Outstanding Support

Whilst watching Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them I rapidly came to the conclusion that Queenie (Alison Sudol) and Kowalski (Dan Fogler) are more interesting than the main characters.  This got me thinking of the supporting characters that have enhanced movies this year:

Rocky: Let’s start with the strangest, Rocky as a supporting character in a Rocky movie! Creed is a Rocky movie, but it’s also its own beast and Michael B. Jordan is excellent as Adonis Johnson/Creed and was unlucky not to receive an Oscar nomination, but Sylvester Stallone was fantastic as Rocky and truly was a supporting character.

Ringer: The 5th Wave was a poor film with little to recommend it but Maika Monroe was brilliant as ever playing the most fun character in the movie.

Sheriff Chris Mannix: Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight is a truly ensemble movie and it is hard to call any of the characters supporting, however, in a dialogue heavy movie one of the less well known actors stands out: Walton Goggins. Anyone who has seen Justified won’t be surprised.

Penelope Lannier: Like many people the first I heard of Dakota Johnson was Fifty Shades of Grey, like many people I thought she was the only good thing about the film.  In A Bigger Splash not only does she stand out, but she does it against some seriously amazing actors: Tilda Swinton, Marianne Lane, Ralph Fiennes.

Howard: 10 Cloverfield Lane: is a seriously leftfield sequel.  Mary Elizabeth Winstead is fantastic in the lead but the film would have fallen apart without the brilliant John Goodman.

Isabelle: In Louder Than Bombs, Isabelle Huppert is never less than sensational and has therefore set the bar pretty high for herself.  playing a dead character, we only see her in flashbacks, but she is the focus of the film and it wouldn’t work unless she is good.  The film is mesmerising and she is monumental.

Tanya Vanderpoel: Margot Robbie‘s best moment in Whisky Tango Foxtrot is in the trailer.  To add to this she is supporting the brilliant Tina Fey in the first movie role worthy of her talents in years.  To be honest the offhand delivery of her line in the trailer is enough to give her a place on this list, but she also provides great support in to Fey’s lead.

St Clair Bayfield and Cosmé McMoon: If Meryl Streep gets within a mile of a movie she picks up an Oscar nomination, it is therefore hard to stand out in her presence, however, in Florence Foster Jenkins two performances stand out; Hugh Grant and Simon Helberg.

Jane Clayton: The Legend of Tarzan: is a good old-fashioned action adventure film that was unfairly derided on release.  Alexander Skarsgård is good as John Clayton / Tarzan, Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson do a really good job playing Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson.  However, I would happily have watched a movie about Jane played by Margot Robbie in one of three standout performances this year.

Jillian Holtzmann: Ghostbusters is a week film.  Its problems have nothing to do with the casting or the gender of the stars and has everything to do with flabby direction and a week unfunny script.  To give an actress as talented as Kristen Wiig such a poor part is a crime .  There is one good thing about the film and this comes from the one actor I had never heard of; Kate McKinnon.

Jake: Star played by Sasha Lane is the star (pun intended) of American Honey but the standout performance comes from the supporting cast as Shia LaBeouf finally fulfils the promise of the talented young actor we saw in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and glimpsed in Nymphomaniac: and The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman.

Miss Peregrine: Eva Green was the only good thing about Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, although she plays the eponymous role, she is a supporting character in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, but a memorable supporting character.

Bobby Andes and Ray Marcus: Amy Adams is the focus of Nocturnal Animals, it will be a crime if she doesn’t pickup her sixth and seventh Oscar nominations for this and Arrival, but there are other standout performances that really make the film tick: Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

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Justified

Last week saw the last episode of the season of possibly the best, certainly my favourite American TV show of recent years, Justified. When the show started in 2010 it looked like it was going to be just another American cop show, but then something happened a few episodes in. although each episode is largely self contained, each season has its own over arching story that develops in most of the episode. We can thank Elmore Leonard for the original idea, the show started life as “Fire in the Hole” a 60 page novella he wrote in 2001. As with a lot of Leonard’s writing the story is driven by the dialogue more than the narrative, this found its way into the show especially through Boyd Crowder who will always use a sentence when a word would do. The first episode contains a lot of the ideas from the book and introduces the characters Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins ) and his sister-in-law, Ava (Joelle Carter). Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant ) had already appeared in Pronto and the follow-up Riding the Rap. The driving force behind the show is Graham Yost, creator, show runner, executive producer and some time writer. And this is where the story finds its real strength, the writing. To extend the story from 60 pages to 52 hours of television (to date) is a real achievement.

