OVP: Supporting Actor (2022)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2022)

The Nominees Were...

Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin

Brian Tyree Henry, Causeway

Judd Hirsch, The Fabelmans

Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin

Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once

My Thoughts: We are currently tracking to have 2022 entirely wrapped up by the end of July, and are moving into our final six Oscar categories, the Big 6 as they are referred to online (and in my house), the first being Best Supporting Actor.  The field here, looking at it outside of the buzz of 2022, is oddly new for Oscar-only one previous nominee is in a bunch of four first-time candidates, which is strange for a category that feels like a retirement home for leading men in the past couple of decades.  The repeat nominee, though, made history with his nomination, with the longest gap (42 years) between his first and second Oscar nominations.

Judd Hirsch's role in The Fabelmans is small, barely more than a cameo (he's onscreen for just 8 minutes), and comes across a bit odd within the movie itself for a nomination.  He is meant to be a disruption in young Sammy's life, which he is, but he's not really called back enough to be consequential to our plot.  Size shouldn't matter with roles (great acting comes in all sizes), but it's also more of a large approach than a nuanced one, and even within his film (with Paul Dano, who was not nominated, doing surprisingly understated work), I can't help but think this was a throwaway nomination when you didn't need to do that given Hirsch was already a nominee.

Brendan Gleeson, on the other hand, is wonderfully effective in The Banshees of Inisherin.  Gleeson has a tricky part in the picture-while most of his costars have expressive roles, sharing their feelings openly through the script, he has to hold back, not openly underlining the frustration he has with his life & that the remainder of his life might be spent propping up Farrell's Padraic, while knowing his dreams aren't possible.  He plays this well, telegraphing in curt statements & weary eyes, and by showing the differences between how he treats Padraic with those of other characters.  I will argue that this role is lead, though it's borderline, and so I'm going to take a star away for category fraud, but that's the only thing that I can say against it, and what a gift it is that Gleeson got "Oscar nominee" added to his resumé  after years of dedication.

Barry Keoghan is in his same film, and there's no way that you could call his work lead, he's very much in the supporting mold (thankfully Oscar has gotten over its aversion to nominating two actors from the same film, at least in supporting).  Keoghan's work is on a ledge-it'd be easy to play as over-the-top, or even offensive, but he doesn't get there because he handles his Dominic with such care.  The late-in-the-film moments with Kerry Condon, where he (after being kind of perverted toward her much of the movie) shows that he does genuinely care about her, and views her as his only shot at happiness, are flawlessly rendered, and provide dimension to his character without feeling like it's servicing the script.  Truly a marvelous turn from an actor who has been growing to this moment.

If Gleeson has been the steady trouper & Keoghan the promising young thespian, Ke Huy Quan would be the ultimate comeback with his role in Everything Everywhere All at Once.  A former child star who had faded completely from the Hollywood firmament, he proves that there are a lot of talented actors out there just waiting for the part to prove it.  I love the way he tackles this role-supporting husband is easy to make into a stereotype or a cartoonish angel, but you understand in the way he approaches the part that his dreams were fulfilled, and he has to challenge the ideas that his wife & daughter's weren't, without letting it feel like a personal disappointment (which it obviously does in spurts).

Brian Tyree Henry's Oscar nomination was inevitable to anyone who saw his bravura work on the FX show Atlanta, where he has been one of the big stars of the cast.  The film itself doesn't work the way it's supposed to (clearly operating on a budget, it needs more human bodies on the sides of the two main characters' world, waitresses & store clerks making it feel less hollow).  Henry's nomination was unexpected given the low profile of his film, and at times it feels like (especially in the second half) the script doesn't know what to do with his character arch, and he gets lost in it, giving us too much elevation after a more subdued, calm first half.  But it's still a good performance...it just doesn't stand up in a slate of great ones.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes gave their statue to Quan, with Gleeson, Keoghan, Brad Pitt (Babylon), and Eddie Redmayne (The Good Nurse) the losers, while Quan also won at SAG against Gleeson, Keoghan, Redmayne, & Paul Dano (The Fabelmans).  BAFTA struck out on its own with Keoghan winning, here beating five nominees (BAFTA for some reason now has six nominees for acting): Quan, Gleeson, Redmayne, Michael Ward (Empire of Light), & Albrecht Schuch (All Quiet on the Western Front).  Redmayne's name shows up the most, and so there's a case for him to be in sixth place, but I'm going to guess the overall love of The Fabelmans in the acting categories (two nominations) means Dano was just out-of-reach.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: Brad Pitt has indicated he wants to wind down his acting career.  Given how good he was in Babylon, as a movie star who is moving beyond his years in the sun, you have to wonder if Oscar missed a chance to bookend one of the most impressive careers of his generation by honoring his brilliant work in Chazelle's picture.

