This is another impressive Best Actor group. Plus, it leaves off Tom Hanks who could easily replace anyone on here without skipping a beat. What a great year for the men.
2013 Best Actor
Matthew McConaughey - Dallas Buyers Club
Ah yes, the culmination of the McConaissance! Look, no matter if you hated this performance for whatever weird reason, McConaughey had one hell of a run for about a year or two and fully deserved the Oscar for that alone. Now I might be hypocritical for saying that because I always think it should go to the best performance and not because someone is due or is old or has some sob story but this is an exception. McConaughey has always been a pretty good actor but got bogged down in doing lots of romcoms and then all of the sudden he exploded back onto the serious acting scene. Look at this list of films: The Lincoln Lawyer, Bernie, Killer Joe, Mud, The Paper Boy (awful film but he's great in it), Magic Mike, and The Wolf of Wall Street. All pretty great performances and all varied in their type of characters, which shows how amazing his couple years truly was. That's leaving out his best performance (in my opinion) from True Detective. So his win for Dallas Buyers Club was definitely the end result of a couple years of just completely amazing work. And I'm so glad he was rewarded and the Academy recognized that fact as well. That's not to take away anything from this performance, either! This is just another great one from McConaughey. Throw away the impressive weight loss aspect and you still have a heartfelt, intense, and important portrayal of a man riddled with HIV/AIDS fighting to stay alive despite the government's lack of concern. What impressed me so much about this one was that McConaughey seems so natural which makes sense as he is a Texan and Ron Woodruff is a Texan. But more than that it's the dialogue which feels improvised and honest. Sometimes films suffer from literary or awkward, unnatural speech from it's characters but not Ron Woodruff. He is entirely believable as a character even if he can be an asshole at times. I think we as the audience like that American spirit in Ron as he tries to stay alive while doing everything he can to subvert the government in getting AIDS medication from Mexico and Japan and doling it out to others who need it instead of taking AZT which is mostly lethal and doesn't much help. McConaughey plays Ron as honestly as he can and that's what makes DBC so good is the honesty in it's story and direction. A well deserved win for a great performance and a great 2 year run of films.
Christian Bale - American Hustle
I'm not sure if Bale or Cooper is the best part of American Hustle, but they are both pretty close. While Cooper is clearly having fun just hamming it up, Bale gives a very dedicated performance that at times seems far removed from all the craziness going on around him in the film. It really is like he's acting in a totally different film at times. You could say that's a bad thing but I think it works here because the film is so crazy itself. And that's not to say Bale doesn't have some great comedic moments, because he absolutely does. It's just that he's not so on the nose about it like Cooper or so clearly pandering and overacting in a bad way like Lawrence. It's as if because Bale is the main focus of the film that he has to ground it himself and bring a little reality and sanity to an otherwise insane film. I like the performance, though, because Bale is so dedicated to his character. Not only the weight gain and comb over look but just the passion of this grifter who has all these different sides pulling him in different directions wanting different things. He's a guy that continuously oversteps his bounds or at least bites off more than he can chew and it's fun to watch him weasel his way out of, or into, situations. I really just like Bale's earnestness in his portrayal of Irving, which is something we've come to expect from him. No different here even if his inclusion in this group was a minor surprise since Tom Hanks gave a pretty great performance and didn't get in. With the amount of fun performances in American Hustle, it's a shame the film itself wasn't any better. Bale gives an earnest, decent performance.
Bruce Dern - Nebraska
Of the three Nebraska reviews to write, this was the absolute hardest. I think that's due mainly to Dern's character being so blase and indifferent to life. His character is known for not saying much, he's grumpy and perturbed when people bug him, and just a guy that seems to want to stick to himself. He thinks he's won a million dollars in a sweepstakes through the mail even though it's a scam and his son offers to drive him to Nebraska to show him that. He's got a very sour demeanor and personality but I think that fits growing up in the heartland where there's not a lot happening and plus we also learn he was in the Korean War and came back affected. That right there would point to why he drank a lot and is so shut off and negative. Dern does a great job in portraying him as such a grump and does a great job with the affectations he has such as the limp, hearing difficulties, shuffling, etc. that define the elder Grant. It's all at once a sad and melancholic performance because after awhile of watching you wish he was a bit more open and a bit more loved. When Woody and his family go to his boyhood home and we get that very subdued look into his childhood and persona and mind, we start rooting for him to win the million dollars and to be happy and for the family to be alright. A lot of that I think is due to the viewer transposing their own life onto the characters and hoping for a good outcome. That's what the film and Dern's performance evokes from us and that's pretty incredible.The end with Woody driving by everyone in his new truck is heartwarming as well and speaks to the larger themes of the film. It's a quietly good performance by Dern.
