One Category at a Time: Supporting Actor

This might take the cake as the year's most unpredictable category. Composed entirely of past winners, there are no narratives of “overdue actor still waiting for first Oscar” to be had. And with a pair of co-lead performances masquerading as supporting amongst true supporting players in popular Best Picture nominees, it leaves the contest as wide open as we've seen in years.

Review - Silver Linings Playbook

Like the bipolar protagonist at its centre, David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook is prone to wild mood swings at the drop of a hat. Fluctuating between wry humour, dramatic pathos, and earnest romance, it may not bring you any closer to understanding mental illness, but it makes for a surprisingly fun and satisfying picture.

In fact, the film actually downplays the severity of mental illness insomuch as it suggests that everybody is, to an extent, “crazy”. Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) – an undiagnosed bipolar having just completed his stay at a psychiatric hospital following a particularly violent episode – may be the character whose mental issues are addressed most directly, but we come to see how he's less strange when surrounded by his unstable family and friends. Be it his OCD father (Robert De Niro) who superstitiously insists on very specific conditions in order to win money on NFL games, his marriage-smothered best friend (John Ortiz), his mental ward cohort (Chris Tucker), or even his well-meaning but stifling mother (Jackie Weaver), everyone in his life exhibits some degree of “crazy”.