OVP: Lone Star (1996)

Film: Lone Star (1996)

Stars: Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Pena, Kris Kristofferson, Matthew McConaughey, Miriam Colon, Frances McDormand

Director: John Sayles

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Kris Kristofferson: click here to learn more about Mr. Kristofferson (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned last week, Kris Kristofferson's acting career never really recovered after the failure of Heaven's Gate, and he spent much of the 1980's alternating between forgettable movies like Songwriter and Trouble in Mind (the latter being a well-reviewed neo-noir that made zilch at the box office and is definitely going on my Letterboxd Watchlist as that feels up my alley) while having more success in music, forming the supergroup Highwaymen with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, & Waylon Jennings.  By the end of the decade, he had moved to a point where he was playing second fiddle to Paul Reubens in Big Top Pee-wee (which didn't even have the good sense to be a hit like its predecessor).  But in the 1990's, Kristofferson starred in his last important film, and appropriately enough, it's a western to close our series.  Made by noted independent filmmaker John Sayles, Lone Star was a modest hit in 1996, and a critical gem that has only grown in stature in the years that followed.  Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, while Kristofferson has worked for decades since, it feels a good way to close his career, and our fifth season of Saturdays with the Stars.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie alternates between two different time frames, focusing on a father-and-son, both of whom are lawmen in the border community of Frontera, Texas.  The son is Sam Deeds (Cooper), who is investigating the appearance of a dead body in the desert, which we learn after a while is the skeleton of Charlie Wade (Kristofferson), a corrupt sheriff who decades earlier disappeared, and was succeeded by Buddy Deeds (McConaughey), who would become famous for his straight-laced and honest approach to his work, reshaping the town for the better.  Sam has a complicated relationship with his father, who was a womanizer & not a strong father figure, and we also learn more about Sam's romantic life, including meeting his troubled ex-wife Bunny (McDormand) and watch as he embarks on a relationship with Pilar (Pena), a girl he loved in his youth but both of their parents wanted to keep them apart.  It turns out they did so with good reason, with two secrets leaking in the waning moments of the film.  We find that not only did Buddy help with the coverup of Charlie's death (he had been killed in a form of self-defense when he was going to kill an innocent man & say it was for "resisting arrest"), but we also learn that Buddy is Pilar's father, having had an affair with her mother years earlier.  In an inversion of the plot of Chinatown, which the film bares a strong resemblance toward, Sam & Pilar decide that, since she can no longer have children, that they should continue to see each other even though they are half-siblings.

Lone Star is the sort of difficult, cerebral film that could only be a hit because it's good, and that's the case.  We see a lot of the tropes of the west that we saw throughout this year-the honorable lawman, the tough-as-nails woman who survives in a world that wants to tear her down, and the corruption of the system in the form of Kristofferson's Wade, holding the West back from modernity.  But it also looks beyond that, which makes it interesting.  Much of the modern scenes with Cooper's Sam talk about the ways that the racism that happened during Wade's reign-of-terror was substituted for a "they're replacing us" mentality.  We get a number of moments where we understand the politics of this community will continue to give more power to the growing Latino population, and even Sam is likely to lose his position as Sheriff soon because a Latino lawman will be elected to replace him.  It's a fascinating dichotomy here that was usually ignored in the Western, where we knew that white men would ultimately control all of the power over the Native American populations they're fighting with, the ones that originally held these lands.  Lone Star smartly talks about how, eventually, the West will always be made by those who come to it, and no one holds sway there forever.

And that ends both our month with Kris Kristofferson and our season of "When Cowboys Ruled Hollywood."  Kristofferson is still alive, and in the decades after Lone Star made films, though almost all of them supporting roles in lukewarm franchises like Blade and Dolphin Tale.  The western continues to survive, and every few years pops up with another classic like Brokeback Mountain, No Country for Old Men, Gran Torino, and The Power of the Dog, with Yellowstone the closest it's come to consistent mainstream success in television.  As I mentioned last week, we'll start our new series looking at the concept of America's Sweetheart through twelve actresses who embodied that title in the 20th Century, but tomorrow we'll have a proper sendoff to our season with one last cattle call of the best of our twelve western stars this year!

No Globe, No SAG...No Problem?

All right, so sorry for the mini-break.  I have been battling a breakup, a cold, and a hellishly busy work week for the past two weeks and so as a result something had to give, and since I don't have Jack Nicholson to cry over, it ended up being the blog.  But we're back, and I have next week off, so we'll be seeing a lot of articles coming in the remaining week of the year and into January as we hit the heights of Oscar season.

