OVP: Supporting Actor (2000)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2000)

The Nominees Were...

Jeff Bridges, The Contender

Willem Dafoe, Shadow of the Vampire

Benicio del Toro, Traffic

Albert Finney, Erin Brockovich

Joaquin Phoenix, Gladiator

My Thoughts: And we are back again today with 2000, moving into the acting categories today.  At the time in 2000, none of these men had won Academy Awards, but while we're writing it today, three of them have taken Oscars, one sadly died without one (not that he would've shown up for it), and the fifth probably just missed a nomination this year by inches.  All of this is to say, the Oscars are snapshots-in-time, but if you can get in once, you probably have a decent shot of getting in again (they love keeping people in the club).

We rarely start with the winner, so let's start with Benicio del Toro.  Del Toro's career since his Oscar win has been a mixed bag, from critical darlings like Che and Sicario to a mess of paycheck gigs (The Wolfman, whatever he's doing in the MCU), all of which is a bummer when you remember how sensational he is in Traffic.  He brings an unexpected sensitivity to a cop being forced into the world of crime, and not being given a chance to get out (until he forges one).  The monologues about baseball, and wanting a better life for himself...there's a reason a previously unknown character actor bested a screen actor who'd been waiting 40 years for his Academy Award in 2000.

Though Finney is not without points in his direction.  The reviews of Erin Brockovich usually center around Julia Roberts in her dynamic titular role, but she's not the only one doing bravura work here.  The interplay with Finney's good guy lawyer (who still needs to make a buck) is really strong.  I love the way he seems impressed with Erin largely from the start, but he has to temper that and the reveal is him showing he knew there was something there from the beginning.  It's good, earnest work from a man who had at that point been headlining films for decades, but slid perfectly into the number two spot.

The same could be said for Jeff Bridges, another reliable leading man-turned-character actor who in 2000 was still on the hunt for his Oscar.  Bridges' work here is solid.  The way that he plays a laid-back, Clinton-esque president who seems to not be in with the sharks like Gary Oldman, and instead proves to be just as cunning as them, using that guise to his advantage, is really strong stuff (kudos to the casting director here).  I will say that I wanted something more from Bridges, though that might not be fair because he's doing the part, playing well against the more scenery-chewing acting from Gary Oldman, but it doesn't quite feel complete-more a great idea than a great character.  Still good though.

Willem Dafoe is in a similar boat, though in a much lesser film.  Shadow of a Vampire sounds great on paper (an actual vampire cast to play a fictional vampire), but it doesn't deliver.  It's a horror film that plays like a staid drama, and the seams show throughout.  I think Dafoe's work here is good-he owns this part, but it does occasionally feel like his over-the-top attitude looks better because the film around him is such a snooze.  I don't think there's enough of Dafoe's trademark grace (for a man who plays villains a lot, he generally has some sort of decency in his best work like Platoon and The Florida Project), and I suspect he won this nomination because of the makeup design (which I also wasn't super impressed by) and the film's final scene (which I was impressed by).

Our final nominee is Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator.  Phoenix, I'd like to point out, is a very good actor.  I give him back-to-back gold medals in 2012 & 2013 for my My Ballot, the only actor other than Nicole Kidman to have done that to date in our 22 seasons.  I say that because two of his Oscar-cited works left me so cold, Joker and today's film.  His Commodus swings for the rafters in virtually every scene.  There's no baseline here, playing a sniveling, power-hungry figure without any depth.  I know I don't love Gladiator, but there are at least 2-3 better supporting actor performances happening in his movie alone...Phoenix got in because he had the biggest part.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went for exactly the same lineup as Oscar, giving the statue to Benicio del Toro, and del Toro won the SAG Award...but in lead actor (I can't remember if this was a filing error or not...the same thing would happen with Jennifer Connelly the following year, as this was a weird trend with SAG at the time).  Supporting Actor instead went to Albert Finney with SAG, besting the Oscar lineup + Gary Oldman in The Contender.  The BAFTA also went to del Toro, but with a much different lineup as Finney & Phoenix were joined by Gary Lewis (Billy Elliot) and Oliver Reed (Gladiator), which was a posthumous citation for Reed.  In sixth place, I'm guessing it was Gary Oldman or maybe Bruce Greenwood in the now-forgotten Thirteen Days, though there are a lot of supporting actors in the Best Picture lineup (Reed, Richard Harris, Michael Douglas, Johnny Depp) that could've gotten in as well...this being such a set lineup most of the season makes sixth place hard to guess.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: One of the primary reasons that Michael Douglas would become one of my favorite actors in high school was his work in Traffic, some of the best stuff of his career and a grand look at a rich white man who has to solve actual problems, not ones that just present themselves as opportunities.

Oscar’s Choice: Gone were the 1980's, when an aging actor would routinely beat an upstart for a sentimental Oscar win-del Toro bested Finney, and probably by a decent amount.

My Choice: Oscar made the right choice, picking del Toro over Finney (the two best nominated works).  Behind them I'd go Bridges, Dafoe, and then Phoenix.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are we all joining Team Benicio, or do you want someone else?  Should Albert Finney have won an Oscar, or was he correctly a bridesmaid (and if so, what)?  And in a pretty open-and-shut year for the final quintet, who was in sixth place looking in the window?  Share in the comments!

Also in 2000: Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2000

Past Best Supporting Actor Contests: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: Actor (2019)

OVP: Best Actor (2019)

The Nominees Were...

