OVP: Supporting Actress (1999)

OVP: Best Supporting Actress (1999)

The Nominees Were...

Toni Collette, The Sixth Sense

Angelina Jolie, Girl, Interrupted

Catherine Keener, Being John Malkovich

Samantha Morton, Sweet and Lowdown

Chloe Sevigny, Boys Don't Cry

My Thoughts: It is pretty rare (and as the Academy becomes even more insular, even rarer in the 21st Century) for the Academy Awards to do what they did in 1999-give us all five first-time nominees.  While each of these women would have very diverse careers that followed (three of them, to date, have been invited back to the Academy Awards as a nominee for a different picture), they all started as first-timers together.  It's fascinating to think about how one of them became a global superstar, one emerged as an Indie darling, and the remainder are three beloved character actresses with very different fanbases.  But we're only judging the performances in front of us, so let's start with them, shall we?

Samantha Morton is maybe the most versatile of these actors, having appeared in countless roles in the years since of varying sizes.  I think it makes sense how well she fits into the vision Woody Allen has set up for her in Sweet & Lowdown.  The mute girl with a heart-of-gold is a staple at the Oscars for a reason (just ask Jane Wyman or Holly Hunter), but I wanted a bit more of it from her.  A lot of her acting here that works is more physical, reactive rather than driving the viewer, and while that's a good fit, it doesn't give us the range I want from this piece (and as Hunter showed in The Piano, not being able to speak onscreen is no excuse for not giving us everything you'd get with a lot of dialogue).

Toni Collette, oddly enough, does that kind of projecting without speaking in her most famous scene in The Sixth Sense, going through a facial journey as she understands her son's gifts, and gets to have a reunion of sorts with her mother (she does have dialogue, but it's definitely secondary to what she's doing).  Collette is aces in this in general, though.  She nails the tough spot of being a single mother in a horror movie (very much a cliche) by giving us a sense of not just what it's like to raise a unique child, but also what it's like to put your life on the back-burner to raise said child.  This is one of those performances that Oscar could've skipped (Osment gets the showier part), and I'm so glad they didn't.

I will confess since this is the last (guaranteed) time that we discuss her that I've never been really besotted with Angelina Jolie as an actress.  I think she's better as a movie star or celebrity, but when she's forced into actually acting or transforming, she can't do it.  Part of the reason she works in Girl, Interrupted is that we're getting that star persona full-force, for the first time, and audiences were wowed by it.  In many ways it's similar to what one of her competitors that missed the field in 1999 (Jean Smart in Guinevere) is doing-it's the first time we see this talent, so we assume it's limitless and are astounded, but we quickly get used to it, and it's not something where every performance is an event like Meryl Streep or Julianne Moore.  Again, I need to judge this based on what's totally in front of me (those are the OVP rules), and what I'm seeing is intoxicating...but I don't know that it's great acting.

Catherine Keener is able to achieve both in Being John Malkovich.  She's playing a role that would be a staple in her catalog (the gorgeous, smart, impetuous bitch), and she nails it.  Keener would later be typecast in these sorts of roles, but here you understand that there's something special to what she's specifically bringing.  Look at the way she is totally comfortable stepping on John Cusack's character to get what she wants, which is something better than him.  It's basically said out loud, but you understand because she's so enthralling why Cusack is willing to put up with it.  In a film teaming with really interesting character decisions, hers is the best and I'm glad if only one person got that nomination, it was her.

