Meanwhile, I was quite conventional with my top two votes in the Best Supporting Actor category. Heath Ledger made me forget about Jack Nicholson, which is not something I would have thought possible at any point over the past 20 years. Robert Downey Jr. might be the strongest silver medalist I've ever had. He rightfully deserved to win for his work in Tropic Thunder, but it was the wrong year to be a supporting actor. Russell Brand is probably a psycho, but I bought him as a well-intended, vapid rock star. As for James Franco, that's a weird vote for him, because I actively disliked Pineapple Express as a whole yet I found him quite winning as a harmless burnout with good intentions and a constant desire to be liked.

As I said on my Big Board for 2008, I thought Rachel Getting Married was the best screenplay of the year. Jenny Lumet shows the wisdom of a grizzled veteran with her moments of subtlety that provide the backstory about Anne Hathaway's character without beating it over the audience's head. "I saw you on Cops" is so much tighter than filming a couple of minutes of humiliation that distract from her weekend with the family. Had it not won, In Bruges would have, as it's almost as marvelous. The hitmen dramedy surprised me, it engaged me, and it made me root for genuinely awful people. I'm not someone who likes rooting for the bad guy per se, so that's an impressive feat. The fact that Colin Farrell's character not only knew he was doomed but felt it was completely justified is exactly the sort of moral ambiguity that wins me over. The only script I want to champion here is Andrews (not a typo) Jenkins for How to Rob a Bank. The writer/director is a complete unknown and this film will do little to raise his profile, but I was deeply impressed by the way he made his argument about the malevolent infrastructure of the corporate banking system. In hindsight, it feels all the more timely. If you watch the film, its low budget production values may prove off-putting, but you will also grow aware of how obscene most banking fees are. I like the critical thinking Andrews displays in his screenplay. A lot.





Given the above, an understandable guess would have been Forgetting Sarah Marshall for Best Cast and believe me, I considered it. The magnificence of Langella's performance combined with exceptional support from Michael Sheen and Sam Rockwell made Frost/Nixon the slight nod. Meanwhile, four of my 40 votes in the acting categories went to the In Bruges cast, so its presence in second place is self-explanatory. My only regret here is that something had to give and that meant pushing down worthy selections like The Dark Knight and Slumdog Millionaire. For that matter, Milk would have won if not for the performance of Diego Luna, which was woefully out of place. It's hard to put a film in the top five for Best Cast while simultaneously naming one of its actors in the Worst Performances category.

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