Best Actor 2010

[Uri]

This was my evaluation earlier this year. In retrospect I'd probably swap Firth and Eisenberg on my list.

Best Actor
1. Jeff Bridges – B. He might have had more challenging roles along his career, but still this is such a confident, smart, gentle and generous performance I wish he won his belated career award for this one.
2. Colin Firth – C. He's good. Was much better last year.
3. Jesse Eisenberg – C. He does exactly what he needs to do here.
4. Javier Bardem – C/unranked. First, I don't allow foreign languish films blah, blah, blah. And if I did - the grotesque film he's in isn't worthy of his talent.
5. James Franco – D. I like him, but I guess the fact that he really didn't have anything to work with here was totally overshadowed by the cosmic/divine/karmic need for him to be nominated this year. A pointless nomination.

Should've been: Jim Broadbent, Ryan Gosling, Geoffrey Rush, Mark Wahlberg.

[mlrg]

Colin Firth - The King's Speech

[MovieFan]

Jesse Eisenberg gets my vote. Its the performance out of these nominations that gets better each time you watch it. Firth was better in a Single Man, Franco was better in Howl, but not nomination worthy in either, Bardem was the best thing about his film but didnt desreve to be nominated, and Bridges has certainly been better

[Sabin]

Javier Bardem has three Oscar nominations. That's pretty incredible, isn't it? He may have signed on to do a Bond movie this past week, but before that the most you could accuse him of selling out was working with the Coen Bros and Woody Allen. But Biutfiul is a horrible movie, perhaps the worst film nominated last year, and, while he does his best with it, he remains a mouthpiece for a repugnant personality.

I'm not a big fan of True Grit. It's enjoyable, but the film is all Hailee Steinfeld's. Jeff Bridges doesn't blow the film out of the water like John Wayne does, but that's because the Coens' film is a tighter production. Ultimately, there is a sense of anticlimax to the film's second half that hinders everybody involved, but it's hard to begrudge him.

Likewise, it's hard to begrudge Colin Firth a win for The King's Speech. Not only did he have everything an actor needs to win, but he manages to compensate for some of the film's many shortcomings. You really do get a sense of tortured history in George that the film skirts over. It's also hard to begrudge an actor who was building up a steady career playing 3rd and 4th lead cuckolds for so long.

James Franco is a very good actor that nobody in Hollywood seems to know what to do with, and they certainly have less inclination to figure him out now! 127 Hours is an obnoxious movie that attempts something rather interesting: just as this guy measures his life in product, increment, and practice, so does Danny Boyle. Now this may simply validate his excesses, but the anchor holding this choice together is James Franco's funny charismatic performance. The dude's a charmer and he's very fun to watch in this role. I wish the film had made some smarter choices, but Franco vibrates a confidence that Danny Boyle doesn't understand.

This one goes to Jesse Eisenberg. Amazing use of his persona! At the heart of The Social Network is the story of an asshole who couldn't communicate with those around him so he changed how people communicate, period.

My Choices
1. Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
2. James Franco, 127 Hours
3. Ben Stiller, Greenberg
4. Lars Eidinger, Everyone Else
5. Jim Carrey, I Love You, Philip Morris

[Damien]

Javier Bardem can be a wonderful actor. But in Biutiful he was not a real-life character but a Symbol -- A Good Man, and he was as silly enacting that Symbol as the movie was as a whole.

Jsse Eisenberg was perfect: An empty performance in a completely empty, unnecessary and pointless film.

James Franco was up to the physicality that entailed starring in a tedious movie about a guy getting his hand stuck under a rock.

Colin Firth gives a lovely performance in The King's Speech. What's so memorable about his work here is that although he makes George VI sympathetically awkward, he can be petulant and self-pitying and distant, and thus often not a particularly warm or likable fellow. It's not a Dustin Hoffman-type performance, looking for love from the audience, but one much more grounded in reality. And, paradoxically, because of that, I cared for the character all the more.

Jeff Bridges is, of course, wonderful in the Coen Brothers' best -- because it is their least smug -- movie. I swear, no matter what the role, the man is incapable of hitting a wrong note. He didn't bring the same iconography to the role that John Wayne did, but it's still a great stand-alone performance and gets my vote.

MY Own Top 5:
1. Casey Affleck in The Killer Inside Me
2. Gerard Depardieu in Inspector Bellamy
3. Mark Wahlberg in The Fighter
4. Jeff Bridges in True Grit
5. Kodi Smit-McPhee in Let Me In

[Big Magilla]

Not eough time has passed for me to put the year in perspective.

It was only yesterday (literally) that I finally saw In a Better World and Of Gods and Men and I still haven't seen Incendies. It's a good thing we don't do polls on the foreign film category!

I still haven't seen Biutiful and really have no desire to, a rare Best Actor performance that I managed to miss. The trailer was torture to sit through, though at some time I will likely cave in and put myself through it. In the meantime, and I suspect long after, Mark Wahlberg (The Fighter) gets Bardem's slot from me.