We end with Chloe Sevigny, one of those stars that just has such a unique screen persona it's inevitable that she would land an Oscar nomination at some point, but likely not much more because she is not in traditional Academy fare.  Sevigny can be a good actress, but she goes all-in with all of her characterizations, and I think her work here needed some more breathing room.  She plays well off of Hilary Swank, but it's more predictable and close-to-the-vest in her approach, giving the audience less glimpses inward rather than just what we get on the surface.  This isn't a bad performance, by any means, but when you're judging on a curve (i.e. giving out an Oscar), you have to be pickier, and I think there was room for something more fully-fledged here.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Golden Globes went with Jolie as their victor, here taking out Morton, Keener, Sevigny, Natalie Portman (Anywhere But Here), & Cameron Diaz (Being John Malkovich).  SAG also picked Jolie, beating Diaz, Keener, Sevigny, & Julianne Moore (Magnolia), while BAFTA gave their statute to Maggie Smith (Tea with Mussolini) atop Diaz, Cate Blanchett (The Talented Mr. Ripley), Thora Birch (American Beauty), & Mena Suvari (American Beauty).  The clear sixth place based on precursors is Diaz, and that probably makes the most sense.  Moore was in the running, as were Blanchett & Gywneth Paltrow for Ripley (they likely split their vote), and as I mentioned above there were some who thought Jean Smart might surprise given her reviews for Guinevere, but Diaz was likely in sixth even if that feels weird given Oscar didn't care for her.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: This was in the era before Nicole Kidman was an Oscar staple, but that doesn't mean that Oscar was making the right decisions by her, as she was still doing the work.  Look at what she does in Stanley Kubrick's final film, a prickly, tough performance as a neglected wife in Eyes Wide Shut...she was Oscar-worthy well before Moulin Rouge!.

Oscar’s Choice: There was some buzz building at the time for Collette to win in an upset, but not enough to topple Jolie from her perch.

My Choice: For sure Collette.  This is on a different level from her competition, even if Catherine Keener would've made a respectable winner as well.  Behind them (in order) are Morton, Sevigny, and then Jolie.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Does everyone want to stay with Jolie, or would you like to see dead people with Toni & I?  Which of these actresses (their first glance for many cinephiles) is the strongest thespian in the years that followed?  And is sixth place as easy as just "it was Cameron Diaz" or does someone want to push for someone more traditionally in Oscar's wheelhouse?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 1999: Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously, in 1999

Past Best Supporting Actress Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

OVP: Actress (2003)

OVP: Best Actress (2003)

The Nominees Were...

Keisha Castle-Hughes, Whale Rider

Diane Keaton, Something's Gotta Give

Samantha Morton, In America

Charlize Theron, Monster

Naomi Watts, 21 Grams

My Thoughts: I sometimes feel like an old man (which depending on your birth certificate, I may well be) when I talk about old Oscar races, but it's hard to impress how wild of a ride 2003's Best Actress race was.  Even compared to recent fields (like this year's crazy, frontrunner-less year), 2003's nominations got bonkers with only two names showing up in most of the precursors (and not a single name landing in all of them), and the remainder feeling totally influx throughout the season (just wait until we get to the precursors below).  We'll start with the two names, though, that never felt in doubt with Oscar all year long.

Charlize Theron, it's hard to remember in 2003, was not considered a particularly compelling actress.  Beautiful, yes, but she had largely stuck to "girlfriend/wife" roles until that point, and when she saw her break playing totally against type in Monster, she took it.  Theron has been called one of the great performances to ever win this award, and to some degree I find that to be hyperbole.  I think she's excellent, inhabiting Aileen Wuornos & humanizing her in a way that probably works better in fiction than in a biopic (the sympathy for serial killers angle always feels like a tightrope considering the lives they ended up destroying even if they started out from sheer horror like Wuornos clearly did).  I don't think she lands the romantic arches with Christina Ricci (there's not enough chemistry there), and I also feel like some of her shock appeal is the makeup doing heavy-lifting because we know what she really looks like, but this is a worthy nomination, even if I don't think it's an all-timer.

Diane Keaton was having yet another comeback in 2003 (her last, to date, with Oscar), and like Theron, there are moments where it doesn't quite work.  I don't know that she had enough chemistry with Keanu Reeves late in the movie for my taste, never quite making it work the same way as with Jack (and there are moments it feels like she's playing Diane Keaton more than her character).  But this is minor quibbling about a terrific performance.  Playing a woman who has found immense success in every avenue of life except love, and then having that be a bumpy, fraught, vulnerable journey for her rather than a simple rom-com...Keaton sells a woman who had settled for her life, even if she always knew there could be more.  It's great stuff from one of the best of her generation.

