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The Lobster

A few weeks ago, we were singing the praises of this year’s Best Actress field, which is easily the most interesting of the four acting categories (at least from this vantage point in October). So where does that leave the Best Actor field? There’s no real reason why a strong year for Best Actress would mean the equal and opposite for Best Actor, but that appears to be how things are shaking up in the early going. While Best Actress manages to be overstuffed with contenders — and that’s even with the news this weekend that Viola Davis will be campaigning as a supporting actress for Fences — it’s a struggle to fill out a likely top 5 for Best Actor.

Which is not to say there haven’t been more than 5 great performances by a lead actor in 2016. When we talk about “Best Actor/Actress/Cinematographer/Documentary Feature is looking thin this year,” it only means that there aren’t too many contenders from movies that are likely to ping on Oscar voters’ radar. It’s a strange and often undefinable alchemy that adds up to an Oscar nomination. It’s never any one thing. Logan Lerman isn’t a likely contender for Indignation despite some great reviews. It’s probably not going to happen for Chris Pine in Hell or High Water despite the fact that Jeff Bridges probably will be a supporting-actor contender for that same film. Ralph Fiennes (A Bigger Splash) can’t seem to get arrested anymore despite being a two-time nominee who was arguably runner-up to the winner both those times. We’ve seen worse performances than Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s in Snowden get nominated for far more gimmicky reasons, but that’s probably not going to happen this year.*

So who DOES stand a chance this year? And does a thin field mean that voters will have to stretch to some interesting corners of the map to fill out their rosters?

The Guys Most Likely

Sooner or later, this race is going to belong to Denzel Washington. For now, we’ll just say he is extremely likely to be nominated for his performance in Fences, the August Wilson adaptation that he is directing. Only two actors have ever won the Best Actor Oscar for films they also directed: Laurence Olivier in 1948 for Hamlet and Roberto Benigni in 1998 for Life Is Beautiful. But one look at the Fences trailer and you know this is something Oscar voters are going to devour.

Denzel’s already won two acting Oscars. Another one would put him on the all-time list for actors, alongside Jack Nicholson, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Walter Brennan. We can talk later on about whether this is a hindrance or not. For now, he’s the leader of the pack.

Following close behind is Casey Affleck, whose performance in Manchester By the Sea has been lauded ever since its Sundance debut. Affleck’s been nominated once before in supporting (for The Assassination of Jesse James), and it feels like the time to bump him up to lead status. The one thing that might hold him back? A pair of settled sexual harrassment lawsuits stemming from his time spent directing that ill-advised Joaquin Phoenix documentary/stunt I’m Still Here. It’s interesting that Nate Parker has essentially been drummed out of Oscar contention for his own past litigation but not Affleck. If this continues to be a story, it certainly won’t help Affleck’s chances.

Outside of Denzel and Affleck, the two most likely nominees are Ryan Gosling, whose La La Land still sits in the frontrunner spot for Best Picture; and Joel Edgerton, whose interracial-marriage drama Loving gets released this month, after great reviews have been percolating since Cannes. So that’s four spots that can’t exactly be said to be sewn up in October, but all four are looking decently confident as the awards-season rollercoaster climbs up to its initial drop. So who would fill that fifth slot? Who would you put your money on today? There’s no one great contender, which means there are a LOT of pretty-good ones.

The Veterans

Oftentimes, when Oscar voters are bereft of buzzier options, they retreat to the cozy confines of the familiar. And who is more familiar (or cozier) than Tom Hanks? The two-time Oscar winner has a bona fide $120 million hit on his hands with Clint Eastwood’s Sully. The only time an Eastwood-directed movie topped $100 million and failed to get a Best Actor nomination was Gran Torino.

Other options from the former-nominees bucket: Michael Keaton nearly won two years ago for Birdman. He’s coming off of two straight years of starring in the Best Picture winner. When The Weinstein Company moved The Founder — where he plays McDonald’s empire-builder Ray Kroc — out of the summer season to December, everyone promptly forgot about it, marking the first time in history that a movie lost buzz by moving to December. Look now, though: we’re two months from the end of the year with a soft Best Actor crop and what’s waiting is Michael Keaton in a Harvey Weinstein-produced biopic directed by the guy whose The Blind Side won Sandra Bullock her Oscar. Why are we underrating this?

