Best Supporting Actor 2011

[Moviesandpizza]

Was so happy to see Nolte! He was so great.

[Reza]

My picks for 2011:

1. Christopher Plummer, Beginners
2. Albert Brooks, Drive
3. Nick Nolte, Warriors
4. Patton Oswalt, Young Adult
5. Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn

The 6th Spot: Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life

[HarryGoldfarb]

Max von Sydow... I'll elaborate later.

[MovieFan]

I like Plummer but I never bought into this idea that he was overdue, I mean the performance most people think he deserved to win for or be nominated was The Insider, and really I thought there were many supporting performances in 99 much better than his. He's fine in Beginners, but Nolte, Sydow and Branagh were more impressive. If they wanted to reward overdue actors on in this category then shouldnt they have gone with Nolte or Sydow? Nolte had more nominations, and Sydow is a much more acclaimed and better actor.

[mlrg]

Christopher Plummer - Beginners

[Sabin]

The only place that Brooks was the favorite to win was on Boards like these. The Academy was never going to warm up to Drive. Otherwise, Gosling would have picked up some traction as well as any of the myriad qualities that enrich the intermittently successful genre riff. The minute that My Week with Marilyn underwhelmed and Branagh was charged with not having much to do in it (again, I haven't seen it), it was Plummer's to lose. The only precursor that Max von Sydow picked up for his performance was a nomination from the San Diego Film Critics. I'm sorry but that is not enough. Regardless of who is the more deserving octogenarian veteran overall (MVS), Plummer was just too visible with a recent nomination for The Last Station, a somewhat recent nomination snub for The Insider, and a prominent role in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But mostly, how many times does a respected veteran of his age score his first career nomination for something like The Last Station, lose, and then come back with another nomination virtually a minute later and do something entirely different?

The only thing standing in his way of a win was that Beginners was a sole nominee. Had the film picked up a [deserving] screenplay nomination, it would have solidified him even more. I genuinely don't understand how they could have picked Margin Call instead.

[bizarre]

Re: ksyrmy's comment, I don't think Brooks was ever the favourite to win. Plummer's film debuted at TIFF 2010 and was already hailed as a BSA contender, and this kept him in predictions as a winner until and after Drive premiered at Cannes. Brooks was seen as a lock for a nomination by many but I think the general trajectory of the year involved a search for a possible winning contender other than Plummer and consistently coming up short.

If anyone could have upset, I would have predicted MVS despite his lack of a precursor showing.

[Sabin]

Plummer, Hill, and Branagh were pretty much foregone conclusions going into the night. I suppose Albert Brooks was also. And the rest was between Golden Globe nominee Viggo Mortensen for David Cronenberg’s interesting flop A Dangerous Method and SAG nominees Nick Nolte for Gavin O’Connor’s indulgent flop Warrior and Armie Hammer in Clint Eastwood’s…huh. J. Edgar made money. Who knew? Well, I can chalk up Viggo’s snub to voters not seeing A Dangerous Method and nobody liking J. Edgar, which somehow makes way for a performance like Nolte’s in a film like Warrior.

The big story was how Albert Brooks was snubbed for Drive, an omission that I saw coming in that Drive never struck me as anything an Academy voter would vote for. When he missed out on a SAG nom, that pretty much sealed it. Even though I’m a big fan of Albert Brooks, I can’t say as though I really find his work in Drive to be nearly as strong as some make it out to be. Scene for scene, he doesn’t really do anything special. It’s just the fact that it’s Albert Brooks in this role. Hard-pressed, I’d say Oscar Isaacs and Bryan Cranston are stronger in the film.

Likewise, proper casting had everything to do with the success of Christopher Plummer in Beginners. He doesn’t really get a big scene, but his performance is just overall wonderful. You love this guy and desperately root for his happiness. It’s wrong to think of Plummer as the standout in Beginners. Really he’s just a very strong member of an ensemble that also features wonderful work by Ewan McGregor and Mary Page Keller. He’s my choice.

I won’t be seeing Max von Sydow’s work in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close or Kenneth Branagh’s in My Week with Marilyn, so forgive me for voting anyway. I'm surprised that Branagh has four votes so far! I thought he was a dud nominee, someone who was carried along for the ride on the basis of prerelease hype and Weinstein muscle. Unlike in Best Actress, I'm going to just vote anyway.

