Countdown to the Oscars: Best 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 Actor

The nominees are:

Bradley Cooper in Maestro

Colman Domingo in Rustin

Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers

Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer

Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction

Bradley Cooper in Maestro

A quite silly narrative has built up around Cooper this season, which is that he is desperate for an Academy Award and that desperation is turning off voters. First of all, Cooper has: 1) directed back-to-back Best Picture nominees; 2) starred in eight films nominated for Best Picture; 3) been the lead of one of the most successful comedy franchises of all time (The Hangover trilogy); and 4) as Rocket Raccoon, been a key part of a wildly successful superhero trilogy and the larger universe around those movies. What I’m saying is that Cooper is not desperate for anything.

Furthermore, he wants an Oscar. So what? So does 90 percent of this town. The truly ridiculous part is that it’s not as if he has come out and said definitively how important it may or may not be to him to win one. Cynics simply prefer to read his genuine enthusiasm about the moviemaking process as desperation. But, even if he did just state outright that he wants a little gold statue, I would find that honesty refreshing. Bette Davis once said she’d like to have the record for most Oscars. I love it. More stars should be open with how they feel about winning an Oscar. Might help the show. Certainly couldn’t hurt it.

Cooper is great in a movie I found to be generally lacking, but there’s no lack of effort on his part. It’s all up there on the screen – the hours in the makeup chair, the months learning to conduct, the years to bring this story to theaters. Cooper works hard and he cares. If that’s embarrassing to a certain subset of folks, that sounds more like their problem than his. Cooper has been nominated for Best Actor twice before this for American Sniper and Silver Linings Playbook. He also has a Supporting Actor nod for American Hustle. Cooper’s going to win a statue someday, and that’s going to be a great day for him and for movies.

Colman Domingo in Rustin

From my piece on the best performances of 2023, where Domingo landed at No. 9: “Domingo has always been a chameleon in prominent supporting roles, whether as the menacing pimp in zola or as a beat-down jazz musician in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. At last, with Rustin, he gets a showcase for the full breadth of his talents. As civil rights hero Bayard Rustin, who begs, borrows, and steals to organize the 1963 March on Washington, Domingo never steps wrong. A Broadway star, Domingo knows how to deliver a big speech to the back row, but he is just as good in moments of quiet sadness as he struggles with his identity and a movement that wishes he would sit down and shut up.”

Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers

If I were to ask you how many Academy Award nominations Giamatti has, what number would you say? He’s been turning in fabulous work in popular, critically acclaimed films for nearly three decades now. It’s gotta be four or five or something like that, right? No. The Holdovers is just his second career nomination. The first came in 2006 for Best Supporting Actor for CInderella Man. Before and since then, until now, nothing, though his snub for Sideways remains one of the 21st century’s most baffling Oscars omissions.

The Holdovers is a perfect showcase for Giamatti, who specializes in sadsacks who learn a little something about themselves from the people in their lives. The teacher he plays in this movie opens his heart so gradually that by the time it happens, you can’t understand how you could have misjudged him. The heart, the soul, and the care that drive him, those things were there all along. He just needed a couple other lonely people to show him that they’re worth embracing and sharing. Just lovely work that could only have been done by Giamatti.

Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer

Here’s some of what I wrote when I put Murphy at No. 3 on my list of the top performances of the year: “Every story beat, every thematic thread [director Christopher] Nolan is hoping to pull on, it’s all right there in Murphy’s sunken eyes and gaunt, angular visage. When you’ve got this, you don’t need anything else. The performance, however, is more than that thousand-yard stare you’ve seen a hundred times if you spend any time on the internet at all. It’s also in the frenetic energy Murphy brings to Oppenheimer’s moments of pure inspiration. It’s in the quiet confidence he displays as his world comes crashing down around him. It’s in every moment of the film. Oppenheimer is Nolan’s masterpiece because Oppenheimer is Murphy’s masterpiece.”

Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction

Wright’s Monk and Giamatti’s character in The Holdovers have a lot in common. They’re both teachers who have let their bitterness about the world get in the way of making genuine human connection. They’re both frustrated writers. And, they both just need to let a little love into their lives. The difference is a matter of tone. Where The Holdovers is a quiet dramedy, American Fiction is largely a broad satire. Each man calibrates his performance to the style of the film he’s in beautifully, and it’s no mistake that they have both landed nominations.

For Wright, this first Oscar nod feels like a long time coming. From the first time he practically jumped off the screen as the titular lead of Basquiat in 1996, it was clear Wright was a special talent. Hollywood has mostly limited him to supporting roles in franchises like The Hunger Games, the most recent James Bond flick, and the Robert Pattinson Batman movie. With American Fiction, the spotlight is fully on Wright, and he doesn’t waste a minute of it. We can hope this kicks off a string of great leading roles for the venerable performer.

The final analysis

After Giamatti won the Critics Choice Award and he and Murphy split the Golden Globes, it appeared as though we could be headed for a toss-up here. Then, Murphy won the BAFTA and the SAG award, Oppenheimer won for ensemble, and all the momentum just shifted to Murphy. I don’t know what Giamatti’s future at the Oscars holds. He sure seems like an actor people would like to give one of these statues to, but it’s not going to be this year. This time around, it’s Murphy’s to lose.

Will win: Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer

Should win: Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer

Should have been here: Andrew Scott in All of Us Strangers

A note about my favorite snub: I named Scott’s work in All of Us Strangers the best performance of the year, and it has only grown in my estimation since I wrote about it two months ago. It’s a performance that has the power to shatter you in one moment, then piece you back together in the next. Scott plays the pain and loneliness and longing about as well as anyone ever has, but Andrew Haigh’s film is ultimately about hope and letting love guide our lives. Scott hits these notes perfectly, as well, and there is never a time when we are not right there with the character, rooting for him through every beautiful, heartbreaking moment.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actor

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best Actor

The nominees are:

Austin Butler in Elvis

Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inisherin

Brendan Fraser in The Whale

Paul Mescal in Aftersun

Bill Nighy in Living

Though I feel pretty good about my prediction in this category, I cannot guarantee who will win. However, I can with a good deal of certainty guarantee none of the five nominees will rush the stage to slap a presenter during the show. Of course, I would have said the same thing before last year’s show, and I would have been wrong. So, let’s see what happens.

Austin Butler in Elvis – The Academy does not really deserve its reputation for being obsessed with performers portraying real people. Over the past 50 years of Best Actor and Actress, the Academy has handed out 100 statues. Exactly 33 of those have gone to performers playing real people, which means fully two-thirds of the time, the award goes to an actor bringing to life a fictional character.

The reputation persists, I think, because the ones we remember tend to be the most egregious examples, like Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody or Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything. No one complains when Daniel Day-Lewis wins for Lincoln or Will Smith (slap aside) for King Richard. Butler will slot pretty easily into the latter category for his full-bodied imitation of Elvis Pressley. It is an excellent performance and probably the saving grace of Baz Luhrmann’s otherwise mediocre Elvis. For a movie that goes wrong in so many ways, Butler is worth the price of admission.

Brendan Fraser in The Whale – If you follow this stuff at all, you know Fraser’s story. It has been written about extensively all over the place. In interviews, on red carpets, and in speeches, Fraser never comes off as anything but genuine and humble, grateful for the praise but a little bewildered by it all. His return to fame is one of the few positive things that has come out of internet nostalgia culture. Millennials who grew up on George of the Jungle and The Mummy have plastered Fraser everywhere on social media as a cause celebre. You may have seen the bumper stickers.

