"Let's be honest here: David Oyelowo not getting a Best Actor Oscar nomination for playing Martin Luther King in Selma was, well, fucked up.
"It seemed like a no-brainer - after all, he's playing MARTIN LUTHER THE KING! Out of all the performances that screamed to be taken into Oscar consideration, it was this one. This isn't to say Oyelowo's performance was pure, blatant Oscar bait. Thanks to writer/director Ava DuVernay (who also wasn't nominated for a damn thing!) making the movie more of a multi-populated character study than a by-the-numbers docudrama, the Martin Luther King of Selma was a character of many dimensions. He was proud, stubborn, flawed, jovial, loving, bombastic, unsure of himself - and Oyelowo brought all that out in his performance.
"There have been many men who played the civil-rights leader on the stage and on the screen: Samuel L. Jackson, James Earl Jones, Jeffrey Wright, LeVar Burton, even King's own son Dexter Scott King. And they all knew the same thing Oyelowo obviously knew when he signed on to play the role: This is not a character you can play half-assed. This is a man who led a life of constant struggle, getting opposition from politicians, cops, racist white people and, sometimes, his own people. He kept marching forward right until an assassin's gun silenced him. Much like King himself, you have to be confident, dignified and definitely fearless in order to step into that man's shoes, even if itâs for a movie. Oyelowo exhibited all of that - and he pulled off a convincing Georgia accent to boot.
"Getting an Oscar nomination would've been a nice cherry on the cake that was Oyelowo's breakthrough year. Along with Selma, the Brit actor gave memorable supporting turns in Interstellar and the getting-underrated-by-the-minute A Most Violent Year. Unfortunately, Oscar voters felt that showier roles, like Steve Carell acting through his fake nose in Foxcatcher or Benedict Cumberbatch getting his A Beautiful Mind on in The Imitation Game or eventual victor Eddie Redmayne tugging on the heartstrings as he twisted his body to play Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, deserved nods.
"Ah, whatever. Oyelowo's performance may not have been as flashy as the rest of the nominees. But, by giving an honest, human portrayal of an American icon, he reminded audiences how everyday people can shake up the whole damn world." ~ Craig D. Lindsey
"In Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal gives a performance of astonishing richness as Lou Bloom, one that is rich by because, in a thrilling paradox, it’s one of utter vacancy.
"Lou’s a spindly, gaunt man whose eyes are without the flickering light that signals to us we're looking at another person, his face usually plastered with a grin that suggests emotional mimicry instead of simple insincerity, Lou hustles and steals and cheats his way into a lucrative career as a freelance photographer, a shameless vulture standing on the misfortune of others. He talks almost exclusively in hokey platitudes, delivered quickly and with the cadence of a sales pitch. He’s incapable of connecting with another, as are all sociopaths, but he can manipulate It’s not even that Lou fools people, as most of the characters know something’s amiss with this strange, ambitious man; the trick is that he’s good enough at what he does to be indispensible.
"Writer-director Dan Gilroy only gives us the tiniest glimpses behind Lou's curtain, keeping his origins nebulous. What came before we met Lou can't be pretty, and nor will what comes after. His plethora of sinister acts are recognizably loathsome, but don't always feel evil, since that would require him to have a sense of right and wrong.
"Gyllenhaal doesn't just craft a character that's not recognizably him, but one who's barely even recognizable as human. He's a prepared set of responses, a calculating villain capable of animalistic violence, and a pitiless climber who communicates as if altruism is his only concern. Gyllenhaal and Gilroy allow only the briefest glances behind the curtain, just enough to clarify that what’s there is something frightening enough to warrant that shroud. Present in nearly every scene, the performance is nothing short of wondrous, with Gyllenhaal making this man, this unnerving creature, something impossible to look away from. I can’t remember the last time a human nothing has been this entrancing." ~ James Frazier
"In a way, Ethan Hawke’s performance in Boyhood can be seen as a metaphor for Hawke’s own progression as an actor over the last twelve years. Hawke begins the film as the noncustodial Dad to Ellar Coltrane’s Mason and Lorelei Linklater’s Samantha, and the character is consistent with the young Hawke’s persona: fun, cool, charming, but not the kind of guy you could count on to pay the rent on time. As Boyhood progresses, Dad matures, gets a good dull job, remarries, has another baby, and becomes by all appearances a pretty good father to Mason, Samantha, and his new kid. He trades in his GTO for a minivan and extols the virtues of Wilco’s least cool album. (Don’t worry, Pops, I love Sky Blue Sky too.) And this guy, the erstwhile wild-man now settled down, suggests the deeper, more interesting actor Hawke has become in his forties.
