Best Supporting Actor 1995

[koook160]

There are some films that have no lead and then there are some films that have borderline leads. I'm one of the Board's biggest prosecutors of category fraud. Pulp Fiction? There are either two leads (John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson) or they're all supporting. L.A. Confidential? Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe, definitely. The Departed? DiCaprio and Damon, but who's railing against that? The Silence of the Lambs? Only Foster. The Assassination of Jesse James...? Affleck & Pitt.

The Usual Suspects? I think everybody is supporting in that film. But really, the reason not to vote for Spacey is that he's incredibly overrated.

You see, this is a more well-thought-out opinion. I can live with this.

[Sabin]

There are some films that have no lead and then there are some films that have borderline leads. I'm one of the Board's biggest prosecutors of category fraud. Pulp Fiction? There are either two leads (John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson) or they're all supporting. L.A. Confidential? Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe, definitely. The Departed? DiCaprio and Damon, but who's railing against that? The Silence of the Lambs? Only Foster. The Assassination of Jesse James...? Affleck & Pitt.

The Usual Suspects? I think everybody is supporting in that film. But really, the reason not to vote for Spacey is that he's incredibly overrated.

[koook160]

Come on, I grow weary of this board's constant denial of category fraud when it stares them in the face.

What the hell are you talking about? In film, sometimes there are parts considered as supporting other aspects of film? (it is allowed to be inanimate like a story, idea, etc...at least in my opinion). I feel like you want us to stand hard against the clear best performance in this category just because you wrongly think he is in a lead role. Next, I expect you to say Spacey was a lead in Seven because he was the central focus or some craziness.

At least, come 2000 you will likely be so tired of our "constant denial" you will give up your cause.. But in the meantime, kook, your award...Fargo!

Spacey was lead in The Usual Suspects because he had the most screentime. You can vote for him here, hell, I did. Besides, I've seen more egregious examples of members of this board ignoring category fraud in the past, even for performances that weren't nominated. Also, it's koook. Learn to read. (Yes, I'm quite aware of the irony of that statement.) Also, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at in the last statement. Care to clarify?

[Bog]

Come on, I grow weary of this board's constant denial of category fraud when it stares them in the face.

What the hell are you talking about? In film, sometimes there are parts considered as supporting other aspects of film? (it is allowed to be inanimate like a story, idea, etc...at least in my opinion). I feel like you want us to stand hard against the clear best performance in this category just because you wrongly think he is in a lead role. Next, I expect you to say Spacey was a lead in Seven because he was the central focus or some craziness.

At least, come 2000 you will likely be so tired of our "constant denial" you will give up your cause.. But in the meantime, kook, your award...Fargo!

[mlrg]

Kevin Spacey - The Usual Suspects

[Reza]

My picks for 1995:

1. Kevin Spacey, The Usual Suspects
2. Tim Roth, Rob Roy
3. Alan Rickman, Sense and Sensibility
4. Dennis Farina, Get Shorty
5. Joaquin Phoenix, To Die For

The 6th Spot: Kevin Bacon, Murder in the First

[Sabin]

Not a terrible comedown. There’s certainly one stupid awesome choice in the lineup, but it feels to me like a foregone conclusion and a bunch of people vying for 3rd (no 2nd present).

First off has to be Brad Pitt for 12 Monkeys. I like the film quite a bit and it was a surprise hit at the box office and amongst my friends at the time. It’s help up very solidly over the years. Back in 1995, Brad Pitt was whiplashed to the forefront of visibility and there was quite a bit of hating going on as to whether or not he deserved it. At least his first nomination had the same kind of off-kilter charge he displayed in Kalifornia and True Romance, but the guy got very big very quickly off of one terrible mega-hit (Legends of the Fall) and one excellent mega-hit (Se7en). And soon after, he was box office poison in a string of misguided duds. I’m not sure when his comeback began exactly. Fight Club was a bomb but he certainly regained a lot of respect for it. Maybe it was gracefully playing second-fiddle to Ocean’s 11. Either way, he’s one of our most reliable movie stars today…ironically, his one dud performance recently is from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, his second Oscar nominated performance.

It’s a wackadoo performance that’s more or less okay. Who could have guessed though that he would turn out to be a more exciting presence on film these days than Kevin Spacey? Pitt won the Globe and Ed Harris won the SAG, but Spacey cleaned up the critic’s awards, so when Kevin Spacey won it felt triumphant. They had made the right choice with the right actor in the right film. And not a single one of those elements has aged well. The Usual Suspects reaped the benefit of a post-Pulp era of “Edgy” filmmaking that today looks a bit facile. Similarly, Kevin Spacey looked like he was doing great acting in The Usual Suspects, but it’s really not a very good performance. At best, he’s fine. At worst, you can seeing him trying too damn hard. The Usual Suspects is worth remembering for its score, it’s editing (same guy!), and for Benicio Del Toro’s insane performance.