It's become something of an annual tradition at the blog to go through, once the dust has settled from the SAG and Golden Globe nominations, to see where the race stands, and specifically figure out who amidst the nominees looks headed toward Oscar immortality and who will be left as the Marilyn Hack.  The reality is that most of the people that were nominated for one of these awards will be nominated in a few weeks with AMPAS, but not all of them.  In fact, only once in the past year have we encountered a season that left us with a completely SAG/Globe-blessed Oscar race, in 2006 (mostly due to the strangeness of the Supporting Actor race, where they were so split across the board that there weren't as many options as usual for Oscar to strike out on his own).  Here's a rundown of recent races that went off-the-beaten-path and went with someone that the precursors largely ignored:

2015: Charlotte Rampling, Tom Hardy, and Mark Ruffalo
2014: Bradley Cooper, Marion Cotillard, and Laura Dern

2013: Jonah Hill

2012: Quvenzhane Wallis, Emannuelle Riva, and Jacki Weaver

2011: Gary Oldman and Max von Sydow

2010: Javier Bardem

2009: Maggie Gyllenhaal

2008: Michael Shannon

2007: Laura Linney and Tommy Lee Jones

2006: Zero (let's pay attention people-we've already been over this)

As you can see, especially in recent years, Oscar has had a mind of his own, but the question is-who does he end up going stray with this year?  Below I've chronicled the Top 10 most likely candidates to get in even if they haven't been mentioned yet, with Number One being the most filled-with-hope of the remaining candidates.  Weigh in below in the comments over who you think is your dark horse contender for the race!

10. Lily Gladstone (Certain Women)

For Her: Her surprise victory at LAFCA earlier this season definitely put Gladstone on the map, and this is a category where there's a high susceptibility for a nomination without a major precursor, since the Globes/SAG went 5/5 with the supporting ladies.  After all, Octavia Spencer was a surprise consensus choice (sometimes, like Leo DiCaprio in J. Edgar that's a bad thing) and Nicole Kidman has defaulted before (The Paperboy).  Gladstone is getting best-in-show raves against Oscar favorites like Laura Dern and Michelle Williams, and occasionally the Academy goes completely against-the-grain, especially in this category.
Against Her: People like Jacki Weaver had more buzz, and more fame, than Gladstone did, and will this make it to the top of the screener pile without an easier hook or another performer from the film also commanding buzz?  It's pretty quiet, and it's not like Kelly Reichardt has ever been an AMPAS draw before.

9. Ben Foster (Hell or High Water)

For Him: For starters, he's a fine actor in a film that is on the edges of a Best Picture citation (anyone else able to get a gage on if this is happening for the top prize?), and he's actually good in it.  Plus, one could argue that they owe Foster, and they know it-he's been consistently great in most films he's done for the past decade, and they occasionally like to mark a longtime character actor with a nomination ala Michael Shannon or Stanley Tucci.  They'll already be watching this for Bridges...
Against Him: ...but will that end up being a hindrance?  No film has had two nominations for Supporting Actor since 1991's Bugsy, and would the Academy start again this year, particularly considering there is a pretty solid batch of diverse contenders in the running for this trophy?  It's a hard sell to make.

8. Michael Keaton (The Founder)

For Him: On paper, there's so much going for Keaton.  He's a recent Oscar nominee who has headlined two back-to-back Best Picture winners, and yet he hasn't managed to score a win despite there being an enormous amount of momentum indicating he could do so.  He's starring in a showy biopic from the Weinsteins, who don't really have a horse in this race but should never be entirely counted out of the Oscar race.
Against Him: Where's the buzz?  Honestly-Best Actor this year is supremely weak, in my opinion, and there's a lot of room for an upset like this to happen, but has anyone even seen this movie-why has this picture, at one time considered a serious player for the trophy here, essentially disappeared from contention?  Is it because it isn't any good, because that's going to hinder it greatly in actually getting a random citation (random citations are usually for either films that are over-celebrated or critical darlings-you don't oftentimes make it if you aren't one of those two things).

7. Matthew McConaughey (Gold)

For Him: Like Keaton, McConaughey has been sort of an omnipresent factor in the Oscar race since his big AMPAS break a few years ago.  He's one of the undeniable movie stars of the moment, and he has the rare ability to combine critical with commercial and invite himself to the Oscar talk.  It felt like after Dallas Buyers Club he'd probably be back soon-could a stealth campaign work for him here?
Against Him: I'm getting a Jen-Aniston-in-Cake vibe here (which isn't entirely bad-I liked Aniston in Cake), but she didn't make it to the Oscars with that "movie that doesn't exist" sort of campaign, and I wonder if that could be the case with McConaughey.  Honestly, this is the sort of year for Best Actor where you could get in on name alone, but I'd expect at least a teensy bit more buzz if that were going to happen.

6. Taraji P. Henson (Hidden Figures)

For Her: The Best Actress field largely named most of the nominees at the Globes and SAG Awards.  Honestly, the woman who almost certainly would have been #1 on this list (Isabelle Huppert) inexplicably landed at the Globes, and so for the most part I didn't have much to say here...except for Henson.  She's a huge star now, and this film is likely A) going to be seen by a lot of people and B) could end up being a pretty across-the-board hit with the Academy as it's populist and warm in a year where there isn't a lot of populist and warm (it's been my surprise Best Picture nominee prediction for months).  Could Henson find room in a volatile Best Actress field?
Against Her: Unlike Best Actor, there's a lot of legitimately strong names here.  She'd essentially have to compete against the likes of Annette Bening, Meryl Streep, or Amy Adams, which is a tough sell.  Plus, her fame is mostly from television, not film, which could hurt her a bit in sinking a second nomination.

5. Liam Neeson (Silence)

For Him: I have felt that Liam Neeson is about as perfect of an Oscar nominee choice as one could make for months now.  He's graduated well beyond his first nod 23 years ago, becoming a major action movie star but one who brings gravitas thanks to his pedigreed chops.  Everyone's heard of him, and it's not like Marty Scorsese has had issue landing tough guys Supporting Actor nods before.  Anyone else feel a bit William Hurt in A History of Violence about this spot?
Against Him: Is this role big enough?  I've heard comparisons to Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now!, which would be a tough sell, but honestly the lack of buzz in general is what's holding me back from a NGNG selection here.  Neeson is famous enough to win this trophy if he was a legit threat-if that were the case, wouldn't he be nominated at least at the Globes?