Antonio Banderas, Pain & Glory

    Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Adam Driver, Marriage Story

Joaquin Phoenix, Joker

Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes

My Thoughts: We move into the lead categories this week, and our Best Actor field.  Toward the end of these series I sometimes run out of things to say about the movies in question, and to a degree we're entering that mode with the 2019 contenders.  Oscar was so unoriginal in what he was pulling off here-the films that are in contention here have all been mentioned, and with one exception, we're already discussed them more than once at this point.  But weirdly we have spent very little time discussing most of these lead performances as we've gone through the movie's technical elements, and as a result there are still some chapters left to analyze in this lineup.

Specifically, I don't know that I've actually mentioned Leonardo DiCaprio during all of these write-ups (and it's not because I don't like him, as Leo is a frequent favorite of mine).  This is weird because in my notes on this performance, Leo gave a solid bit of acting.  I always appreciate him better in lighter roles (which this is), and his chemistry with child actor Julia Butters is one of the better parts of the movie.  This isn't a standout performance in his career, but it is well-grounded (he plays this as a man who came close to stardom but couldn't quite reach the echelons), though one wonders if this nomination was necessary-there were better performers in 2019, and he had just won.  Usually Oscar makes the actors wait a little bit longer, so perhaps they want him to get a second after his long drought?

It's harder to begrudge Jonathan Pryce his nomination, as he is a "long-working character actor getting his due" but I felt somewhat similar about his work here.  Pryce's Pope Francis doesn't have the internal drive & "awards clips" that Hopkins' performance elicits, and while I'm not shy about enjoying less bait-y work (and indeed, the chemistry between the two actors is a both-sided situation), this is a bit routine from Pryce, and you leave not knowing enough about Francis in the way that you do about Benedict by the film's end.  Still, as I've said multiple times this is a better (and lighter) film than one would expect considering the biopic subjects.

Joaquin Phoenix would of course win this trophy, becoming the second actor to take the Oscar for playing the Joker onscreen.  If you'll recall I gave this trophy to Ledger when we profiled his performance in 2008, but Phoenix's work is not going to repeat that feat.  There's an intense physicality  to this performance that I have to respect, as his actions & body need great control to pull off some of the consistent ticks & swerves of this character, but I'm not as impressed by physical changes as the Academy is.  And once you take that away, there's not much there-Phoenix, a truly great actor, gives his Arthur little depth or dimension, instead making him some sort of bizarre creation without a driving soul.  Gone is some of the care he's put into better work like The Master or Her, and instead we're given a performance that feels (for me) quite flat.

Adam Driver, on the other hand, is an "of the moment" actor who completely lands this characterization.  Driver's work kind of makes-or-breaks the film, as it is ultimately his arch (the big Sondheim number where he realizes what he lost & what he must let go of) that will land the film.  Driver creates his Charlie as someone who had ambitions, and is sometimes obtuse to the feelings of a partner that he clearly loves on some level, but dislikes for not being the person he wanted her to be.  Playing characters of this ilk, where they're meant to be unlikable but human, is hard because the cartoonish angles or crutches are there if the actor wants to partake, but Driver is so committed to us feeling Charlie's journey (even if we aren't "siding" with him) that he doesn't take them.

Banderas' nomination is in some ways similar to Jonathan Pryce's-a longtime trouper getting his moment in the sun with the Academy-but while Pryce has been a character actor at the edges, Banderas is that rarer breed of proper movie star who finally gets recognized for his talent.  This is another Oscar trope, and sometimes it's even better than the character actor because it gives us a career-defining role that made us rethink what we thought about a matinee idol.  Banderas has always been good, but this ranks up there as some of his best work as a director working through his inner-demons, frequently frustrated by his inability to move beyond a long-ago success story, and also giving us a tender love story (not just for himself & a past lover, but also with his complicated relationship with his mother).  Banderas creates his own soul, but uses his decades of work with Pedro Almodovar to blend in personal elements of the director's life & personality into the characterization to give us a fully-realized performance.

Other Precursor Contenders: As we've said a few times here, the precursors didn't bring many new names into the Oscar conversation, and uniformity was the theme.  The Globes gave their Drama trophy, therefore, to Joaquin Phoenix over Driver, Pryce, Banderas, & Christian Bale (Ford vs. Ferrari), while the Comedy/Musical went to Taron Egerton (Rocketman) over DiCaprio, Daniel Craig (Knives Out), Roman Griffin Davis (Jojo Rabbit), & Eddie Murphy (Dolemite is My Name).  SAG went with Phoenix as their winner, besting Bale, DiCaprio, Driver, & Egerton, while BAFTA also favored Phoenix over DiCaprio, Pryce, Driver, & Egerton.  Throw in Robert de Niro (The Irishman), who was probably on some ballots considering his longtime perch at the Academy, and this is a really sturdy lineup...I would have to believe that Egerton was in sixth place and surely would've been nominated were it not for the stench of the Bohemian Rhapsody wins a year earlier.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Even with a slate that's not terrible, I'd upend almost the entire lineup personally.  I'd include Brad Pitt, who was considerably better in Ad Astra than he was for Hollywood (which you'll remember I did enjoy), and would've kept de Niro, who brings an empty soul quality that I liked to The Irishman.  Jimmie Fails (Last Black Man in San Francisco) announced himself as a talent with his sensitive portrayal of disappointment & hope in that movie, while Franz Rogowski gave a star-making performance (if anyone bothered to watch) in the beautiful Transit.

Oscar’s Choice: Phoenix skated through easily in a role that twenty years ago would've struggled to get a nomination-honestly not sure even who was second it was such a foregone conclusion (maybe Banderas?).

