Best Actor
Casey Affleck – “Tower Heist”
In a marked contrast to his alleged behavior around women working for him on his film sets, Casey Affleck has generally shown taste and wisdom in his movie choices — even when a film doesn’t work, like “The Finest Hours” or “Triple 9,” you can see why he would have signed on in the first place. But that’s not to say that there aren’t a few (non-sexual harassment related) skeletons in his closet. His odd, tiny role in “American Pie 2” isn’t enough to be a real black mark on his name, so the honors probably go to his part in the ensemble of Brett Ratner’s “Tower Heist.” The film’s probably one of Ratner’s more palatable efforts, uneven more than it is truly bad, but it’s still a pretty familiar and uninspired rehash of the “Ocean’s Eleven” vibe (thoughts of that not exactly helped by Affleck’s presence in both films). And the actor himself feels a bit miscast here in a not-terribly-interesting role, never quite gelling in an ensemble otherwise made up of Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick and scene-stealing Michael Peña.
Andrew Garfield – “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”
Since properly breaking through in 2010 with “Never Let Me Go” and “The Social Network,” Andrew Garfield’s only made a small handful of movies, many of which, like “99 Homes” and “Silence,” have been very good. His less-than-prolific nature is partly because he spent a huge chunk of that time making Spider-Man movies. Garfield was a perfectly decent choice for Peter Parker (particularly given the obvious chemistry he shared with co-star Emma Stone), but Marc Webb’s first film in the rebooted franchise was a bit of a letdown, so hopes were that the sequel would be the Spidey movie he deserved. Instead, we got one of the worst superhero movies ever, a hot mess of bad storytelling, worse aesthetic or sonic choices and wasted talent. Even Garfield is less assured than he was before: as with Tobey Maguire in the third Raimi film, playing the hero as, well, kind of a dick.
Ryan Gosling – “Gangster Squad”
Like a number of other nominees, Ryan Gosling doesn’t purely sell out that often, which is why it was so disappointing that when he did, with “Gangster Squad,” he sold out so hard. Ruben Fleischer’s film is a sort of “L.A. Confidential” for dummies, with Gosling’s cop teaming with Josh Brolin and a team of ragtag troops to take on mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn, in one of his worst performances, which is saying something). Gosling’s flirtations with regular co-star Emma Stone lack the chemistry of their films before and after this, and he doesn’t add much to the thinly written character other than “speak quite softly.” It’s an overly violent, emptily stylized (and not very good to look at) picture, and the only real feeling that you’re left with at the end is why such a talented group of people were wrangled into signing on.
Viggo Mortensen – “Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III”
More than most, Viggo Mortensen has refused to fit into a movie-star box — since making his way onto the A-list, he’s mostly done what he wants to do, and even his mainstream picks like “Hidalgo” have been semi-respectable. Before that, though, he was a jobbing actor with a few dodgy credits (“G.I. Jane,” Sylvester Stallone vehicle “Daylight,” actioner “Tripwire”) — but the most unlikely might be his villainous turn in second “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” sequel ‘Leatherface.’ Mortensen is admittedly the best thing in the film as Tex Sawyer, a charming hitchhiker who turns out to be a murderous member of the titular chainsaw killer’s family, seemingly channeling Norman Bates in his cross-dressing. But despite his best efforts, the film’s lousy, reducing the scuzzy terror of Tobe Hooper’s original to a sub-“Friday The 13th” slasher: it’s a rare black mark in the star’s career.
Denzel Washington – “Virtuosity”
One of the more sturdy, reliable leading men in Hollywood, you tend to know what you’re getting with Denzel Washington. His films are rarely terrible and, at least since “Malcolm X,” rarely masterpieces, but generally turn out as watchable, middle-of-the-road programmers with varying degrees of success. “Virtuosity” is certainly made in that mold, but it’s also one of the worst, and least successful, films Washington has made. Set in the then-future of 1999, and one of that period of mid-’90s films reflecting Hollywood’s deep fear of the internet and video games, it features Washington as an ex-cop put behind bars for killing the man who murdered his family, who must face off against SID 6.7 (Russell Crowe), a virtual reality amalgam of the personalities of the worst 200 serial killers in history, who’s escaped into the real world, thanks to reasons the screenwriter barely bothered to figure out. It’s a defiantly stupid film, summing up so much of the worst of mid-’90s mainstream cinema, and Washington’s autopilot cop is in an entirely different film to Crowe’s wildly-over-the-top scenery-chewing.