4. Janelle Monae (Hidden Figures)

For Her: I've said above that I think that Supporting Actress has some room to grow, and if anyone's sort of "arrived" at the cinema this year, it's Monae.  She's potentially starring in two Best Picture nominees, she's a warm presence onscreen, and honestly seems like she'd be a blast at Academy events.  AMPAS hasn't shied away from nominating two women from the same film in this category before (it's the most common acting category for it to happen by-far), and Cher, Bette Midler, and Peggy Lee can attest that they aren't snobs about going for musicians that take on a second career.
Against Her: They haven't gone for a crossover star in a while (just ask Justin Timberlake), and could she lose out on support from Octavia Spencer?  There might be an attitude of "she's young, she'll have others," if the Oscars are feeling cautionary about handing out a first shot to someone so new to the world of acting but famous somewhere else (perhaps Jennifer Hudson's less-than-stellar film career could be a hindrance?).

3. Tom Hanks (Sully)

For Him: He's a two-time Academy Award winner who is being directed by a man who has overseen 13 Academy Award-nominated performances.  I mean, that in and of itself could keep Hanks in the conversation, not to mention that he's been on a bit of a streak recently in terms of critical and commercial success (gone are the days where you couldn't count on Tom Hanks launching a movie), and he's playing a real-life hero in a year where we could use a few of those.  All-in-all, this feels up the Academy's sleeve.
Against Him: AMPAS has been so weary of Hanks in recent years even when they're more than willing to nominate his films.  Pictures like Captain Phillips and Bridge of Spies were Best Picture citations but somehow couldn't make it to Best Actor-could it be that the Academy has just moved past him (it happens-see also Emma Thompson, Susan Sarandon, and Ed Harris)?  His lack of a Globe or a SAG despite being one of the most recognizable movie stars on the planet has me thinking that this could be just people not feeling him anymore.

2. Greta Gerwig (20th Century Women)

For Her: Gerwig was on most people's predictions lists prior to the Globe and SAG nominations.  She did score at the BFCA and is getting raves for her work in 20th Century Women.  She's also still in that age group that Oscar tends to notice women (33, getting a bit old for Oscar's first date but not too much so-that's AMPAS sexism, not mine, commenters), and she's a consistent presence in arthouse cinema even if she hasn't broken out with general audiences quite yet.
Against Her: The Frances Ha nomination at the Globes sticks out like a sore thumb for me, in that they already knew she existed, and could have played along with giving her the nomination instead of Spencer.  That they didn't makes me wonder-is 20th Century Women playing too small?  Bening is also at risk in Best Actress, and movies in recent years have struggled in trying to gain late buzz by doing a "screeners and NY/LA only" strategy (just ask Selma and Cake).  I wonder if A24 badly underestimated people's desire to seek this film out without more buzz-it feels like the sort of picture that would have been much smarter in October.

1. Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals)

For Him: Despite Aaron Taylor-Johnson randomly getting in with HFPA, Shannon actually got the bulk of the critics' praise for Tom Ford's latest.  More to the point, Michael Shannon just missed last year for 99 Homes, and was in pretty much every film that came out in 2016 (seriously-he made ten movies according to IMDB).  That sort of determination is sometimes rewarded (just ask Jessica Chastain), and this is his best shot of the ten.  The Supporting Actor field is still influx, and he's made it to the AMPAS dance before.
Against Him: The fact that Taylor-Johnson got a nomination at the Globes sort of makes me wonder if there's more ticket-splitting happening than expected.  Additionally, while I do think there's some vulnerability there, Jeff Bridges, Lucas Hedges, Mahershala Ali, Hugh Grant, and Dev Patel all look collectively like an Oscar lineup.  Hedges is young and Grant could lose vote from category confusion, but I totally buy them as a lineup.  That being said, if one falters, I think it's going to be Shannon who takes his place.

OVP: Interstellar (2014)

Film: Interstellar (2014)
Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Bill Irwin, Casey Affleck, Ellen Burstyn, John Lithgow, and one more major star that is a huge surprise cameo, so we'll only mention him after the spoilers
Director: Christopher Nolan
Oscar History: 5 nominations/1 win (Best Original Score, Production Design, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Visual Effects*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Oh Christopher Nolan, he of the fanboy films and the larger-than-life productions.  There's really no other director working today who can rival Nolan in terms of gargantuan scale and divisiveness across the entire internet.  Spielberg makes too many historical epics to be included anymore, Scorsese generally gets too many films like Hugo to interrupt the random and controversial Wolf of Wall Streets, and J.J. Abrams always seems to be a producer, not a director.  Nolan combines incredible budget frequently with something interesting to say, and as a result, we get something truly worthy of our discussion.  And love it or hate it, and I managed to do both, Interstellar is definitely worthy of our discussion.

