My Award Nominations: Supporting Actor

Onward we march in my drawn-out unveiling of 2014's best cinematic achievements. Today the focus is on Best Supporting Actor.

Unlike in my recently unveiled Best Original Screenplay ballot, I find there is a dearth of quality in this category. I'm sure you'll immediately notice that my top five are nearly identical to the SAG, Globes, BAFTA, and Oscar slate (save for one obvious non-contender who should've received more consideration anyway). It's not that I particularly enjoy lining up with the everybody else, but I couldn't find a whole lot of alternatives that I felt okay nominating myself. When different groups are in this much agreement at the nomination stage, it's often an indicator of a weak year.

But enough griping, because these five performances are still excellent -- whether or not they had any competition:

NBR pipes up for 'A Most Violent Year'

The significance of the National Board of Review is always debated when they chime in each December. Since it isn't really a critic group or an industry organization, they can sometimes make choices that will certainly not be reflected by the Academy two months down the road. Then again, sometimes those odd choices can serve as a nifty exposure boost for a low-profile contender (remember Jacky Weaver back in 2010?)

This year, it's J.C. Chandor's A Most Violent Year that could benefit the most from their singular taste, picking up mentions for stars Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain in addition to the Best Film honour. As a small film just on the outside of the Best Picture bubble (kinda like Chandor's All Is Lost, ultimately an under-seen awards disappointment last year), this could do a real service to the film.

Review - Moonrise Kingdom

An AWOL Khaki Scout and his sweetheart commit probably the most adorable elopement ever put on screen in Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, the latest in the auteur's ever-growing portfolio of exacting comedies, wherein subdued youthful angst and emotional exploration manifest themselves in a case of love on the run, sending shock waves through the cozily contained island community of New Penzance.

The two absconders in question are 12-year-olds Sam and Suzy, exquisitely played by newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward with a precocious, self-aware deadpan intended to serve Anderson and cowriter Roman Coppola's deliberately eccentric dialogue. He, an orphan who can't seem to make friends even among his fellow Khaki Scouts as they're so called (not to be confused with Baden-Powell's boys), and she, frustrated and smothered by a family composed of three banal brothers and lawyer parents who parley in legal jargon without a trace of irony or affection, have in common that they're both social outsiders, and both may be, as others perceive them to be, “emotionally disturbed” – but really, who wasn't at that age? Perhaps emotionally curious is a better way of summing it up, after a chance meeting at a church pageant followed by an intimate pen pal correspondence prompts them one summer to runaway together, certain that whatever existence they forge for themselves in the coastal wilderness of their island home will be happier than the ones they currently lead.