I feel a little bad ragging on child performers, particularly since I know my brother reads this blog & will be guarding his beloved Whale Rider with mama bear arms, but Keisha Castle-Hughes doesn't work with me.  There's naturalism in a performance, and then there's just not emoting enough, and I think she's more in the second half.  It doesn't help that her script is hackneyed and filled with coming-of-age cliche that even the most skilled of performers wouldn't have been able to bring to life, but I wasn't into this the way that so many were...bonus points to the Academy, though, for putting her in the correct category as this is 1000% a lead performance.

Samantha Morton is better with naturalism in In America.  She plays her mother as a real, complicated figure, someone who can have horny sex with her husband (strong chemistry between Morton & Paddy Considine), while also having great anger toward him later in the movie & still make it feel believable.  Morton's work is informed by grief, her Sarah knows that she can never fill the void left by the death of her son, and just wants someone to blame because blaming no one is the worst punishment.  Morton was capping off a truly impressive run in the late-1990's & early-2000's with this her second (and final) nomination, and while it was a surprise, it was a pleasant one from Oscar.

Our final nomination cannot get the same compliment.  Naomi Watts has been nominated for a My Ballot Award before for King Kong and was in sixth place for The Painted Veil-I consider myself a fan.  But she is actively terrible in 21 Grams and I will never understand why Oscar chose this as the moment to honor her, one of the worst performances of her career.  She is constantly screaming, constantly angry, acting as if there's nothing underneath her hostility toward the world, nothing that existed prior to the confines of the movie.  This, like her nomination for The Impossible, feels like they're nominating the role more than the actress, and that these movies (and not something unique & film-fitting like Kong) are where she got her nominations will never not confuse me. 

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have eleven women nominated for these awards.  For Drama it's Theron besting Cate Blanchett (Veronica Guerin), Scarlett Johansson (Girl with a Pearl Earring), Nicole Kidman (Cold Mountain), Uma Thurman (Kill Bill: Volume 1), & Evan Rachel Wood (Thirteen), while for Comedy/Musical it's Keaton over Jamie Lee Curtis (Freaky Friday), Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation), Diane Lane (Under the Tuscan Sun), & Helen Mirren (Calendar Girls).  SAG gave us Theron as the winner over Keaton, Watts, Wood, & Patricia Clarkson (The Station Agent) while at the BAFTA Awards it was Johansson (Lost in Translation) winning over Watts, Johansson (for Girl), Thurman, & Anne Reid (The Mother) (due to release schedule issues, Theron wasn't eligible until the next year with BAFTA, which used to happen a lot more there than it does now, and she was nominated but lost that season).  All of this is to say-who the hell knows who was in sixth place...there are thirteen names just listed and only three of them made it with Oscar, and that's not counting that for much of the race Jennifer Connelly (House of Sand and Fog) was considered something of a favorite.  If I had to guess, thanks to Johansson's campaign being royally botched, it was probably Wood, but this was a bizarre race & one that I still can't figure out.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Similar to our comments for Return of the King, it's hard to know where to put Uma Thurman's work in Kill Bill exactly since it's one great performance split in half, but it's a darned shame that Oscar didn't make room for her in either 2003 or 2004.

Oscar’s Choice: There was no beating Theron-that trophy was undeniably hers...Keaton didn't stand a prayer, and she was obviously in second.

