2014 Muriel Awards: Best Lead Performance, Male

I know the Oscars get a bum rep nowadays, and while some of that is contrarian grousing, the naysayers often make some solid points. After all, for every time the Oscars get it right, they seem to drop the ball at least as frequently. Take this year's Best Actor category- while none of the picks were bad, most of them were fairly unexciting, comprised largely of famous people playing other famous people.

Compare that to Muriel's top five (which can be found by clicking the link after the break). On the one hand, all five of these guys seem like they could conceivably have made perfectly respectable Oscar nominees. Yet while I'm no doubt biased, I think this group is a good deal cooler than the Oscar nominees. What say you?

Third place:

Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler [116 points / 18 votes]

Second place:

David Oyelowo, Selma [139 points / 22 votes]

And the Muriel Award goes to...

Ralph Fiennes, The Grand Budapest Hotel [199 points / 32 votes]

“The stylistic hallmarks in the films of Wes Anderson may be constant enough to warrant their own bingo game but each work has its own distinct tone, and it frequently emits from the leading man. Luke Wilson gives off the goofy optimism of Bottle Rocket, Jason Schwarzman holds the earnest yet stunted emotionality of Rushmore, the sweet yearning of Moonrise Kingdom surfaces in the curious stare of Jared Gillman, and so on.

"As M. Gustave, the poetry­spouting concierge of The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ralph Fiennes handles this work with a marvelous grace. As Gustave attends to hotel guests and his harem of dowagers, and mentors Tony Revolori’s Zero whileleading him through murder and mystery, he’s the embodiment of the film’s nostalgic charm, and its disarming combination of refinement and vulgarity. Watching Fiennes turn on a dime between the two is a truly exhilarating thing.

"Anderson wrote the part with Fiennes in mind, and it’s easy to see why the filmmaker felt his old world Euro look and manner would be a good fit. But he also saw in the actor a flair for comedy that’s so far eluded almost every other director (Notable exceptions: Curse of the Were Rabbit’s Nick Park and Steve Box). It was Fiennes who came up with the film’s most widely memorable moment, when Gustave drops his decorum and hauls ass upon hearing of a warrant for his arrest.

"But there’s another scene that sticks with me, when Adrien Brody’s hostile heir to a fortune calls Gustave a 'goddamn little fruit.' The look of hurt on the actor’s face is palpable as he softly replies, 'Now how’s that supposed to make me feel?' In this fantastical confection made remote by its faraway time and place and those wonderfully meticulous touchstones of Anderson’s universe, Fiennes drops in a moment that’s instantly relatable, and it lingers like a spritz of L’air du Panache.” ~ Melissa Starker

Note: tomorrow at noon I'll be posting the first "Muriels Also-Rans" column, focused on other notable male performances (both lead and supporting) of 2014. The column devoted to their female counterparts will go up the next morning at 8:30 AM, followed shortly thereafter by some other miscellaneous goodies and, finally, the beginning of the Best Picture countdown.

Click here for full results.