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    2009 Oscar Predictions: Best Actor

    The big night is just a week away, so it's time to get serious. The Best Picture nominees are covered here. For the rest of this week, I'm going to do my level best to post my predictions for the other major categories.

    For Best Actor, the nominees are:

    • Richard Jenkins for The Visitor;
    • Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon;
    • Sean Penn for Milk;
    • Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; and
    • Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler.

    Based on my comments about Benjamin Button (I called it The Curious Case of How One Can't Recover Three Hours of One's Life), I'm sure you can guess that Brad Pitt is not my odds on favorite to win the award. I'm not picking on Pitt. I like him sometimes. But only in comedies. He comes alive on screen when he's playing a rake. Or a smartass. Or even a dumbass, like in Burn After Reading. But in dramas, and in Benjamin Button in particular, he falls flat. The aw shucks Forest Gumpishness just doesn't work.

    Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler is better. I've heard it called the performance of his career, and I suppose I would agree, seeing as how his early career was basically softcore porn. And he is good in The Wrestler. He might win, but he's not my pick. I have walked out of exactly two movies in my life and The Wrestler was the second. I wanted to leave after the first fifteen minutes, but I persevered. I walked out just after he decided to come out of his short-lived retirement. Rourke does a great job of portraying a man who realizes that because he focused on his career and neglected every other aspect of his life, he is faced with being utterly alone when his career ends. But the movie is so violent and so crushingly depressing, I couldn't stand to wait to see if it has a hopeful ending. I'm betting it didn't.

    Sean Penn and Frank Langella both give outstanding performances playing the title characters in Milk and Frost/Nixon. Penn simply inhabits Harvey Milk and Langella, in a quiet, understated way, shows Nixon's regret not for the bad things that he did, but for the fact that they would forever overshadow the good.

    Any of the nominees except Pitt could win the award, but my money's on Richard Jenkins. In The Vistor, Jenkins takes the audience on a journey. The plot centers around undocumented immigrants semi-squatting in the New York apartment of Walter Vale, a college professor who has been living in Connecticut for several years, but travels unwillingly to New York and discovers the couple. But what Vale really discovers, or rediscovers, is himself. Long detached from life and other people, Vale literally comes alive as he connects again to music, to friends, and to heartbreak. It's a beautiful performance and a beautiful movie. Like Doubt, another that could have taken Benjamin Button's place on the list. 

    Coming next, Best Actress.

    Comments

    The Visitor was good but overrated. Very cliched and predictable i thought for a movie with such an original idea. jenkins like the rest of the acting was solid but i dont think there's a chance he wins.

    walked out on the wrestler?!? well, i can understand the discomfort with the violence. I looked away plenty during several scenes, but walking out on theater is such a dramatic form of protest, and that movie was a solid B+, so i can't say i understand it (even if you did correctly guess the ending....).

    langella was awesome as nixon. I never saw much of the man except in historical footage and only then in limited moments, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of his portrayal but man, did he make him a compelling, tragic figure. very entertaining film, especially considering it was about a television interview.

    havent seen milk or benjamin button so i can't make comments there.

     

     


    I didn't think The Visitor was cliched or predictable. I don't want to give the ending away, but it's not what I expected or wanted it to be, yet it was wholly satisfying at the same time.

    As for The Wrestler, I always have a difficult time watching people do self-destructive things that are based in a real-world reality. I don't, for example, have a problem watching the girl in the horror movie go toward the danger, because I know in real life any rational person would be out of the house and half-way to the state line in the time it takes the movie person to climb the stairs. But I am crawling-out-of-my-skin uncomfortable watching realistic movies about addictions to things like gambling and narcotics. For me, The Wrestler was like that. So sad that it was unwatchable. I did my best. But blech.


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