The lead role of Charlie in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale is a fascinating part for the once-upon-a-time matinee idol. Buried beneath layers of makeup and CGI, Fraser brings you into the world of a morbidly obese man who cannot forgive himself for things he has done and has essentially decided to die. But even in that state, he seeks ways to connect to his daughter and pass along a message of hope, kindness, and generosity. Fraser plays this one for the people in the back row, but it is actually perfectly attuned to the frequency of the film around him. He’s back, like he never left.

Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inisherin – This is the best performance of the year for me. The entire ensemble of The Banshees of Inisherin is doing tremendous work, but Farrell is transcendent. It would be condescending to suggest we didn’t know he was capable of this. He’s been great in plenty over the years, from Minority Report and The New World to In Bruges and The Lobster, but this is the best he has ever been. It’s a performance that proves his best is better than most.

Watch the way Farrell’s Pádraic reacts at the inciting incident of the film. Brendan Gleeson’s Colm tells him he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, and in two seconds, without saying a word, Farrell communicates everything – the pain, the incomprehension, the disbelief. It washes over in waves, and we feel it with him. The events of the film feel silly at first, but the movie works because Farrell never treats them as such. This is deadly serious for Pádraic. And as things get darker and darker, Farrell is already there, waiting for the audience to catch up to him.

Paul Mescal in Aftersun – When the Academy Award nominations were announced, Mescal was in London, playing Stanley Kowalski in a West End revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. That’s a great part for him, and it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine the young actor following in the footsteps of Marlon Brando in becoming one of the “It” actors of his generation. That’s a lot to put on a 27-year-old performer, but those are the kinds of comparisons you draw when you are Oscar nominated for just your second feature film.

Charlotte Wells’ elegant little coming-of-age drama follows young dad Calum (Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter, Sophie (Frankie Corio), on their Turkish holiday. He is doing the best he can to be a father to this adolescent girl, but he is struggling, as he barely knows who he is, let alone how to understand his preteen daughter. Mescal brings depth and compassion to the role that would be difficult for a seasoned performer to convey. But, here he is in his first leading role, announcing himself as an actor to watch for a long time to come.

Bill Nighy in Living – On the flipside of that coin, we have the 73-year-old Nighy, who was 20 when he first performed Tennessee Williams on the British stage in 1969, some 53 years before Mescal got to it. His long film career has run the gamut from Shaun of the Dead to Love Actually to a key role in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. He has truly done it all, and yet, this is his first Academy Award nomination.

It would be easy to dismiss this nomination as a lifetime achievement nod, but that would be to ignore the work Nighy is actually doing in this film. It is no easy feat to step into the shoes of Takashi Shimura, the legendary Japanese actor, for a remake of one of Akira Kurosawa’s most revered films, about a dying bureaucrat looking to find some meaning in his final days. Nighy puts a uniquely British spin on the part while never losing the soul of the material. He carries the longing and regret of his years with him in everything he does, and in the film’s closing moments, borrowed from the Kurosawa film, we see that weight lifted and we finally view the man who once was.

The final analysis

Many Oscars prognosticators would have you believe this is a closer race than it is, particularly after Brendan Fraser’s triumph at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. But, if 2020 taught us anything, it taught us you can’t trust SAG when it comes to this one. That was the now-infamous Chadwick Boseman-Anthony Hopkins year. Boseman was a sure thing, especially after the posthumous recognition from his peers. And, that was true right up to the moment the 2020 Academy Awards ceremony ended with Hopkins’ name being read and Hopkins being prevented from accepting via Zoom call. It was a weird time.

In any event, Fraser has not received near the acclaim Boseman did in the runup to that ceremony. Butler won the BAFTA, he won the Golden Globe, and his rising star has shown no signs of slowing at any point this season. In my view, Butler is running away with this thing.

The only potential spoiler could come in the form of Colin Farrell sneaking up the middle if Fraser and Butler split the vote. That scenario is pretty rare, but many have used it to explain the 2002 Oscars when Adrian Brody won for The Pianist, beating out Jack Nicholson (About Schmidt) and Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York), who were considered neck and neck for the award. If it happens, it will make me as happy as anything else Sunday night is likely to make me, but I won’t hold my breath.

