Best Performances from the 2018 Oscar Best Supporting Actor Nominees

Best Supporting Actor is always my favorite category at the Oscars.  It is the category that is always loaded with great performances and is the category that allows under-appreciated veterans and up-and-coming character actors to get their due.  This year is a list of named veterans who have made their ways around the block or two.  They have all given a number of great performances throughout their careers, but what are there best?  Here are my picks for the best performances from the 2018 Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominees.

WILLEM DAFOE (Nominated for The Florida Project)

BEST PERFORMANCE – SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE (E. Elias Merhige, 2000)

In this fictionalized telling of the making of Nosferatu, Dafoe gives his best and most bizarre performance to date as insane character actor Max Schreck, the man cast to play the legendary vampire.  But weird happenings on the set make the cast and crew question whether Schreck is a committed actor of an actual vampire.  Dafoe crushes this performance, never showing us his cards and keeping us guessing as to his true identity.  He has a ball playing Schreck and we have a ball watching him.

WOODY HARRELSON (Nominated for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)

BEST PERFORMANCE – NATURAL BORN KILLERS (Oliver Stone, 1994)

Harrelson has quietly become one of the best working actors we have in Hollywood, continuously giving us stellar work in a number of different genres.  But his work in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers is something special.  Never before had Harrelson been like this.  Mickey is a cold blooded, soulless, disgusting human and Harrelson knocks it out of the park.  We are rooting for he and his wife to be free and we actually like them and that is all because of the masterful performance.  I have never seen a performance like this in my life.

RICHARD JENKINS (Nominated for The Shape of Water)

BEST PERFORMANCE – STEP BROTHERS (Adam McKay, 2008)

When you’re cast in a Will Ferrell movie, it is very easy to get lost in shuffle.  But when it is a Will Ferrell/John C. Reilly vehicle, you’re more than likely invisible.  Ferrell and Reilly are off the leash in Step Brothers, but it is Richard Jenkins who lasso’s this movie in to make it an actual movie.  Playing the father and step father of Dale and Brennan (Reilly and Farrell), Jenkins is the emotional center of this comedy, showing us flashes of sympathy in a movie that cares nothing about that.  His dinosaur speech is one of the weirdest inspirational speeches I’ve ever heard.  It might sound crazy, but Jenkins is the key in what really makes Step Brothers a comedy classic.

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER (Nominated for All the Money in the World)

BEST PERFORMANCE – ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD (Ridley Scott, 2017)

Christopher Plummer has been acting for over 50 years.  He has been acting longer than some of our nominees have been alive.  He has an Oscar.  So why is his most recent performance his best?  Because Plummer got a nomination for a performance in which we shot just months before the movie’s release.  Playing the key player in this crime drama based on a true story, Plummer steals the movie as J. Paul Getty.  What Plummer does best is show us a man who is obsessed with greed, money, and power, and yet does it in a way where we don’t hate him, we understand him.  Plummer is an icon and his nomination is deserved for pulling off this impossible and giving us something spectacular.

SAM ROCKWELL (Nominated for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)

BEST PERFORMANCE – THE WAY, WAY BACK (Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, 2013)

Since Galaxy Quest, I have loved Sam Rockwell.  Whatever movie he is in, whether good or bad, Rockwell always shows up and gives the best performance he can give.  He has given a number of masterful performances over the years, like this year in Three Billboards and his one-man-show Moon.  But Rockwell in The Way, Way Back is a performance that I fell in love with when I saw the film at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.  This movie highlights all the things we love about Rockwell.  It shows him as a great comedic actor loaded with charisma who can flip on the dramatic switch when needed.  Criminally robbed of an Oscar nomination in 2013, Rockwell showed why he is one of Hollywood’s great talents in this one.

What are your favorite performances from the 2018 Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominees?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter and Instagram, @kevflix, or on Facebook by searching Kevflix.