(Spoilers Ahead-and I'm not kidding here, I go into everything so see the movie beforehand if you're hoping to) The film starts in a similar fashion to where you expected in the trailers.  The movie, taking place in the not-so-distant-future (you get the sense that it's roughly 2050-that John Lithgow is a member of the Millennial generation, and you can do the math from there), shows Earth in the wreckage of a horrifying reaction to climate change.  We live in a world covered in dust, where crops are failing and the countries have largely depleted in size and the military and science no longer exist in a proper form, but instead we just focus on food production and...that's about it.  The first third of the film is pretty amazing in its politics-frequently when we get climate change style films, we see the world destroyed and suddenly everyone is rather wise about what to do with their lives, but here we see the opposite-we continue to focus exclusively on the short-term (surviving as of that day) rather than the long-term (funding more science and medical research so that we can move into the future).

For a society that relies lightly on science, Christopher Nolan relies heavily on it for his script, and we soon learn that a "ghost" is haunting our main character Cooper (McConaughey) and his daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy as a child, later Jessica Chastain and finally Ellen Burstyn), and thanks to an odd combination of Morse Code that is not initially questioned fully enough, in this author's humbled opinion, leads them to go to the NASA space station, where all hell is about to break loose.  Cooper meets an old mentor Dr. Brand (Michael Caine, making his requisite appearance, marking this as a Nolan picture), as well as his attractive daughter Amelia (Hathaway), and finds that this is kismet-they are in desperate need of a pilot (random plothole, amongst many of them-what would they have done if Cooper hadn't shown up?), and Cooper fits the bill better than any other options.  Cooper is then persuaded that there is a black hole near Saturn that is passable by human beings, and through which we can venture into another galaxy, where there are three theoretically viable planets for humanity to live in, thus saving the human species.  Cooper must abandon his family to try and save the human race, and of course his children, and so he goes where no man has gone before, along with Amelia, two ancillary astronauts that you know are just there to help the body count, and a wise-cracking robot named TARS (Irwin).

The following sequences are easily the best in the film, and are perhaps the only time in the movie that doesn't seem bogged down by Nolan's insistence to put in convoluted theories and/or emotional moments that ring more and more hollow as the film continues.  This period of the picture gives you some serious unrest, and you wonder what will happen on these planets, and whether or not we'll ever get back to Earth (for the record, we never really do), or whether any of these three planets are actually viable in terms of the human species' survival.  In particular, when they land on the first planet we get some of the most terrifying and spectacular effects of the film.  We land on a planet, seemingly in the middle of a shallow plane of water, with mountains in the distance, and are soon left to assume that this is a wasteland of only water, with all life constantly upheaved by gigantic, skyscraper-style tsunamis (if only this were a tuna expedition, they'd be set!).  The way that Nolan sounds out this period of the movie makes sense-we slowly realize that the idea of transporting an entire species, billions of people, into another part of the galaxy is utterly hopeless, particularly with a ticking clock back on Earth (the final crop, corn, will soon succumb to the blight that has destroyed wheat and okra as viable food sources), and we learn that really, the only option for these astronauts is the obvious-they will be charged with rebuilding civilization in the wilderness, using frozen embryos to continue the species on some distant rock.

However, Nolan insists on going back to the love of a father for his daughter (you have to feel bad for the son, who doesn't actually abandon his father when creating these videos, since he's largely forgotten by his dad), and then we go into a series of ludicrous, Contact-style plots where Cooper in the present communicates with Murphy in his past, protected by future generations of human beings who somehow can bend into the fifth dimension (never mind the serious temporal paradox problems going on there), and honestly, the last half hour is a major snore.  We have Dr. Mann, who has been brought up as the "best amongst us" so many times that you know he's going to be evil and played by a major Hollywood superstar (though even I was surprised that the Matt Damon cameo was kept so far under wraps-bravo to his team and the marketing team for not tipping their hand there), essentially blowing up the crew's principle way to get home, with Cooper floating around a random tesseract without getting torn to bits, and then suddenly finding himself greeting his 95-year-old daughter (now, finally Ellen Burstyn) and having her, after a two-minute reunion, dismissing him to go and save Amelia on her lonely planet.

Honestly, there is so much to like about this film, and we're going to get into that first before I continue to tear the film to shreds.  The movie is beautiful-it's a nice change of pace for Nolan fans to have Hoyte van Hoytema rather than Wally Pfister, so we get an almost dreamlike wonder in the way he plays with different focus levels in the screen, occasionally mimicking the videos of the actual Apollo astronauts more than crystal-clear work that Pfister frequently favors.  The film's visual effects seem to be pretty heavily in the shadow of a film like last year's Gravity (there is never a moment that quite reaches what the Cuaron film does, though the wall of water sure comes close), but really, it's just inside the lines of that film's gargantuan leaps in technology, and I was left breathless multiple times.  And the cast is game, even if many of their parts are left underwritten-McConaughey, Hathaway, and Chastain are such wonderful movie stars that they can sell the big emotional moments, and hold us through when the film is a bit sketchy in its plot (I always chuckle though when three of our most beautiful citizens are the ones who have to save all of humanity-supermodels to the rescue!).

And there's something so sure about Nolan when he's got a particular vision in mind for his film.  The three planets seem distinctly beautiful, just south of hospitable for the first two and just north of hospitable for the third.  He's a very strong director, frequently finding new ways to shock the audience, but always in a popcorn-style way.  Think of the way that he bends Paris in Inception or the collapsing football field in The Dark Knight Rises, or best of all, the tick-tick-tick of the Joker robbing Gotham.  These are great, steady-handed moments from a director who knows how to build suspense, and we get them with Miller's watery planet here and the shifting through Saturn's blackhole-he knows how to create cinema as a director.