I think I thought that Ed Harris would win because I found it hard to believe that he hadn’t won yet. And I still find it difficult to believe he hasn’t won yet. But for what film? And against who? His work in The Truman Show against Billy Bob Thornton? Pollock against Before Night Falls? The Hours against Adaptation.? He’s the kind of actor who is too often the beneficiary of a film’s success and not his own craft. Is he good in Apollo 13? The best in his cast? Yes, but there’s only so much he can bring.

The same is true of James Cromwell in Babe, though lovingly so. He’s a beautiful mythic presence throughout the film. It’s not that he has to dance for the pig…it’s that he runs a gamut of emotions before he does so. You have to believe in his gentle reformation throughout Babe, that indeed he and the pig are star-crossed by destiny for greatness, and I cannot imagine anybody else in the film.

But this belongs to Tim Roth, and I’m actually kind of surprised he was nominated. If the fact that nobody saw Devil in a Blue Dress killed Don Cheadle’s chances, then what’s the excuse for Rob Roy? Fewer people saw that film and it was overshadowed by a very inferior Oscar juggernaut? Maybe that’s what did it. These people wanting more Braveheart…

There are three great performances in Rob Roy, and Tim Roth gives one of them. We’ve seen the fey villain before but Tim Roth acts like we haven’t. He’s complex, sinister, androgynous…you never like him, but you find him fascinating throughout. The film wisely offers up a swordfight so exceptional that you actually do fear for Liam Neeson’s life (easily, this be his most underrated performance to date), and without his presence this pretty great film wouldn’t be half what it is. It would feel lopsided. I doubt Tim Roth will ever win an Oscar because he has a screechy quality to him usually that’s poorly used, but he deserved this one.


Best Supporting Actor
1. Tim Roth, Rob Roy
2. Don Cheadle, Devil in a Blue Dress
3. Delroy Lindo, Clockers
4. Joaquin Phoenix, To Die For
5. Benicio Del Toro, The Usual Suspects

[FilmFan720]

I agree with the Kevin Spacey consensus here. I rewatched the film a few years ago, and was shocked how well it holds up and how exceptional his performance still is. There's no way it is a lead performance, but it is the best supporting performance of the year.

As for the others, they are all actors I like giving performances not among their best. Brad Pitt is embarrassingly ham-fisted in his lunacy, while James Cromwell and Tim Roth do what they do just fine but bring nothing astonishing to the table. Ed Harris is pretty wonderful in Apollo 13, and I have him in my fifth slot for the year, but he has a much better (and similar) performance coming up in a few years.

For the also-rans, I concur with those who have mentioned Don Cheadle's remarkable breakthrough and Kevin Bacon's frightened inmate. I will also add to the mix Paul Sorvino, so powerful and nuanced as Henry Kissinger in Nixon...to me, he is just as great as the two Oscar-nominees from that film.

[Mister Tee]

1995 was that wild year where there were maybe 30 movies that could have figured in the Oscar race some way or other. Just for example: I can imagine many years where Dead Man Walking, Leaving Las Vegas, Toy Story, Heat and The Bridges of Madison County were the best picture slate, and it would have been on a par with most years of recent vintage. (And that's not even considering Nixon, seven, 12 Monkeys...)

Similarly in this category: I don't see this as a mostly locked-in slate I'd tinker with at the margins. I'd offer a largely new slate, from the bounty the year offered.

First on my list would be Joaquin Phoenix, for his hilariously dense high school murderer in To Die For. One particular exchange sticks in my head, between him and interrogating detective Dan Hedaya:

Hedaya: Your friend says your dick is bigger than your brain.
Phoenix: He SAID that?

That whole teenage/lost in a fog of hormones cluelessness was just a thing of beauty, and my favorite performance in the category this year.

Also of great note, a bunch of gangster-ish types: Nicolas Cage in Kiss of Death (at the time it seemed a major breakthrough performance for him -- until of course he topped it with the Las Vegas perforamnce later in the year); Delroy Lindo as the drug lord in Clockers; and, a more comic variation, Dennis Farina's hilarously foul-mouthed turn in Get Shorty.

I'm not saying I'd discard the actual nominees as worthless, but James Cromwell, for one, is merely solid, and along as a tribute to the unlikely popularity of his film.