Will win: Austin Butler in Elvis

Should win: Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inisherin

Should have been here: Felix Kammerer in All Quiet on the Western Front

A note about my favorite snub: All Quiet on the Western Front is entirely Paul’s story. He is our guide into the abyss. If that central performance doesn’t work, the whole thing falls apart. Luckily, Felix Kammerer is more than up to the task. Paul’s transformation from fresh-faced teen to shell-shocked vet is brutal, heartbreaking, and all too real, and Kammerer makes us feel every ounce of his pain.

Next time: Best Actress

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

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actor

Leonardo DiCaprio is the frontrunner for Best Actor for his performance in The Revenant.

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 this month for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories.

Best Actor

The nominees are:

Bryan Cranston for Trumbo

Matt Damon for The Martian

Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant

Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs

Eddie Redmayne for The Danish Girl

You cannot stop a moving train, especially when this particular train has been picking up steam for more than two years now. The world wants to see DiCaprio win an Oscar. The Internet certainly does, and for the first time, it seems like the Academy is coming around to that view as well. For the most part, this started two years ago when DiCaprio’s The Wolf of Wall Street performance lost out to Matthew McConaughey’s more traditional work in Dallas Buyers Club.

There are other exceptional performances this year – Fassbender and Cranston are particularly memorable – but there is no other narrative as strong as the one building up around DiCaprio. Damon and Redmayne have already won Oscars. Cranston is beloved, but he is a first-time nominee. Fassbender, like DiCaprio a generation-defining talent, will have other chances. No, the story is DiCaprio and his long-overdue recognition as one of the best in the business.

Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant – In reality, the obsession with DiCaprio winning an Oscar started long before The Wolf of Wall Street. DiCaprio has been one of the biggest stars in the world for nearly 20 years, but even before Titanic rocketed him to superstardom, he was an Oscar nominee for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? Many felt he was snubbed for Titanic, and in some quarters, a narrative built up that Academy members might consider DiCaprio too much of a pretty boy whose success was derived from looks and youth more than talent.

However, DiCaprio made smart choice after smart choice, rarely faltering in the projects he championed and never turning in a bad performance. His nominated work on The Aviator and Blood Diamond, as well as The Departed and Shutter Island, showed an actor willing to dig into the psyches of his characters and deliver raw, visceral experiences onscreen. We associate “getting ugly” with Best Actress winners – such as Charlize Theron in Monster or Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball – but the phenomenon is just as real for Best Actor. Consider McConaughey, Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland, and Adrian Brody in The Pianist.

Well, DiCaprio not only “gets ugly” in The Revenant, but he goes feral, eating raw bison liver and subjecting himself to the many hardships of the frontier all in order to bring the story of Hugh Glass to life. However, this is more than a physical stunt. It is a searing, emotional portrait of a man betrayed, adrift, and alone. DiCaprio has never been better, and no other leading actor this year was this good. He will win, and in at least one respect, all will seem right.

Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs – Interestingly, the last time Fassbender was nominated, he lost Best Supporting Actor for his performance in 12 Years a Slave to McConaughey’s Dallas Buyers Club co-star Jared Leto. I would have gone the other way, but at least the Academy’s choice was defensible. What is not defensible is the fact that Fassbender is on just his second nomination after incomparable work in films such as Hunger, Shame, and Frank. Oh well, he is in the club now, and he will keep coming back because there is no other actor like him working today.

Director Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs is a frustrating movie with a number of fine elements teetering on the edge but never tipping over into greatness because the whole exercise feels just a little too self-conscious. Fassbender, however, is scintillating as the title character, a business genius whose personal life is in shambles. He creates chaos everywhere he goes, but because he sits in the eye of the storm, everything seems perfectly clear to him. Fassbender brings out the frustration and rage of someone who believes he is better than everyone else and cannot tolerate playing down to their level.

