My favorite performance of 2005 is Pierce Brosnan as a clinically depressed hitman in the black comedy The Matador, but if after 16 years that movie hasn't found an audience, it isn't likely to. So no nomination for you, Mr. Brosnan!
See, I think for a movie or performance to be award-worthy, it has to not only be great, it also has to find an audience, i.e., become iconic — which is to say it strikes a chord that resonates across generations.
That's the inherent problem with the Oscars — they're handing out the award just a few months after the movie has come out. How can you tell after so short a time if a film will stand the test of time or is just the flavor of the month? As my very wise big brother suggested to me recently, they should wait twenty years before handing out the Oscar — then you'd know what you're really handing the Oscar to!
Maybe that's why there are so many alternate Oscar sites, including this one ...
But alas, the Oscars aren't really designed to honor greatness — they're designed to sell Hollywood's idea of itself to itself, very safe, very dull, which is why we keep getting winners like Green Book instead of, say, Black Panther. Green Book is a nice movie, I enjoyed it, two thumbs up, but it was hardly a cultural phenomenon. And my guess is that in twenty years people will say "Green Who?" while we're all still watching Black Panther and the forty Marvel movies that followed it.
Oh, well. Let's get to it, revisiting the best actors and supporting actresses of 2005. FYI, Brokeback Mountain dominated in the other categories, winning best picture, director (Ang Lee) and supporting actor (Jake Gyllenhaal). Felicity Huffman (Transamerica) took home the prize for best actress.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I can't blame math for this one — I nominated the top six movies and the two or three consensus picks in each of the other categories and then filled out the rest with my own choices. Feel free to rip me on Yelp.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Lots of complaints about my picks for 1995 so I started from scratch and went with a purely consensus set of nominees. A pretty grim list. My fellow Oscar nuts don't have much of a sense of humor is all I can say.
If I didn't nominate your favorite movie or performer, don't blame me.
In case you were wondering, my personal favorites are, in alphabetical order, Apollo 13, Babe, Before Sunrise, Clueless, Congo, Devil in a Blue Dress, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Get Shorty, A Little Princess, Persuasion, The Quick and the Dead, Richard III and Toy Story. A baker's dozen. All top ten lists should be a baker's dozen.
The worst movie of the year, for those playing at home, was Demi Moore's version of The Scarlet Letter, with Showgirls giving it a real run for its money. I'd say one day we should hand out Alternate Razzie Awards for history's worst movies and performances, but life is too short to self-inflict one's own misery.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Another actress poll I shut down early — "shenanigans."
By the way, before I forget (as I often do), these were 1993's alternate winners in the categories I am not revisiting:
Picture: Schindler's List
Actor: Bill Murray (Groundhog Day)
Director: Steven Spielberg (Schindler's List and Jurassic Park)
Supporting Actor: Ralph Fiennes (Schindler's List)
Supporting Actress: Gong Li (Farewell My Concubine)
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Anthony Hopkins's performance in The Silence of the Lambs is iconic, deservedly so, one of the greatest villains in movie history. In fact, his Hannibal Lecter is so memorable, you forget how little time he's actually on the screen. Thus, I've dropped him into the supporting category where I think he belongs.
Which leaves a bit of a mess in the lead category. I've nominated the five guys who ran closest to Hopkins in the various alternate Oscar lists I follow. Of them, I opted for Kevin Costner in JFK as my winner, as much a career win as for the individual performance, although I still think he's better than his competition.
By the way, do I buy into the conspiracy theories touted in JFK? Not for a second. I think in 1963 we couldn't wrap our heads around the notion that a pissant like Lee Harvey Oswald could kill the most powerful man in the world, the beloved John F. Kennedy, and came up with all sorts of elaborate explanations for such a heinous crime. But if there's anything that we've learned over the six decades since, it's that one man with a gun can murder multitudes. In retrospect, the only surprise is that Oswald didn't take out half the street.
Nevertheless, I enjoy a paranoid thriller about JFK's assassination — e.g., James Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand, Stephen King's 11/22/63 — as much as the next guy, and Costner is at the heart of this one. That the film falls flat during its earnest third act isn't his fault.
But as always, you decide.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
When I ran the poll for best actress of 1990 the first time around, I shut it down very early — a clear-cut case of voting vandalism. Not sure why my actress polls inspire more shenanigans than the actor ones, but they do. Feel free to speculate in the comments section below.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I seem to remember some chirping from the peanut gallery back in the day for my failure to nominate Batman — first dark comic book movie, influential, etc. — thus, the nominations for best picture and director. But I still say it hasn't aged well, and Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson now look as campy to me as Adam West and Cesar Romero. Feel free to disagree in the comments section below.
And still no nomination for Driving Miss Daisy, the Academy's choice for the year's best picture. It's not the worst movie to win for best picture — but it's close. I'm going with the anti-Miss Daisy, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, but you have many other movies to choose from. I hope you find something to your liking.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I'm not exactly a hobgoblin for foolish consistency, but if I nominated La Dolce Vita for best picture of 1961, then I really should put Cinema Paradiso, 1989's best foreign picture winner, in, you know, 1989. Thus, this slight reshuffling.
By the way, in the categories we are not revisiting, Tom Hanks (Big) won best actor, Susan Sarandon (Bull Durham) won best actress, and Joan Cusack (Working Girl and Married to the Mob) edged Michelle Pfeiffer and Geena Davis for best supporting actress.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
This is one of those years I exercised the "dingoes ate mah baby!" card and skipped over very actor-ly, Oscar-nominated performances by Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep in Ironweed, a mediocre and largely-forgotten drama about a couple of skid row drunks. I opted instead for a pair of iconic performances that the Academy ignored, John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing.
If you don't like it, you've come to the wrong place.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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