9 Terrible 2015 Oscar Nominations - Corrected

4. Ben Mendelsohn (Starred Up) Instead Of Robert Duvall (The Judge) - Best Supporting Actor

Truth be told, there were many, many great supporting male performances to be found in 2014, male side-characters generally continuing to be the most consistently interesting in English-language film. Some of the standouts from last year that would have made good Best Supporting Actor nominees this time around: Robert Pattinson in The Rover, Riz Ahmed in Nightcrawler, Tyler Perry in Gone Girl, Matthias Schoenaerts in The Drop, Toby Kebbell in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and pretty much everyone running the tank in Fury (yes, including Shia LaBeouf). Rather than choose any of those more obviously Oscar-friendly choices, however, we're going for a leftfield pick that really should have been nominated by now anyway: Ben Mendelsohn. In Starred Up, Mendelsohn expertly plays a veteran prisoner as a conflicted, intimidating alpha, but the Aussie actor could've been nominated for any one of his excellent performances from the past five years, including for Animal Kingdom, Killing Them Softly or The Place Beyond the Pines. At the very least, Mendelsohn's overdue nomination in place of Duvall's 'he might not be around much longer so let's nominate him quick'-safety net vote would have stopped David Dobkin's widely-derided legal drama from getting to call itself "The Oscar-nominated The Judge".