Bryan Cranston for Trumbo – Speaking of frustration and rage, we also have Cranston’s blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. A brilliant wordsmith, Trumbo was persecuted for his political beliefs, and rather than back down, he fought back with his typewriter. He refused to let the system shut him up and stood up to become a hero for freedom of expression. The great thing about Cranston’s performance is that he does not play Trumbo as a hero. Instead, he shows us a man annoyed by the stupidity and bigotry he must endure. He battles because it is in his nature to fight. He just happens to be fighting for a righteous cause.

Cranston is a beloved and respected figure in the industry. Though he is mostly known for his television work on Breaking Bad, for which he won four Emmys and a Golden Globe, Cranston has proven to be a popular character actor in films such as Drive, Argo, and Little Miss Sunshine. He is even the best part of the otherwise disposable Godzilla remake from 2014. In his first true leading film role, he knocks it out of the park. He will continue to be a force in this industry for as long as he wants, but this will not be the year he wins an Oscar.

Matt Damon for The Martian – Damon was the nominee about whom no one was really certain. There were a few other options hanging around the edges of the season such as Johnny Depp in Black Mass and Will Smith in Concussion, but ultimately, Damon prevailed. Looking back, it should not be that shocking – and if I can toot my own horn, this is the exact lineup I predicted in this category back at the beginning of December.

Damon carries The Martian on his shoulders entirely. The scenes back on Earth with the NASA team and everyone else are important to the plot of course, but the movie does not work without a tremendous actor playing Mark Watney, the man stranded on Mars. Damon is the perfect combination of brainy, funny, and sympathetic to pull off this role. Even in dire circumstances, he remains fun to watch because he gives the character a spark of mischievousness to counteract the seriousness of the situation. Everything we feel when watching The Martian is because Damon is able to bring those feelings out in us.

Eddie Redmayne for The Danish Girl – If Redmayne had not won this award just last year for The Theory of Everything, this awards race might have been a little closer. Indeed, some were positing that Redmayne could become the first back-to-back Best Actor winner since Tom Hanks in 1993-94 and just the third ever. Alas, The Danish Girl did not catch fire, either at the box office or with the industry, meaning Redmayne’s work does not have the necessary heat to make history at the Oscars.

The work is solid, and it is mesmerizing to watch Redmayne make the transition from portraying a confused man to a man becoming a woman and finally to the woman that man always was. Redmayne finds a number of subtle notes to play in the transformation, and with his guidance, the audience is never at a loss to understand the character. By the end, Redmayne simply becomes Lili, and it is as if that is how it was always meant to be.

The final analysis

There is not much else to say. Cranston and Fassbender each picked up some early critics’ awards, but that was before the locomotive that is DiCaprio in The Revenant pulled out of the station. Since then, DiCaprio has taken everything in sight – the Golden Globe, the Screen Actors Guild Award, and the BAFTA, among others. When he wins an Academy Award next Sunday, it will be one of my favorite moments in Oscar history, watching my favorite actor accept an award he richly deserves.

Will win: Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant

Should win: Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant

Should have been here: Tom Courtenay for 45 Years

Tomorrow: Best Documentary

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actor

Eddie Redmayne is the frontrunner for Best Actor for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.

Each day as we make our way to the Academy Awards ceremony Feb. 22, Last Cinema Standing will take an in-depth look at each of the categories, sorting out the highs, the lows, and everything in between. Check back right here for analysis, predictions, and gripes as we inch toward the Dolby Theater and that world-famous red carpet.

Best Actor

The nominees are:

Bradley Cooper for American Sniper

Michael Keaton for Birdman

Steve Carell for Foxcatcher

Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game

Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything

Best Actor is easily the most stacked category every year, with a ton of worthy contenders and too few spots to put them in. This year, for instance, you could put together a list of great performances that would make a tremendous list of nominees without including a single one of the actual nominees. As a thought experiment, here is my alternative list: Jake Gyllenhaal for Nightcrawler; Timothy Spall for Mr. Turner; Brendan Gleeson for Calvary; David Oyelowo for Selma; and Phillip Seymour Hoffman for A Most Wanted Man.

