After Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere suffered disappointing box office results and middling reviews that have seen it drop to a “rotten” status of 59% on Rotten Tomatoes, Jeremy Allen White takes a tumble out of my top 5 this month. While it’s true a great performance in a dud of a film can still snag an Oscar nom (Ana de Armas in Blonde, anyone?), the Best Actor field is so damn competitive this year, making it that much harder for White to rise above the negative noise.
In his place comes Joel Edgerton for a film that’s growing in strength every week. After rave reviews out of Sundance in January and TIFF in September, Train Dreams has been more wildly seen in October with almost unanimously positive reactions (currently 98% on RT). Edgerton won the Outstanding Achievement in Acting Award at the Middleburg Film Festival and you have to hope this all kicks Netflix into gear in making a major priority this season.
For the first time in years, Best Actor is actually looking like an embarrassment of riches. Praise be. After the universal praise for One Battle After Another, Leonardo DiCaprio jumps straight to the front of the pack. After finally snatching his first Oscar in 2015 for The Revenant, is it time to give DiCaprio his second ten years later?
At this point last year, Timothée Chalamet was sitting in pole position for his as-yet-unseen turn in A Complete Unknown. Rather ironically, he finds himself in the same situation this year as we await to see his work in Marty Supreme. Much like A Complete Unknown, the film shunned festival season and will similarly debut in December. Chalamet likely came in second place for Best Actor last year, so maybe this will finally be his turn.
After strong first reactions to the surprise screening of Marty Supreme at the New York Film Festival, it’s now clear this is shaping up as a battle between Timothée Chalamet and Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another). Neither landed a nomination at the Gotham Awards, but it’s believed Marty Supreme wasn’t ready in time for eligibility.
Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) did score a Gotham nob, which is the perfect start for his campaign. Likewise with Lee Byung-hun (No Other Choice) and Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon). There have never been two non-English language performances nominated for Best Actor in the same year. Moura and Lee could change that.
BEST ACTOR PREDICTIONS:
1. Leonardo DiCaprio – One Battle After Another (Warner Bros.)
2. Timothée Chalamet – Marty Supreme (A24)
3. Wagner Moura – The Secret Agent (NEON) – Gotham
4. George Clooney – Jay Kelly (Netflix)
5. Joel Edgerton – Train Dreams (Netflix) – Gotham
IN CONTENTION
Will Arnett – Is This Thing On? (Searchlight Pictures)
Russell Crowe – Nuremberg (Sony Pictures Classics)
Daniel Day-Lewis – Anemone (Focus Features)
Ethan Hawke – Blue Moon (Sony Pictures Classics)
Colin Farrell – Ballad of a Small Player (Netflix)
Brendan Fraser – Rental Family (Searchlight Pictures)
Hugh Jackman – Song Sung Blue (Focus Features)
Oscar Isaac – Frankenstein (Netflix)
Dwayne Johnson – The Smashing Machine (A24)
Michael B. Jordan – Sinners (Warner Bros.)
Lee Byung-hun – No Other Choice (NEON)
Jesse Plemons – Bugonia (Focus Features)
Jeremy Allen White – Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (20th Century Studios)
