20 Terrible Oscar Nominations From The Past Ten Years - Corrected

In a year with quite a few strong leading male performances, this was a very disappointing category. Bradley Cooper (the best out of these five nominees) and Willem Dafoe for A Star is Born and At Eternity's Gate respectively were fine, but the other three weren't quite top five material.

Viggo Mortensen and Rami Malek were both excellent in Green Book and Bohemian Rhapsody respectively, but they were a little let-down by being stuck with rather straightforward Oscar-Bait material and the bad lip-syncing in Bohemian Rhapsody was very distracting.

As for the ever-overrated Christian Bale's over-praised performance in Vice, that 'performance' barely even counted as such. It was little more than a mechanical series of tics, pauses and facial expressions that felt more like a robot impersonating Dick Cheney and yes, how much Bale resembled Cheney was impressive, but that was mostly thanks to Vice's make-up, the nomination for which was the only one of its shocking Eight nominations Vice actually deserved.

Corrected:

Ethan Hawke's stunningly brilliant performance in First Reformed should've won Best Actor, so him not being nominated was embarassing. Two other, far worthier nominees would've been Joaquin Phoenix in You were Never Really Here and Ben Foster in Leave No Trace, who both gave amazing performances as a traumatized assassin and a PTSD-stricken veteran respectively.