Male Acting 2013: Lopsided Embarrasment of Riches
Sunday, November 24, 2013 at 10:10AM It's that time of year when we have to start taking stock of the year and prepping all that delicious Year in Review nonsense that goes on forever (aka 2 months at least). I can't help myself with the listing from December through January (and sometimes beyond). We already surveyed impossible ballot decisions when it comes to the women. So now it's time for the men. I thought about delaying this another week since the great remaining unseens for me are male-centric. I'll see Out of the Furnace, American Hustle and Wolf of Wall Street all within the next 8 days and will try and catch up with Rush, too... if only because, generally speaking, I adore Mr Daniel Brühl.
We'll start with the weakest of the four acting quadrants both historically speaking and this year, too. Even in this meager list of 12 men I'm considering (before those last four key films) two of them are arguable leads...
SUPPORTING ACTOR - my longlist ballot
in no particular order
- Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
- Chris Cooper, August: Osage County
- James Franco, Spring Breakers
- Keith Stanfield, Short Term 12
- Ryan Gosling, The Place Beyond the Pines
- Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
- Sergio Hernández, Gloria
- Tom Hanks, Saving Mr Banks
- Colin Farrell, Saving Mr Banks
- Ben Foster, Lone Survivor
- James Gandolfini, Enough Said
- Elyes Aguis, The Past
I'm misleading you a little. I'm not really considering all 12 since I've mostly narrowed it down to the actual nominees with the full knowledge that the future screening of The Wolf of Rushing Furnace Hustles could well make me start all over. But I'm posting a 12 wide chart for symmetry's sake.
Immediately after doing the chart I began to wonder whether I should be accepting the (convenient) campaign notion that Gandolfini and Hanks are supporting players in their films. It's true that both of those films are ABOUT their female lead but both men are crucial to their movies. I'm not sure who started the weird oft-repeated rumor that took hold this summer that Hanks is not in much of Saving Mr Banks but they were lying to us all. His scenes are sometimes short and maybe the actual minute count is limited but its impactful screentime. It's the sunny version of the Hopkins/Hannibal situation from 1991. The story is about the woman but it just cannot exist without him poking at it and her continually during the running time.
BEST ACTOR - my longlist ballot
in no particular order and i went crazy here with inclusiveness (20 instead of 12) because we dont talk about actors enough and there was just SO MUCH good work by leading men this year. Recognize!
- Paul Eeenhoorn, This is Martin Bonner
- Michael B Jordan, Fruitvale Station
- Robert Redford, All is Lost
- Bruce Dern, Nebraska
- Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips
- Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
- Tye Sheridan, Mud
- Ethan Hawke, Before Midnight
- Jake Gyllenhaal, Prisoners (campaining as supporting)
- Gael Garcia Bernal, No (not eligible for Oscar despite a 2013 release)
- Joaquin Phoenix, Her
- Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips (campaigning as supporting)
- Miles Teller, The Spectacular Now
- Jude Law, Side Effects
- Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyer's Club
- Israel Broussard, The Bling Ring
- Will Forte, Nebraska
- Hugh Jackman, Prisoners
- Ali Mosaffa, The Past
- Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis
and you, dear readers?
Reader Comments (46)
Man such a strong year for leading actor. Can I just say that Julie Delpy definitely owned the first two Before movies but Ethan Hawke finally had her beat in the most recent. Both of them were just on fire though.
If you haven't seen The Hunt, you're missing out on an extraordinary performance from Mads Mikkelsen and other great acting as well.
I'd also consider John Gallagher Jr along with Stanfield in Short Term 12,
Great call on Sergio Hernandez! I could watch a whole separate movie surrounding his character in Gloria.
My top performances in lead so far are Mads Mikkelsen in The Hunt, Redford, Hanks, Isaac and Jordan, but I also liked DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby, Dern and Hawke. Many still unseen though.
