Leading Actor 2000

Almost done with 2000! Which is a huge feat. This year always felt like it was indeed 15 years away and I'm glad I'm almost finished. This Best Actor group offers up 3 small movies and 2 box office smashes. I'm very curious about the smaller films in this group.

2000 Best Actor

Russell Crowe - Gladiator

Crowe finally gets his Oscar....wait, this was only his 2nd nomination? Didn't it feel like this was the Academy giving Crowe a makeup Oscar for not winning the year before and for being around for so long and nominated a lot even though that's not true? Because it certainly does to me! I don't like this win because I don't really think Crowe did much acting in Gladiator. He plays General Maximus who is a favorite of the current Emperor of Rome but then that guy dies and his son takes over who hates Crowe and banishes him and then Crowe becomes a gladiator and fights his way back to Rome and kills Phoenix's character. Oops, spoiler! But come on, this is telegraphed from the very beginning and doesn't come as much of a surprise. Crowe plays more of an action hero type role, where all the acting is really being able to sell the gladiator fights and look all muscle-y and intimidating. That's about all there is from Crowe. There are some quieter moments that should have and could have added more depth to Maximus but they get glossed over in favor of the action. The script and story never allow Crowe to do much more than what we see. Oh your wife and son are killed? You can be sad for a brief time but then you must go fight and look tough. This movie is less about the character of Maximus than it is about showing cool fights and the Coliseum and the costumes and the whole spectacle of everything. It never becomes introspective and when it starts to, it makes sure to yank itself out before we get any real emotional depth to the character. We are told it's all for revenge but that aspect just feels robotic and a necessity of the script. Crowe is able to make a decent action star/gladiator for sure but he doesn't get to do much else in this movie. It's frustrating because we know he can be a good actor because of his nominations in 1999 and 2001, which are definitely better than this one. It's basically one of those yeah, Crowe deserved an Oscar but just not for this one which he won for type deals. If he wins for The Insider or A Beautiful Mind, we might not mind a nomination for Gladiator but a win is just too much.

Javier Bardem - Before Night Falls

It can be very hard to judge foreign language performances. I think I might have said that same thing the last time I reviewed a non Coen Bros Bardem movie. Bardem at least speaks mostly in English in this one but there are very long parts where he delivers a monologue in Spanish. I confess that I only know a small amount of Spanish from my years of attempting to learn it in school so those long monologues are mostly lost on me, but it does allow me to focus on the face of Bardem and to take in his physical acting instead of what's being said. That's a unique thing that I don't get from many nominees since few are of the foreign variety. It's kind of nice because acting is a very universal thing even if you can't understand the speaker, you can understand the expressions and the what's being conveyed. Before Night Falls tells the story of a gay Cuban writer and his life. Bardem portrays the man from the early stages in the the 40s or 50s up until his death from AIDS in 1990 or so. That spans many years, obviously, but gives many opportunities for Bardem to recreate his character as he grows and confronts the many challenges of living in a revolutionary Cuba as a gay writer. We know Bardem is a great actor. He's got his Oscar win and a few Goyas (Spanish Oscars) and many other accolades and this was the Academy's first nomination for him and first focused attention. I think it might have changed Bardem's life even if he was destined to be a great actor anyway but it's pretty prescient of Oscar and shows that sometimes they can be ahead of the curve. There's a lot of Bardem in this movie and he is someone that can be a strong actor through voice or look or movement and it's legit a treat to watch. When I watched Biutiful (or more like when I couldn't find it and then eventually did months later) for this project I looked at what else Bardem had on Netflix watched a great performance by him in a Spanish movie about unemployment. Entirely in Spanish but was just universally understood as a great performance (it had subtitles but the acting transcended them). This was never going to win in this year but was more of an introduction of Bardem to the American public and I think he caught our eye. I want to see the rest of his Spanish movies and I can't wait to see what he does next.