Unfortunately, he never manages to do this as a writer, and he is desperately in need of not writing his own scripts.  We saw this in the continued unraveling of the beautifully-shot Inception or the giant, continual plot holes that mar The Dark Knight Rises.  It's actually become a bit of a game when it comes to Nolan's films to discuss plot holes, but this film actually enters an M. Night Shyamalan-style level of absurdity (the Captain and Tennille were right-love is what is keeping us together!).  You feel like realism has slowly been peeled away by the end of the film, with McConaughey floating through a black hole, communicating with his past self.  It's absolutely absurd, and even if you try to make sense of the science, it never really holds water.  Nolan is the sort of writer who puts something spectacular on-screen to distract you (that kaleidoscope image of bookshelves is mesmerizing), but his films completely fall apart the minute you start to think about them.  About the only way that the film makes sense is if you borrow a page from Minority Report or Laura and assume Cooper dies the second he ejects from his ship.  And yet, there's not enough hints as to that this happened like there are in films like Minority Report and Laura (the clear shifts in tone in those films give more credence to the theory, and to be fair, those are two of the best films ever made in this writer's opinion).

There's also the sincere troubles of the character's motives.  It's hard to fathom that Chastain's Murphy in particular would spend a lifetime trying to track down her father, light years away in the cosmos, and that she took until her mid-thirties to actually forgive him despite working on a project related to his life essentially since he left.  The reality is that for a film that focuses on time, we never really get a proper crash course in such a thing-it makes sense for Cooper to still pine after his long-lost children, but Murphy was only ten when her father left-it's likely that her bitterness would have led to a cold, crystalized love for her long lost dad rather than something that consumed her every day.

We also get the problem that every character other than Cooper and Murphy is horribly underwritten.  Anne Hathaway's Amelia is at the top of this list.  Hathaway is an actress that knows how to dominate a screen, and she's very good at what she does here (this was the perfect film role for her to choose following Les Miz and the random Hathahate that followed), but this character is completely ancillary, and it's pretty condescending by the writers of the film that her romantic love for Edmunds is deemed less than the paternal love that Cooper experiences for Murphy.  Her character is entirely there to reflect Cooper's journey, as well (as is Murphy's), and quite frankly both are added to the long list of ways that Christopher Nolan cannot write women.

And we're going to leave it there, though with nearly three hours of cinema there's surely more to tackle in the comments if you're feeling like it.  What were your thoughts on Nolan's latest?  Do you think he'll finally score that Best Director nomination the entire internet is clamoring for him to have?  Do you agree with me that he is in desperate need of a better screenwriter?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: Actor (2013)

OVP: Best Actor (2013)

The Nominees Were...

Christian Bale, American Hustle

Bruce Dern, Nebraska

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street

Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave

Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club

My Thoughts: Whew, we are going through these at a breakneck speed this week, but we’re now heading into the lead actor races, and seeing whether the five men in “an exceptionally strong year for Best Actor” (don’t you roll your eyes every time that chestnut is strutted out, since it’s brought out literally every year) actually lived up to the title.

I want to start out with two men who stand out in the list above the most to me, the clear leader throughout the year and the guy who just “showed up” randomly in the lineup.  The first is of course Matthew McConaughey, who won dozens of awards throughout the season for his performance as Ron Woodruff.  The McConaissance, as it has been termed, has been growing for several years now, and I will easily admit that he’s a much better actor than I think any of us who just thought he was hot in A Time to Kill or Contact (but man was he hot, so you can forgive).  And yet, Ron Woodruff wasn’t the moment to honor him with a heaping dose of approval.  His work here is okay.  He’s best in show, I’ll give him that (though that’s not saying much considering the competition he’s up against), but I don’t find that he gives the character enough layers and differentiation in his journey from a bigot to an advocate.  There’s too much selfishness and not enough acknowledgement of that from the actor.  Being sick doesn’t make you a good person, but that’s what I get from his work.  Also, and it has to be said when you’re competing for an Oscar, but Matthew McConaughey is not good at crying on-cue.  His crying in this film is awful.  This movie in general is awful, and we have talked about it way too many times for my liking…and I still have to discuss it one more time because it made the Best Picture race.

The other guy I want to discuss right away is Christian Bale.  Bale was the shocker on Oscar morning.  While everyone was debating whether it would be Leo or Robert Redford that got cut from the lineup, Leo made it and so did Christian Bale, causing the major upset exclusion of Tom Hanks despite this being his big comeback year.  Bale’s performance, sadly, is not particularly strong and seems to be more about Megan Ellison’s very strong Oscar game than an actual merited nomination.  Bale’s work is all bloated Brando impersonations and occasionally waking up from the monotony of his work to say something funny or protest.  His work doesn’t jive with the way the character, so cunning and smart, is projecting, and we are left with a wasted slot that could have gone to a number of better actors, not ones that are using their character as a way to show you can be brilliant even when you’re terrible (which he’s not a good enough actor to pull off-even Brando struggled in that regard).

