Countdown to the Oscars: Best Supporting 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 Supporting Actor

The nominees are:

Brendan Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin

Brian Tyree Henry in Causeway

Judd Hirsch in The Fabelmans

Barry Keoghan in The Banshees of Inisherin

Ke Huy Quan in Everything Everywhere All at Once

The acting categories are truly exciting this year. It is rare that we have this much drama in four of the biggest awards of the night. I love it. Last year, I broke down the previous 15 years of winners across all four acting categories. Across 60 winners, there were at most eight that could even be considered surprising, and the real number is probably closer to three or four.

Last year was about as bland as they come with Jessica Chastain, Will Smith, Ariana DeBose, and Troy Kotsur sweeping their way to the Academy Awards stage with virtually no (pre-show) drama. I am not saying they were not deserving winners, particularly DeBose and Kotsur, but I am saying they were predictable. And, that’s not a healthy place to be for the future of this awards show.

This year, on the other hand, there’s drama all down the line. Actress is a toss-up between two worthy performers. Supporting Actress is a free-for-all. Actor is a fight to the finish between the up-and-comer and a comeback story for the ages. And, while Supporting Actor seems the most locked of any of them, there is one little stat that stands in the way of predicting a clean sweep for the frontrunner. Exciting stuff. Let’s get to it.

Ke Huy Quan in Everything Everywhere All at Once – As much as I might prefer other performances in this category, it’s hard not to be happy for Quan. It’s the comeback of a lifetime. Even Brendan Fraser has been working steadily overseas and on television. Quan was all but out of the game. Before making Finding ‘Ohana in 2021, he had not acted in a feature film since 2002. It’s a cliché, but the put-upon husband/universe-hopping secret agent Waymond Wang is the role of a lifetime, and Quan did not miss his chance to leave a mark.

Though the script often leaves the actors high and dry, Quan makes the most out of what he’s given. Whether in the In the Mood for Love-style romantic drama pastiche or the Matrix-style fight sequences, Quan rises above the mess around him and pulls real emotion out of a character that’s pretty one-note on paper. Quan has already filmed the next Russo Brothers movie – a sci-fi action adventure movie, if you can believe it – and I’m sure he’s great in it. But, here’s hoping all this attention nets him some opportunities to dig into some real characters.

Barry Keoghan in The Banshees of Inisherin – Keoghan has been unforgettable in every movie he has appeared in. Whether in scene-stealing bit parts like The Green Knight or weightier supporting roles like Dunkirk, he brings an unmistakable blend of intensity and vulnerability to every role he plays. Though he had been around for a few years, I first noticed him in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer as an implacable villain hellbent on revenge. I called it the best supporting performance of 2017. He outdoes himself in The Banshees of Inisherin.

We have seen the village idiot character in plenty of movies before but never portrayed with this much pain and pathos. Keoghan plays Dominic as a man bound by circumstance, good-hearted in a cruel world, not wholly innocent but moral in his way. There is a gentleness to everything Keoghan does in the role, a touch so light you wonder if you felt it – that is until the tears start falling. It is a beautiful piece of acting, and I look forward to many more years of Keoghan’s work.

Brendan Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin – If we’re being honest, Gleeson is really more of a co-lead with Colin Farrell in this picture, but Farrell is the movie star, and Gleeson is the character actor, so it was always going to go this way. Regardless, Gleeson is perfect in The Banshees of Inisherin as a musician who just wants to use the time he has left composing songs and thinking about the weightier aspects of life.

Gleeson is an actor’s actor, great in everything he does, but he has been at his best working with Martin McDonagh and McDonagh’s brother, John Michael McDonagh. Between the two filmmakers, Gleeson has appeared in four features and an Oscar-winning short, and they comprise the best work of the performer’s long career. Maybe it’s because they’re countrymen, or because Gleeson just understands the rhythms of their writing, but whatever it is, it’s magic.

Brian Tyree Henry in Causeway – Because of the vagaries of moviemaking and the way release dates can shift around, sometimes an actor who has been working a while will seem to burst on the scene and be everywhere. I think a lot about 2011, when Jessica Chastain had Take Shelter, The Tree of Life, and The Help all come out within a few months of each other. Henry experienced that to the nth degree in 2018, when he had seven movies in which he appeared come out in theaters. His brilliance in Widows and If Beale Street Could Talk could not be denied, and it has all led up to this.