Oscar’s Choice: Oscar loves a comeback story, and given the EEAAO love in general, Quan probably got a majority of the vote.

My Choice: I am going with Keoghan's role, which I think is a more impression arch and better-rendered with less to do than Quan's, though both are sensational.  Third is Gleeson, who would get the bronze with or without my category fraud demerit (he'll be submitted for lead when we get to how I'd submit my personal ballot).  Following him is Henry, then Hirsch.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you mad at me for abandoning the affable Quan or do you think that Keoghan was an underrated part of his movie?  Why can't we have double nominees from the same film in lead again, since we've made progress in supporting?  And was it Dano, Pitt, or Redymane in sixth place?  Share in the comments!

Also in 2022: Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature, Sound, Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2022

Past Best Supporting Actor Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021

Eternals (2021)

Film: Eternals (2021)

Stars: Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Harish Patel, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie

Director: Chloe Zhao

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We are now 26 films into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and, well, we all kind of know the formula at this point, right?  After we spent 22 films leading up to the ultimate Avengers showcase in Avengers: Endgame (remember Thanos & his glowing hand), the story has continued and been a bit sprawling, if we can be honest.  Spider-Man: Far From Home was a disappointment (for yours truly), unable to get me all that interested in a world beyond Thanos, and Black Widow was an origin story that would've been more interesting five years ago.  Shang-Chi had me intrigued, as we had a film that, again, did the origin story thing but was so well-cast (particularly Awkafina & Tony Leung) that it felt elevated and like Marvel knew how to do a twist on a story that had become familiar.  And like every sentient being, I'll be seeing Spider-Man as soon as I can because you an only shove so much speculation into one movie without stoking my curiosity (I am confident this will become the first film to make $1 billion post the pandemic).  But I don't know that there's been a Marvel movie in a long time that had me genuinely as curious as Eternals did.  From the mind of Chloe Zhao, fresh off of her well-deserved Oscar for Nomadland, it'd been a longtime since we'd had a creative mind like this behind a Marvel film-would Zhao be able to put her distinctive, introspective spin on a movie so integral to the Disney machine's brand?  I was intrigued, and the divisive reviews had me even more curious.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place over literal centuries, as we learn about a group of protectors to the planet called the Eternals.  They are led by Ajak (Hayek), who gets her orders from a Celestial named Arishem.  They are asked to simply battle an invasive species known as Deviants, but not to stop or interfere with any other violence or war (i.e. this is why they didn't help in the battle for Thanos, a question that has been levied at this group since it was decided to introduce it into the Marvel Universe).  When the Deviants are defeated (or so they assume) in 1521, the group breaks up but they remain on the planet for centuries, never aging & taking their lives/powers in different directions.  When a Deviant shows up in modern day around Sersi (Chan) and Sprite (McHugh), it sets in course a chain-of-events that reunites all of the Eternals, who learn complicated truths about their existence and what their true role has been for thousands of years across the universe.

That's about all of the plot I'm going to get into, both because this article isn't a Wikipedia article (if you want to know more, go see the movie), and because it's hard to summarize Eternals, which plays well (like several films we've reviewed this week, length is never an obstacle in what we're sitting through), almost like a miniseries.  It is very, very hard to write a film like this where you have to introduce a dozen or so characters and not give some of their stories short shift, but Zhao pulls it off-the characters in this film feel distinctive, realized, & well-cast.  It's hard to pinpoint an exact person I liked the best (Richard Madden & Barry Koeghan probably rise to the top if I had to pick), but the actors feel exactly true to their star personas, and it never feels like we're lingering too long on one hero or staying away too far from another.

The film's best moments, though, are the way that Zhao introduces risk & consequence into a Marvel Cinematic Universe where increasingly that doesn't exist.  Eternals is not faultless (it relies too heavily on exposition, particularly in picking up some of the looser ends of the plot toward the back-half of the film), but it has genuine stakes.  Some of these characters will die, some of them big names that might have made sense for a future film.  It's messy-there are tangents that don't quite work-but it's also creative & fascinating.  It looks beautiful, it uses a terrific score from Ramin Djawadi (random aside, but having Djawadi score a film where Jon Snow & Robb Stark fight over a woman named Cersei...at what point did Marvel realize exactly what they were doing here for the Game of Thrones fanboys?), and its effects are glorious.  I loved the way that the costumes become their own special effect, and the golden fighting effects are elegant & distinct.  I genuinely liked it, not because it's a truly great film (Marvel has technically done better), but it's the most creative I've seen the MCU be in at least a decade.  Here's to hoping that MCU sees the benefits of having stories like this in the future.