Leonardo DiCaprio was the other on-the-bubble nomination in this crew, but thankfully with Leo we have a character that is genuinely stretching him as an actor.  For too long (basically since Titanic) we have seen the same Leo show up in all of his prestige films: haunted, quiet, a man of few words and fewer laughs, and though Leo is really good at this part, even for me this was starting to take its toll.  This may be because of Inception specifically and Gatsby only exacerbated the problem, but from a Leo devotee, I needed a bit of a change and Jordan Belfort was the perfect recipe.  Leo puts the charm he once showed in Jack Dawson into a morphed version of Jordan Belfort.  He manages to make you detest him and secretly root for him, in a way Michael Douglas did decades ago in Wall Street.  This is an actor who is obviously very posh and seductive in real-life (have you seen the women he dates?!?), and you see that come alive in this role, where he occasionally embarrasses himself, is vulnerable physically and not just emotionally, and you see someone who is just past the golden boy stage of his career playing someone who is just past the golden boy stage of his life.   A perfect combination, and a rare treat where Oscar notices a dramatic actor doing great atypical comedic work.

We’ll move on to Bruce Dern next, as Leo, Bruce, and Chiwetel have almost nothing in common and so there’s no clever way to segway them.  Dern’s work is not going to be put through the ringer like I did with Squibb.  It’s above the grade in that regard, though I still don’t see why it was “special.”  I loved the way that he delays some of his reactions or keeps some of his answers to questions (likely knowing that he doesn’t fully understand what’s being asked, but being aware of the ritual of giving an answer).  However, most of the film is just filled with blank stares, and I don’t feel like Dern gives enough of his introverted self to establish that the long stares and peers into the distance are anything more than him just not emoting-in order to prove that an actor is actually giving the range that a part gives it credit for, I need a bigger jump in the quality of the acting.  I don’t see that with Dern, and so he only gets partial credit.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is our final nominee, and probably the one who ended up in second place on Oscar night (though, honestly, McConaughey was so far in front that I’d believe all but Bale was the second place contender).  Ejiofor’s got a killer role, and there’s something desperate in his eyes as Solomon that instantly connects with the audience.  There are moments in this film that are so deeply felt that you almost want to give him the trophy straight away.  However, I do feel like Ejiofor is the weakest link of the main four actors, and this is primarily because I feel like the character is underwritten.  I’m aware he’s a real-life person, but in the way to make him near perfect, the writers stop him from being particularly interesting-all of the other members of the quartet (Paulson, Nyong’o, Fassbender), get layers-you can see the real-life attributes of their flawed but human portrayals onscreen.  Solomon is a saint, and perhaps he was in real-life, but realism doesn’t make great acting, even if physically the demands that Ejiofor is going through are brutal and there is tremendous promise from an actor to watch.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes of course distinguish between Comedy/Musical and Drama (though they lie through their teeth in genre fraud on the former), and in odd twist (again, thanks to the genre fraud) we had nearly an even split between comedies and dramas.  McConaughey won the Best Drama prize, beating Ejiofor as well as Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips), Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom), and Robert Redford (All is Lost).  DiCaprio took the comedic prize over Bale and Dern, as well as Joaquin Phoenix (Her) and Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis).  Proving at the very least that the year had a lot of names, the SAG lineup was similar to Oscars (same winner), but they chose Hanks and Forest Whitaker (Lee Daniels' The Butler) instead of Bale and DiCaprio.  And since BAFTA had the good sense to skip Dallas Buyers Club, we saw Ejiofor take the trophy and Tom Hanks (surely sixth place) taking McConaughey's slot.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I'm going to admit it-while no year is a particularly bad year when you take the five best performances (if you hunt enough, you'll find five great pieces of acting), this isn't my favorite year for acting either with Oscar's lineup or (comparatively) with mine, but I still could have come up with a stronger lineup than Oscar.  I'd definitely have included the soulful star-making of Michael B. Jordan in Fruitvale Station, the lovelorn loneliness of Joaquin Phoenix in Her, the frustrated soul of Oscar Isaac in Inside Llewyn Davis and the horny frustration of Ethan Hawke in Before Midnight.  Now THAT would have been a lineup worth spouting cliches over.

Oscar’s Choice: They cannot deny a movie star who makes good: McConaughey by a country mile (al'right, al'right, al'right?).

My Choice: The winner is going to be Leo, though to be fair he would have been fifth on my personal ballot (any of the men above I would have given the Oscar to most gladly, whereas Leo wins for a strong piece of work that I give the trophy to reluctantly, since I know he can do better-but that's the OVP; at the end of the day, it's simply about honoring the best nominee of the five).  I'd follow Leo with Ejiofor, and then McConaughey, Dern, and way in the back, Bale.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Is anyone else bucking the McConaughey express (or wishing he had won for Magic Mike instead)?  What is your favorite piece by Leo, and when (if ever) would you have given him the Oscar?  Anyone want to vouch for Bale being the best of the bunch?  And who was the best lead actor of 2013?  Share in the comments!

Also in 2013: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Live Action Short, Animated Short, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score,  Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2013

Past Best Actor Contests: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012

2014 Oscar Predictions: Best Actor

As proof that these articles are a bit silly to be writing right now, as I pointed out in my Best Actress article, these are all just a snapshot, since clearly after the raves The Theory of Everything Felicity Jones got at Toronto she’ll likely go lead and might even win the entire thing.