My Choice: Driver-he brings the most to his work, and creates the best (if not always as famous) characterization.  Banderas, DiCaprio, Pryce, & Phoenix follow him in that order.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you with me siding with Driver, or am I a little mad for not picking Phoenix?  Is this the end of the line for Banderas or Pryce, or can they come back like Gary Oldman did & win a trophy?  And did Rami Malek cost Taron Egerton his first Oscar nomination?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2019: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Animated Short, Live Action Short, Previously in 2019

Past Best Actor Contests: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

OVP: Actor (2005)

OVP: Best Actor (2005)

The Nominees Were...

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Terrence Howard, Hustle & Flow
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line
David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck

My Thoughts: It's pretty rare to have a Best Actor field with no former winners, and even rarer to have one with only one previous nominee, but that's what we get in 2005.  The average age of these actors was only 37.6 at the time, making this possibly the youngest average field of this millennium (I've never done the full math, though that does sound like something I'll probably do at some point, but an average under 40 is spritely for lead actor). The tragedy, of course, is that two of these men are already gone, including the youngest of the bunch, Heath Ledger, who is where we'll start this writeup.

Ledger always had a charm in his films, especially in earlier work like 10 Things I Hate About You or A Knight's Tale, but while I think some might have suspected Jake Gyllenhaal would turn a triumph at some point, assuming Heath Ledger would was at one point a question mark.  Ledger's work in Brokeback, though, is seismic and one of the great film performances, for my money.  He brings a danger & passion to Ennis that feels worn, rough, and tender.  The way he handles that last scene of the movie, where all of the bitterness that he's shown turns into tenderness, knowing what he once had...it's gut-wrenching.  Brokeback would fall on its ass if the Ennis character didn't stick in your gut, but with Ledger, even 15 years later, his work still feels raw and challenging.

Ledger lost the Oscar to Philip Seymour Hoffman (three years later, Hoffman would lose the Oscar to Ledger, but we've already discussed that), and at the time this made total sense since Hoffman, while he'd never been nominated, felt like the sort of guy who'd been born to win an Oscar considering the plethora of high-prestige movies he'd been in to that point.  His Truman is a feat, though it's one I wasn't impressed by.  I don't love transformation performances (into famous people), unless they feel like authentic creations onscreen, and this always veers into mimicry for me.  Hoffman is a good actor (I've seen him give a great performance in The Master and a legendary one onstage in Death of a Salesman), but he falls into overacting so easily, especially early in his career, and this is a part rife with overacting.  Capote is cold & scant in its best moments, but it juxtaposes poorly against Hoffman's Capote, unfeeling & hammy in what he brings to the screen.

Joaquin Phoenix also has a bit of the mimicry going on in Walk the Line, but it doesn't feel at odds with his film.  For starters, Walk the Line isn't as stylistic as Capote, so there's less room to not match with the movie itself, and secondly, Phoenix brings a life to his Cash that never feels like it's simply an imitation.  Phoenix's performance occasionally goes so deep that you don't get the sense of enjoyment from the character that you do Witherspoon's June (Witherspoon seems more intent on giving a great show than imitating her famous counterpart, something that you can't claim for Phoenix), but after the histrionics of Gladiator, this was a nod to the peak duo of The Master/Her that was soon to come from this actor.

David Strathairn rounds out our trio of real-life figures, but while he has countless hours of television to study Edward R. Murrow from, he's the least known to modern audiences so while his vocal pacing is immaculate, it's also unnecessary.  Strathairn's got one of the more challenging roles-how do you create an arch for a man who is famous for sticking to his principles?  He does so with subtle movements, his slow indication that he won't stand injustice, and the ways in which he underlines the risks he's taking with the network by becoming more reserved as the film goes on; it's not the sort of performance you expect Oscar to love, but it's thrilling to see when he does.

The final nominee has had arguably the strangest post-Oscar career of these actors (if obviously not the most heartbreaking).  Howard went from superhero sidekick to getting out-shined in his broadcast TV show relatively quickly after this was released (and is also famous for bizarre offscreen behavior, though that's true of every one of these guys save for Strathairn), but in 2005 was the big new star of the year.  He likely won this nomination for both Crash and Hustle & Flow, but that's not how the OVP works (I only judge the nominated perf, not what else led to a nomination), and Howard is only okay in Hustle & Flow.  This is the least of the actual movies up in this category, so the arch isn't atypical (musician wanting to strike it big is not breaking ground), and while Howard is raw & felt, especially his scenes with his future Empire costar Taraji P. Henson, it feels routine against some of these turns.

Other Precursor Contenders: We start with the Globes, which distinguish between Drama and "Comedy/Musical," and as a result have ten men on our ballot.  For Drama we have Hoffman besting Russell Crowe (Cinderella Man), Howard, Ledger, and Strathairn, while in Musical/Comedy it's Phoenix on top over Jeff Daniels (The Squid and the Whale), Johnny Depp (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), Nathan Lane (The Producers), and Cillian Murphy (Breakfast on Pluto).  SAG skipped Howard in favor of Crowe, but kept the rest of the Oscar lineup (including the winner), while Hoffman also won the BAFTA, this time over Strathairn, Ledger, Phoenix, and Ralph Fiennes (The Constant Gardener).  Weirdly considering my comment about some of these men's offscreen behavior, the only reason Howard was able to get in was because Crowe spent most of 2005 earning headlines for throwing a phone at a hotel clerk-he was surely in sixth place, and probably a close sixth.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I'd get rid of three of these guys, but this isn't a bad lineup (2005 in general Oscar didn't get dealt a great hand by the film industry from what I'm finding, and thus made the most of a lousy deck).  That said, I'd keep Fiennes, who is awesome opposite Rachel Weisz's Oscar-winning turn in one of many great performances AMPAS has skipped since The English Patient.  I'd also keep Daniel Auteil's intricate work as a TV host in Cache, and in a little-remembered turn, Bill Murray as a man looking through the women of his past in Broken Flowers.