This was probably inevitable; Richard Linklater’s method in Boyhood guaranteed that its characters would bear traces of their actors’ own histories. Less inevitable was what a lovely, soulful piece of work Hawke’s performance would turn out to be from start to finish. He is pitch-perfect at every step, nailing how young Dad’s brash energy gives way to older Dad’s complicated but relationship with middle-age responsibility, while maintaining a coherent character throughout. And because Boyhood is a film made up almost exclusively of interstitial moments, he manages this without any of the major events in his character’s life occurring on-screen. It’s lovely, low-key work, accomplished through sensitive attention to how a person’s life is shaped, moment to moment, by the steady, subtle accretion of lived experiences both big and small. Perhaps this is due to Hawke to some extent living out his own life before the camera; perhaps it is not. Either way, it’s the best work of his career." ~ Matt Noller
"If Joaquin Phoenix's Freddie Quell in The Master was a masterclass in humanity as a sentient web of knots, then let's call his Doc Sportello a man unwound. Genially stoned, motivated by empathy and appetite, and possessed of an unyielding devotion to decency, Doc is a master of rolling with whatever life throws at him. There's a defined constancy to Doc, and Phoenix uses it as a springboard for whatever the scene ahead requires of him. The Sportello saunter is just as much an aspect of Phoenix' peerless ability to get to the heart of who a character is as the clenched movements of his Bruno in The Immigrant, but I can't imagine anyone else in the business today being able to handle the transition from weed haze to PCP freakout, or the harrowing way in which Shasta's confession unfolds into sparagmotic erotic theatre, with the skill that he does here. The way he tackles the former scene is almost as if he is expanding outward the maddened dialogue between mind, flesh, and short-circuited synapses going on within the scene, allowing the viewer to experience the internal as a genuine crisis of the flesh.
"Phoenix has been one of the best for quite some time now, but in Inherent Vice, he crafts a stoner superhero (not in terms of antirealism or hyperstylization) who, while all too human manages to continually work for truth, decency, and the ability for humanity to believe in our capacity for goodness. The future is bleak for hippie idealism, and the film's closing discussion of Sortilege and her knowledge of possibilities allows for one of those electrifying moments when Doc is granted vision beyond the immediate (see also his Beaubier twin-style psychic link to Bigfoot as it manifests periodically throughout the film). He looks to us. But what does he see there?" ~ Jason Shawhan
"Edward Norton is handsome, but not so distinctive as to transcend a white male everyman look. What is distinct is that his performances carry an intensity most other actors lack. Sometimes this can carry him over the top as in American History X, but it works wonders in more low-key roles like his Inspector Henckels in last year’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. Basically playing the most decent of military men, a throwback to Grand Illusion, Norton makes Henckels’ conviction for respecting others powerfully real. Norton deserves more recognition there, but that cast is so large and so good, he’s been lost in the mix.
"In Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Norton plays Mike Shiner, a big-name method actor devoted to his art, and it is anything but a low-key role. But because Alejandro González Iñárritu’s style is so outsized and overblown, Norton’s histrionics work as a piece with the rest of the film. Unfortunately, aside from Norton and the other actors (particularly Emma Stone), the rest of the film is not very good. As with all of his films, Iñárritu overindulges and tries to milk every scene beyond what the artifice can sustain, hammering every point until subtlety is ground into sawdust. Only Norton and Stone bring enough visceral authenticity to rise above Iñárritu’s limitations. Norton’s histrionics work, Iñárritu’s don’t.
"That said, one of the hardest things to do in movies is to tell the audience what you’re seeing is some masterpiece of whatever art form is being depicted and then carry through on that depiction because you’ve already raised expectations so high. Mike Shiner is supposed to be a great, renowned actor. Norton has to prove it, and like his co-star Naomi Watts did in her rehearsal scene in Mulholland Dr., Norton more than delivers. ~ George Wu
"In Steven Knight's deftly made Locke, Hardy gets the most impressive – and unexpected – showcase for his talents yet. Almost completely robbed of movement, with the camera nearly always on his face, Hardy carries the film on his shoulders. It’s about as close to a one-man show as we see in today’s cinema, and Hardy utterly commands the screen as Ivan Locke, a construction foreman and family man driving to a hospital for the birth of his illegitimate child, the result of a one-night stand.