Next to go is Jeff Bridges. Yes, the Coen Brothers' reamke of True Grit was more faithful to the novel, which I read before seeing the John Wayne version, and which I was disappointed in at the time because of some of its changes, but as a film it moves faster and Wayne's self-parodic performance, though not deserving of an Oscar over Hoffman and Voight, is nonetheless just about perfect. Bridges is merely good. Robert Duvall in Get Low gets his slot from me.

James Franco does yeoman work in 127 Hours, a film whose excesses are the fault of the director (Danny Boyle), not the actor. It's marginally nomination worthy.

Jesse Eisenberg is on target as Mark Zuckerberg and one of teh reasons The Social Network was one of the few contemporarary films of recent years that really works and was last year's best film by far, but the Academy got this one right.

The one award that The King's Speech truly deserved was Colin Firth's Best Actor award, both because it was an expert performance and because the actor was due.

[FilmFan720]

I probably shouldn't have voted, as I still haven't bothered to catch up with Biutiful, but from what I hear and know about Inarritu, it wouldn't have swayed my vote.

Jeff Bridges is probably my favorite actor working today, but this is his weakest nominated performance and the first to go here. He is fine, but the character as written is fairly one-note, and Bridges never really tries to give much more to it.

Colin Firth won every award in existence for The King's Speech, and they all came a year too late. Firth is fine, and he certainly gets points for always making the stutter honest and rooted in the character rather than tacking it on, but the film never really goes anywhere and doesn't let Firth go anywhere either.

Jesse Eisenberg is tremendous in The Social Network, especially when you consider what he had to work with. Neither Sorkin nor Fincher really know what to do with Mark Zuckerberg: is he a misunderstood hero, is he a very smart jackass, is he a thief, is he a manipulative visionary? They never really answer these questions, and leave Eisenberg to have to maneuver his way through all of them. He embraces the jackass and manipulative side of Zuckerberg much more than many actors would, but also plays him with just enough compassion and weakness to always keep him compelling and to keep pushing us back into his corner when need be. It is a very delicate performance walking some very fine lines.

127 Hours is a much lesser film than The Social Network, and a lot of that is the fault of Danny Boyle and not James Franco. The film is much too hyper, and the script much too shallow, but whenever Franco is left to his own accord he is magnetic. It is a courageous performance, leaving no emotion untouched while also never getting the benefit of a scene partner to bounce off of. Franco never backs down, and every frame that he exudes is pitch-perfect. You only have to wish that Boyle would have just let the camera sit on him more and let him work his magic, rather than overcutting and stylizing everything. Sometimes a still camera can do wonders, especially when you just let it run.

As for the also-rans, Aaron Eckhart should have gotten every kudo that Nicole Kidman got, as he is just as integral (if not more) to the success of Rabbit Hole in a role with a much stronger arc than hers. It is probably the best performance by one of our most underrated actors. Casey Affleck is nomination-worthy in The Killer Inside Me, and you can't overlook the ineligible Edgar Ramirez, giving the performance of a lifetime in the full 5 1/2 hour Carlos.

[ksrymy]

I think this is a very decent lineup with one exception.

That exception is James Franco. I did not like his performance and I did not think 127 Hours was as great as it was hyped up to be. I'm pretty sure I hated the performance even more after the shit job Franco did hosting the Awards. I found this role unimpressive. He should have easily been replaced by Mark Wahlberg, Tahar Rahim, or Ryan Gosling.

Next to go is Javier Bardem. I thought Biutiful was great and I thought his performance was heartbreaking. I was also glad to see a foreign language nominee since they are so hard to come by. Bardem succeeds in this role but I find the last three nominees better.

Here's a role I liked Jeff Bridges in. I thought he did wonders to the Rooster Cogburn character. He did with the character what would have been unacceptable for John Wayne to do: act like a complete drunken fool. If Wayne played the Cogburn Bridges did in 1969, audiences would have been shocked and appalled. Bridges is lovely when he drunkenly babbles little songs (my personal favorite being, "Hmprhpmhrpmgpnhfresomprthpm") and when he is forced to be tender with Hailee Steinfeld's character.

But for me, it's between Jesse Eisenberg and Colin Firth. Colin Firth is heartbreaking yet heartwarming as Bertie. He's someone you can't help but cheer for and the stutter Firth uses in the film is brilliant as he doesn't use it excessively to the point of annoyance. The pain and frustration you can see on his face as he tries and tries to overcome his impediment is marvelous. We even get a bit of comedic relief with his "and shit and fuck and... tits," line. Firth is superb in this role.

Yet we also get (much more cynical) comedy with Eisenberg. I was astonished when I saw The Social Network because I had always been under the impression that Jesse Eisenberg could not act. He could not be more annoying as Mark Zuckerberg, but that's exactly what his character is. He is blunt. He is an asshole. He couldn't be more opposite from Firth's character.

In the end, both Eisenberg and Firth have a lot of flashy speeches but the more brilliantly delivered ones are given by Colin Firth whom I vote for this year.

1. Colin Firth - The King's Speech
2. Jesse Eisenberg - The Social Network
3. Tahar Rahim - A Prophet
4. Jeff Bridges - True Grit
5. Ryan Gosling - Blue Valentine

6. Mark Wahlberg - The Fighter