The Top 10 Male Performances That Should Have Won Oscar

As November grinds to a halt, as December announces the arrival of the end of each particular year, film critics and fans of the medium start contemplating awards — bests and worsts, the deserving and the soon to be discarded. It’s a ritual as traditional as pumpkin pie, fantasy football, the tannenbaum, and of course, the complementary complaining about movies and makers still MIA. Sit in on any cinematic sewing circle and just listen to the laundry list of complaints — director’s wrongfully snubbed, films erroneously praised — and you come to a clear conclusion: even within groups where consensus seems to strive for balance, the good aren’t always given their due and the dreadful often walk away with gold.

Sometimes, however, the failures are more than egregious. They stare you squarely in the face and announce their lack of careful consideration. Roberto Benigni may have wowed the unfamiliar with his farcical take on the Holocaust, but in retrospect, Life Is Beautiful didn’t deserve any of the accolades it received. In fact, similar statements can be made about titles as diverse as West Side Story or The Return of the King. With that in mind, the next four installments of List This will try and highlight ten of the many slights experienced by actors, actresses, directors, and their movies. While there are many, many more, the one’s selected represent a real lack of vision on the part of voters and those who support such annual appraisals. Beginning with the men, we offer the following:

Fans love his work as Captain Jack Sparrow (a couple of billion dollars can’t be wrong, right?) but the truth is that Depp has done such fantastic things that picking a single performance to champion is difficult at best. You could go with the melancholy Edward Scissorhands, or the clueless crap-master Ed Wood. Beyond Burton, his work in Public Enemies, Blow, and the recent Rum Diary inspire a similar kind of appreciation. But in taking on one of the most difficult roles in all of musical history – Sondheim’s Victorian serial killer barber – Depp tested every facet of his movie star mantle – and succeeded brilliantly.

When scholars go back and trace the career of this stunning male model-esque superstar, they will point to this particular film as the moment when the matinee idol finally went legitimate. Tapping into an anger heretofore unknown and maturing before our eyes, his work in this wrongly underrated drama deserved the highest award the Academy could bestow. Indeed, without his efforts here, subsequent hits such as Shutter Island and Inception would have been impossible. DiCaprio needed to grow up and break free of his Titanic image. This is the film – and the performance – that turned the tide.

As part of David Fincher’s focused nostalgia nasty, a look at one of the most notorious unsolved serial killer cases ever, Downey delivered one of those sensational showboating turns that kept the entire experience from turning too dark and depressing. Here, he’s the flamboyant investigative reporter who believes he can solve the Zodiac crimes, all while his own vices threaten to undermine his professional and personal life. Though he disappears toward the end of the second act, Downey’s defiant work makes all other parts of this piece even better. A brilliant turn in a shocking underappreciated film.

Suave and sophisticated, light and frothy – those are the terms usually associated with the last legitimate link to old world Hollywood hunkiness. In fact, many have used Grant’s looks and his lady killer presence to pretend he couldn’t act. Proof of how stupid such an idea is rests right here, in one of his many memorable collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock. As Roger Thornhill, the wrong man in the wrong place, he anchors this thriller with the kind of urgency and fear the material mandates. He also gets to woo Eva Marie Saint and spar with James Mason…and he never once misses a beat.

He was great in if… He was even better in O Lucky Man. So naturally, UK young gun McDowell was seen as the rightful heir to the always open crown of superior British thesps. In between those seminal turns, Stanley Kubrick introduced him to audiences outside the arthouse circuit, hiring him to essay the pivotal role of Alex in his adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ controversial novel. It ended up becoming an inspired, iconic choice. While he would never quite regain the fame of his ’70s stardom, McDowell satiric sociopath deserved recognition for what it was – a brilliant reflect of the oncoming Me Decade mayhem.

Gary Oldman, Peter Sellers and more…

So the story was more fairy tale than fact. Who cares that actual participants such as Julien Temple and John Lydon have condemned the film as nothing more than a pack of preposterous lies. Alex Cox wanted to celebrate the defiant DIY spirit of punk and picked Sid Vicious and the Sex Pistols to do so. He then hired a relative newcomer to play the all important role – and Oldman nailed it. He sang. He spat. He emerged himself in the musician’s crude combination of antisocialism and little boy lost and came out a star. He also managed to humanize what was long considered a crude rock caricature.

By one count, the man should have three Academy Awards. He definitely deserved one for Lawrence of Arabia and another for either the Lion in Winter or his later career home run, My Favorite Year. Still, for our money, this was the last great O’Toole turn, a scandalous deconstruction of a power mad moviemaker that appears to be based on every despotic director the actor ever worked with. With dialogue dripping with sarcasm and a delivery that defies the stereotypical British stiff upper lip, the formidable actor turned Eli Cross into a symbol of studio excess. While he was destined to lose the Oscar, his work here remains wildly inventive and insightful.

All buff muscles and unshaved snark, every lonely female’s cinematic crush came into his own with this David Fincher masterpiece. While Edward Norton got the more “complicated” role, Pitt provided the macho mirror image to his pal’s thorny psychosis, and in the process, proved he was much more than just a mass produced pretty face. Along with his turns in 12 Monkeys (where he actually earned an Oscar nod) and Se7en, the late ’90s proved who Pitt really was. Since then, he’s turned in one intriguing performance after another. In fact, his efforts for Quentin Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds comes a close second in the race to recognize this superstar’s serious mantle.

When he was sober – which wasn’t often – Oliver Reed could be charming and chummy. When he drank, he turned dark and tortured. All throughout his career, he was dismissed as a second rate Richard Burton, an alcohol fueled fury ready to explode at any given moment. Luckily, longtime buddy Ken Russell knew how to tap into Reed’s troubled talent, and their work together remains an important part of post-modern British filmmaking. This role, in particular, pushed so many buttons and resulted in so much controversy that it could have derailed both men. Luckily, Russell and Reed braved the storm together…and won.

Comedy never gets the respect it deserves. Now imagine the crime in failing to recognize a timeless piece of laugh making. This was the problem with Sellers throughout his surreal, storied career. He never was taken seriously, seen as a clown for bringing some classic characters to hilarious life…and that’s about it. Because he was naturally witty – and a bit nuts – he was always seen as simply playing ‘himself’…accents and approaches outside consideration. However, it’s impossible to deny the brilliance of this crazed comic turn in Kubrick’s callous cold war satire. Strangelove is the standard for former Nazi nutjobs – and it was Sellers who crafted said bemused benchmark.