Performances that should be nominated...but won’t be

The Academy announces the 2009 Oscar nominations tomorrow morning, and I’ve decided to help them out a little bit by throwing out some names they may have not considered.

While Mickey Rourke, Sean Penn, Meryl Streep and Heath Ledger will be locks in their respective categories (and have better chances of winning than almost anyone else), it’s important that the underdogs—either lesser-known actors, performances in small productions or terrific work that just got overlooked—get at least a little recognition.

I have picked one underappreciated performance for each of the four major acting categories, and I have carefully considered every movie I saw this year (two of the performances I picked were from films I didn’t even like).

These actors likely won’t have their names announced during the nomination telecast tomorrow, and although I don’t believe these performances would deserve to win even if they were nominated, hopefully this entry will steer you in the direction of some terrific work.

Best Actor
Richard Jenkins, “The Visitor”
Of my four picks, Jenkins has the highest chance of getting a nomination. In Thomas McCarthy’s wonderful “The Visitor,” he plays a stick-in-the-mud college professor whose life is changed when he finds two illegal aliens staying in his vacation home. The picture could have easily resorted to manipulative histrionics, especially after one of the immigrants is arrested and threatened with deportation, but McCarthy’s script (which should, if there is any justice, also get a nomination) and Jenkins’ quiet, humble performance elevate this from cheap melodrama to intriguing character study. He finds a warmth and timidity beneath his character’s somber exterior, and he is completely believable at every moment. It is a testament to him that the movie works so well.

The runner-up in this category is Robert Downey Jr. in “Iron Man,” who used his trademark sardonic wit and self-debasing humor to great effect (he could easily get a Supporting Actor nom for his race-defying work in “Tropic Thunder”). I also admired Sasson Gabai in “The Band’s Visit,” Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in “In Bruges,” Andrew Garfield in “Boy A,” Ricky Gervais in “Ghost Town,” Dev Patel in “Slumdog Millionaire,” Sam Rockwell in “Snow Angels” and Michael Sheen in “Frost/Nixon.”

Best Actress
Dakota Fanning, “The Secret Life of Bees”
Although “The Secret Life of Bees” was a minor fall hit and female audiences seemed to adore it, I didn’t find much to like about it other than the strong performances (without a cast that includes Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, Sophie Okonedo and Alicia Keys, this movie would have premiered on the Lifetime Channel). Despite that star wattage, the movie’s best work came from young Dakota Fanning, who was only thirteen when the film was shot. She conveys more maturity than any actor her age, but her performance is not impressive because of her age—it is impressive because she is a tremendous actress. Fanning has the most difficult role in the picture, one that requires a number of emotional scenes, and she pulls it off so convincingly and so honestly, you’ll forget your watching a teenager. If she continues this caliber of work, she’ll have an Oscar by the time she’s twenty.

This was a harder category to fill, mainly because the best actresses are the ones that are the more obvious choices (Meryl Streep in “Doubt,” Kate Winslet in “Revolutionary Road,” Anne Hathaway in “Rachel Getting Married”—all astounding turns). So the runner-up here is Melissa Leo in “Frozen River,” who would have been my first choice had she already been the subject of Oscar talk—don’t be shocked if she gets a nomination, but the fact that her superb performance was in such a small film decreases her odds. Other terrific performances in this category include Kate Beckinsale in “Snow Angels,” the severely underrated Téa Leoni in “Ghost Town” (get this lady a star vehicle, stat!) and Anamaria Marinca in “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.”

Best Supporting Actor
Eddie Marsan, “Happy-Go-Lucky”
Most of the accolades for Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” go straight to its star, Sally Hawkins, and rightfully so. But Eddie Marsan’s portrayal of a short-tempered, bigoted driving instructor is stupendous, mainly because his character becomes crucial to our understanding of the film’s heroine. In one of the movie’s final scenes, Marsan has a meltdown and unleashes a verbal assault on Hawkins that, although painfully honest, gives us a shocking bit of insight into the character—is she really as happy and selfless as we thought she was at the beginning of the picture? Leigh is one of my favorite directors, and I especially love how he pulls out the rug out from under an audience and completely alters our perception of a person in a matter of minutes: Marsan’s character begins as a cute, curmudgeonly counterpoint to Hawkins’ effervescent Poppy, but his performance evolves into something much more profound.

The runner-up this time is also likely to get an Oscar nomination this Thursday, but for a different film. Brad Pitt is a favorite in the Best Actor category for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (curious, indeed, because he’s the least interesting character in a very interesting movie), but he was brilliant in the Coen brothers’ goofball espionage comedy “Burn After Reading.” Since comic performances are so often overlooked, I’d also like to mention Russell Brand, the eccentric British comedian who ran off with the best lines in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” Also of note were Jason Butler Harner in “Changeling,” Bill Irwin in “Rachel Getting Married,” David Kross in “The Reader,” Michael Shannon in “Revolutionary Road” and Ben Whishaw in “Brideshead Revisited.”

Best Supporting Actress
Anjelica Huston, “Choke”
Why Anjelica Huston hasn’t received more accolades for this performance is beyond me. I imagine it has to do with the fact that “Choke” was not a very good movie that hardly anybody saw. Still, her turn as Sam Rockwell’s elderly mother, a former con artist slipping away with dementia, was heartbreaking, a welcome source of tenderness in a movie that desperately needed it. Her scenes with Rockwell—she doesn’t recognize him, thinking he is a lover from her past, and he plays along with her delusions—have a poignancy that you may not expect from a sleazy movie about sex addiction, and their interaction was an island of humanity amidst a sea of jumbled plot strands and labored comedy.

Marisa Tomei is likely to get a nomination for her wonderful work in Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler,” but likely to be overlooked is her co-star Evan Rachel Wood, who appears in the film for about ten minutes and makes a tremendous impact. Also of merit were Rosemarie DeWitt in “Rachel Getting Married” (if anybody from the terrific supporting cast will get a nod, it’ll be Debra Winger), Beyoncé Knowles as Etta James in the middling musical biopic “Cadillac Records” and Hanna Schygulla as a grieving mother in the Turkish film “The Edge of Heaven.”