One more: Matthew McConaughey won this award three years ago and then promptly began settling into the dowager phase of his career. But this December, he’ll be hitting theaters with Gold, the based-on-true(ish)-events film which appears to have been assembled entirely from American Hustle footage that was cut after a particularly negative test screening (“the tiger seems like a LOT”). Gold is just asking for critics to hate it, but don’t be surprised if Oscar voters see an aging, balding, pudgy individualist/con artist and say “Sure, we nominated Christian Bale for the same thing, but this is a story that needs to be recognized.”

The Rookies

Is this finally the year that …

…Dev Patel gets the Oscar nomination he narrowly avoided for Slumdog Millionaire? There are rumblings that he may get pushed as supporting for Lion, where he plays a young man who was adopted as a boy by Australian parents after a harrowing separation from his family in India. Patel only plays the film’s lead character during his adult years (roughly half the movie), but my hope is that voters won’t be fooled. He’s great in the film and more than worthy of a Best Actor nomination.
…Andrew Garfield gets rewarded for fleeing Spider-Man? Now that he’s free to be a real actor again, Garfield has a pair of buzzy roles: as a conscientious objector in Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge; and as a Jesuit priest in 1600s Japan in Martin Scorsese’s Silence.
…Miles Teller gets his first Oscar nomination, for the boxing biopic Bleed for This, thus finally providing the platform for Teller to give the single most obnoxious interview in recorded history? The possibilities are staggering here. What’s the venue? Vanity Fair profile? Charlie Rose? A podcast of some kind? One of those Hollywood Reporter roundtables?!?!?!

The Affleck

Now that The Accountant has shown itself to be a rather ridiculous and silly venture, the Ben Affleck partisans among us (they’re all around us, interacting with us, though their smiles never quite reach their eyes) will try to convince you that if Live By Night, his latest directorial effort in which he also stars, opens by the end of the year, it’s a contender. Don’t believe them. Watch the trailer and know the truth.

Remember when it seemed like Ben Affleck was going to turn his talents increasingly towards directing, since that was where the bulk of his talents appeared to lie? And now he’s making six movies as Batman and directing films that have more and more focus on him as the lead character. “1920s Irish gangster pic” might seem like heady Oscar bait, but maybe not so much anymore? It’s not like Black Mass saw such success last year. “But Black Mass was terrible!” you say. And then I shoot you a raised eyebrow.

The Globes

The Golden Globes are the second-biggest movie award show of the year, and while their nominations can just as often be crazy and dumb, sometimes they’re onto something. The musical/comedy category should be interesting if only because there look to be so few contenders to far. Ryan Gosling in La La Land is probably your winner. Would they dare push McConaughey in Gold as a comedy? Don’t laugh too hard — they put The Wolf of Wall Street there.

One possible boon to the Oscar race is if Colin Farrell gets a Globe nod for The Lobster (they liked him enough to give him the win in 2008 for In Bruges). It’s a great performance in a movie that went over WAY better than was expected.

Also? Don’t be surprised if Will Smith gets a Golden Globe nomination for Collateral Beauty. That movie looks like if Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and A Winter’s Tale had a baby, and that baby grew up to write inspirational refrigerator magnets, but the Globes can’t resist a star. Smith was nominated just last year for Concussion.

If We Made Picks Today

Putting my money where my mouth is:

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Denzel Washington, Fences
Casey Affleck, Manchester By the Sea
Ryan Gosling, La La Land
Joel Edgerton, Loving
Michael Keaton, The Founder

(though I’m weirdly pulling for Matthew McConaughey in Gold)

*Grain of salt. It’s October. There’s always a chance that someone’s campaign will catch fire as the months get colder. Predictions are made for fun, et cetera.