James Caan was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Sonny Corleone, a performance built entirely on a temper the character cannot govern, and the toll booth sequence is one of the most famous deaths in American film.
Thief, for Michael Mann, is the better performance and the less seen one: a safecracker whose long monologue about a photograph collage is the film’s center.
He took most of the 1980s off, citing his sister’s death and cocaine use, and returned with Misery, playing a writer immobilised for almost the entire film, which required him to act with his face alone.
Elf gave him a late comic register, and he was consistently better than the material he chose in the last two decades.
Bob NewhartA human raised by Santa's elves travels to New York City to find his biological father, an embittered publishing executive. Elf is Jon Favreau's 2003 American Christmas comedy about Buddy, a human raised among Santa's elves at the North Pole,…
Frances SternhagenMisery is Rob Reiner's 1990 American psychological-thriller film adapted from Stephen King's 1987 novel, depicting a romance novelist who crashes his car in a Colorado snowstorm and is rescued by his self-described number-one fan, who imprisons him in her isolated…
Anthony HopkinsRichard Attenborough's massive ensemble WWII epic about Operation Market Garden. Legendary cast across Allied and German command.
Abe VigodaThe Godfather is the best film ever made from a craft perspective. Not the most entertaining, not the most beloved, not the most influential, though it is all three.
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