Causeway is a strange little film. It was sold to audiences as something of a comeback for Jennifer Lawrenece, but Henry steals every scene they’re in together. He doesn’t get a ton to do in the film – honestly, neither of them does – but he does what he can as a mechanic who befriends Lawrence’s wounded war veteran. It is an understated performance, but if the movie works at all for you, it is because Henry grounds the events in an emotional reality that brings you into the characters’ world.

Judd Hirsch in The Fabelmans – Hirsch has already made Oscars history with this nomination, breaking none other than Henry Fonda’s record for the longest gap between Academy Award nominations. Fonda went 41 years between his nods for The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and On Golden Pond (1981). Hirsch’s previous nomination came for Ordinary People in 1980, 42 years ago. Hirsch is also now the second-oldest acting nominee ever at 87 years old. He is three months younger than Christopher Plummer was when he was nominated for Supporting Actor in 2018 for All the Money in the World.

With this nomination, Hirsch adds his name to the list of one-scene wonders to strike it big with the Academy, joining the likes of Ned Beatty in Network and William Hurt in A History of Violence. Hirsch is only in The Fabelmans for a few minutes, but as Great Uncle Boris, he delivers the central theme of the movie to little Sammy Fabelman and makes plain the conflict that will haunt Sammy (and Steven Spielberg) for the rest of his life. Art or family? Family or art? It’s quick and to the point, and Hirsh holds nothing back.

The final analysis

I have talked a lot over the years about the BAFTAs as the best predictor for the acting categories at the Academy Awards. I have never felt less sure about that than this year, and that uncertainty holds across all four acting categories. So, bear with me as I feel this out.

Quan has won basically everything of importance, except the BAFTA. He has given humble, heartwarming speeches every time he has been given the opportunity. He is somebody for whom his fellow actors root. Everything Everywhere All at Once appears to be a merciless frontrunner for Best Picture, gobbling up every other award it is within striking distance of. I see no good reason why Quan won’t win this in a walk.

That said, Keoghan did win the BAFTA. Over the past 10 years, the BAFTAs have matched the Oscars in Supporting Actor eight out of 10 times. The two that didn’t: Barkhad Abdi won the BAFTA for Captain Phillips in 2013, while Oscar winner Jared Leto wasn’t even nominated by the Brits for Dallas Buyers Club; then, in 2016, Dev Patel won the BAFTA for Lion, while Mahershala Ali went on to win his first award for his work in the Best Picture-winning Moonlight.

In the past five years, they have matched every time. But, this year feels much more like 2016, doesn’t it? Patel is a beloved British star who did career-best work in Lion, much like the Irish Keoghan delivering his best work in a movie the Brits liked quite a bit more than they liked Everything Everywhere All at Once. Meanwhile, Ali was the heart and soul of the movie that went on to win the top prize, much like Quan is for this year’s Best Picture frontrunner. Never mind that Keoghan actually delivers the best performance of the group. The winner will be Quan.

Will win: Ke Huy Quan in Everything Everywhere All at Once

Should win: Barry Keoghan in The Banshees of Inisherin

Should have been here: Nicolas Hoult in The Menu

A note about my favorite snub: As the amateur foodie who gets taken down a peg, Nicolas Hoult is pitch perfect in The Menu. He is exactly the right kind of infuriating, making you root for his downfall throughout the whole film. Then, when it comes, Hoult turns it around and actually makes you feel bad for the fate that will befall him.

Next time: Supporting Actress

Year in Review: Top 10 Performances

New blood is vital to the film industry – young storytellers with no fear of failure and young actors with the energy and spark to try anything. Young people are great for the arts because they do not know any better. Certain things should not work and sometimes probably should not even be attempted, but if you are starting at the bottom and there is nowhere to go but up, taking the biggest risk you can is really the only plan.