"As he drives, Locke talks on the phone with his wife, his coworkers, his mistress, andothers, creating a series of semi-two-handers that run the emotional gamut. Hardy ably explores the range of personalities within each of us, the different vocal masks we don while talking on the phone with professional and personal connections. So much of Hardy’s performance is in his voice: the way he soothes his loved ones, directs his colleagues, instructs the doctors at the hospital as the birth looms ever closer. It’s an incredible feat of acting, so reliant on the nuance of the delivery, and Hardy pulls it off with aplomb, utterly commanding viewers’ attention as he becomes a quintessential Job, his life crumbling around him as he tries to do the right thing. Even with such fine actors as Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott, and Tom Holland lending their voices, Locke belongs to Tom Hardy, one of the few actors who can make a dialogue-driven commute up the highway one of the year’s most tense, engaging thrillers." ~ Clayton Walter
"He’s a cartoon character, and Brolin cheerfully plays him as such while still remaining surprisingly sympathetic. There are few contemporary stars who embody old school masculinity the way Brolin does, and while he’s always taken roles that play against that type, his performance as Bigfoot is a wonderfully ridiculous portrait of wounded masculinity. The sight of Bigfoot miming sex with an index finger working in and out of his clenched fist is both hilarious and says volumes about the character, and it’s remarkable that Brolin was able to do it with a straight face. But it’s also a performance of surprising depth; Doc and Bigfoot are as much a study of an opposed but symbiotically linked pair of men as the male leads in There Will Be Blood and The Master, with the latter’s “Slow Boat to China” scene finding its stoned equivalent in Brolin’s final scene. The actor has to sell Bigfoot doing something that’s completely ridiculous and arbitary, and he does so beautifully; the way he looks at Phoenix as he does it, and Phoenix’s reaction shots, had me laughing harder than any other scene this year, even as Brolin gives themoment a weird sort of pathos. It’s at once an unexpectedly poignant portrayal of a man in need of a keeper and evidence that, if there’s ever a Naked Gun reboot, Brolin should be at the top of the list to play Frank Drebin." ~ Andrew Bemis
"In Stranger By the Lake, Alain Guardie's lush and generous thriller, there is only one real outsider of the group of gay characters cruising for sex in the French countryside: Henri, played with a quiet humor and loneliness by Patrick d'Assumçao. The sex in the film, often explicit and theatrically staged, takes place a bit too far away from Henri's gaze. Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), the film's lead, does his best to question Henri's sexuality, though the answers are ambiguous. When Franck begins falling in love with the mysterious, brooding beach bum Michel (Christophe Paou), the film shifts its focus and Henri's outsider gaze is no longer part of the mix.
"Though the film is very much a gay man's narrative, a slightly conservative and dated one at that, it is Henri and the performance of d'Assumçao that provides breathing room in an otherwise airtight space. And the quiet grace of d'Assumçao's performance, even when thrown into the film's deepening mysteries in the third act, haunt the film as much as the final shot of the film, as it slips into impenetrable darkness." ~ Michael Lieberman
"The only reason I can grok that Brendan Gleeson's tremendous performance in Calvary has not received more attention is that is camouflages itself. It'd be easy enough to dismiss the performance as Gleeson doing yeoman's work playing a slightly gruff yet warmly paternal authority figure; slightly gruff yet warmly paternal authority figures not exactly out of Gleeson's wheelhouse. But just under the surface of what may look like Brendan Gleeson doing that Brendan Gleeson thing (never mind the problem inherent in taking 'that Brendan Gleeson thing' for granted) is a role that is devilishly complex and tricky.
"It may be bad form for one writer to quote another for his central thesis, but as he so often does Tim Brayton summed things up so succinctly that I'm at a bit of a loss at what else to do. As he puts it:
Gleeson has to play three layers all at once, two of them wholly symbolic, and still make Father James feel like an actual, plausible human being.
"Calvary is a nakedly symbolic film. It is after all a movie about a man on the way to his death that is called Calvary. But it's one thing to understand a symbol and quite another to care about it. To watch Gleeson simultaneously embody a straightforward Christ figure AND personify The Waning Influence Of The Church In Modern Ireland AND come across as a decent, frightened man who knows he is going to die yet hopes that cup might pass from his lips, is to watch a master make the difficult seem effortless.
"McDonagh's film is such a riot of activity, one part the psychotic pulp pain of Ken Bruen, one part SamuelBeckett, one part something like a version of Leap Year directed by Hieronymous Bosch that without Gleeson's sturdy presence at its center it might have ended up ripped apart by its own centripetal force. Much of his job is to simply react, or not, as his congregation spew their bile. The key to Calvary comes for me in two matching monolouges, one delivered by Marie Josee Croze the other by Aidan Gillian, one sacred, one infernal. Watch how Gleeson reacts under the weight of both their words. Watch how it tells you everything you need to know about him.