Still, though, it’s a fun bit of silliness and I hate starting things I don’t complete (the 2013 OVP is starting up again this week, I promise), so we’ll continue on with Best Actor.  This category always feels ridiculously full, and once again that’s the case with a number of actors taking on many challenging roles, though I must admit that even here I feel a tad underwhelmed.  I genuinely get bored with AMPAS’s bizarre and constant love of biopics.  The reality is that while these are occasionally brilliant (Zodiac, A Social Network, basically the David Fincher ones), by-and-large they are boring because they stick to well-known and predictable narratives and while they occasionally have superb acting, they rarely delve into tangents and interesting ways of telling a story.

Still, though, this is about Oscar’s opinions and not mine, and Oscar loves him a biopic, which should surely help the handsome and affable Eddie Redmayne make his way into the Academy’s good graces.  The Theory of Everything got an outstanding response in Toronto and though he is pretty young by this category’s standards, I still think we should count on his name amongst the nominees.

Ditto Steve Carell, playing against type in Foxcatcher.  The constant delays for this film makes me raise an eyebrow, but Bennett Miller got lead nominations for both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Brad Pitt-I doubt that this will be any different.  The real question continues to be whether or not Channing Tatum correctly campaigns here or if he is demoted to a supporting performance ala Julia Roberts last year.  I’m guessing supporting for now, so that gets us to two.

Benedict Cumberbatch’s The Imitation Game has a little bit of a smell around it right now in my opinion, though I am basing that on nothing other than the trailer, which gave away the entire movie (that always leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and makes me a bit nervous about the movie).  Still, this is Harvey’s big player this year, and it’s hard to imagine Cumberbatch, who is at “that moment” in his career, going much longer without Oscar attention, especially for something so BAIT-y.

Continuing the oddly first-timer heavy aspect of this category (really, there’s a decent chance that all five of the nominees in this category will be first-time nominees, which would be the first time this has happened in Best Actor since 1934) we have Michael Keaton, back from the career abyss with a show-stopping role in Birdman.  Hats off to Keaton for playing a very meta character (a washed-up actor most famous for playing a superhero…sound familiar?), and I think that if this delivers Keaton could be in a position very similar to Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler a few years ago.

There are a number of former winners/nominees, of course, that could continue that 1934 streak.  Bill Murray is getting strong recognition for St. Vincent, and is clearly pushing for a nomination for that role.  You’ve got Tommy Lee Jones in yet another passion project for The Homesman (hey, it worked with In the Valley of Elah) and Matthew McConaughey could have an afterglow for Interstellar, though with True Detective already out doesn’t it feel like he’s been rewarded enough?  Brad Pitt is back once again with Fury and that certainly looks captivating, though Pitt’s so good so often these days I wonder if the Academy will continue to recognize this.  And there’s of course Joaquin Phoenix, who gets put in Oscar’s good graces as often as he’s ignored, but Inherent Vice has a solid aura surrounding it.

That being said, I think we’re looking at a first-timer at this point for the fifth slot.  Jack O’Connell is the lead of one of the year’s biggest pictures (Unbroken), but is probably too young at 24 and way too hot to be nominated in a category that likes their nominees middle-aged and sexless.  Timothy Spall is leading a Mike Leigh film which is occasionally good for an acting citation (though Leigh's more consistent for writing, where he's almost certain to be nominated again this year).  Therefore, my gut is telling me that this is going to go to David Oyelowo at this point.  His star is on the rise after The Butler, and Selma has that sort of feel of a film that is going to land a huge number of nominations.

My Predictions: I’ve kind of already gone there (Cumberbatch, Oyelowo, Carell, Keaton, and Redmayne).  If I had to name some names that I think are being underestimated, we’ve got Gael Garcia Bernal (Jon Stewart is going to campaign the hell out his Rosewater and everyone likes Stewart), Spall (whom I already listed but bears repeating: he did win Cannes, after all), and perhaps Oscar Isaac who is a major emerging talent but may be picking too Indy of films with Inside Llewyn Davis last year and A Most Violent Year this year (which will help him in the long run with his career but will probably mean he’ll have to wait for a milquetoast biopic in a few years to compete with Oscar).

Is there a winner? Oddly, while his costar Jones is nearly the perfect age to win, Eddie Redmayne is almost certainly too young to win Best Actor with Oscar.  Instead, I’d suspect that he’ll settle for an “investment nomination” and he’ll applaud for either Keaton or Carell, both of whom are at the right point in their careers to pull off a Forest Whitaker-style win (winning on what will likely be your only nomination).  How bizarre would it be for Steve Carell to have an Emmy but no Oscar though?  Share your thoughts on this and this entire slate in the comments!

Emmy Predictions: The Dramas

We’ve hit the movies and the comedies, so with just one day left until a lot of Hollywood stars are either ecstatic or firing their agents, we’ll move into the five Drama categories.  As I’ve mentioned before, the higher the ranking, the more likely I think it is that someone will be nominated (not necessarily win, though).

Best Drama Series

1. Breaking Bad

2. True Detective

3. House of Cards

4. Game of Thrones

5. Mad Men

6. Downton Abbey

The Lowdown: This looks extremely familiar, because, well, it is.  The only show that I’m skipping from last year is Homeland, which has become a shadow of its former celebrated self.  I do feel like new blood could oust the aging Mad Men and Downton Abbey, but no show aside from True Detective seems like it could be elevated onto this list.  The Americans is more a critical than an audience fave (which matters with ratings-conscious Emmy) and The Good Wife missed last year (usually a death knell) and this category has been very resistant to network dramas.  I say that this is the lineup, though don’t be surprised if Downton or Mad Men become the surprise miss of the morning.

