Oscars 2018 Predictions: Nominations For Best Supporting Actor

Three Billboards
Three Billboards

I found this to be an extremely deep year in the category of Best Supporting Actor. I suppose there is something to be said for the fact that there were far more meaningful roles in this Oscars race for men than women, but I’m not nearly skilled enough to say it.

 

Willem Dafoe for The Florida Project

If there’s anything I’m a sucker for in films, it’s a rugged father-figure with a heart of gold. Defoe plays the manager of an Orlando motel that also serves as a slum for its poverty-stricken residents.

Dafoe playing a man who is at times trying so hard to not care for Mooney, the young protagonist, in light of her home-life is so incredibly moving and captivating that him bringing home the big prize wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.

 

Michael Stulbarg for Call Me By Your Name

What a year for Michael Stulbarg. He was fantastic in FX’s Fargo, as well as in all three of his performances in the sure-to-be Oscar nominated films The Shape of Water, The Post, and Call Me By Your Name – in which he plays the father of the protagonist played by Timothee Chalamet.

For some, Stulbarg might be on the bubble. But his body of work put’s him over the hump for me. And his performance in Call Me By Your Name was seriously amazing. A monologue of his near the end was one of the only times I can remember a theater being upended by the sounds of sniffles and tears.

 

Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBCWknuw-Ok

Rockwell won the Golden Globe for his role as a violent, redemptive police officer in Martin McDonagh’s midwestern crime-epic, so an Oscar nomination shouldn’t surprise anybody. I thoroughly enjoyed the black comedy that Rockwell’s character brought to the film, which ended up making my top ten for the year.

 

Armie Hammer for Call Me By Your Name

Not since Bugsy in 1992 have two actors (Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley) from the same film been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. But I’ll stick with my bold take that Armie Hammer’s charisma will get Call Me By Your Name two nominations because man oh man is he likable in it.

Hammer plays a graduate student spending a summer in Italy with a professor and his family who finds himself falling in love with the teenage son, played by Timothee Chalamet.

He’s meant to be, at first, alluring and illusive to the lust Chalemet’s character, which we, the audience, also feel with his performance. His cadence, his body language, his facial expressions – all leaves for more to be desired in one of the best performances of the year.

 

Steve Carrell for Battle of the Sexes

This might by a little dark horse-y, but I think the Academy will choose to recognize a film that got lost in the awards season shuffle by nominating one of their darlings, Carrell.

Don’t get me wrong, Carrell puts on a hell of a show as washed-up, conniving tennis player Bobby Riggs. I honestly believe that Steve Carrell, if you look at his body of work thus-far, will be remembered as one of the great actors of our time.

 

Honorable Mentions

Ray Romano for The Big Sick

Michael Shannon & Richard Jenkins for The Shape of Water

Tracy Letts for Lady Bird

Sebastian Stan & Paul Walter Houser for I, Tonya

Woody Harrelson for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

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