Oscar’s Choice: History might remember this as closer than it was at the time considering the longitude achieved by Brokeback Mountain, but this was Hoffman in a walk.

My Choice: Heath Ledger gives what might be the best performance of this century on film-it's just that good.  There's no way I wouldn't give him the trophy, or even say that he's close even if David Strathairn would've been a worthy winner in different circumstances.  Behind the two of them is Phoenix, Howard, and Hoffman.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you with me over in Team Ennis, or does Capote still have its share of fans?  Do you think Terence Howard ever gets back in with an Oscar nomination or has that portion of his career ended?  And if Crowe doesn't pick up that telephone, would he have gotten his fourth nomination (a nod that I bet never materializes now that he's past his movie star years)?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2005: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Original Score, Original Song, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2005

Past Best Actor Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

OVP: The Village (2004)

Film: The Village (2004)
Actors: Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson, Cherry Jones, Celia Weston, Judy Greer, Michael Pitt, Jesse Eisenberg (seriously-this cast list is nuts)
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We're back to our reviews!  I took a week off to recuperate from some personal life things as well as to try and get my professional life in order, but we're back to our weekday reviews, and our (frequently Oscar-inspired) themes.  This week, the focus is going to be on music, specifically Oscar-nominated music.  All of this week's movies will have one thing (and pretty much that only thing in common)-they were nominated in one of the three Oscar music categories (either Song, Score, or Song Score...and in some cases a couple of those).  We're going to start off this category with a pretty recent nominee by our standards, The Village, which was during the period where M. Night Shyamalan was not only a bankable director, many were thinking he was about to rival Spielberg & Cameron in terms of becoming the rare director who could open a movie simply based on their own name.  While this film struggles in terms of quality years later, it didn't disprove that theory-The Village was a big hit, the final one before Shyamalan's epic fall-from-grace in the back half of the Aughts.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in a remote village in Pennsylvania, a 19th Century town where villagers live in fear of bizarre creatures in the woods who walk around in red cloaks.  The town is run by a group of elders, headed by Edward Walker (Hurt), whose blind daughter Ivy (Howard) is in love with a local boy named Lucius Hunt (Phoenix...btw, it is so weird to see Phoenix when he would still take romantic lead roles, and a bummer to remember he was so good in them).  After Lucius is stabbed by another young man in the village, Noah (Brody, playing a character with a developmental disability in a performance that would raise eyebrows today), Edward decides to let his daughter go out and find medicine from beyond the forest that surrounds their village, in hopes of saving Lucius' life.

This is where the film's twist happens, but, well, it doesn't feel like a twist.  Perhaps because The Village (as I mentioned, a huge hit at the time) has become so influential, I kind of assumed that we weren't in 19th Century Pennsylvania but instead a modern day time period but a group of people who were living as if time hadn't passed.  As a result, I wasn't really thrown by the twist, which isn't a bad thing (this was the era when the "twist" became the most important aspect of story-telling in a movie, frequently to the chagrin of the actual plot), but it feels pretty anticlimactic, and the movie never really recovers.  Some of the emotional tears this might have aren't fully explored.  The village elders founded the town because of traumas in their own lives, that they could no longer handle, but the film's final moments aren't grand enough or precise enough to get across a sense of the sacrifice they made by escaping the world, and what it means that they are willing to let all of the other children in the village continue living as if the world around them hasn't changed (and that the monsters aren't real).  As a result, I feel like The Village is less a bad movie and more a failure, something that could have been terrific but gets lost in the execution.

The score to the film is actually quite good on its own.  James Newton Howard creates a rich, elegant sound and frequently uses violinist Hilary Hahn to great effect, having her create a signature almost wave-like chill over the movie itself.  The problem for Howard is that the music, while gorgeous, doesn't fit the movie and frequently feels like it's telling a story that the film doesn't know.  The music is always building to something, some great reveal, and since I didn't feel like the movie's "surprises" (it's so essential to the script that these read as surprises to you in order for the movie to work) really added to the narrative, his music feels off-balance in the movie.  It's not really Howard's fault (I'm certain he composed the way that Shyamalan pitched the movie & hoped the film would turn out), but it doesn't land properly on the ear while actually watching the picture.

OVP: Joker (2019)

Film: Joker (2019)
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert de Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy
Director: Todd Phillips
Oscar History: 11 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Joaquin Phoenix*, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Makeup & Hairstyling, Score*, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

In an odd twist, Joker is so far the only film that I have seen (in some capacity) twice in 2019.  That might change (there's at least one movie I'm hoping to do a re-watch of, though that might be in January), but about a month ago I was getting over a bout of what would turn out to be pneumonia, and during what I thought was a lull in the cold I went to the movies, only to find myself hacking up a lung about thirty minutes into the picture, and because I didn't want to ruin Joker for the packed theater that had paid to see it, I left without knowing the finale.  As a result, I put off seeing the film again because I felt I had already established my opinion in the movie's universe, and got the rare opportunity to see if a film's ending actually changes your opinion of the film.