"Like most of the films that really mean something to me Calvary is ultimately a film about what Martin Scorsese termed, 'The terror of compassion.' Calvary works for many reasons, Jonathan McDonagh's ferbile, twisted script, filled with the sort of dialogue that causes actors to salivate on screen, the remarkable ensemble he assembled around Gleeson and his own quietly assured direction. But there is no doubt that Gleeson is the rock on which this particular church is built. It is he who sells the power of the terror and the value of the compassion. He who takes this profanely sacred film and bears it." ~ Bryce Wilson
"Lauded at Cannes last May and ignored this winter by Academy Award voters, Timothy Spall’s embodiment of the great British painter J.M.W. Turner eschews, as does the splendid movie writer-director Mike Leigh has fashioned around him, the familiar tones and hallmarks of the sort of biographical representation favored by Oscar. There are none of the usual flashbacks, thematic signifiers or red flag key moments in which Spall is encouraged to suggest readily digestible, speculative reasons for the way Turner behaved—or at least, the way he behaves in Leigh’s film. (See, instead, The Theory of Everything or The Imitation Game.)
"Instead, Spall paints Turner in both quiet detail— the way he cannot meet eyes with the family he barely knows and has effectively abandoned— and with a sort of brutal efficiency, rendering the expressive motivations of this artist, an expansive man of unsubtle carriage, few pretenses and even fewer words, with a measure of mystery that is perfectly suited to the paintings he produced. Like his art, Spall’s Turner is difficult to pigeonhole, which makes his performance that much more pleasurable. (It’s funny too. He often looks as if he’s picking up a scent that he feels compelled to follow, from wherever it might be emanating.) Though he is well capable of florid speech, Turner is more often heard responding to the world and its impositions in an almost nonverbal manner, through a series of impatient grunts, sniffs andmurmurs that could be defense mechanisms, but could also be Spall’s (and Leigh’s) way of suggesting that the paintings be allowed to speak (or not speak) for themselves. He is also a man of brusque appetites, casually mounting his maidservant quietly from behind, satisfying himself and moving on, almost as if embarrassed by that much intimate contact.
"Spall also seems to draw interior energy and confidence from the way Leigh chooses to lend him pictorial weight. He’s often framed by Dick Pope’s magisterial camera in landscapes that seem ineffably haunted, or in frames-- windows, mirrors, frames encasing other pictures, sometimes multiplied within other frames-- which reinforce the notion that the man, however closely examined, will never be pinned down.
"Critic David Edelstein wrote, in his review of Mr. Turner, that Leigh and Pope allude to the sometimes intangibly rendered beauty of Turner’s work in many of their own painterly compositions, not to make the movie look like a Turner painting itself but to suggest the way Turner looked at the world before he set to the task of reinterpreting it for an audience, and for himself. I think there’s a great measure of that strange spark dancing in Spall’s eyes as well, and in his countenance, seemingly perplexed, blinkered, impatient, yet always fully engaged with the subjects of the world upon which he sets his gaze, continually interpreting, dismissing and composing his own prismatic perspective on life. It’s a performance that draws us in but refuses to do all the work for us. Like Turner’s paintings, Spall’s portrait of Turner is a rich, allusive illusion alternately rendered with actorly extremity and unsettled quiet which never tips over into caricature or easy interpretation. He honors the audience by allowing Turner to gain his true measure through our eyes, in our heads, in the way that the man’s paintings do." ~ Dennis Cozzalio
"If you're someone, like me, who never thought the words 'Tyler Perry' and 'good' could be credibly used in the same sentence, here's some good news: In David Fincher's Gone Girl Tyler Perry — yes, Mr. Madea hisself — is very good indeed. As Ben Affleck's celebrity defense lawyer, he's utterly convincing as a slick, talented player who combines the charismatic showmanship of Johnny Cochran and the self-promoting ambition of Saul Goodman ('Better call Saul!'). Perry's opportunistic attorney, Tanner Bolt (great name), is a sleazeball, but he's a polished sleazeball, flaunting the overweening vanity that only a top-notch tailor can appease. And like almost everyone in the movie, he's a hustler, a skilled manipulator who knows precisely how to work the angles — for the cameras as well as for the jury, because he knows they’re equally important to the appearance of guilt or innocence in a society where nobody is really 'innocent' but might still be found 'not guilty.'
"Director David Fincher is justly renowned for his visual skills, but his gift for casting, and his ability to nurture (or browbeat) the best from his actors, is equally strong — among them, Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Mark Ruffalo, Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Rooney Mara, Armie Hammer, Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike … they've been good in other things, but they've never been better than under the tutelage of Fincher. Now, we can add Tyler Perry to that list." ~ Jim Emerson
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