The Green Knight (2021)

Film: The Green Knight (2021)

Stars: Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Barry Keoghan

Director: David Lowery

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

We have not done a theme week in a while on the blog in terms of our reviews, but this week we're going to change that, as I am sitting on four film reviews from 2021, and am expecting to see at least one film before Friday in theaters, so I can add in a fifth.  So each day this week we'll be discussing a 2021 film release, and we're going to start with one still in theaters, and one that has gleaned a surprising diversity of opinions: The Green Knight.  Directed by David Lowery, this is one of a number of pictures that was initially expected to come out last year but was delayed due to the pandemic.  I thought when I first encountered it, despite some solid trailers, that we were in for a version of the Arthur legend, some gorgeous Howard Pyle-style heroism that was fantastically lit.  What I found, though, was a moody, difficult piece about sacrifice & the price of mortality that provides no simple answers, but instead opens up a variety of well-etched questions.

(Spoilers Ahead) Much of The Green Knight is about mood, and as a result describing the plot is a bit difficult, particularly since very few of the characters actually have names.  What we have, though, is Gawain (Patel), a handsome young man who is not yet a knight but due to his status as the King's nephew through his mother (it's implied, but never said outright, that the King here is an aging Arthur, the queen Guinevere, & Gawain's mother is Morgan le Fay), he is elevated and likely to be the next king.  When the magical Green Knight offers a riddle, only Gawain, eager to prove himself, is headstrong enough to challenge him, with the Knight offering to Gawain that "should he strike a blow on him, it will be returned a year later."  Rather than fight, the Knight bows to Gawain, who decapitates him...after which the knight leaves, reminding Gawain of the bargain.  

There is more to the story, but I want to pause and move on to the discussion of the picture because, as I mentioned above, while plot is critical to driving The Green Knight, it is a supporting character to the film's ideas.  The movie takes a hard look at the value of honor.  Much of what drives Gawain, for better or worse, is an elusive respect.  It's why he makes the foolish decision to both fight the Green Knight and to decapitate him (rather than deduce the logic of the riddle), and it's ultimately what leads to his death before the end credits, when he sees a long life, but one filled with privilege rather than happiness, and one destined for sadness.  The film's message feels a bit complex, but it's aware of it.  Gawain ultimately chooses death to honor a bargain...but a bargain that he likely should've ignored in the first place, and certainly didn't understand.  There's an arbitrariness to the film that feels intentional, and reflexive of life-after all, most of life feels quite by chance, and oftentimes to defy logic.

The movie's overall aesthetic is extraordinary.  Once you settle into the pacing, it's a gorgeous, foggy vision of the Arthurian legend, with occasionally flights into a realistic fantasy (gotta love the giants), and one that isn't going to explain some of its choices.  Alicia Vikander plays two roles, first as a commoner and later as a lady who gives Gawain a sash that will save him from the Green Knight.  Vikander oftentimes gets ragged upon for not doing more with her Oscar win, but here you see why she won it in the first place, taking two very difficult-to-play parts, and totally immersing them into the mystery.  

Dev Patel is also giving us his all as the lead.  Patel has graduated, slowly but surely, from his nerdy roots in Slumdog Millionaire and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel into a bonafide hunky leading man, and he brings a movie star swagger to Gawain, a young man lost in his own destiny.  Patel, whose acting choices are often at odds with his movie star charisma in other roles, knows how to play Gawain's confidence, the brash assuredness of privileged youth, perfectly.  We watch it start to strip away as the movie progresses, and he understands that he cannot understand all things.  Combined with a clear nod to the gays (not just a thirsty kiss from Joel Edgerton, but the now infamous fistful of semen is a sign that Patel knows where his fanbase is), this is the role that Patel totally sold him to me as a promising leading man living up to that promise.  The Green Knight is not perfect (some of the quirks feel a little bit too shock-the-audience for me, and not quite with the humble melody of the movie), but I am going to lean into the 5-star rating as this movie swept me up in its story, and I suspect that in future screenings those quirks will read as foretelling rather than out-of-place.