Like Plummer, Jonah Hill is also just very well cast in Moneyball, but this is pretty clearly his strongest role to date. He very wisely plays every moment like he’s Jonah Hill standing next to Brad Pitt. It makes for some very funny scenes. Nick Nolte certainly does the most acting in Warrior. He has some very strong scenes but the film is also pretty choppy as it goes along so he never really has the opportunity to transcend the limitations of his film’s trappings. It’s just a sprawling, indulgent mess that is occasionally quite affecting.

Best Supporting Actor
1. Ryan Gosling, Crazy, Stupid, Love.
2. Alex Schaffer, Win Win
3. Shahab Hosseini, A Separation
4. Christopher Plummer, Beginners
5. Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life

[The Original BJ]

Not the most exciting lineup, though I can't say there was a bountiful field of alternates either.

I'm on the fence with respect to Albert Brooks in Drive. On one hand, it was an entertaining and dominant enough part that a nomination wouldn't have been unworthy. But at the same time, it wasn't such a deep or original villain that I was terribly bothered he was excluded. (Honestly, I wasn't that shocked either...and I certainly never thought he was ever in win contention for a movie like this, critics' prizes or not.)

I definitely preferred Shahab Hosseini in A Separation. And maybe Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life? Hawkes in MMMM? Giamatti or Hoffman from Ides of March? All are solid, though I can't say I have a terribly strong preference in any direction.

Of the nominees, it's hard to begrudge a genuine screen legend like Max von Sydow a late career nomination. But everything about this role (Mute! Holocaust survivor! That groan-inducing mid-film reveal about his character!) struck me as jerry-rigged for maximum cloying effect. He may be the best thing about Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, but I could never vote for him for this.

Warrior is one of those movies that comes around every once in a while -- it gets rave reviews from the mainstream press, tanks at the box office, then everyone whines about how audiences don't want to see good dramas. Well, I thought those reviews were extremely generous, for a story that I thought was mostly generic. As for Nolte, he has a baity role, but I thought that, too, was pretty much standard alcoholic stuff, and not anything special.

A lot of people in my real life were irritated that someone with Jonah Hill's track record could become an Oscar nominee, but I don't think it's fair to hold his lowbrow comedies against him when evaluating his Moneyball work. Here, he is engagingly funny in a classic supporting sidekick type role, and also manages to create a very realistic portrait of a young man nervously embarking on his first big job, with a lot of ideas but not a lot of experience. I found his performance imminently relatable -- I wonder, if he'd been a completely fresh face, might his nomination have engendered fewer brickbats from some people? All of that said...I think I'd still want to see how much range the guy has before handing him an Oscar.

I was cautious about Branagh as Olivier for the exact opposite reason I was cautious about Williams as Monroe: it just seemed like SUCH obvious casting (like Freeman as Mandela), that I wondered if the actual performance would seem like a mere afterthought. But, as I was surprised by Williams, so I was surprised by the way Branagh makes Olivier a multifaceted individual -- he's a fully comic, over-the-top showman, an intelligent and educated thespian, and a protective father figure to Monroe with deep insecurity issues of his own. The fact that My Week With Marilyn is such a light souffle, though, makes him only my runner-up.

Around here, many seem to be rejecting Christopher Plummer's awards season dominance, but I was fully onboard that train. I think his performance is so touching, as a man struggling for connection (both sexual and familial) during his last days. It's also pleasingly light and funny, a portrait of a man embracing life's end by continuing to live it to the fullest. And, in a career that has had the actor playing many stone-cold serious roles of late (Last Station obviously excepted), it was lovely to see Plummer's wit and warmth on display beside his trademark gravitas. Not an all-time great choice, but one I'm happy to endorse in this year.

[Big Magilla]

2011 was a disappointing year over-all. This category, however, did yield a few worthy candidates, most of whom struck me as worthy of a nomination, but not a win.

Joanh Hill's numbers guy in Moneyball bored me to tears. If they had to give a slot to funny young fat guy acting serious they should have given it Patton Oswalt who was a revelation in Young Adult, though the slot really belonged to Albert Brooks in Drive.

Of the others, Nick Nolte was at his best in decades in Warrior and deserving of what will likely be his last Oscar recognition. Kenneth Branagh was amusing as Laurence Olivier in My With With Marilyn, but the role was not written especially well.