My Choice: I'm going to go with Keaton, who gives the stronger character arc without the need for prosthetics to enhance the performance, against Theron (I also, to be fair, like Keaton's movie way better as I didn't like Monster at all and in a close race, that matters).  Morton is third, with Castle-Hughes & Watts falling behind.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Are you with Oscar & Theron, or do you dare to be different with Diane & I?  Why do you think that Oscar has the worst taste in Naomi Watts movies?  And who the hell was in sixth place here?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also in 2003: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2003

Past Best Actress Contests: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019

OVP: In America (2003)

Film: In America (2003)
Stars: Paddy Considine, Samantha Morton, Sarah Bolger, Emma Bolger, Djimon Hounsou
Director: Jim Sheridan
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Actress-Samantha Morton, Supporting Actor-Djimon Hounsou, Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We're double-dipping today and completing our Best Actress quintet of performances with a fairly recent one (a movie tied for the most recent film I haven't seen in the Best Actress category, in fact).  In 2003, the Best Actress category was crazy.  At the time, no single lead female performance had been nominated at the BAFTA's, SAG's, and Globes (a year later, due to eligibility window rules this wouldn't be entirely true when Charlize Theron would be cited for Monster), and most assumed that other than Theron & Diane Keaton that it was anyone's game, with stars ranging from Uma Thurman to Naomi Watts to Jennifer Connelly all the way to a double-dip of Scarlett Johansson (in Girl with a Pearl Earring and Lost in Translation) causing category confusion.  Oscar didn't disappoint on nomination morning, choosing to cite Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider (a performance treated throughout the season as a supporting turn) and Samantha Morton, four years after her Academy debut for the small immigration tale In America.

(Spoilers Ahead) Morton plays Sarah Sullivan, who with her husband Johnny (Considine) have moved to New York so that Johnny can try his luck at acting.  The two are raising two young girls (the Bolgers), and all are mourning the death of their son Frankie, who died after a brain tumor was discovered when he fell down a flight of stairs.  The family lives in abject poverty in a tenement frequented by drug addicts, and a reclusive artist named Mateo (Hounsou) who is initially off-putting but eventually befriends the female members of the family (Johnny seems more apprehensive).  As the film progresses, we learn Mateo is fighting for his life in a losing battle with AIDS, and Sarah is pregnant, but is not expected to carry the baby to term.  The two stories cross when Mateo dies, leaving the surprise trust fund he has to pay off Sarah's doctor's bills, and both she and their new child are able to survive, with Johnny finally able to mourn his son who died.

The movie's more hopeful than I just described, though the script is about as sentimental as you can imagine.  The screenplay doesn't do a great job of grounding the movie.  Sarah & Johnny frequently are put through repetitive scenes, and Johnny-as-written suffers from mood swings that read like "we're going to make him feel this way because it helps the script" and not very organic.  The character worries oftentimes about money, and yet in a climactic scene bets the entire family's rent to win an ET doll for his daughter.  There's not a lot of logic to the characters, and the ending is really convenient (the dying man living in ruins is sitting on a gigantic $30,000 trust fund?).

This is all a pity as Considine & Morton are both giving compelling performances, particularly the former.  His Johnny is a man who has the confidence to pursue a dream he feels slightly too old to pursue (he's 30 and moving his family around the world to pursue a pipe dream?), and that pride is felt in every movement that Johnny brings to his character, whether he's having playful sex with his wife or confronting his neighbor or accosting a mugger.  It's a terrific bit of work.  Morton is good, too, though she doesn't add as much to the character (this role 100% would be considered supporting today, for the record-she's gone for stretches of the movie).  I loved the scene where she accuses Johnny of "killing" his son because they found out about the tumor-Morton plays her character not as insane or angry, but as someone desperate to find a place to pour the hurt she experienced by losing her child into, even if no one is to blame.

Hounsou is not in the same league as the other two.  His Mateo is intriguing, but he reveals little of the character, and fails in the movie's big moments.  The sequence where Johnny accuses him of being in love with Sarah, and Mateo replies that he's "in love with you" (meant to be Johnny) is meant to be played for laughs or shock value, but it just feels super flat, as if we haven't already guessed that he is gay, and that they were going to find a way to tell us that story (he is not, for the record, in love with Johnny, but in love with the normalcy of their family).  Hounsou at the time was a pretty big character actor, and had already missed out on a major potential nomination for Amistad, so I get why this happened, but it's another uninspiring citation in a 2003 Best Supporting Actor field full of them.

