A Little Help From My Friends

This week I decided that I was going to be reviewing the 2004 acting nominees as part of my feature The Races. I like to look at the competition as though I have a say in Oscar history. It's a fun little game of make-believe.

While working on the Best Actor race, however, a number of glaring snubs (Giamatti, Neeson, Bardem) convinced me to broaden my horizons a bit and look beyond Oscar. In addition to the acting races I'd like to look at 2004 (and other years, later) as a whole and talk about its strong points and influential pieces of cinema.

So if you could all do me a favor and recommend some films from 2004 you think I should see, that would be great. Titles I've already profiled from the year can be found here. Thanks in advance for your help!

An Update

The Races - a feature I've been doing in which I talk about all the Oscar-nominated performances in a specific acting category in a certain year and determine who should have won - is getting a bit of a makeover.

So far I've just been picking a category and year at random, but the completist in me has been driven a little nuts by that method. So starting now I'll be doing a whole year at once. All the acting categories in 2004 are up first. Best Actress has already been done, so you can check that out and keep an eye out for the others coming soon.

Best Supporting Actor, 1986

In the first edition of The Races I talked about the Best Actress race of 2004. Today I'll be looking at the five performances nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category back in 1986. I've been watching all the nominated roles over the past couple of weeks, and now I'll examine each one individually and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the works, then decide for myself if I think the win was deserved. This particular year the winner was Michael Caine in my favorite Woody Allen film, Hannah and Her Sisters.

Tom Berenger in Platoon

In Oliver Stone's definitive 1986 Vietnam epic, Platoon, Tom Berenger plays Sgt. Barnes, a combat-loving sadist who leads his platoon in the massacre of a Vietnamese village. Stone put his actors through hell to prepare to play soldiers. Berenger and other cast members slept in 2-hour shifts and were woken by real explosions meant to fray their nerves. It's helped create an impressive accuracy. Berenger is a force to be reckoned with, as is his Sgt. Barnes. He represents Evil in every man, his battle-scarred face only half as wounded as his war-torn soul. He's survived so many battles that his men believe he can't be killed, and Berenger's forceful command of each scene he's in has the audience believing the same. ****/4
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Michael Caine in Hannah and Her Sisters

In a film full of incredible performances (what else in Woody Allen's best film?), Michael Caine's Elliot feels like the most important and interesting. Elliot is married to Hannah, but in love with her sister Lee, and Caine plays him with an obnoxious, pathetic charm that has the audience simultaneously hating him and rooting for him to find happiness. One of my favorite scenes is Elliot's moral dilmma after he's first slept with his wife's sister. His thoughts ping-pong back and forth on whether or not to call Lee and end things, and when to call her, and what to do if her boyfriend picks up. You hear all this in the dialogue, but you don't need to. Caine's nervous, frantic body language says it all. His marvelous performance provides equal parts drama and laughter, and he steals the show every time he's on the screen. ****/4
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Willem Dafoe in Platoon

Willem Dafoe is Sgt. Elias, the yin to Sgt. Barnes' yang in Platoon. He is a free-spirited man who looks after the new soldiers in their ranks and frequently disagrees with the heartless tactics of Barnes. He is the Good in man, choosing to escape the horrors of warfare with drugs and camaraderie instead of madness. He's a role model to the earnest young men who join the military because they believe they are doing something noble and honorable. Dafoe gives a no-holds-barred performance as the skilled soldier who has somehow managed to cling to a strong code of ethics even amidst the incomprehensible violence of Vietnam. Elias is the moral compass to the platoon, and Dafoe is the emotional center of an already powerful film, and gives us a reason to hope that the best in the men will prevail. The only criticism I can think of really is that he doesn't come out as strong as Berenger, but considering how the movie goes, that could be intentional. ***1/2/4
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Denholm Elliott in A Room with a View

Lucy Honeychurch travels to Florence, where she falls in love with George Emerson, a passionate young Englishman. As George's free-thinking father, Denholm Elliott steals scene after scene in this classic romance. Mr. Emerson is a sweet, bemused man who aims to please, if at times with less than the usual degree of decorum. Elliott is the most fun and impressive member of an extensive British cast, and his character serves as the voice of reason amongst a host of people too concerned with appearances to care about happiness or young love. He delivers the film's most important line: "There's only one thing impossible, and that's to love and to part." ***1/2/4
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Dennis Hopper in Hoosiers

This is the first performance I've watched since starting this feature that I didn't enjoy. While Dennis Hopper has a few touching moments as the town drunk who helps lead a high school basketball team to victory, I have to say I found the majority of his performance to be hammy and cliched. Of course, I'd describe the film Hoosiers with the exact same adjectives, so perhaps Hopper didn't have much to work with. A shame, since The Hop is one of my favorite guys playing crazy. *1/2/4
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Final thoughts: Berenger and Dafoe play off each other spectacularly in Platoon, but probably split the vote. Elliott's role was too inconsequential for a win, even in supporting, and Hopper's spot really should have gone to Daniel Day-Lewis for his role as Lucy Honeychurch's betrothed in A Room with a View. Again, I have to agree with the Academy. Michael Caine was wonderfully weasly in Hannah and Her Sisters, and his work was head-and-shoulders above the rest. A well deserved win.