That having been said, this list of performers is almost all seasoned veterans. As I wrote Tuesday in the Best & Worst feature, when established actors take chances, there is little more invigorating. Two of the actors I mentioned in that piece top this list. Acting is often associated with vanity and beauty and all their related issues, but that is not what I associate with art. Art is ugly, dangerous, and confrontational. It should scream out for recognition from its core, not its surface. The following performances cry out for attention because they come from places of pain and truth, usually buried deep inside but unearthed by these fantastic performers.

Before we move on to the list, here are five more performances worth checking out: Katherine Waterston in Inherent Vice; Mark Ruffalo in Foxcatcher; Andy Serkis in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes; Mia Wasikowska in Tracks; and Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything.

10. Chris O’Dowd in Calvary

Of all the lost souls Father James encounters over the course of Calvary, Jack Brennan, played by Chris O’Dowd, seems both the most lost and the most in need of being found again. O’Dowd embodies this contradiction with grace and subtlety. Many of you will know him only from his comedy work, in particular as Kristen Wiig’s love interest in Bridesmaids, but this performance is about a thousand miles removed from anything like that. Here, O’Dowd brilliantly captures the soul of a desperate man in search of anything to repair the damage done to his life.  

9. Michael Keaton in Birdman

There is certainly a meta-cinematic angle at play in Michael Keaton’s performance in Birdman, with Keaton, a former megastar for playing Batman in the early 1990s, playing a washed-up former superhero-movie star. That reading of the film exists and is fun to ponder, but it does a disservice to the edgy, complex character Keaton creates in Birdman. He is not Riggan Thompson, but he understands him on a level none of us could hope to. That some may be unable to distinguish the two is a credit to Keaton’s performance.

8. Lisa Loven Kongsli in Force Majeure

Forgive the play on words, but Lisa Loven Kongsli’s performance in Force Majeure is a tour de force. I have already written a bit about her work in the film (here), but it bears repeating. Kongsli is a relatively untested film actress with only a handful of features to her name, but she is the beating heart and wounded soul of Ruben Östlund’s black comedy. Her contribution is nothing short of a miracle, and though there are flashier roles on this list, Kongsli is the one who does the most with the least. While the rest of her family’s world spins out of control, she is the one left to sort out the pieces, and as she does, Kongsli invests the character with sharp wit, cool calculation, and deep empathy.

7. Julianne Moore in Still Alice

Julianne Moore is among the most reliable actresses working in the business today. Even when the films around her are lacking, she devotes herself fully to her craft. Still Alice is a film worthy of that devotion, and Moore does not disappoint. She plays a brilliant woman struck in her prime by early-onset Alzheimer’s. We see her at her best and at her worst as the disease ravages her mind, and through it all, Moore gives us the full picture of a woman who loses everything she held dear but only rarely has the faculties to realize it. It is devastating, immaculate work of the kind we have come to expect from Moore but should treasure none the less.

6. Brendan Gleeson in Calvary

With every performance, Brendan Gleeson just gets better and better, such that I hasten to call Calvary his career-topping work because he is capable of magnificence every time he appears on screen. It is enough, then, to say this is his best so far. He plays Father James, a Catholic priest in a town without faith. The locals try to beat him down and bring him to their level, but they cannot. His large build commands attention wherever he is in the frame, so even as the townspeople try to belittle him, it is bred into his DNA that he will stand tall. Gleeson is expert at using his body as part of the character, imposing his will simply by being imposing, though the town continues to slip from him.

5. Philip Seymour Hoffman in A Most Wanted Man

It is impossible to discuss Philip Seymour Hoffman’s work in A Most Wanted Man without feeling the pangs of sadness at the knowledge we will never see him lead a film again. Though the despair will linger, we have the work, and his final starring turn is among the best work he ever did. As a German intelligence officer tasked with preventing terrorist attacks, Hoffman has the walk, the talk, and the weary energy of a man who has been at this too long but who does not know what else to do. The character is built in silence, as Hoffman slumps his shoulders, shuffles his feet, and scrunches up his face to clue us in to who this man was and is. It is a masterclass in subtlety and understatement, and when he finally does erupt, we remember what made Hoffman so great, and we feel sad once more.