The way it holds the viewers interest is simple, the characters. You expect Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder to be well written characters, but it goes beyond that, and includes the supporting characters. With the best part of another dozen well written characters including other U.S. Marshal’s, low level criminals and The Dixie Mafia the show has a depth and breadth of character that no other show can on TV at the moment can match. This not only helps keep the interest but also gives the show potential longevity. The beauty of the format is the way it allows characters to be promoted from supporting and background characters to more important ones when the story needs it. There is also a wealth of recurring characters who are also we rounded and perfectly cast.

At the heart of the show is Raylan Givens a cowboy hat wearing Deputy U.S. Marshal, who is described in the source novella as “a man who is born 100 years too late”. A perfect stereotypical character, honest and righteous but always pushing the boundaries of the rules, he is far from “by-the-book”. A quick draw man straight out of the old west, despite his best attempts for a peaceful resolution, he shoots (and kills) a lot of people. But on his own, how good could the character be? Givens and Boyd Crowder are two sides of the same coin. The pair knew each other as kids and “dug coal together” in their teens, they have real if begrudging respect for each other. As Boyd often reminds Raylan they aren’t that different.

The first three seasons all hard a story revolving around a central villain. In season one it was Bo Crowder (M.C. Gainey), Boyd’s farther who runs the local drug trade. Season two sees the converging forces of a mining conglomerate and Mags Bennett (Margo Martindale) and her family drug business. In season three it is Robert Quarles (Neal McDonough), an exiled lieutenant from Detroit crime family. In season four it all changed as the overriding story involved an investigation into a twenty year old crime and the secret identity of the perpetrator. But two characters held all these stories together, Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder are always there in some way or another, as the stories develop there involvement increases. Don’t underestimate the geniuses and subtlety of the writing that makes this possible.

A fifth season has been announced for 2014. There are lots of things that need to fall into place for the show to succeed and remain fresh, I’m not worried.

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The Two Best Supporting Characters on TV

It is relatively easy for a main character in a TV show to be a perfectly cast well drawn and rounded character, but the best shows can claim the same in the supporting roles. There are many of them: Katey Sagal in Sons of Anarchy, Peter Dinklage (one of an ensemble rather than a supporting character) in Game of Thrones and Kelly Macdonald in Boardwalk Empire, but there are two that really stand out for me: Ruth Wilson as Alice Morgan in Luther and Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder in Justified.

We first met Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson) in the first episode of Luther back in 2010. Fresh back from seven month suspension, DCI John Luther (Idris Elba) returns to investigate a home invasion/double murder. After interviewing Alice, the victims daughter he soon realises that she killed them but can’t prove it. In any normal show that would be the end of it but Luther is far from a normal show. A genius, sociopath, narcissist and serial killer she should be a detestably character but is strangely alluring for both Luther and viewers of the show.

The great thing about Boyd Crowder is that he is both ambiguous and morally ambiguous. We first meet him as a white supremacist who doesn’t appear to be a racist (unless there is money in it). He reinvents himself as a preacher but appears to atheist. A reluctant war hero, he is highly intelligent and well read but most likely self taught. Every sentence he utters contains about three times more words than needed and often contains quotes from scripture and literature. On top of this he is a childhood friend of the shows main character U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), it is often mentioned the pair dug coal together as teenagers. Originally appearing as favour to his friend, Timothy Olyphant, Boyd was shot in the first episode “Fire in the Hole”. Rumour has it that the character was supposed to die, however after a positive reception from the test audience became a recurring and main character. A career criminal and reprehensible character you just can’t help liking.

Perfectly written, but it goes deeper than that the two characters are so perfectly cast, it is quite possible that no other actor could play then half as well Ruth Wilson and Walton Goggins. If you aren’t familiar with the two shows, go back and watch them from the start, they are worth seeing on their own merits as well as for these tow great characters.

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