Christopher Plummer and Max von Sydow have been friends, as well as acting legends, for so long, it's really quite shocking that until this year neither had won nor had either been nominated more than once before.

Plummer is good in Beginners, but this is another under-written part that really has nowhere to go once the old guy announces to his son that he is gay and going to die. Von Sydow's part in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is really one-dimensional on paper, but von Sydow imbues it with such sparkle and charm that you can't help liking him. Had Plummer not won my award for YThe Insider, it might have been a more difficult choice for me, but as it stands, von Sydow gets my probably sole, but highly enthusiastic support.

[bizarre]

I haven't seen any of these guys.

Wide pool of contenders this year. Albert Brooks was the big snub - I was predicting Branagh, Brooks, Armie Hammer (J. Edgar), Plummer and von Sydow. Also in the running were Patton Oswalt (Young Adult), Ben Kingsley (Hugo), Viggo Mortensen (A Dangerous Method), Christoph Waltz (Carnage), Brad Pitt (The Tree of Life), Corey Stoll (Midnight in Paris), John Hawkes (Martha Marcy May Marlene), Kevin Spacey (Margin Call), Andy Serkis (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Ides of March), Robert Forster (The Descendants) and John Goodman (The Artist).

[Precious Doll]

This is an ordinary bunch of nominees with good solid work by four of them with only really Branagh worthy of a nomination. My own choices for 2011 aren't really much better.

1. Richard Green in Snowtown
2. Albert Brooks in Drive
3. Benedict Cumberbatch in Tinkler, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
4. Michel Blanc in The Minister
5. Cheyenne Jackson in The Green

[nightwingnova]

Not sure what to think about this bunch.

Jonah Hill was rough around the edges and not subtle.

While very good, I wasn't necessarily impressed by Christopher Plummer's performance in Beginners. It was not outstanding. I much prefer his performance as the head cleric in Priest.

The others I have not yet seen.

[ksrymy]

As I suffered through Extremely Loud & Incredible Close, Max von Sydow arrived onscreen. Fuck yeah. This is going to be the saving grace of this piece of crud. And then I realized that even the screen legend himself couldn't save the film. He gives the best performance in the film, but I don't think he's one of the five best of the year. I'd really like to see how Magilla lays out his vote for von Sydow. He also gets props for putting up with all our shit about EL&IC and for predicting a nomination for him almost immediately.

He is better than Jonah Hill though. Hill continued the critics' yearly "Look! This guy isn't very good, but he does some pretty good mediocre work here!" nomination. Mila Kunis was the critics' darling at the time and Mo'Nique before her (though the latter is certainly much better than the other two). Hill has an interesting role, but he certainly does not need a nomination for this work.

He stole this slot from Albert Brooks. He was easily the early favorite to win until Christopher Plummer entered the scene. Brooks picked up almost all the critics awards. Brooks is very good too in a role that is entirely different from his usual shtick we see in Finding Nemo and Broadcast News. He transforms from Woody Allen into James Caan and it's great to see.

von Sydow is also better than Nick Nolte. This is Nolte's third nomination for screaming; however, it is effective. I pretty much have to change pants after his "YOU GODLESS SONOFABITCH!" scene. It's entirely uncomfortable but nothing new.

Christopher Plummer really didn't do too much in Beginners for me. He was quiet and subtle, but the character seemed to be the one being nominated. An Oscar-baity role and a swan song nominee always guarantees a win and Plummer had both those down pat. Plummer does give one of the best five performances of the year. He is much more tender and better-suited as the role of Henrik Vanger in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. He gives life to a character of some importance and delivers the best performance of the film.

So Kenneth Branagh gets my default vote. I really did enjoy his performance though. One of the best Shakespearean actors playing the best Shakespearean actor and my favorite actor ever. Olivier was known to be a bit of a prima donna and Branagh does this splendidly. Do they look anything alike? Not really. Branagh, along with Williams, makes his dreary film worth watching.

My picks
_______________________
1. Corey Stoll - Midnight in Paris
2. Albert Brooks - Drive
3. Kenneth Branagh - My Week with Marilyn
4. Christopher Plummer - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
5. Robert Forster - The Descendants

6. Shahab Hosseini - A Separation