4. Michael Fassbender in Frank

With Hoffman gone, the title for “best actor of his generation” is up for grabs, and if I am on the nominating committee, Michael Fassbender gets my vote with no runner-up. From Shame to Hunger to 12 Years a Slave, Fassbender has proved time and again that he can grasp the soul of pain and reflect it back to us through film. How refreshing, then, to see him pull a complete 180-degree turn from anything he has done before. As Frank, the leader singer of the best band you will never hear of, Fassbender drips pure joy and manic energy. With his face covered nearly every minute he is on screen, Fassbender conveys everything he needs to with his body and his voice. Even behind a mask, the character is nothing less than fully present, and that is thanks to Fassbender’s tremendous talent.

3. Timothy Spall in Mr. Turner

 This may well be the definitive portrait of the artist as an old man. JMW Turner has reached the pinnacle of his profession, then watches it all fade into nothing. As Turner, Spall captures essence of the highs and the lows, the successes and indignities, as he takes us on a 25-year journey through the character’s life. What makes it all the more remarkable is that Turner, while notoriously prickly, is the least expressive character in the film. He communicates by grunts, grumbles, and grimaces, yet through Spall, the audience experiences the full range of emotions of a man whose surface rarely changes but whose feelings run as deep as anyone’s.

2. Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler

No one transformed himself more for a role this year than Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler. As Louis Bloom, the logical result of a gold-star, self-esteem culture manifested in human form, Gyllenhaal is unrecognizable. He is a gaunt, angular, predator of the night, preying on the pain of others with no moral compass to guide him through the darkness. He is not evil. He is worse. He is a sociopath who sees the world as his inheritance. His persistence and self-belief are his weapons, and he wields them expertly.

From 2013’s Prisoners to Enemy earlier in 2014 to Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal has taken on the kinds of roles other actors in his position would shun. At this point in his career, he could do anything he wants. In choosing these parts, Gyllenhaal is reaffirming a commitment to craft over commerce, and that will always be commendable.

1. Charlotte Gainsbourg in Nymphomaniac

Though she has been acting for 30 years, you may not be familiar with Charlotte Gainsbourg, and that is okay. If pressed to name the most popular films she has appeared in, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 21 Grams and Michel Gondry’s Science of Sleep would probably top the list. As much as she might deserve to be, she will never be one of the most famous actors in Hollywood. However, she is one of the most adventurous, passionate actors you will ever see on screen.

I have written before about her collaborations with director Lars von Trier. He makes dense, angry, challenging films about dense, angry, challenging people. In von Trier, Gainsbourg has found an ideal partner, and together, they have stretched the perception of what is possible in film acting. As a sex addict whose addiction has finally gotten the best of her in Nymphomaniac, Gainsbourg elevates her performance to the level of art, then transcends that. She is a walking, talking totem to pain, misery, and disappointment, all of which ooze out of every pore. When we talk about performances that scream out from their cores, this is what we mean. This is the best performance of the year.

Check back tomorrow as Last Cinema Standing's Year in Review concludes with the Top 10 Films of the Year.

New movie review: Calvary

Father James, as played by Brendan Gleeson, prays in a scene from Calvary.

The damage has already been done. When John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary opens, the past has already set the future in motion, and the present has no say in what is to come. McDonagh’s script has many preoccupations – religion, guilt, and forgiveness among them – but at its core, it is about inevitability and struggling to live a good life in the face impending doom.

Brendan Gleeson plays Father James, a Catholic priest in an Irish town that has seemingly lost faith, if it ever had it to begin with. The members of his flock dutifully attend church and take communion, but they are going through the motions. In confessional, one member threatens to kill Father James for crimes the Church has committed.

The unseen church-goer was sexually abused as a child by his priest, who has since died. But, he does not want revenge on a bad priest. With chilling certainty, he tells Father James there is no message but vengeance in killing an evil person, and instead, he will kill a good priest. That will make news, he reasons. Father James is a good priest and a good man. No one – not even among the faithless – refutes this, but his own goodness can redeem neither the town nor the Church.