I could go on like this all day with Oscar Isaac in A Most Violent Year, John Lithgow in Love Is Strange, Joaquin Phoenix in Inherent Vice, Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood, Aleksey Serebryakov in Leviathan, and on and on and on. The point is that while the five nominated performances are each fantastic in their own right, the Best Actor category at the Oscars is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the best performances of the year. It is not just this year either, as similarly long lists could be made for any year. If you want to talk about Best Actress, it could fall the same way, though the contender field there is often unfairly narrow, and that is a good discussion to have another day.

What we have, then, are the five performances Academy members liked best, and all credit to them, they liked some damn good performances. Maybe most remarkable is that four of the five nominees, including the two frontrunners, are first-time nominees. None of these actors has won an Academy Award before. In fact, this is the only acting category this year not to feature a previous winner. The last time not one of the nominees was a previous winner was in 2006, so no matter who wins, it will be a history-making night for someone.

Michael Keaton for Birdman – No one in the Best Actor category this year had the same task as Keaton. While the other four nominees were all playing real people – meaning they had books, interviews, videos, etc., to base their performances on – Keaton created a whole new person from just the words on the page. Great words though they may be, they mean nothing without Keaton’s incomparable contribution. He is the heart and soul of Birdman, the burning fire at the center of the film. His performance lends poignancy, gravitas, and humanity to an otherwise caustically satirical endeavor.

Keaton is Riggan Thompson, not because of who he is in life but because of who he is as an actor. Keaton is not great as Thompson because he once played Batman and Thompson once played a Batman-like superhero called Birdman. A lot of actors have played superheroes at one time or another, and more now than ever before, but no other actor could have brought the deep wells of pain and anguish that Keaton brings to the part. This is not a case of stunt casting. It is an instance of casting the perfect actor in the role of a lifetime.

Keaton embraces all of the flaws and contradictions of a man who just wants to be seen as an artist but who has a history of selling out that goal. Every time he walks on stage, he takes with him the hurt of a failed marriage, a washed up career, and a lack of respect. Birdman does not tell the story of a man overcoming all these grievances but of a man who finally channels these grievances into the art he so desperately wishes to make. The words of the writers create this world, but it is Keaton who makes them fly off the page.

Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything – In a relatively brief career, Redmayne has been involved in a number of highly prestigious projects, including Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables, My Week with Marilyn, and The Good Shepherd, but perhaps none has carried more inherent prestige than this biopic of Stephen Hawking. For The Theory of Everything, Redmayne takes on the unenviable task of portraying a famous and beloved figure who is still very much alive and very much in the public consciousness.

Redmayne handles the project by going above and beyond the call of duty and does not so much play Hawking as become him. He has the look, the walk, and the attitude of a man whose body keeps him trapped but whose mind takes him places the rest of us could not even dream about. Characters with disabilities have always been seen somewhat derisively as Oscar bait, but Redmayne does not attempt to milk Hawking’s motor neuron disease for pathos. Instead, he treats it as a fact of life to be dealt with and overcome so that he may attend to more important matters.

In the film’s best scene – and one of the best scenes of the year – Hawking becomes frustrated that he cannot keep up with the pace of a dinner with friends and excuses himself from the table. He attempts to climb the stairs but collapses. He cannot go up or down. Then, he sees his son standing at the top of the stairs behind a safety gate, but the son does not seem as locked in as Hawking in this moment. He tries to reach out to his child, but he cannot connect with him. Redmayne is able to show us this haunting and tragic moment with his body, but he makes us understand it with the longing and despair on his face.