Tom Hanks - Cast Away

While watching Cast Away, it became clear that this was basically a quintessential Tom Hanks performance because it captured the two different styles of his acting. In the bookends for the deserted island scenes, we get what I kinda think of as the classic Tom Hanks. He plays the sweet, charming, Mr. Nice Guy role with some self effacing humor which is found throughout a lot of his other characters. In this film, it's the weaker of the two types and comes as mostly an afterthought since the deserted island stuff is the main course. If the beginning and end were trimmed down, I don't think we'd miss it all that much especially since the ending devolves into some boring melodrama. But that's on Zemeckis the director, really. The other style is what makes up most of this film and is clearly the best part and what got him nominated. That is the intense, focused, turned up to another level, serious Tom Hanks. The two can be equally great but, man, do I think Hanks as the stranded Fed Ex employee on a deserted island part is incredibly strong, even by Hanks' own standards. He spends the majority of his time on the island acting without saying anything, with only some occasional mumbling and talking to the volleyball, Wilson. The fact that he's able to carry the film without saying much speaks to his tremendous acting ability. He sucks you in to his world and along with it all the fear, frustration, anger, pain, sadness, and hopelessness that comes with that world. I found myself wishing he could stay on the island longer so I could see how he dealt with being alone for so long and wished it wouldn't have cut to 4 Years Later so soon because I wanted to see just how Hanks transitioned from marooned man to survivor man. It's unfortunate that the bookends drag the performance as a whole down because the middle is so good. If the entire film was focused on the survival aspect, this would have been considered right up there with Tom Hanks' best. Instead, it's just pretty good which is usually better than most - including 2000's winner Russell Crowe.

Ed Harris - Pollock

What I knew of this film before hand was very little, only that it was a passion project for Ed Harris. What I know of passion projects is that they are one of two things mostly: a self indulgent mess or a bonafide masterpiece. When it comes to Pollock, I'd say it's essentially the latter. It's quite evident that this was a 10 year labor of love for Harris, who also produced and directed it. The word passion does not do it much justice because you can tell Harris labored over this creation with blood, sweat, and tears. That's the big takeaway from the film is that it shows how passionate Harris was with this. The directing is really good and I like a lot of the compositions he used in the film especially playing with shadows. That comes off as pretentious but man, it's noticeably good. I was worried that maybe given the subject, a modernist painter, that it might be a very pretentious work itself but what we get is not a typical biopic. It speaks more to the process of painting and to the demons Pollock faces than the typical early lifetime, middle tormented genius part, and then the redemption. I anticipated a little artsy film that played to the sensibilities of film people and actors but I was wrong. It is a little film but it feels much bigger than it is. A surprisingly great performance from Harris for a film I didn't think would be all that much. I just realized I didn't really talk much about Pollock's performance which is really good! He plays the painter with such an intensity that you can almost feel it while watching. It's very much an actor in the zone and you can see why Harden was able to feed off that and give a great performance herself. Acting in that type of environment must be a dream come true for an actor. I think that's what makes it so enjoyable to watch is that you can see that love and passion come through in the performance. Harris is much better in the early goings of the film than in the end where Pollock becomes a more ardent alcoholic cavorting with younger women and living off his ego. That's obviously an easier thing to portray and I feel that the early acting from Harris is just better and more truthful. I was definitely surprised that I liked this performance so much.

Geoffrey Rush - Quills

So Geoffrey Rush was alright in this, I guess. It's more like I didn't feel too strongly one way or the other about his performance. For someone playing a sexual deviant that's locked up in prison and wild in his antics, I should at least feel something for the character, but I didn't. I openly admit that I'm not a fan of Rush at all. I haven't seen his Oscar winning role yet but everything else has been very theatrical in style, including this one. Rush plays the Marquis de Sade as a rockstar holed up in a hotel causing chaos and being held down by the man. It's a portrayal that should be larger and more interesting than it is but sadly it's just kinda meh to me. If you're going to be a rockstar, go all out and be a rockstar! Maybe Rush was kept in check by the director or something, I don't know, but I know a character like that should really shine through everything else. I've also got beef that the Marquis wasn't exactly the main actor in this. He's more of a bigger supporting role so I'm not sure it belongs here but that's the Academy for you. Not much else to say about this one really. Rush is pretty meh and I don't think stands out too much yet the Academy liked it for whatever reason. Not something I'd ever single out but I don't get a vote.


So this should have been one of the easiest groups to predict because this was boiled down to Crowe vs. Hanks. Harris starred in a very small, barely seen film, Rush played a sexual deviant in another smaller film, and Bardem played a gay Cuban writer in a, you guessed it, small film. So it was up to the Academy to award Crowe who many thought could have and should have won the year before for The Insider or give Hanks his 3rd(!) Oscar for talking to a volleyball on a deserted island. That's an easy choice, right? Crowe was the hot commodity and giving a 3rd Oscar is rarely done. If you were to go by performance alone this is a hell of a group. Harris and Bardem would have equal claim to the win along with Crowe and Hanks. Rush is just kinda there. So Hanks would be my winner with Harris and Bardem right behind. Crowe and Rush would bring up the rear. Obviously, not bad at all from my perspective - if only the Academy saw things my way!

Oscar Winner: Russell Crowe - Gladiator
My Winner:   Tom Hanks - Cast Away
Ed Harris
Javier Bardem
Russell Crowe
Geoffrey Rush