Brad Pitt does some very effective line readings in 12 Monkeys, but his physical tics drove me bananas. I'm sorry to say I suspect it was the latter that got him this nomination. Pitt has lately evolved into a very effective actor, but back then he was still in the learning stages.

Ed Harris was something of a favorite going into the evening, on career points and on the film's overall popularity. Harris was, as always, strongly grounded, and it was a halfway showy role. But he didn't really have any special scenes to merit him the prize.

Tim Roth's nomination was a surprise to me, and a pleasant one. Roth has always been a good actor, and Rob Roy was (as I've said here before) better written, acted, designed and directed than the Scottish-based film that won the big prize that night. Roth probably comes in second by me.

But I'm here to endorse Kevin Spacey's win, one of my favorites of the era, and the only nominee I'd definitely hold onto. Let me start by saying that labelling him a clear lead is total bullshit. There is no such role in The Usual Suspects; it's an ensemble piece. Put it this way: had Spacey been nominated alongside Penn, Cage and Hopkins that year, would anyone be predicting him for the win? Of course not...and the reason would be, his role was so much less dominant than any of those three. Verbal is a very strong role, and beautifully played by Spacey, but that only makes him an excellent supporting candidate, not a lead. Spacey was of course helped by his chilling extra credit in seven, as well as his Swimming with Sharks perforrmance (THAT one was a lead), but I think he merits the prize on Usual Suspects alone.

[ksrymy]

Come on, I grow weary of this board's constant denial of category fraud when it stares them in the face.

Spacey is much like Eva Marie Saint in this sense. This was his breakout film (Waterfront was Saint's actual debut though) and since he wasn't a big enough star to duke it out in the lead category they relegated him to support.

[koook160]

Spacey was great in The Usual Suspects, but he was even better in Se7en. That, and he was lead in The Usual Suspects. Come on, I grow weary of this board's constant denial of category fraud when it stares them in the face.

[Big Magilla]

Yeah, I feel pretty much the same way about this one.

I like Jmaes cromwell, but I don't think his performance here was really that special. I am glad, however, that the second generation star does have an Oscar nomination to his credit, something which eluded his father, director John Cromwell (Since You Went Away); actress mother Kay Hammond (Blithe Spirit) and actress stepmother Ruth Nelson (Wilson). My choice for the fifth slot was Kevin Bacon in Murder in the First.

I don't know what exactly Brad Pitt was doing in 12 Monkeys, but whatever it was, he did it well, though I, too, remember that Golden Globe acceptance speech more than I do his performance.

Ed Harris merited a nomination for Apollo 13, but that was all.

Tim Roth never did have the career we thought he would, but he was perfect as the villlain in Rob Roy.

My introudction to Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects was on the laserdisc release of the film in which I had Bryan Singer's commentary on - the first and last time I listened to a commentary without having seen the film first. The first words out of the director's mouth were to reveal the ending as Spacey's caharacter appears. It pissed me off big time, but not enough to take away Spacey's win. He gets my vote.

[ksrymy]

After the two best lineups in this category's history, I find this group filling me with ennui. There is nothing particularly exciting about most of the nominees.

James Cromwell is effectively-cast as Farmer Hoggett, but there's not much in the role.

Brad Pitt is crazy in 12 Monkeys and he merits a nomination for doing it spectacularly well. Sadly, I remember his thanking the makers of Kaopectate at the Globes more than I do his performance.

My dad raised me to love astronaut movies so Apollo 13, along with The Right Stuff, is special to me and Ed Harris deserves his nomination as Gene Kranz especially because he wasn't nominated for The Right Stuff. His stolidity works with him here and he is the obvious standout from the cast. I just really want Harris to win an Oscar in his lifetime.

Tim Roth is a very good actor and I'm glad to see him with at least one Oscar nod.

But I can't think of what to say about the other actors because I can only vote for Spacey here. His line deliveries are pitch perfect. He doesn't allow Verbal's stutter to get in the way. It's a very natural performance which is so entirely important considering the ending. This performance is a-one. One could argue that Spacey won because he had a spectacular year with Se7en and Swimming with Sharks as well, but I venture to say that this film alone would have still garnered him a win if the other two were made some other time. One could say that, with Gabriel Byrne, Spacey is a co-lead. I'd venture to say that everyone is supporting in The Usual Suspects with the exception of Byrne. No category fraud here.

My picks
__________________
1) Kevin Spacey - The Usual Suspects
2) Ed Harris - Apollo 13
3) Alan Rickman - Sense and Sensibility
4) Don Cheadle - Devil in a Blue Dress
5) Kevin Bacon - Murder in the First

6) Tim Roth - Rob Roy