My Award Nominations: Leading Actor

It wasn't as slim a year for Best Actor candidates as many pundits would have you believe. There were some sterling performances out there beyond Casey Affleck's slam dunk Oscar nod, if you knew were to look. Here are my five:

FYC: My Nomination Wish List as Oscar Polls Open

Ballots were mailed today to the Academy's 7000-some-odd voting members,
so now is the natural time for me and Oscar bloggers everywhere to deliver our impassioned last-minute "For Your Consideration" pleas on behalf of the underrated and overlooked of the awards season thus far.

Mind you, I don't circulate in any circles of influence on such matters, but that shouldn't stop any of us from professing what potential goodies we'd luuuuuv to unwrap on nomination morning (our Christmas, y'know). AMPAS could do a lot worse than to at least give these longshots an honest chance:

Actors

While the depiction of Chiron in Moonlight is undoubtedly a cumulative piece between three actors, it's Trevante Rhodes' iteration that has critics most frustrated for being unable to gain any attention outside a bevy of Best Ensemble citations. True, there doesn't seem to be much room for Rhodes in a Best Supporting Actor conversation that's been utterly dominated by costar Mahershala Ali, but why not take advantage of a thin year and place him the category where he belongs: Best Actor. The same logic should be extended to Dev Patel in Lion, screen time be damned. Who's going to argue that the characters these men play aren't the leads of their respective films?

'Moonlight' Gains Foothold by Being Out the Gate (Relatively) Early

The biggest Supermoon in 70 years may have astronomers flocking to their telecscopes this weekend, but a far more luminous object has cinephiles flocking to their arthouses as Moonlight continue its expansion in its 3rd week of release.

Barry Jenkins' soulful sophomore feature is every bit as exquisite as you've read, but I can understand its cautious release strategy; A triptych character study about a young gay black man struggling with his singular and fluid sense of self is, admittedly, a tough sell. But those willing to believe that crises of identity are universal to all people -- as Jenkins clearly does ("In the moonlight, all boys look blue...") -- will find themselves hard pressed not to be moved by the poignant and painful discoveries of Chiron's childhood, youth and adulthood.