Cosmopolis (2012)

Film: Cosmopolis (2012)
Stars: Robert Pattinson, Sarah Gadon, Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Juliette Binoche, Jay Baruchel
Director: David Cronenberg
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

"Weird for the sake of weird" is something that I, as a filmgoer, am far more forgiving of than your average movie attendee.  I celebrate films that try to play with form and that are willing to go to different heights for a movie.  I do occasionally find them hard to grade (I'm still not sure if The Counselor was a good movie or not), but generally I try to at least see what the point of the weird was, because if there's a point or a larger purpose, I can get onboard with the movie.  Sadly for me and for my Thursday night, Cosmopolis is simply a film that's weird for the sake of being weird, rarely actually trying to make a strong statement that resonates outside of robotic, intense dialogue even though it has polished literary roots and a fine enough cast.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, based on the novel by the acclaimed Don DeLillo, essentially follows Eric Packer (Pattinson), an obscenely wealthy but deeply neurotic hedge fund manager who spends most of his day in his state-of-the-art limousine.  We see Eric, recently married to the beautiful but largely uninterested Elise (Gadon), struggle with both his hypochondria (he literally gets a medical exam everyday, including a prostate exam that is both deeply disturbing and wildly erotic early in the picture), and his enormous sex drive, sleeping with multiple women and making sexual release a huge part of his day.  The film takes a turn late in the picture when Eric gets his inner Patrick Bateman on by randomly killing his head of security and then coming face-to-face with a man who has been threatening his life Benno Levin (Giamatti).  The movie's progress is steep, with him losing everything but still seemingly favorable to the life of Benno, and the film ends with Benno attempting to kill Eric, but we don't ever see if he pulls the trigger, and a series of Rothko paintings over the end credits in a callback to an earlier scene where Eric tries to buy the famed Rothko Chapel in Houston.

The film succeeds on occasion, it's worth noting.  Robert Pattinson's ability as an actor is definitely there (he's not Taylor Lautner) but he's not really as strong as he could be (he's not yet Kristen Stewart).  However, the role seems tailor-made for him, as few other people could play someone so deeply disturbed, but yet through money and unattainable beauty every person, including the audience, remains drawn to him even as he becomes a murderer and someone who is less and less concerned with his own welfare.  The other actors can sometimes play into the movie, particularly Juliette Binoche as a randy art dealer, seemingly screwing Eric not for the job but because he's actually good at sex, and Samantha Morton as an employee of Eric's who can command the screen just with that wonderfully firm voice.  Both Binoche and Morton are in the film only fleetingly, but they are great cameos and something the film could have used more of as it progressed down the rabbit hole.

The problem is that these few pluses don't make up for the myriad subtractions in the cast.  For starters, the dialogue, while clearly stylized to the point of incomprehension, borders that line between "a fascinating departure" and "how cool am I?" to wobbily and especially in the final showdown with Giamatti it gets far over the top, to the point where you almost wish it were a silent picture.  Cronenberg is a fascinating director when he wants to be, but I'm not sold yet that he's a great screenwriter, and that's true here, as the dialogue isn't quite sharp enough in its "autre" mode to actually be profound.  Combine that with the worst scenes of the film being toward the end (Paul Giamatti is one of my least favorite actors, and this is hardly his The Master moment of redemption as he hams it up and is actually playing a character that plays into all of his worst acting tics).  All-in-all, a boring movie that is interestingly shot and I truly wish he'd found a way to amp up the directorial flourishes, perhaps never actually leaving the limousine as the picture all falls apart when he takes away that insulation from a restless, disruptive outside world.

