Oscar pick-a-palooza: Who should win Best Actor?

Denzel Washington in Fences

This is part four of an ongoing (and fourth annual!) series of blog posts (featuring myself and fellow blogger Brian Wezowicz) about the 2017 Academy Awards, honoring the best of Hollywood from last year. 

Check out our previous posts on the Best Supporting Actress race here, Best Supporting Actor here, and Best Actress here. And stay tuned for our takes on all the other major categories.

Brian: If 2016 was a great year for women's performances, I could make the exact opposite argument for men. To me, it doesn't seem like we've had a ton of breakout performances by leading men this past year.

Looking at the nominations, the only glaring snub would have to be Michael Keaton getting shut out for his wonderful performance in The Founder.  I guess you could make a case for Ton Hanks in Sully (a movie I thought was overrated), or maybe Andrew Garfield should have been nominated for Silence instead of Hacksaw Ridge.  I can't really recall any other male lead performances that stood out to me.  If you look at the SAG award nominations, you'll see they mirror these.

With that being said, let's discuss the nominees for Best Actor.  Casey Affleck, and his incredibly moving performance in Manchester By The Sea, seems like an almost certain lock to take home the trophy.  His less-is-more performance is cleaning up left and right during this awards season, and while Affleck certainly shines in his role, I think giving him the Oscar is not the right play.

Denzel Washington gives the performance of his distinguished career in Fences as a deeply flawed husband and father, and I think he deserves it more than Affleck in this case. I know winning it multiple times is almost impossible and winning three Oscars is almost unheard of, but Washington deserves it.  He's an American institution and this is his crowning achievement.

There is also the matter of the sexual harassment allegations in Affleck's past, and while I'm one to separate art for the artist, it's just sad to note that he's escaped relatively scratch free.  Contrast that to how allegations from Nate Parker's past completely derailed the awards chances of the wonderful, The Birth of a Nation, and I feel that criticism of Affleck in this case is warranted.

Here are the nominees:

Best Actor:
Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea
Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge
Ryan Gosling, La La Land
Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic
Denzel Washington, Fences

Who Will Win:  Affleck.  He's cleaned up at every awards show, and it should be no different here.

Who Should Win:  Washington.  I haven't been as in awe of a performance in a long time as I was with Washington in Fences. He absolutely deserves his second Best Actor trophy (and third overall).

Dark Horse:  Ryan Gosling.  He won at the Golden Globes and La La Land has a ton of momentum going in to the big show.  I feel like one of the leads will take home a trophy, but could it be both? It'll be interesting to see how the SAG awards play out.

What do you think?

Michael Keaton

Adam: I guess you may be right. There were only a handful of really standout lead male performances for me this year. Denzel Washington did some of his best work ever in Fences, and although I have more than a few problems with Casey Affleck's off-screen persona (and the double standard that has been applied to him, which you alluded to), I must admit that his work in Manchester By the Sea is terrific and powerful.

I'm rooting for Washington because I think Fences represents a kind of culmination of all his previous work -- it was a role he was born to play and I don't know if he will ever reach a pinnacle like this again.

The rest of the nominees for me are no real threat to win. Ryan Gosling is wonderful in La La Land, charming and self-effacing, I love his comic timing in this and a slew of his recent films. Who knew he had such a natural gift for comedy? I have a lot of respect for Viggo Mortensen, but I haven't seen Captain Fantastic, so I can't speak to its worthiness, the same goes for Andrew Garfield, who has shown a lot of promise in films like The Social Network, and has a kind of sweet, old fashioned Montgomery Clift type quality that I gravitate towards. But for my money, as you mentioned Michael Keaton should have been here for The Founder, one of his career best performances, and a film that really deserves more critical appreciation.

Will win: Casey Affleck. Unfortunately, this feels like a foregone conclusion. I can't really quibble with him winning -- he is that good in this film -- and he's a talented actor (see The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, it's fantastic), but I can't say I am thrilled about it. There is something smug about him, even without factoring past allegations of sexual harassment against him. I also just roll my eyes whenever one actor cleans up every precursor and its almost this self fulfilling prophecy that they will take home the Oscar.

Should Win: Denzel Washington. I just enjoyed and appreciated his performance more than Affleck's. I respected Affleck's, but I found Denzel's to be more emotionally fulfilling and compelling. This film deserves a wider audience too. Denzel and Viola Davis are the best acting duo on screen this year, elevating what could have been just a filmed play into something transcendent.

Dark Horse: Ryan Gosling. If this night turns to be some kind of epic La La Land lovefest, which is entirely plausible, considering that it's tied the record for most nominations ever, I could see Gosling getting swept in too. Its not the kind of performance that typically wins Oscars, he doesn't have a big Oscar scene per se.

He is just fun and breezy throughout, but with a quiet backlash to Affleck brewing and Fences getting good but not great praise from critics (plus Denzel already has two Oscars and Gosling has none) I could see this being a bit of an upset.

Damn, we agree on pretty much everything.