(Spoilers Ahead) I'm aware I'm probably the last person on the planet to see this movie, but for those of you who only frequent dollar theaters (bless you-I love all filmgoers, but particularly those whose routines support independent theater houses), Joker is about the origin of the most famous Batman villain.  Here we have Arthur Fleck (Phoenix), a man who suffers from some sort of mental illness and at one point was institutionalized.  He lives with his mother Penny (Conroy), who is frail and doesn't leave their apartment, and spends most of her time writing to her former employer Thomas Wayne & watching television, including Murray Franklin (de Niro), a Johnny Carson-inspired late night host that Arthur idolizes.  Arthur wants to become a standup comic, but he doesn't have the skills to do so, but more so he just wants to be loved by a world that continually strips him of his dignity.  This happens in a subway one night when he shoots three men who are beating him and mocking his mental illness, but instead of retreating from the public eye, he keeps emerging into it, first trying to prove that Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) is his father, and then after realizing his mother lied to him, going off of his medication and randomly starting a killing spree.  In the process, he murders his mother, Murray Franklin, and leads to the death of Thomas & Martha Wayne (Carrie Louise Putrello), which of course eventually causes Batman.

As I mentioned yesterday in my Frozen II review, Joker is the sort of film that starts out as unnecessary.  Origin stories are almost always bad ideas, particularly for villains, because they're repetitive ("villains aren't born, they're made" could describe literally every villain's backstory), and uninspired.  Joker isn't spared this, even with an iconic character and an actor who has been one of the most exhilarating to watch this decade.  We see Arthur as a victim, someone whom society has left behind, but his message is empty, and Todd Phillips feels like he's telling a story about issues he doesn't want to properly flesh out.  The film is reliant on jump scares, violence, and twists, all signs of a script that doesn't really know what it's about.

The film has been attacked for demonizing mentally ill people (it does that-there's no way around it) by people more qualified than me to speak on the subject, but I do want to make sure that I also address the picture's hollowness.  The movie improves in its second half, perhaps best with the encounter between Robert de Niro, who gets the toss-away role of Murray Franklin, and Phoenix's Arthur.  De Niro is good in this movie, a nice complement to his work in The Irishman, and might be one of the few people who could get Phillips' expository dialogue out in one interview without it reading as too much of a plot crutch.  But the fact that Phillips has to underline his ideas of income inequality and economic oppression in such an obvious way indicates that he didn't have any confidence in the story that's been told up until that point (and this happens late in the film).  In a lot of ways Joker reminds me of Vice, another movie about a villain's origin, and the way that that picture constantly has to reiterate its opinions to the audience, not having any confidence we'll see the message the director is trying to achieve.

Phoenix will get an Oscar nomination for this, and I'm not entirely mad about that (I'm confident a lesser performance will get in along with him).  He's good, though he's been considerably better in films like The Master or Her.  I do feel like more of Arthur was surface-level than others are giving Phoenix credit for-this is a physical performance, one that requires a lot of discipline with Phoenix's actions & body, which he achieves, but in the process it makes the softer moments for Arthur (like the sequence where he chooses not to kill the coworker who has been kind to him despite that ensuring he can no longer maintain his innocence) more two-dimensional, his confessions feeling bereft of the depth Phoenix has shown in past work.  I worry if he wins the Oscar for this part (which could happen-it's that kind of role), it will be for a performance that will be well-remembered, but ultimately is only 60% of what it could have been.  Given a better script & a director more focused on Arthur and less on "Arthur finding the Joker," Phoenix could have given a meaningful interpretation that would rival Heath Ledger's Joker.  In reality, his is just a good imitation, landing decidedly in the middle of the "Joker Pack," but not as iconic as the gifs and memes from this movie would suggest.

Oscar's Long-Suffering Gentlemen

As you may have guessed due to the massive increase in articles on this blog in the past two weeks, I'm in a bit of a house-cleaning mode for the blog, getting all of the articles I meant to write in 2018 but never had time to, out the door for your enjoyment before we dive into some of the new series/articles of 2019.  While doing so, I was looking through my drafts folder and realized that I owe you a sequel to an article about Oscar bridesmaids that I wrote in December.  There I took a look at the living actresses who have been nominated 3+ times but never won a competitive Academy Award.  At the time, it seemed possible that both Glenn Close & Amy Adams could be removed from such a list, but instead they just moved further into the front, both still waiting for an Oscar that might never come (but don't tell them that).

Today we're going to look at the 12 men who are living and don't have an Oscar, but have lost at least three times.  Despite the focus on Close & Adams, there are actually three men on this list who moved up thanks to this past year's ceremony, and we actually had a tragic change in this list from what it would have been had I finished it in December, as the man who would have been our #1, Albert Finney, passed away last month.  Since I didn't have time to write him an obituary at the time, consider this a bit of a memorial post to the fine actor.

Finney was very rare when he died.  I wrote in my December article that only 11 women have died with 3+ Oscar nominations and never winning a competitive one, but for men it's nearly as rare, with 13 such men who have died without a competitive Oscar.  This list includes such icons as Mickey Rooney, Peter O'Toole, and Charles Boyer, all of whom won Honorary Oscars, as well as noted character actors such as Clifton Webb and Charles Bickford.  Below you will find an additional dozen that are waiting for that competitive Oscar-speculate in the comments which ones you think have the best shot at actually taking a trophy home before their final curtain call.

Honorable Mention: Warren Beatty, Matt Damon, and Brad Pitt have 3+ acting nominations without ever taking a trophy for their thespian abilities (and are still with us), but they all have competitive Oscars of their own.  Beatty won Best Director for 1981's Reds, Pitt won Best Picture in 2013 for 12 Years a Slave, and Damon won Best Original Screenplay for 1997's Good Will Hunting.  As a result, I kept them off of the list even though technically they'd qualify.

Note: These are ranked by how many nominations an actress made, then by who got their most recent nomination the latest, and then by who got their first nomination first.

