2005 Calvins: Best Supporting Actor
By David Mumpower
February 14, 2005
How dominant is Thomas Haden Church in this category? In the schoolyard bully vernacular, he not only takes the lunch money of his fellow nominees, but also bloodies their noses and blackens their eyes. Then, he makes out with their sisters. Church has almost as many votes as the second and third selections combined. Stating the obvious, we like his work in Sideways.
What in particular makes this performance so memorable? There is perhaps nothing harder for an actor than making an unredeemable character likeable enough that we grow to forgive his despicable behavior. In this instance, we have a man who promises to love and cherish a woman the following week but spends the current one boozing and grabbing any skirt within striking distance of his drunken double vision. While his counterpart, Paul Giamatti, is considered the lead in Sideways, there is no disputing the fact that Church is given the showier role. And he nails it.
This just in: David Carradine is not dead. Who knew? Quentin Tarantino might have been the only person, but that is all it took to bring the Kung-Fu icon into the 21st century. Like Robert Forster before him, Carradine was fortunate enough to be a fave of the video store clerk who dreamed of making movies. When QT finally had the chance to realize his vision in Kill Bill, he gave the titular role to the long-forgotten actor. The result is a soulful performance involving a tortured man who loves the woman who bore him a child. The fact that she is driven to kill him is the fly in their ointment. Carradine is asked to walk a fine line between lover, father figure, teacher, and rat bastard. To his credit, the performance is unforgettable in its depth and believability. Never has a movie seen its climactic fight sequence be such an exercise in verbosity. It's impossible to imagine any actor other than Carradine accomplishing such a feat. When he talks, we want to listen. When he fights, we are afraid of him.
Third place sees a tie between two indie actors whose stock is on the rise these days. Clive Owen may or may not be the next James Bond, but he has recently demonstrated he can hold his own with any actor in the world. In a film frontlined by three other gifted thespians, it's Owen who steals the show. He portrays a dermatologist who finds his life thrown into upheaval by a chance encounter with an unfaithful woman. Once he falls in love with her, the professed "nice guy" performs acts of unconscionable viciousness in order to secure what he feels is his. Along the way, Owen's encounters with characters played by Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman demonstrate that beneath this actor's steely veneer lurks a being fully in touch with his dark side. In Closer, Clive Owen portrays a man willing to make the hard choice and see it through. In doing so, he proves he is ready to stand among the finest actors in the world.
Our other third place entry plays a much different character. Peter Sarsgaard received significantly more attention for his work in Kinsey, but the BOP staff preferred his performance as a well-meaning gravedigger with mother issues. Garden State is a strong contender across the board in Calvins voting this year, showing that the film really strikes a chord with us. Sarsgaard in particular is the breakout actor of the bunch. We already knew Portman going all the way back to her Beautiful Girls days, and Zach Braff is a favorite for his work on Scrubs. Sarsgaard, on the other hand, has been largely under radar to all of us but those who have the most eclectic of tastes in independent cinema. His work here is a revelation. The loyalty demonstrated to the friend who forgot him after getting famous is exactly the sort of everyday Hollywood celebrity story that has been historically ignored. Sarsgaard plays a man who was left behind yet who holds no grudge for the behavior. His everyman realism is in direct contrast to the irregular behavior of the neurotic twin leads. As such, Peter Sarsgaard is the anchor of a marvelous film.
Morgan Freeman's work in Million Dollar Baby earns him fourth place in the vote, three points behind Sarsgaard and Owen. The film itself is a three person masterpiece of character development and existential debate. Freeman portrays the soulful balance between the withdrawn redemption seeker played by Eastwood and the white trash dreamer played by Hilary Swank. It is left to Freeman to create a reason why the two should interact. Whether the other two are achieving their dreams or suffering through unexpected, tragic pitfalls, it is left to him to put each of them on the path once more. This is without question Freeman's finest work since The Shawshank Redemption, with the knock being that it does feel like familiar territory at times.
Sixth place goes to a boy who may not have been born when this site began. How old is Freddy Highmore, four? I know that the Hollywood adage is to go younger if at all possible, but between this kid and Dakota Fanning, it's getting out of hand. Anyway, the 12-year-old (!) wins our notice for his pre-pubescent portrayal of a young Corey Feldman-type who meets a Michael Jackson-level celebrity named J.M. Barrie. The two embark on a perfectly innocent, above board friendship that is not at all sick and wrong. While there are other children involved in the story, the reality is that the success of Finding Neverland hinges upon the relationship between the characters played by Highmore and Johnny Depp. The fact that a kid whose voice hasn't changed yet is able to hold his own with one of the finest actors of this generation is more than enough reason to justify his lofty placement.
Spots seven through ten go to Mark Ruffalo, Alfred Molina, Yeong-su Oh, and Rodrigo de la Serna. Ruffalo plays an off-kilter lab assistant who performs the procedure on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's Jim Carrey, which causes Rubberface to lose his mind. That reason alone is enough to make him a hero to the masses. Molina steals the show in Spider-Man 2 as the villainous Doctor Octopus. His mentor/protege relationship with Peter Parker is overshadowed by his inevitable fight to the death with Spider-Man. The international contingent at the bottom of the list is led by Yeong-su Oh of Spring, Fall, Winter...and Spring. Voters were impacted by his spiritual portrayal of an aging monk trying to teach life lessons to a troubled youth. As the title suggests, the film's five season story arc passes time quickly, allowing the character to see his fair share of heartache and pain. But it does so in a celebration of Buddhism with the elderly man calmly accepting the fate that has been placed before him. Rodrigo de la Serna is given the task of humanizing a communist revolutionary by being buddies with him in The Motorcycle Diaries. At the risk of showing up on various government watchlists, we must admit that some of us (not me, I swear, but some of us) liked the way he did this. That probably makes said voters commie bastards.
There are other guys we liked but just not quite as much as these guys above. These are Mark Wahlberg for I Heart Huckabees, Willem Dafoe for The Life Aquatic, Tom Wilkinson for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Timothy Olyphant for The Girl Next Door, and Rupert Grint for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Sorry, guys. It's just a damn popularity contest and, well, you lost.
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Top 10
|
| Position |
Actor |
Film |
Total Points |
| 1 |
Thomas Haden Church |
Sideways |
93 |
| 2 |
David Carradine |
Kill Bill Vol. 2 |
55 |
| 3 (tie) |
Peter Sarsgaard |
Garden State |
53 |
| 3 (tie) |
Clive Owen |
Closer |
53 |
| 5 |
Morgan Freeman |
Million Dollar Baby |
50 |
| 6 |
Freddie Highmore |
Finding Neverland |
38 |
| 7 |
Mark Ruffalo |
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind |
34 |
| 8 |
Alfred Molina |
Spider-Man 2 |
31 |
| 9 |
Yeong-su Oh |
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring |
25 |
| 10 |
Rodrigo de la Serna |
The Motorcycle Diaries |
24 |
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