In supporting, I've only *really* liked Matthew Goode in Stoker. I currently also have Abdi, Gallagher (ST12), McConaughey (Mud) and Cumberbatch (Star Trek) on my ballot, but like, whatever. Shamefully poor compared to both female categories.
Seeing Prisoners tonight :)
It is a fantastic year but it was very easy for me to come up with a top 2 despite liking a lot of performances. Ejiofor and Isaac. The eyes and the voice.
For a long list for Supporting Actor, possibilities might include: Geoffrey Rush for The Book Thief, Steve Coogan for Philomena, Forest Whitaker for Black Nativity, Joel Edgerton for The Great Gatsby. And I wonder if George Clooney can ever be discounted. His part was small but that's what puts him in the supporting category.
And for the not-so-possible, two actors that really woke their movie up when they were onscreen were Tom Hiddleston in Thor, and Benedict Cumberbatch in the Star Trek movie. I also really liked Paddy Considine's turn in The World's End.
What about John Gallagher Jr in Short Term 12, did you consider him lead and didn't live up tothe competition or were you not a fan pf the performance? I thought he was pretty fantastic
Nice piece. One person I've really loved this year with no chance of getting a nom is Nick Frost in The Worlds End. Though not a major fan of the film, his turn I found quite moving and against type.
On seeing your "Supporting" designations, I wanted to bring up a talking point, but then you hit on it yourself. Gandolfini is a lead to my eyes. We don't see as much of him as JLD, but we do follow his emotional journey unlike with his supporting foil, Keener's character. Also unlike Keener, we get a number of scenes with him alone with his daughter, yes?
I would be okay with Barkhad Abdi in Supporting though. Why? I can't put it to words except to say that I might have fallen under Hanks's star power.
My picks for the win: Joaquin in Lead (second year in a row in my personal Oscars!) and Fassy in Supporting.
Evan: is that right? I was thinking he was supporting because the action never stays with him. I thought his only scene without JLD was brief, and it was a scene she just walked out of. I might be remembering wrong. I definitely need to see the movie again, and then 20 more times after for fun.
García Bernal is not eligible because the film "No" was a BFLF nominee last year. It would have been eligible for all other categories if it had been released the same year as it was nominated.
great u named jackman.
I have a couple of FYC, Jake Gyllenhaal for Enemy, I find his performances in the film more intriguing than Prisoners, if just a little. I was also quite taken by Steve Coogan in Philomena Pierre-Yves Cardinal from Tom at the Farm.
My list:
Leading Actor
Chiwitel Ejiofor, 12 Years A Slave
Jack O'Connell, Starred Up
Israel Broussard, The Bling Ring
Paul Eenhoorn, This is Martin Bonner
Simon Pegg, The World's End
Ethan Hawke, Before Midnight
Jude Law, Side Effects
Daniel Bruhl, Rush
Miles Teller, The Spectacular Now (It's fine but eh.... he is just asked to do a little too much but occasionally did give good John Cusack vibes)
Supporting Actor
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
James Gandolfini, Enough Said
Ben Mendelsohn, Starred Up
Richmond Arquette, This is Martin Bonner
Dwayne Johnson, Pain & Gain (I stand by this!)
James Franco, Spring Breakers
Vithaya Pansringarm, Only God Forgives
Nick Frost, The World's End
Just going to outright say I thought Gosling was bad in The Place Beyond the Pines. Not Emory Cohen bad but his stoicism is not a good look at all and everything that character represented and the way it was valorized by Cianfrance just grossed me out to really find anything worth while in that performance. At least Refn had his character beaten up in OGF. Cooper did good underplaying in his role but there is also the fact nothing about that character actually exists and Cooper felt victim to some fantasy writing. Mendelsohn would be my choice for that movie but his role in Starred Up quite frankly is both better in terms of role and movie quality and the movie almost is a rebuke of TPBtP's whole existence.