12. Viggo Mortensen

Nominations: Eastern Promises (Actor in 2007), Captain Fantastic (Actor in 2016), & Green Book (Actor in 2018)
He Lost to: Daniel Day-Lewis, Casey Affleck, & Rami Malek
Closest to the Win: It would have been 2018 had awards bodies not A) fallen weirdly in love with Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody and B) Green Book hadn't gotten a significant amount of flack for its treatment of black characters, though that latter hardly stopped it in the Best Picture & Screenplay categories so maybe it was just the former.  You could make an argument that Mortensen may have been a more palatable choice than, say, Christian Bale had Malek not been on a missile trajectory to winning his Oscar.
Well, He Still Won...: Mortensen hasn't been very lucky with awards bodies.  About the most notable trophy he's picked up would be for Best SAG Ensemble for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, but he's never won a significant award for his solo acting.
Is This Happening Someday?: I don't know.  Aside from Green Book, Mortensen's past nominations were genuine surprises, and ones that had no chance of actually winning.  If he continues to make populist films like Green Book this could theoretically happen, but he's not the type of actor who seems comfortable with campaigning, and as a result I'd wager he won't take this, unless he gets the right biopic.

11. Woody Harrelson

Nominations: The People vs. Larry Flynt (Actor in 1996), The Messenger (Supporting Actor in 2009), and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Supporting Actor in 2017)
He Lost to: Geoffrey Rush, Christoph Waltz, & Sam Rockwell
Closest to the Win: The Messenger?  1996 he was in fourth or fifth place, and Three Billboards was a near-miss for a nomination, so The Messenger you could quite plausibly state that he was second place, though a distant second place to Waltz.
Well, He Still Won...: Harrelson has never won a major trophy for film, but he did take an Emmy for his time in Cheers.
Is This Happening Someday?: I think so.  Harrelson is the sort of actor who demands respect at this point, and appears in prestige films regularly (he works regularly, period).  Give him the right supporting part in a film, and it feels like he'd be able to sneak in as a career-capper sort of trophy.

10. Mark Ruffalo

Nominations: The Kids are All Right (Supporting Actor in 2010), Foxcatcher (Supporting Actor in 2013), & Spotlight (Supporting Actor in 2014)
He Lost to: Christian Bale, JK Simmons, & Mark Rylance
Closest to the Win: None of these movies.  I honestly can't even wager-he was at least in third for all of them, perhaps no higher than fourth.  Ruffalo's nominations are weird because all of these felt like citations you could predict, but also are for work that was never going to come close to an actual win.
Well, He Still Won...: Ruffalo took the Emmy for Best TV Movie for his work as a producer on The Normal Heart but he hasn't picked up a major trophy yet for acting.
Is This Happening Someday?: Yes, it is.  Ruffalo just turned fifty, is well-liked (all of his costars seem to adore him), and now that he's not under contractual obligation to Marvel, he's got more time to make arthouse films, which feels like where he's at home.  He just needs to get in on a Best Picture nominee, and he could win...I honestly think he's famous enough he could win lead.

9. Edward Norton

Nominations: Primal Fear (Supporting Actor in 1996), American History X (Actor in 1998), & Birdman (Supporting Actor in 2014)
He Lost to: Cuba Gooding, Jr., Roberto Benigni, & JK Simmons
Closest to the Win: Call me crazy, but maybe 1996?  The Academy was feeling frisky that year (just ask Lauren Bacall), and he had just won a Golden Globe.  Most pundits, if you look back, thought it was a battle between Gooding and William H. Macy for Fargo, but I wonder if Norton (who also appeared in Everyone Says I Love You and The People vs. Larry Flynt) was more in the thick of the wins than people gave him credit for at the time.
Well, He Still Won...: Norton lost the Oscar to Gooding, but managed to pick up a Golden Globe in 1996 for Primal Fear.
Is This Happening Someday?: I'm going to guess no.  Norton has had a lot more pits than valleys in a career where he's never really stopped working.  I think he's the definition of an actor who starts out strong (surely everyone assumed he was the next big thing by 1999), but Birdman feels more the exception than the rule, and he's not the type that will go after the (quality) Oscar-bait projects.  They'll need to come to him.

8. Joaquin Phoenix

Nominations: Gladiator (Supporting Actor in 2000), Walk the Line (Actor in 2005), & The Master (Actor in 2012)
He Lost to: Benicio del Toro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, & Daniel Day-Lewis
Closest to the Win: None of these are close wins.  Walk the Line couldn't even get a Best Picture nomination, and that's the one that makes the most sense when you compare it to its competition (and he's at best in third behind Hoffman & Heath Ledger).
Well, He Still Won...: It always feels weird to say this, but the only major trophy that the deeply method & dark Phoenix has ever won was for the Comedy Golden Globe (for Walk the Line).
Is This Happening Someday?: I don't think so.  If anyone on this list is the modern successor to Albert Finney, it's Phoenix, who is an actor that is too good not to occasionally be nominated for awards, but also clearly hates them and I doubt the Academy would ever want to give him a microphone.

7. Nick Nolte

Nominations: The Prince of Tides (Actor in 1991), Affliction (Actor in 1998), & Warrior (Supporting Actor in 2011)
He Lost to: Anthony Hopkins, Roberto Benigni, & Christopher Plummer
Closest to the Win: You could make a sincere argument that he was the frontrunner in 1991, with tough competition from Hopkins and Warren Beatty (Hopkins victory has aged very well, to the point where we feel like it was inevitable but that was not what people thought at the time).  However, he was also in the thick of things in 1998, when James Coburn stunned for a victory in Supporting Actor, so there was clearly a lot of support for Affliction (considering how Benigni's career aged, the Academy probably wishes they had given it to Nolte).
Well, He Still Won...: Nolte nabbed the Golden Globe for his work in The Prince of Tides (hard to believe in this era of uniform awards seasons, but Nolte managed to win Drama Actor over the man who'd eventually take the Oscar)...please take note AMPAS-creativity is a good thing.
Is This Happening Someday?: No.  Nolte's shot at ever winning this Oscar died the day that infamous mugshot was taken.  He's nearly 80 years old, and he wouldn't be an awful choice for an Honorary Oscar if it would occur to anyone, but a competitive trophy ain't going to happen-the Warrior nomination was probably the closest he was ever going to get to a career honor.