Leonardo DiCaprio - The Wolf of Wall Street
Doesn't every new DiCaprio performance feel like it's the role he was born to play? I feel like you can say that about most of his roles because they feel like they were tailor made just for him and everyone was waiting for him to take them on. Wolf of Wall Street is no different. DiCaprio seems born to play Jordan Belfort and like his turn as Jay Gatsby was a dry run for this performance. By now, DiCaprio and Scorsese have such a good rapport with each other and can obviously bring out the best in each other that it's fun to watch these two work. It also appears that DiCaprio is just having tons of fun in this role which offers up a lot of crazy antics, situations, and scenes. The film itself is crazy and fun and a whirlwind of sex, drugs, money, drugs, women, drugs, and booze. DiCaprio seems more at ease in these kind of fun roles instead of his serious ones and it's more enjoyable to watch him when he's like that, at least for me. It's not as if he's gunning for that elusive Oscar so obviously like in some of his other performances. Just be the awesome DiCaprio we know you can be, ya know? And a lot of that awesome DiCaprio shows up in the couple different motivational speaker type scenes with his company. It's DiCaprio just taking over the scene and killing it, basically. His performance is just a lot of fun to watch and I know I've said that already but it really is. It's kind of like you can turn your brain off and just watch and laugh and admire the great work everyone is putting in. Is it DiCaprio's best? Probably not, but it's his most accessible and easy going, for sure. Did he deserve to win the Oscar this year? Not when compared to this group, but that's not a knock on him obviously. It's hard not to like DiCaprio here and in a weaker year he may just have won for a pretty interesting performance.
Chiwetel Ejiofor - 12 Years a Slave
I fell in love with Chiwetel Ejiofor's performance almost immediately while watching this film the first time. That love only grew the second time I watched it. He is the engine that drives the film, dependable and stalwart. He plays Solomon Northup, a free man from New York who was caught by slavers and sold into slavery in the South. There's a million adjectives I could use to describe why I love the performance so much but delicate and subdued, yet mighty and authoritative is a good start. Towards the very end when McQueen keeps the camera on Ejiofor staring off into space at dusk contemplating life and his predicament and then he looks towards the camera for a few seconds and it's eerily powerful. As if Northup himself is staring at us, the audience, with a plaintive, pleading, accusatory, hollow look that screams how could something like this ever happen in history - and continue to happen even now across the world. That may be reading a bit too much into that moment in an amazing film but Ejiofor conveys a look that speaks volumes in just a few short seconds. That's great acting drilled down to it's very essence and convinced me that Ejiofor was my favorite for the year among a very strong group. Ejiofor does so much with this performance throughout the film by being so restrained in a lot of moments where you'd expect, hell - where you WANT him to react violently or passionately but he doesn't. It's a masterclass in acting. He creates a very sympathetic character but never devolves into schlock or cheap acting to make us feel a certain way. He just presents Northup as a man and let's us see the humanity in his character. This is just an utterly brilliant performance by Ejiofor.
Again, if you included Tom Hanks here for Captain Phillips it would only improve an already great group. I'd have switched out Bale for Hanks but the Academy does what it wants. My winner would be Ejiofor who I believe gave a performance that will be remembered as great for years and years to come, one that is classic. McConaughey was deep in his McConaissance so I approve of his win since it's hard to not love his recent little explosion of awesome. Then I'd say Leo because he just looks to be having so much fun and gives an easy going, awesome performance at the same time. Dern was the one I was always unsure about going in but his delicate take on a man wanting to claim a lottery prize is touching. Bale brings up the rear because I'm not a fan of his film and he is easily the weakest of this group.
Oscar Winner: Matthew McConaughey - Dallas Buyers Club
My Winner: Chiwetel Ejiofor - 12 Years a Slave
Matthew McConaughey
Leonardo DiCaprio
Bruce Dern
Christian Bale
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