If Clooney even gets a Golden Satellite nod for Gravity, I will just wave my hands and give up. Why do people just feel the need to reward him?
MM -- those two films. i wish they would be released.
CMG -- oh i'm sure he will. The power of the clooney transcends anything to do with his actual performances. which is sad because then it makes the honors for his worthy performances suspect.
THANK YOU for the Jake Gyllenhaal classification. I've been wondering if I've been crazy for a couple months because his and Hugh's screentime are practically equal, we follow him for most of the movie, etc. etc. And yet no one is batting an eye when he gets thrown in supporting. Crazy talk.
My Top choices, as of 11/23/2013:
Best Actor:
1. Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)
2. Pilou Asbaek (A Hijacking)
3. Soren Malling (A Hijacking)
4. Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station)
5. Daniel Bruhl (Rush)
6. Robert Redford (All Is Lost)
7. Ethan Hawke (Before Midnight)
8. Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)
9. Bill Heck (Pit Stop)
10. Steve Coogan (Philomena)
Best Supporting Actor:
1. Sam Shepard (Mud)
2. Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)
3. David Oyelowo (Lee Daniels' The Butler)
4. Dane DeHaan (The Place Beyond the Pines)
5. Abdihakin Asgar (A Hijacking)
6. George Clooney (Gravity)
7. James Gandolfini (Enough Said)
8. Paul Dano (Prisoners)
9. Chris Cooper (August: Osage County)
And, I'm sorry, but Hugh Jackman wins my Worst Lead Actor award for his abominably awful performance in "Prisoners."
Supporting Actor is such a wasteland this year. I'm personally keeping Barkhad Abdi there almost entirely to heave it up to five names.
So glad that you threw some love Gyllenhaal's way! I didn't really think much of him at the time, but as the movie recedes in memory, I find that I'm thinking of him as often as any other performance by any person of any gender from 2013. Career-best work, for sure, though I'm not the hugest fan of that career.
Nathaniel- I agree. Had he won either of his 2 Oscars for Michael Clayton/O Brother Where Art Thou/Three Kings/The American/Out of Sight, I could be more forgiving but I find the work he does get recognition for to be incredibly annoying. I mean he got a Screenplay nod for Ides of March. How but George Clooney gets that nomination for such a poor script of a poor movie? It just fell apart for me to care about him with that self-serving Oscar speech that clinched his status with AMPAS for the rest of his life. He gets to be our next Jack and Cary Grant despite not nearly being as ambitious in his projects or actually being the box-office movie star of his peers. I just find nothing genuine to him.
Him badmouthing Malick during the 2011 Oscar season and also that recent Esquire article where he went into great detail how awesome his takedown was of Russell Crowe really soured me to him. He just seems like the Popular Kid who also just happens to be best buds with the Principal and staff at your imaginary high school. This may be projection but I feel like he is the personification of Academy thinking, so of course I am going to dislike the person who rolls his eyes at art movies ever getting nominated and winning Oscars.
Simon Pegg in The World's End - most complicated performance I've seen so far this year.
"We'll start with the weakest of the four acting quadrants both historically speaking and this year, too" - I'm assuming you mean in terms of Oscar, right? Because there's no way that in the general history of cinema one acting "category" could be said to be weak by comparison to the others, is there?
{off-topic}
Ryan Murphy wants Michelle Pfeiffer for American Horror Story. Although, personally, I prefer if he utilized her for one of his HBO vehicle or his opportunities to helm or produce a theatrical release. Pfeiffer is done with the strange for strange sake crap she gets from current-Tim Burton.