6. Johnny Depp

Nominations: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Actor in 2003), Finding Neverland (Actor in 2004), & Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Actor in 2007)
He Lost to: Sean Penn, Jamie Foxx, & Daniel Day-Lewis
Closest to the Win: Pirates, for sure.  The 2003 Best Actor race was a genuinely close affair, with Penn, Depp, and Bill Murray all in a threeway locked race.  I remember at the time some people even speculated that it could end in a tie of sorts.  Can you imagine a year where the Globes and SAG honored three different lead performers in this era?
Well, He Still Won...: Depp is beloved by the Golden Globes (he's been nominated ten times, including multiple citations before Oscar gave him the time of day), but only won once, for Sweeney Todd (the year of the strike, so we've never seen a major Johnny Depp speech)
Is This Happening Someday?: Probably not.  Depp has become something of a pariah, a sellout on-par with Nic Cage at this point, and the abuse allegations against him will age more poorly as time goes by.  I honestly don't think he'll even get an Honorary Oscar considering how much of his once darling arthouse reputation has been drowned in a series of big-budget schlock.

5. Tom Cruise

Nominations: Born on the Fourth of July (Actor in 1989), Jerry Maguire (Actor in 1996), & Magnolia (Supporting Actor in 1999)
He Lost to: Daniel Day-Lewis, Geoffrey Rush, & Michael Caine
Closest to the Win: Cruise has genuinely been close to winning all three times he's been nominated.  Day-Lewis won in 1989 because Cruise was too young and too new to prestige, Jerry Maguire was a loss because Cruise, like his idol Paul Newman, probably was still too rich & famous to need an Oscar to complete the ensemble, and Magnolia would have happened had Miramax not been shoving caviar down the entire Academy's throat (also, everyone's worked with Mike Caine, and seems to love him, so him being thirsty for the thing probably helped).
Well, He Still Won...: Proving you learn something new every time you research an article, Cruise won the Golden Globe every single time he was nominated for the Oscar for the same film.  Oscar just never bit compared to the starstruck HFPA.
Is This Happening Someday?: I can't tell.  Cruise is still famous enough that he could make this work if he really wanted to, and I think (unlike Depp) he'd be forgiven his baggage.  I just don't think he wants to make the types of pictures that would allow him into an awards season, and honestly-can he still pull off such a character?  He hasn't done something like Magnolia or even Jerry Maguire in so long I honestly don't know if he still can, well, act.  An Honorary Oscar could be in the cards though, especially if they set precedence with Harrison Ford or Sly Stallone.  A lot of Academy members paid their mortgages thanks to Cruise's star power.

4. Kirk Douglas

Nominations: Champion (Actor in 1949), The Bad and the Beautiful (Actor in 1952), & Lust for Life (Actor in 1956)
He Lost to: Broderick Crawford, Gary Cooper, & Yul Brynner
Closest to the Win: At the time, most people assumed that Kirk Douglas, then one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, was a shoo-in for a trophy for Lust for Life.  The Academy, though, seemed to like Oscar-lookalike Yul Brynner more in the crowd-pleasing The King & I and so Douglas went empty-handed.  One has to assume if they had known at the time that he'd never get another nomination that he might have won, but who knows what the Academy would do, even with hindsight.
Well, He Still Won...: Douglas deservedly won the Honorary Award at the 1995 Oscars, back when they still broadcast the Honorary winners at the ceremony, so the world was treated to his emotional tribute to his son.  In addition to a slew of Honorary trophies (everything from the DeMille to the Kennedy Center Honors to the AFI Life Achievement Award), he picked up the Golden Globe in 1956 for Lust for Life.
Is This Happening Someday?: No, obviously not.  Douglas is retired and 102.  He got his Honorary Award, and basically every other lifetime achievement award the industry could throw at him, and he'll die a legend.  Kirk Douglas will still be one of the iconic movie stars of all time even without a competitive Oscar, which is surely better than a statue.

3. Bradley Cooper

Nominations: Silver Linings Playbook (Actor in 2012), American Hustle (Supporting Actor in 2013), American Sniper (Actor in 2014), & A Star is Born (Actor in 2018)...he also was nominated for Best Picture for American Sniper & for Picture/Adapted Screenplay for A Star is Born
He Lost to: Daniel Day-Lewis, Jared Leto, Eddie Redmayne & Rami Malek
Closest to the Win: American Sniper felt at the time like it was on the rise, and honestly I wonder if with two more weeks of gargantuan box office if Cooper could have bested Eddie Redmayne.  Also, still not sure what happened this year with the similarly-gargantuan box office for A Star is Born...though at least there Malek came with his own pile of gold.
Well, He Still Won...: Cooper has competed at the Golden Globes, BAFTA's, and Tonys in addition to the Oscars, but like Dafoe, he's never picked up a major trophy.
Is This Happening Someday?: We enter a trio of actors who have been nominated four times without a victory (with Finney's death, no living male actor has received five nominations without winning at least one of them).  Cooper arguably should be first on this list since he has more losses than anyone, but I'm only counting acting trophies.  Also, he's going to win someday unless we're witnessing a Kirk Douglas situation.  Cooper surely has the respect of the industry, and has a hunger for that trophy, which they usually award (especially in men), though he may have to be a little less pretty to finally get there.

