Third place:
Amy Adams (actor: American Hustle, Her, Man of Steel) [101 points / 18 votes]
Second place:
Emmanuel Lubezki (cinematographer: To the Wonder, Gravity) [108 points / 16 votes]
And your winner...
Matthew McConaughey (actor: Dallas Buyers Club, Mud, The Wolf of Wall Street) [213 points / 31 votes]
"Many of us first encountered Matthew McConaughey as Wooderson (no first name necessary) in Richard Linklater’s legendary 1993 debut Dazed and Confused where, in just a few short scenes, men and women alike fell in love with him. Between then and now he has remained universally likable, but finding something on his resume that could be whole-heartedly defended as good has proven to be a difficult task. At some point, I have to imagine he had a conversation with either his agent, his wife or himself (maybe all three) that redirected a career largely wasted on rom-com throwaways (Fool’s Gold, Failure to Launch) and misfired attempts at prestige pieces (A Time to Kill, We Are Marshall) in favor of a string of much stranger, more challenging roles that started with 2012’s Magic Mike. Something about the way he played Dallas, the King Dick owner of a male strip club, made us look at middle-age McConaughey differently. He was still the handsome hardbody with Southern Charm but the experience you saw written on his face and translated in his demeanor made him seem sketchy, even unstable. He was still a guy women would go home with but they might not go bragging about it to their friends anymore.
That set the stage for a monster 2013 that has seen the 44 year-old actor steal the show in The Wolf of Wall Street, take on the title role in Jeff Nichols’ Mud and get some major award recognition for his outstanding work in Dallas Buyers Club. In The Wolf of Wall Street, McConaughey makes the most of his early cameo in a brilliant but bizarre, have-to-see-it-to-believe-it lunch break pep talk aimed at new hire Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) in which he endorses cocaine, martinis, masturbation and a Native American chant – all of which the up and coming Belfort takes very much to heart. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say it may be the most memorable scene in a movie that’s full of them. In Mud, he portrays the single-name title character, a man living on an island (more precisely, in a boat somehow sitting in a tree) somewhere near Arkansas who is fleeing both the law and family of the man he killed in defense of the woman he loves. He befriends a pair of teenage boys who had also set claims to the boat and trades them unsolicited wisdom and a sense of adventure for food and supplies. Mud is a mysterious character, almost mythological, that seems to embody the lost innocence of youth. In that sense, McConaughey does a good job of appearing beaten up by the outside world but never short on optimism or self-confidence.
Despite the strength of those two performances, it’s his role as Ron Woodruff in Dallas Buyers Club that really allowed McConaughey to put his stamp on 2013. He plays a hard-living rodeo rider with “a pussy addiction” who, early in the film, is diagnosed with late-stage AIDS and given 30 days to live in a time when very little was known about the disease or how to treat it. Labeled a “faggot” by his ignorant, tough-guy Texas friends and given virtually no help from the medical community, Woodruff is forced to look for other ways to prolong his life and, in doing so, helps to turn the tide on the treatment of HIV and AIDS from a focus on trying to cure the disease towards boosting the body’s immune system so that it could cope with the daily attack. It’s a difficult, demanding role (both mentally and physically) that required an actor of McConaughey’s dedication and pedigree not only to get the movie made but to bring some much needed charm, grace and dignity to a man who chose to fight rather than quit. McConaughey goes through a drastic on-screen transformation as he withers to skin and bones, but perhaps even more eye-opening is his shift in attitude as he partners with a cross-dressing diva to distribute a regimen of vitamins, hormones and drugs to homosexual men terrified by the death sentence an HIV diagnosis appeared to be in those days. As the movie plays out we watch his regular interaction with gay men reverse his prejudice as well as the gradual deterioration of his body, and somehow he manages both without losing an ounce of his dick-swinging Texas swagger. It’s an impressive piece of work and likely the highlight of what’s turned out to be not only a milestone year but a suddenly very interesting career." -- Bryan Whitefield
As for the note of interest I alluded to at the top of the page? McConaughey won this category last year too, which shouldn't be a surprise - many of our voters are proudly and vocally on board with the McConaissance. What is worth a chuckle is that he got the exact same number of points both years. Funny how things work out sometimes.
See the full results.
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