I agree with James on this being the only installment where Hawke outshines Delpy, though they are both excellent as usual. I really liked Clooney in Gravity (though it obviously wasn't a huge stretch for him), Leto was fantastic/should win from what I've seen so far, d'Assumcao from Stranger By the Lake was great (absolute zero chance)... Fassy was solid... yeah, weak category. I can't even get to five. Lead Actor needs more space though. Hawke, Deladonchamps from Stranger By the Lake, McConaughey and especially Ejiofor are magnificent, and Hemsworth made my list for Rush (I preferred his turn out of the two). Today I see Dern, then come Bale x 2, DiCaprio, Isaac and Phoenix (who looks like he's giving an acting tour de force), so yeah, Actor is stuffed to the gills. Funny how this year the leads are so overflowing and the supporting categories seem so open for both sexes. We could have some surprises this year.
Strange. You've Veerle Baetens in your list of best actresses but you don't have Johan Heldenbergh on your best actor list. I personally thought both of them were amazing in The Broken Circle Breakdown.
eurocheese- I actually really considered Hemsworth for my short-list who I thought had a much more complicated role but felt like the movie let him down too much. Felt like I didn't know enough about him and yet the movie didn't seem to realize if you are going to have such a short-lived, lightning in a bottle figure, at least add a bit of mystery for him. But anyway, Hemsworth's likability goes a long way.
I'm fine with Gandolfini being considered a supporting actor, and this is coming from someone who is pretty much always strict on category fraud. I put Christian Bale in the lead category for The Fighter even though almost no one else did (though if I remember correctly, you did the same, Nathaniel). I put Javier Bardem in lead for No Country for Old Men. Those are just two examples out of many. My thought process is that if a performance seems like it could go lead, then it should, because I think it's more important to make room for true supporting performances in the supporting categories. I'd rather it be possible for short but memorable performances to be nominated than just fill up the supporting categories with big roles that just happened to have a bit less screen time than one of their costars.
But I'm going against my usual routine on this one. Yes, I think Gandolfini is right on the line where he could be considered either lead or supporting, but the main thing for me is that he doesn't have many (maybe only one or two) scenes of his own without Julia Louis-Dreyfus. In fact, almost all of his scenes are filtered through the lens of her character. He has a lot of screen time, he has a full arc of his own, and he's a complex character with many subtleties, so I know that I probably should consider him a lead...but anyway, that's the justification I'm using, because the real reason I'm putting him in supporting is just because I want him to win, and so far he wins my Supporting Actor award. Maybe I'll consider changing categories once I see the movie again, but for now, I'm fine with him being supporting.
So happy to see the love for Jake in Prisoners and Barkhad Abdi in Captain Phillips (also to see them both in lead where they belong).
What?! Gosling is clearly Lead for Place Beyond the Pines. That's usually the type of two people of the same sex can't share the same category bullshit you argue against.
Otherwise, nice lists - although like you mentioned, they could change heavily with the release of WOWS & AH.
Nathaniel, if there was no Captain Philips this year, would Hanks make your Best Actor long list for Saving Mr. Banks? He may have impactful screentime, but how real good is he?
And since he is incredible in Captain Philips and just can't win in leading again, could he win in supporting?
(too many questions, you can save them for the podcast ;) )
Meh. The Place Beyond The Pines is an ensemble piece. There are arguably 3 leads or all of them are supporting characters. But honestly, arguing the awards prospects of that movie besides cinematography is a joke.
CMG -- this is not an argument about awards prospects. this is my personal favorites in each category. i dont care whats going to get nominated when i do my own prizes.
Anonny -- SPOILERS. but he's only in the first third of the movie! that was my reasoning. he's the lead of act one, yeah. but there are two more acts and in both of them Bradley Cooper takes over.
Ralph -- that was a mistake. he should be there. oops.
