roof above her family’s head, but she has fallen behind on her house payments thanks to a bad loan of the kind that led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis. She has no money and no way out but is offered a job by a sinister banker who has come to town to clean up the mess his predecessors left behind.

Bones spends his days gutting homes that have been abandoned and salvaging whatever copper he can to sell. His nights are spent with the neighbor girl, Rat, played by Saoirse Ronan and so named because of her pet rat, though the name could be just as reflective of her place in society. Bones’ activities cause him to run afoul of the self-appointed neighborhood gangster, who deals with agitators by cutting their lips off on the first offense. Presumably, no one dares commit a second offense.

The banker, played by the magnificent Ben Mendelsohn (The Dark Knight Rises, The Place Beyond the Pines), opens a club on the outskirts of town. He tells Billy he has done this in each of the “lost rivers” he has visited. Billy’s job offer consists of simulating self-mutilation on stage for the club’s wealthy clientele. The banker calls it a release for his customers, which it is, but it is also the manifestation of all their impotent rage over what the financial crisis has done to them. For them, this is the next best thing to lashing out in violence.

Meanwhile, Bones discovers a town completely submerged in water, one result of a nearby dam project. The town is so frozen in time that it even features dinosaurs, albeit as part of a prehistoric theme park that once existed there. Rat obsessively views an old educational film reel that was seemingly used to dupe the townspeople into believing the dam would be good for them, while her grandmother is also frozen in time with her own film. Her husband died during the construction of the dam, and she has not spoken since, preferring instead to sit in silence and watch her wedding video over and over.

The grandmother is played by Barbara Steele, a great actress from a number of classic Italian and American horror films. Her presence alone is an homage to some of Gosling’s influences, and much of the film is clearly inspired by the work of Nicolas Winding Refn and Derek Cianfrance, two directors Gosling has collaborated with multiple times. Both are even name-checked in the acknowledgements in the credits. However, while Gosling’s visual style may not be unique – though the photography by the brilliant and underrated Benoît Debie is sumptuous – his script is a densely layered, tightly woven mini-masterpiece.

As with all great films, nothing feels accidental, and even incidental moments are packed with meaning, both in the moment and for future events. Though ideas of right and wrong have lost their meaning in Gosling’s grotesque creation, there is a clearly defined sense of fatalism, in that the wrongs we perpetrate almost inevitably are revisited upon us. Billy, Bones, and Rat are good people trapped in a place with no future, only shadows of the past.

They cling to the lives they have because this is all they have ever known, but the world has conspired to tear all of that apart. Something is coming for them, be it in the form of the town bully, a devious banker, or the universe itself, but something is most definitely coming, so they are forced to choose. They can stand their ground and be destroyed or charge headlong at the monsters moving toward them. They are scared and have every right to be, but when all other roads lead to the slow death of the body and soul, the only choice is to escape.

See it? Yes.