To see the list I made of the best supporting performances given by females, go here.
Honorable mentions (in no order):
Edward Norton, Birdman
Ben Mendelsohn, Starred
Up
Kristofer Hivju, Force
Majeure
Owen Wilson, Inherent
Vice
Kool Shen, Abuse of
Weakness (side note: I wish my name was Kool Shen)
5. Nat Wolff, Palo Alto
I was
completely unfamiliar with Nat Wolff before seeing Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto, but knowing he’s a former
Nickelodeon star only makes his performance as the frighteningly immoral teenager
Fred that much more impressive. Fred’s the sort of sociopathic kid we all knew
growing up, who for some reason finds pleasure in being cruel and destructive.
He’s despicable, but as the film goes on and his behavior becomes increasingly dangerous, Wolff gives the character a sense of desperation that make his
actions seem less like gleeful destruction and more like a cry for help.
4. Beck Bennett, Beside Still Waters
Characters
who use their sense of humor to mask inner pain is well-worn territory in
modern indies, but Beck Bennett's performance in Beside Still Waters somehow makes this character feel new and
exciting again. Bennett shows impeccable comedic timing as Tom, a slacker who has just been fired from his job at a law
firm by his own father, but far more
impressive is the way he underscores his deadpan delivery with a sense of
sorrow and self-loathing. In a film featuring excellent performances across the
board, Bennett’s melancholic funny man makes the greatest impression.
3. Robert Pattinson, The Rover
I’m
extremely sensitive to actors portraying characters with special needs. Usually, the
performances are bearable at best (like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man), and just plain offensive at worst (like Sean Penn in I Am Sam). Robert Pattinson’s
performance in The Rover is more than
just bearable. It’s absolutely heartbreaking. In the post-apocalyptic Australia
in which the film is set, everything is a matter of life and death, which is a
big problem for Pattinson’s Rey, who’s always one step behind the rest of the
world. No scene brought me closer to tears in 2014 than the simple scene of Rey
singing along to a pop song alone in the middle of the night, a moment of
innocence in a world that has no place for it.
2. Josh Brolin, Inherent Vice
Of all
the wonderful performances in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, perhaps the most surprising is Josh Brolin’s
hilarious turn as Detective “Bigfoot” Bjornsen. Nothing Brolin has done prior
to this has even hinted at the comedic range he shows here, suggestively
sucking on a chocolate-covered banana or shouting out his pancake orders in Japanese.
But, like the rest of the film, there’s a deep melancholy underneath the
surface of humor. It’s clear from the way he treats “hippie scum” Doc Sportello
(Joaquin Phoenix) with equal amounts of hatred, jealousy, and admiration, and
from the way he seems to use his job to escape his personal life, that Bigfoot is far from happy. He’s a guy who bought into the American ideal of a nice house, a
nice family, and a nice job, only to discover it wasn’t the dream that had been
promised.
1. Jonathan Pryce, Listen Up Philip
Listen Up Philip’s view of humanity is extremely pessimistic, and no character better
exemplifies this than Jonathan Pryce’s arrogant author Ike Zimmerman. Ike treats
people like tools whose only purpose is to support him, and anything they do
against his wishes he takes as a betrayal. Of course, this means he feels betrayed by basically everyone he's ever known, causing him to isolate himself from the rest of the world. The only people
he regularly interacts with are his daughter, who he only views as a reminder of all
his failures, and the young writer Philip (Jason Schwartzman), who he mentors
by encouraging his worst tendencies, especially his self-centeredness. It’s a
performance of incredible darkness and venom from an actor I never would have
expected it from.
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