Alternate Best Supporting Actor 1993

Well since there is not a clear strong five for alternate line up, and also since it would be rather impossible to crack my current top five for 93 here are just a few performances I feel are worth mentioning. 

Matthew McConaughey - Dazed and Confused - Alright Alright Alright. Dazed and Confused follows multiple high school students on the last day of school in the 70's. Matthew McConaughey does not play one of the students instead appears as a man, David Wooderson, in his twenties who prefers to spends his nights still hanging around with the high school crowd. This was McConaughey's first role, outside of course being murdered on Unsolved Mysteries, and well he already had it, what ever it was. This role is a great example of the sort of McConaughey wackness that is very specific and something that only he is able to pull off. McConaughey is very entertaining here with his dumb grins, and excessively relaxed delivery bringing life to a guy whose more than a little stuck in arrested development. The thing is though is he loved every minute of it. McConaughey is a delight here though as he makes his role of Wooderson a highlight of the film. McConaughey technically does not avoid the underlying sleaze related to the role, but rather wears it in a way that makes him kind of endearing in a strange way including his speech about the agelessness of "high school girls". It's a fun performance that really could have only been delivered by McConaughey.

Chazz Palminteri - A Bronx Tale - A Bronx Tale is a more than decent coming of age story, although it does feel like De Niro attempting to be Scorsese, about a Italian boy learning about life from his father and in the unlikely source of a gangster Sonny LoSpecchio played by Palminteri. Now Palminteri would be Oscar nominated a year later for his gangster turn in Bullets Over Broadway, but I can't help but if some residual love for this performance played into that. The type would become Palminteri's go to type, even in Coke commercials, and this is probably the best example of his work in that type. Palminteri fulfills basically the man who owns the town well. He has this sort of confidence of a man who believes himself to essentially be untouchable, but coats it well with a definite charm of man who knows how to get people on his side. He never comprises the darker side of the role. That certain killer's edge to the man is always apparent in Palminteri's violent glances, and there is even an underlying intensity in his more friendly moments. The focus of the film is on how Sonny relates to the young boy, but it isn't about how he's a bad influence though, actually sort of the opposite. Palminteri is great in the fatherly scenes as he so effectively conveys the real warmth in Sonny towards the boy, that is wholly genuine, yet he still doesn't hide the nature of the man. Palminteri instead captures a certain wisdom within the man's darkness essentially by showing the intelligence that can be found in a man who never suffers fools and will always lead never follow. Palminteri captures this dynamic effortlessly as does not show two separate men, the teacher and the gangster, but instead effectively gives us the wise mobster with both his faults and his knowledge.

Michael Keaton - Much Ado About Nothing. Much Ado About Nothing may be lead and directed by the consummate Shakespearean Kenneth Branagh, but the film is filled with some actors you'd never guess would come near the Bard. This includes Keanu Reeves (who does as well as you'd expect but it actually kind of works for the part), Denzel Washington (who is actually pretty good), and Beetlejuice himself, Michael Keaton. The whole story is a series of stories, yet Michael Keaton's is probably the most detached, until the end of the film. He plays Dogberry the local constable who along with his merry men solves the rather low key crimes plaguing the central characters. Keaton once again proves that he is a one of a kind actor. Yes he actually does do well with making the words seem wholly natural, but Keaton really makes them his own. This is a downright hilarious performance in just everything he does. The whole set up is great as Keaton walks half as a the proper purveyor of justice and half as a drunken idiot. Keaton steals every one of his scenes beautifully through his consistently hilarious delivery that is filled with just the right bluster of confidence and just the right non-sense in Dogberry's most unusual method of law enforcement. Every second he's onscreen is quite entertaining as Keaton just glories in playing a fool but a fool who gets the job done.

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