2. Willem Dafoe

Nominations: Platoon (Supporting Actor in 1986), Shadow of the Vampire (Supporting Actor in 2000), The Florida Project (Supporting Actor in 2017), & At Eternity's Gate (Actor in 2018)
He Lost to: Michael Caine, Benicio del Toro, Sam Rockwell & Rami Malek
Closest to the Win: I would guess that last year Dafoe was in second place, and I still think it's a bummer that he didn't gain more traction for a clearly better role than Rockwell's, but he hasn't really been close for any of his other work, so I'd go with that film.
Well, He Still Won...: Dafoe has won a mountain of critics' prizes, but never picked up one of the major televised awards.
Is This Happening Someday?: I would assume not, but honestly that fourth nomination threw me a bit.  There were other more obvious contenders (John David Washington, for example) that could have easily snuck in and taken the fifth slot for Best Actor, and Dafoe doing so indicates that there's some appetite to get him an Oscar...but if there was a proper appetite, wouldn't he have won for Florida?  He works with high-profile auteurs, so if one of them gets a film with a little more traction/nominations it could happen, but it'd help if it was in the next couple of years since he's got some recent losses under his belt.

1. Ed Harris

Nominations: Apollo 13 (Supporting Actor in 1995), The Truman Show (Supporting Actor in 1998), Pollock (Actor in 2000), and The Hours (Supporting Actor in 2002)
He Lost to: Kevin Spacey, James Coburn, Russell Crowe, & Chris Cooper
Closest to the Win: Other than The Hours, Harris was close on all three of the other films.  It was down to he & Kevin Spacey in 1995.  In 1998, it was down to he and Robert Duvall (and then in a huge upset James Coburn won, proving that this "closest to the win" is very much a guessing game).  And in 2000, he was surging at the last minute enough to get his costar Marcia Gay Harden across the finish line, but he wasn't able to invade the Crowe/Hanks battle.
Well, He Still Won...: Harris grabbed Golden Globe awards for The Truman Show and Game Change (the HBO TV movie).
Is This Happening Someday?: I doubt it.  Harris still works (Westworld), but he refuses to campaign, and honestly has gotten to the point where I don't even think he'd show up to accept it (he didn't for Game Change), and unless you're Maggie Smith, you don't win if you don't show up.

OVP: Brother Bear (2003)

Film: Brother Bear (2003)
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Suarez, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas, Jason Raize
Director: Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It's hard to remember this right now, but in the mid-Aughts the Disney brand was suffering pretty severely.  Competition in the animated sector, after a gigantic monopoly of quality entertainment in the 1990's, was fierce.  Dreamworks had the Shrek franchise blasting through record-after-record, and Disney's kid sister Pixar had officially usurped it as the coolest kid on the block.  In fact, from 2004-2007, Disney had three consecutive films fail to land in the Animated Feature Oscar race, the only time since the category's inception that that has happened.  The film directly preceding this drought, Brother Bear, I remember thinking only made it at the time due to a complete dearth of competitors-2003 was arguably the thinnest year for animated contenders I've seen since the Oscars created a category for this sub-genre.  That being said, a nomination is a nomination, and we have an OVP to consider, so during my recent vacation, I set about finally seeing the flick.

(Spoilers Ahead) The thing to remember about Disney in this era is that they were slowly moving out of the animated films that had made them so much money (mimicking Dreamworks and Pixar), but hadn't entirely abandoned it.  So there are songs a-few in this film, perhaps trying to gun for an Oscar nomination in the aural categories as well (they failed there, even with Tina Turner and Phil Collins providing vocals to original ditties), but that isn't the central focus.  Here the central focus is on Kenai (Phoenix, and I will admit fully I had no idea he was providing the vocal track until I read it earlier this morning), a young Inuit man who is upset about his totem (he gets the bear of love), and then goes off and needlessly attacks and kills a bear.  In the process of killing the bear, however, his eldest brother dies and Kenai is transformed into a bear (because, you know, Disney), and has to learn to walk in the shoes of another before the spell can be broken.

The film is pretty indicative of where Disney went wrong post about Mulan.  The films of this era couldn't find the right balance between classic and modernizing, a blend I'm still not 100% certain they've really achieved (note that we don't have Rapunzel or The White Queen, but instead Tangled and Frozen), but they've definitely come closer to accomplishing.  The film has darker moments, the ones that sort of catapulted Disney to high-brow, but they feel much less mindful than the sacrifices of Mufasa or Bambi's mother in the past, as Kenai's older brother is basically alive as a spirit for most of the movie, becoming more of a Grandmother Willow situation than anything else.  The film has a strong message, and it shouldn't be completely discarded, but the movie itself has too many side characters that just seem strange and have comedy that relies on accents and not really on actual jokes (Moranis and Thomas, both quintessentially Canadian comedians, voice moose that take on the bulk of comic relief).  There's clearly a racial metaphor at work here as well, but it feels too obvious at times, and there's not enough actual character focus on Kenai (what does he do other than be a cocky blowhard prior to becoming a bear?).  All in all, it's a pretty blasé entry from Disney, and even if it looks like the sort of film that made the studio successful, it never remotely hits the level of great that we'd come to expect during that era.

Those are my thoughts on a long-forgotten entry in the Disney canon-how about yours?  Am I underestimating this film, or do you agree that this got nominated sheerly out of a lack of obvious contenders?  Are any of the subsequent Disney films (Home on the Range, Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons) worth looking into or should I just leave these where they lay?  The comments are below for you to let me know!