/3rtful -- he'll never get her. she turned down silence of the lambs because it was too morbid. i say no chance she says yes to american horror story which is way more gruesome than SotL. plus its tv which she's always said no to aside from a surprise for her husband (i think she cameo'ed on picket fences as a surprise if i remember? i didn't see it)
Casey -- perhaps i overstated but in general i dont think there are as many great supporting roles for men as there are for women. There are so many movies ABOUT men that the energy seems to go to the leads whereas with actresses they keep them around to liven up each movie in vivid supporting and ocassional lead roles which are often buttressing the emotional content whereas male roles are more functionary... this is gross generalization but kind of why I think that. But mostly that was my distaste for Oscar's conception of the category talking. It's a rare year where they have stellar lineups in that category (in which they're not cheating I mean with leading players)
But historicaly speaking I've almost never seen a year where Supporting Actor is where it's at! whereas i can't say the same for the other three acting quadrants which each have their "this year is so incredible for _________" time frames.
Understood, Nathaniel. I was just focusing on the complaint of category fraud to your list that misapplies the general complaints to category fraud to actual awards, of which the movie appears not to have, as opposed to your correct opinion of the category placement. Sorry about that.
Re: La Pfeiffer, maybe Ryan Murphy should not have treated Dianna Agron's Quinn so badly (he has now said he disliked her humanizing the role when he wanted a b----) that he could have a direct connection by way of The Family to convince her about it. Whatever, Murphy managed to get Deneuve on Nip/Tuck. Give her a buzz.
I'd have to add Chadwick Boseworth and Harrison Ford from "42." Also Bobby Cannavale from "Blue Jasmine."
OMG I'm not the only person who disliked Place Beyond the Pines and the acting in it. My day is made. That is all.
(Well, almost all, kudos for putting Abdi in lead!)
Gandolfini is supporting just like Johansson is supporting in "Don Jon." Both their movies probe deep into the mind of one person's fixation over an individual of the opposite sex. "Don Jon" might hyperbolize men's conception of women, but it's just on target about the topic as "Enough Said" is on target on how middle-aged women view men. In Short, "Enough Said" belong to Julia Louis-Dreyfus (tremendous, by the way), while "Don Jon" belongs to JGL. The actors playing their significant others are supporting.
2 more questions: where is the "Stoker" cast (I wasn't too fond of the acting, but you seemed very fond of Goode, Nathaniel)? AND is McConaughey supporting or leading in "Mud"?
I wish Keith Stanfield had a legitimate shot a best supporting actor nom he was fantastic
I have to agree with the assertion that Gosling is lead in 'Place Beyond The Pines'.
BVR -- yes. i loved Goode in it... so both he and the guy from BROKEN CIRCLE should probably be on the chart. see? I guess Goode's character is in the end too simple for me to seriously consider him for prizes but damn he was chilling.
there's way too many stellar male leads this year to make any sense of it all. where to even begin with one's personal ballot.
Ryan Gosling for "The Place Beyond The Pines"
One of my favorite actors is Ryan Gosling ... I hated hin in A Place Beyond...
He is also doing horrible choices in movies .. saw "Gangster Squad" on cable ... HORRIBLE!!
The title of the other mess he did this year , escapes me ( is it "God Only Knows/? ) Equally bad.
How was John Gallagher, Jr. in "Short Term 12"? I've been following that awesome trio of "Spring Awakening" actors (Groff, Michele, Gallagher) for a long time now. :)
How is Sam Rockwell in Way Way Back getting 0 buzz?
FYC: Christian Bale (lead), Casey Affleck, Forest Whitaker, Woody Harrelson and Willem Dafoe (all supporting) in Out of the Furnace.
(Excited about seeing The Hunt tonight.)
YAY: McConaughey, Phoenix, Gyllenhaal (leaves Jackman in the dust), Hanks (and from supporting) Leto, Franco, Fassbender, Gosling
HMMM: Abdi, Dern.
Can't wait for the HUSTLE boys
I just saw "Kill Your Darlings" and would strongly throw Daniel Radcliffe (lead) and Dane DeHaan (co-lead? supporting) into the mix.
On a side note, along with his power-turn in Place Beyond the Pines (and in that Metallica movie...oh, never mind that), I'd say Dane deserves consideration for your Film Bitch Breakout Award.