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1. Caine in Hannah and Her Sisters

2. Berenger in Platoon

3. Dafoe in Platoon

4. Elliott in A Room with a View

5. Hopper in Hoosiers

Best Actress, 2004

You may or may not have noticed that I've been watching and profiling the films that had Best Actress nominees back in 2004 over the past week or so. In my reading about this year's Oscar contenders, I've come across a number of people who feel that not one, but BOTH of Hilary Swank's Oscar wins have been undeserved.

As someone who thinks she does great work given the right material, I was a little surprised. So I decided to revisit her most recent win and decide for myself, after watching all the nominated performances, whether or not she deserved to take the Academy Award home that year. Here are my thoughts.

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Annette Bening in Being Julia
This was the only performance of the five that I had not seen when I started this project last week. Annette Bening is always a wonder to watch, and this is no exception. She plays Julia Lambert, an actress who becomes bored with stardom and looks to fill the void in her life with an affair. Bening is terrifically funny in a rather boring film, and has a joyful presence that helps her handily outclass the rest of the cast. She plays a few characters here, in a sense, as an actor playing an actor always does, but I don't feel like the part asked much of her. It's a light film, and I think her performance is less effective because the material doesn't require a true showcase of her enormous range. It's a great and entertaining performance, but it doesn't speak to me on an emotional level. ***/4

Catalina Sandino Moreno in Maria Full of Grace
Catalina Sandino Moreno was one of the last actresses director Joshua Marston came across while casting his film about a Colombian teen who gets involved in drug traficking in the hopes of forming a better life for herself. What a find. Moreno has some beautiful moments here. Her performance rings painfully true, and I found myself wondering about the actress' background. Are there echoes of her real life in the script? I don't know. She is eerily focused during every moment of her performance. Moreno is also fantastic at thinking onscreen. Watch this movie and notice that there is always something going on in her expression. Even in silent scenes she shows an intelligence that is essential in understanding how and why Maria does what she does. I would have expected bigger things to have happened in Moreno's career after this shocking and phenomenal first performance. Hopefully there are more great roles on the way for her. ****/4

Imelda Staunton in Vera Drake
Imelda Staunton is one of my favorite British actresses. Before Mike Leigh's terrific Vera Drake, I'd only seen her in small (yet enormously entertaining) roles. Mrs. Jennings' daughter in Sense and Sensibility. Lady Viola's nurse in Shakespeare in Love. Here, though, she gets the chance to really show off her talent. Vera Drake is a wife and mother in 1950s England. She's a big-hearted woman who helps everyone she can in any way she knows how, including helping women terminate unwanted pregnancies. Staunton plays Vera Drake splendidly. She's a cheerful, happy woman, who we immediately love and support, despite the fact that she performs criminal acts every week. The story and the rest of the characters fall into place specifically because of her performance, which conveys love and heartbreak effortlessly and powerfully. It's the role of a lifetime, and Staunton adds an unsettling dose of humanity to the controversial subject of abortion. ****/4

Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby
Hilary Swank plays Maggie Fitzgerald, a poor waitress from southern Missouri whose dream is to become a prize fighter. She's the only smart and driven member of her hillbilly family, and she won't rest until she makes something of herself with the help of trainer Frankie Dunn. Hilary Swank is perfect. She nails every moment on screen, from Maggie's earnest pursuit of Frankie's help, to her determination in her training, to her heartache as she seeks the love and acceptance of her mother. We feel every bit of hurt and triumph with Maggie, and it's so heartbreaking when the light inside her gets snuffed out that I break into sobs during the third act. Swank's performance packs an emotional blow to rival any knockout punch she throws as Maggie. ****/4

Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Kate Winslet is my favorite actress ever. I mean that. She's been #1 on my list since I was ten years old and no one has ever come close to unseating her. Her role here as Clementine, an unstable woman who erases her boyfriend Joel from her mind, happens to be my favorite of her performances. When Joel decides to have Clementine erased as well, we follow the procedure through his memories of their tumultuous relationship, and Winslet's performance is key. A less capable actress would have been lost not only in the brilliant maze of a screenplay, but in the character's frequent and severe ups and downs. Not Winslet. She's the sole reason the journey through Joel Barish's mind works. We identify with his frustration with the compulsive and exuberant Clementine, and ten minutes later we understand why he fell in love with her in the first place. ****/4



Final thoughts: Though this was an extraordinarily strong year for actresses, this is an easy call for Swank. I think the main reason people are upset about this win is that it makes two times she (deservedly) beat Annette Bening for the Oscar glory. While I agree that Bening is overdue, I don't think Julia Lambert was an Academy Award-worthy role.

Here's how I'd rank them:
1. Swank in Million Dollar Baby
2. Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Staunton in Vera Drake
4. Moreno in Maria Full of Grace
5. Bening in Being Julia