Winner?: I mean, Breaking Bad has milked that double season for all it’s worth.  True Detective could be a factor, but that seems more of a lead actor situation.  Walter White wins in his final showdown.

Best Actor in a Drama Series

1. Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad

2. Matthew McConaughey, True Detective

3. Kevin Spacey, House of Cards

4. Woody Harrelson, True Detective

5. James Spader, The Blacklist

6. Jon Hamm, Mad Men

The Lowdown: Once again, prestige (a pair of Oscar winners) and love of their shows will cement the top four easily in place.  James Spader was once a major Emmy player for Boston Legal, and I suspect the ratings on this show will ensure him a nomination (perhaps I am underestimating it even for Best Series?).  The final slot is a showdown between previous winner Jeff Daniels and long-suffering loser Jon Hamm.  I’m going to go with Hamm because his show is more established with Emmy and didn’t get a gut-punch cancellation.  That said, Mad Men is clearly weakened going into this year, and I think at least one of its perennials will miss.

Winner?: This is going to be an amazing showdown between the recently crowned Oscar Best Actor and a longtime Emmy favorite retiring his iconic character.  I don’t dare predict who will win until I see how their shows fare in other categories, but this is going to be one for the ages.

Best Actress in a Drama Series

1. Robin Wright, House of Cards

2. Kerry Washington, Scandal

3. Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife

4. Claire Danes, Homeland

5. Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men

6. Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black

The Lowdown: Occasionally getting snubbed when you were expected to get in has a HUGE effect the next year (see Sean Hayes for a good example), and I think that’s what Maslany is going to be this year.  Michelle Dockery for Downton Abbey or Lizzy Caplan for Masters of Sex or even Keri Russell in The Americans all would make more sense, but Orphan Black is a major part of pop culture right now and she’s easily a breakout star.  The rest of the women seem pretty set, though Moss could be vulnerable if Mad Men love completely falters.

Winner?: Margulies may have had one helluva a season, but I think this is a battle between Washington and Wright (Danes has slipped too far to win, though she’s got at least one more nomination in her before the sun sets on her series).  Washington is on the biggest show on network television right now if you go strictly on buzz, and I still think that she’ll win for this role, but the fact that she missed last year (when Scandal love seemed to peak) could mean Wright’s ice queen will enjoy this trophy.

Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series

1. Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad

2. Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones

3. Dean Norris, Breaking Bad

4. Jon Voight, Ray Donovan

5. Josh Charles, The Good Wife

6. Mandy Patinkin, Homeland

The Lowdown: I don’t watch Boardwalk Empire anymore, but it does appear that Bobby Cannavale is not in contention this year (I suspect his character may have been a one-season arc), so we’re left with only a handful of actors from last year that could be returning, chief amongst them Aaron Paul, Mandy Patinkin, and Peter Dinklage.  Dean Norris also seems to have gotten a lot of press for Breaking Bad and it’s hard to argue with an Oscar winner at the Emmys, so I think Jon Voight is probably going to be up here as well.  That leaves one last slot, and I think that Josh Charles major season on The Good Wife coupled with his nomination a few years ago for the same role will be the push he needs to take out someone like John Slattery in Mad Men or Kit Harington in Game of Thrones.

Winner?: Breaking Bad is going to be hard to beat, and Aaron Paul seems quite likely to pick up a third trophy for his final season on the show.  That being said, Dinklage has had a marvelous actorly showcase this season on Game of Thrones, and he has been favored by Emmy before-it could happen again.

Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

1. Anna Gunn, Breaking Bad

2. Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey

3. Christine Baranski, The Good Wife

4. Michelle Monaghan, True Detective

5. Christina Hendricks, Mad Men

6. Emilia Clarke, Game of Thrones

The Lowdown: Emmy likes to repeat-that’s the best way to make sense of this list.  While Gunn, Smith, and Baranski all seem pretty well-set (Baranski doesn’t have quite the heat she once did, but Emmy loves her to bits considering she has eleven nominations so far), the final three slots are a bit harder to sell.  I suspect we’ll see Monaghan (someone other than Harrelson/McConaughey need to score from that show), and I am going to pick Hendricks/Clarke for the final two slots because they managed to make it in last year in a tough competition.  Emmy could of course go with someone they once had the hots for like Archie Panjabi in The Good Wife or Joanne Froggatt in Downton Abbey or even someone outside the box like Bellamy Young for Scandal or Lena Headey for Game of Thrones, but my money is on Clarke/Hendricks for now.

Winner?: If Maggie Smith ever bothered to show up for one of these awards shows, I suspect they would call off the voting and just proclaim her the winner, but her absence makes it harder to vote for her.  I suspect Gunn will win her second trophy for her show’s final season, with Christina Hendricks continuing to stew over the fact that no actor from Mad Men will ever win an Emmy.

And there you have it folks-tune in tomorrow to see my thoughts on the Emmy roundup, but before we get there-which dramatic contenders are you rooting for?  Are you expecting?  Share in the comments!