American Animals (2018)

Film: American Animals (2018)
Stars: Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner, Jared Abrahamson, Udo Kier, Ann Dowd
Director: Bart Layton
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I'm currently working my way through a few of the 2018 films that I missed in theaters but intrigued me enough to get done before my year-end lists (still figuring out the exact date, but it'll be sometime in mid-January as I'm a critic that doesn't hail from NY/LA, so my access to select movies-looking at you Destroyer and Cold War-is more challenging than my better-located friends on the coasts).  One of the films that I was bummed to miss in theaters was American Animals, a heist film (I'm a huge fan) with a cast of up-and-coming actors (Peters, Keoghan, Jenner) that I've thoroughly enjoyed in the past.  The film meanders and occasionally frustrates, but it's genuinely, truly interesting as there are twists not only in the plot but also in Layton's bold directing style that make it one I'd highly recommend seeing (and learning as little about in the process).

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows four young, privileged white men who decide to perpetrate a heist at Transylvania University, one of the South's oldest and most prestigious universities (Vice Presidents John Breckenridge and Richard M. Johnson both attended it).   Four students who attend the university, Warren (Peters), Spencer (Keoghan), Chas (Jenner), and Eric (Abrahamson) decide to rob the rare books collection at the school, for reasons that don't entirely make sense (none seems particularly poor, and other than Warren all seem to have promising futures ahead of them in their respective fields).  The film follows them as they execute the heist, essentially making out with nearly a $1 million worth of books and artwork (including a first edition of Darwin's Origin of Species, an illuminated manuscript, a copy of Hortus Sanitatis, and drawings by John James Audubon), but in the process tying-and-gagging the librarian BJ Gooch (Dowd), and then foolishly blundering in the weeks that follow, essentially leading the FBI right to them.

While I like heist films, and there's a certain perverse pleasure in watching such a film & hearing names like Darwin and Audubon uttered, what lends itself well to this movie is the bizarre documentary-style look the film does toward the real-life criminals involved with the heist.  Though it could not remotely be called a documentary (for starters, actors as famous as Peters, Keoghan, and Dowd don't appear as people who recreate scenes in a standard documentary), the film features all four of the real-life men who committed the crime, as well as their parents and (briefly) the librarian whom they assaulted in their crime.

This creates something really fascinating, comparing the actions in the movie to the stories that they tell, with us not able to properly trust any of the narrators.  There are scenes toward the end of the movie where the real-life Spencer admits he doesn't know how much of Warren's version of the events (say, his travels to the Netherlands and his meetings with a prospective buyer of the stolen art) was true, and they cut to the real-life Warren stating, sheepishly "they'll just have to take my word for it."  As a result, the film unfolds in a strange fashion where truth melds with fiction in a way that makes it impossible to know what actually happened, and only the basest of verified facts can be confirmed.  Do we trust the real-life Spencer because of who he is, or because of the character that Barry Keoghan is crafting for us?  It's impossible to tell, and as a result this becomes a pretty daring picture, the likes of which I don't remember seeing.

The film has its problems-the actual fictional aspects occasionally feel repetitive.  It's not a particularly long story taken on the surface (it'd be better-suited for a Vanity Fair article), and the leads aren't compelling in a major way, perhaps why the documentary angle works so well (all of them seemingly had good, stable homes and didn't want for the money, and had promising futures ahead of them).  It's difficult to tell if they didn't understand the damage they were doing, particularly to Gooch, until after the fact or if they just didn't care or if they only cared when the cameras were on.  The film starts out slow, but once Layton starts underlining his bigger points, particularly around the way that these real-life men essentially ruined their lives for nothing (it was clear they'd never get away with such a crime from the very early stages of the robbery), it becomes riveting cinema.  Dowd and Keoghan are the standouts in the cast (as they are almost every time we see them onscreen lately), but Layton is the true star as he begins to reveal his thoughts on the characters in the film, crafting a strong finish.  The end titles, which have Gooch still serving as the rare books librarian and the four men at a lesser position of where they once were, stuck in jobs that require a privilege that a former convict will struggle to attain (artist, writer, etc), is about as fitting as you can find for the end of a documentary.  I'm going with 4 stars, which is bizarre because during the first half I was thinking it was a "waste of time," but Layton's a deceptive, deliberate filmmaker and I'm excited to see more work from him in the future if he has this sort of strongly-executed ambition.