Bradley Cooper for American Sniper – Cooper is the only previous Oscar nominee in this group, and he has been nominated in three consecutive years – for Best Actor in 2012 for Silver Linings Playbook, for Best Supporting Actor last year for American Hustle, and this year. It has been a kind of remarkable career transformation for Cooper, whom many of us first took notice of in The Hangover, though if you are a David Wain fan, you were enjoying Cooper’s comedy chops as far back as Wet Hot American Summer in 2001.

American Sniper was a passion project of Cooper’s, something he has wanted to bring to the screen for years. He chased it through numerous directors and production delays until he and director Clint Eastwood were finally able to bring the story of Chris Kyle to the screen. Cooper’s passion behind the scenes is clearly matched by his dedication on screen, as he transforms himself into a U.S. Navy SEAL.

Cooper has charisma to burn, but here, he channels that energy into a man who has a deep love for his country and an abiding need to defend it but for whom the horror of war gradually begins to take its toll. Cooper looks appropriately warrior-like in his action scenes, but when you watch him at home, that is where the real work appears. Cooper absolutely embodies a man who leaves a piece of his soul on the battlefield every time he goes out and who must fight to keep what he has left when there is no more war to fight.

Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game – Cumberbatch’s Best Actor case is an interesting one. On one level, he is fantastic in the film as mathematics genius and British war hero Alan Turing, but on another, taken out of the context of The Imitation Game, the performance feels like another in a string of recent performances by actors using the same set of tricks to portray a character who is clearly on the autism spectrum. Cumberbatch, himself, does a riff on the autistic genius who does not get along so well with people on his television show Sherlock. It is a trope that has become commonplace in modern storytelling, so how to judge Cumberbatch’s work here?

Objectively, it is an undeniably solid performance. Given a character who has difficulty showing emotion and who lives so much inside his own head, Cumberbatch communicates a world of feeling and soul simply with his body language and facial expressions. Really, Cumberbatch is marvelous as Turing. The problem is that Turing is not a well written character in the film. Because the character shows little depth, writer Graham Motion does not imbue him with any. Whatever depth we sense in Turing is thanks to Cumberbatch’s excellent portrayal.

Steve Carell for Foxcatcher – Let’s try not to make this about a comedic actor impressing everyone by going dramatic. In the first place, it has been done before with great success, and more than that, Carell already has a demonstrated facility with dramatic acting, even in ostensible comedies such as Little Miss Sunshine and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. So, it would be great if we could all stop acting so surprised Carell was able to pull off such a magnificent portrayal of a mentally disturbed millionaire in Foxcatcher. He is a great actor, and that is what actors do.

John du Pont, as played by Carell, is a man devoid of either heart or soul. His ghostly pallor suggests a body drained of blood. What he subsists on is power, and he wields it like the only weapon he has. He is an impossibly careful man who speaks with a slow, deliberate cadence and does not so much walk as shuffle. Appearances are everything for him, and the worst fate that could befall him is to be perceived as weak or incompetent. Carell embraces the character as only a gifted actor could and pulls the nearly impossible trick of making a wealthy psychopath understandable, if not sympathetic.

The final analysis

It will be Keaton and Redmayne down to the wire, and Redmayne has a slight advantage, having won the Screen Actors Guild award and the British Academy of Film and Television award. Each won a Golden Globe – Keaton in comedy and Redmayne in drama. Early in the season, some thought Redmayne and Cumberbatch might split the British genius vote, paving the way for a Keaton win, but Cumberbatch’s campaign never materialized. Now, some are theorizing that Keaton and Redmayne may split the vote and clear a path for Cooper to win.

I never have really subscribed to the idea that a split vote could lead to a surprise winner. For that to be true, the third candidate would have to have as much support as the two leaders without losing any votes to them. The math just does not seem to work. I would love to see Keaton onstage accepting an Oscar. It would be one of the highlights of my night. However, all signs point to Redmayne winning for his transformative portrayal of Hawking, and it is hard to argue with that.

Will win: Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything

Should win: Michael Keaton for Birdman

Wish he had been here: Jake Gyllenhaal for Nightcrawler