This is McDonagh’s second film, following 2011’s excellent The Guard. Apart from sharing an inspired leading turn by Gleeson, both pictures are fables of one man standing up to do what is right because it is his duty and he has the courage to do so. It was clear from that first film McDonagh possesses immense talent, and with Calvary, he makes good on that promise by dialing back the comedy and turning up the existential dread.

There is comedy here, but it is that of closely observed moments and recognition of the folly of human nature, more so than outright jokes. And because the film opens under the threat of death, the blackness is never far from the viewer’s mind. This duality – the humor of life and the terrifying fact it will end – is where Calvary finds its strength, and in Gleeson, McDonagh finds an actor who embodies this contradiction and embraces it rather than fleeing.

Gleeson is a sturdy, somber presence at the center of the film and plays Father James as a necessary shelter in the storm of the world, if only someone would take him up on his offer. Gleeson is a big, imposing man, and he is not afraid to use his size to his advantage. McDonagh frames Gleeson in such a way that he towers over his congregation, and even at his lowest moments, the high ground in this village belongs to him and him alone.

Except when it does not. By way of transition, McDonagh often cuts to the Irish countryside – the shores, the fields, etc. – and in particular to one towering bluff. More and more of this mountain is revealed throughout the film, and it feels as though the hand of God is reaching out of the earth to remind us that no matter how tall we stand, He can stand taller.

We follow Father James in the week after the death threat is made. The would-be attacker says he will give the priest a week to get his affairs in order, then meet on the beach to kill him the following Sunday. Father James goes about his business, and from the start, he knows who is behind the threat. However, he does not turn this person in or confront him. That is not his place.

His role in the community – in the Church – is to lead this person out of the darkness and into the light. Father James takes this role seriously, and each day of the week, we watch the shepherd tend to sheep who have gone astray. While often showing due deference to the man who hopes to save them, they show no interest in returning to the flock, but he is undeterred. He stands steadfast in his field as the clouds of doubt hover overhead.

Among his flock are the atheist doctor, who represents science and logic, the promiscuous woman, who perhaps represents the Whore of Babylon, the foreigner, the philistine, and the prodigal, as well as several others. Each has a part to play and wisdom to impart, whether they know it or not.

Chris O’Dowd, known to U.S. audiences as the love interest in Bridesmaids, plays a seemingly ignorant butcher whose life revolves around chopping things to pieces. Dark and foreboding, he is brilliantly cast against type, taking already-stellar material and making it his own. Aidan Gillen, of Game of Thrones fame, is less against type but no less brilliant as a doctor who is openly contemptuous of the snake oil he believes Father James is selling. At the same time, he seems to relish having a worthy adversary.

Yet, as the whole town seems to stand against Father James, either in practice or in theory, he has one person standing in his corner. Kelly Reilly, most recently of Flight and the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes adaptations, plays Fiona, the priest’s daughter. She arrives in town after a suicide attempt, seeking some guidance but mostly respite from her tragic life. Reilly is a calming influence in an otherwise suffocatingly tense film.

While Father James has the specter of imminent death hanging over him, his daughter’s crisis seems trivial in comparison, but as she makes clear without realizing it, no crisis is insignificant to the sufferer. Father James knows this, and it is this bit of insight that allows him to carry on in the face of so much adversity.

“Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do,” said Jesus on the cross at Calvary, this film’s namesake. Tellingly, the teachings of a forgiving Christ guide Father James, rather than the vengeances of a wrathful Old Testament God. He is turned away – politely and not – at every door he visits, but he continues to knock on each and every one.

The bubbling undercurrent of this film consists of the crimes of the Catholic Church and the abuses perpetrated by its clergy. The widespread sexual abuse of children by members of the priesthood constituted a breach of trust, the ramifications of which will be felt through the ages. The faithless did not simply lose their faith. It was shaken from them by the very people entrusted to strengthen it.

None of this is Father James’ fault, but it is made explicitly clear throughout the film that he represents the Church. He is the closest to God the villagers can hope to come, and as such, he represents the bitter betrayal of the Church’s crimes. They do not resent him but that for which he stands. Unfortunately, the two are one and the same, and the damage to both has been done. For what is faith without trust? But Father James remains, standing tall in the field and guiding his sheep into the fold. For what is a shepherd without his flock?

See it? Yes.