Those are my thoughts on this film, one I've wanted to see for a while and Netflix gave me a mailed reason this week.  How about you-are you a fan of Cosmopolis or the films of David Cronenberg?  Is there ever going to be a film of Paul Giamatti's where I actually love him in the role?  And Robert Pattinson-is he ever going to have an undisputed critical triumph?  Share your theories down below!

OVP: Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)

Film: Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)
Stars: Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Clive Owen, Abbie Cornish, Samantha Morton, Jordi Molla, Rhys Ifans, Eddie Redmayne
Director: Shekhar Kapur
Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Actress-Cate Blanchett, Best Costume Design*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Movies are not supposed to provide a history lesson.  I have frequently longed for, quite frankly, a world where history isn't quite as followed on film as it needs to be, as contrary to popular opinion truth is almost never stranger than fiction.  In fiction, you can create convenient plot devices, and utilize everything from mummies to aliens to flying men in spandex to help shelter your little universe.  As a result of this I liked the idea of Elizabeth: The Golden Age, a film that threw out multiple aspects of English and Spanish history to create a rather crowning story about a queen, someone who would eventually be considered one of England's great rulers who made several tactical mistakes during her lifetime, throwing caution to the wind and giving us a film that grossly exaggerates, bends, and occasionally just breaks history into smithereens.  What I didn't like about the film is that it occasionally features hackneyed romantic triangles, ridiculous overacting and far too much bombast from its lead.

(Spoilers Ahead) Yes, this is the review that I take one of the truly great actors of her generation, Cate Blanchett, to task a bit as this is hardly what you'd consider a fine performance.  It's not unfun, I want to point out-Blanchett overacting is still better than someone like, say, Tara Reid overacting because Blanchett's technical training and stage roots bring a theatricality to the world of Elizabeth that lesser actors wouldn't have been able to find.  However, her queen here is nowhere near the sharp, polished achievement she pulled off nine years earlier in her star-making role in the original.  Here she gives too little care to some of the subplots (such as her relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh) and is only really fun during the film's few comic bits.

Perhaps she should have gotten a lesson from Samantha Morton, who finds room to play the quiet parts of her role as Mary, Queen of Scots a bit more levelly while also finding a deliciousness in her portrayal (both women find the over-the-top privilege afforded to them as queen's, something that most movies lack because they want to make them relatable, but this is silly-these people were gods amongst men in their time, it's hard to fathom that that didn't go to their head).  The rest of the cast isn't nearly as strong as Morton or as admittedly fun as Blanchett.  Eddie Redmayne and Rhys Ifans border onto the bad as would-be assassins, while Clive Owen relies mostly on his dark eyes and enamoring accent rather than any semblance of direction for his character (Abbie Cornish, like everything she does that isn't Bright Star, is Novocaine).

If there's a cattiness to this review it's because this is a gigantic David O. Selznick style tragedy that succeeds when it's more Dynasty than Upstairs, Downstairs, but it doesn't have the good sense to stick to the trashy aspects of the film, instead deciding that the very flawed Elizabeth needs to be a hero instead of just deeply flawed.  The film's position as an Oscar-nominee puts a harsher light on the film than what it could have been (Blanchett's Mommie Dearest), and as a result I find myself critiquing it more harshly than I normally would have.  Perhaps the only person on the set who 100% got the camp of the entire thing would be costume designer Alexandra Byrne, who creates decadent, marvelous costumes for the film, particularly those worn by Elizabeth.  She has little shame while creating increasingly outlandish and gaudy (but always stunning) gowns, which normally I'd find a bit much but here it matches the mood of the film.  Byrne, a long-time Oscar bridesmaid, knew this was her moment and went to the hilt, gaining her little gold man in the process.

We'll end there, as I need to breathe from the whirlwind of feelings I had about this movie, but I'd love your thoughts.  What'd you think of Elizabeth: The Golden Age?  Do you agree that this is Blanchett's least Oscar-nominated work, or are you going to defend the scenery-chewing?  And considering the showy competition she had from Atonement and Sweeney Todd, are you on-board with Alexandra Byrne finally winning her Oscar?