The Steak Knives

To be eligible for the Steak Knives, candidates must not have been recognized by the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the Independent Spirit Awards or in the top tier of the IndieWire Critics' Poll. To see the ineligible nominees, click here.

Chris Cooper
Breach

In Breach, Chris Cooper isn't a character — he's a friggin' statue. He plays a version of Robert Hanssen that is immovable, unflinching and concrete in its convictions. You can't hope to change this Hanssen, and from this is born the story: Budding ingenue Eric O'Neill's task is to find the crack in the marble for the FBI. O'Neill (Ryan Phillippe) delicately traces the man's contours in search of that rough patch that could be his downfall.

Many of Cooper's accolades are earned through the storm cloud he generates as Hanssen. When he is good, he is somewhat amicable, but when he is bad … look out. One minute, O'Neill is caught in a hailstorm of blunt insult and invective, the next he's found shelter under a moment of fatherly guidance.

None of this is formulaic "character development" for Hanssen; it's Cooper's reaction to each combination of buttons pushed. He plays Hanssen as a regular person, not a dramatic character with arcs and epiphanies and peaks and valleys. We are all simply the product of our inputs, and we may very well not know what those around us are driving us to do. A more fictionalized character changes, adapts and ends the film in a car chase. A real person of Hanssen's mettle heads down a dark alley without fear, but also without knowledge of what lies at its end.

Each scene compels Cooper to stand proud for those tenets he shapes his life around, among them the behavioral code of the FBI, the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church and the hardened perspective of a scorned, ignored man. The combination of these, the sum of the parts that is Hanssen, will provide O'Neill with enough slack to jerk him around, choreograph his movements and take him down. Cooper's Hanssen never acknowledges that he is anything less than a harmonious equation. It's a performance that begs the viewer to examine themselves for such blind spots. Such pride and such ignorance would be unthinkable from a spy of his stature, but alas, this is Cooper's creation, a man with such pronounced flaws in his composition that he heads down that dark alley without a second thought. O'Neill finds that crack, all right. Without knowing it, Hanssen shows it for all the world to see. — Andy Stilp (andy.stilp at gmail dot com)

Emile Hirsch
Into the Wild

Emile Hirsch portrays Chris McCandless, a charismatic Emory University A-student who gave away all his possessions and headed west to live off the land as a kind of 21st century hitchhiking Thoreau. Hirsch could have taken the easy route, playing Chris as the only "real" thing in a world co-opted by The Man, or whatever. But he avoids romanticizing McCandless by playing up his contradictions: He's fun and attractive, but after a beer or two, shows juvenile rage at "the system." He's friendly and generous, but takes no responsibility for the selfishness of leaving his family heartbroken and clueless about his whereabouts. Hirsch's likeable outward manner is deepened by an intense physicality, throwing himself into farmwork and wilderness living with reckless abandon. Hirsch has his small moments, too: When Hal Holbrook tries to talk him out of going to Alaska, Hirsch trains his eyes on the old man to absorb the lessons, as Chris would do with everyone he meets, then puts his head down and then looks into the distance. Hirsch gives us a number of ways to read McCandless: a loopy romantic with a death wish, an egomaniac with a messiah complex, or a determined realist who sees his trip as a final stunt before re-entering "the real world." By not giving any firm answers about Chris McCandless, Hirsch creates a Rorschach test in which we see our own ideals and cynicism. — Stephen Himes (stephenhimes@hotmail.com)

Christopher Mintz-Plasse
Superbad

Two decades ago, Superbad would've been a complete fantasy. Weird Science is 23 years older than Superbad, but despite differences in setting, plot and reality, both films boil down to the same basic theme: A coupla geeky guys set out on a quest to score with the hottest girls in school and essentially fail, ending up with true love instead. But Weird Science didn't ring true in 1985 the way Superbad does today. Partly, that's a sign of the times. Sure, it was fun to fantasize that two geek friends could somehow breathe life into a beautiful, computer-created sex surrogate capable of teaching them the secrets of gettin' it on, but could an Anthony Michael Hall-level dork nail Kelly LeBrock? In 1985? Certainly not. It may've been fun, but as unbelievable concepts go, even after discarding the "computer-created" bit, Weird Science never could've happened. Dorks just didn't rate back then; most of the time, real dorks didn't even get cast in dorky roles (think Tom Cruise in Risky Business), and despite the high hopes of the 1980's geek population, audiences left theaters with little increased interest in the loser crowd.

The 2008 Geek is a different animal. Sort of. He hasn't evolved much: He still likes electronics, math and video games, and he's as desperate to get laid as ever. No, it's the world that's changed. Geeks now have an enormous niche of their own, and command a respect today they did not in 1985. Look around: Everyone who's "cool" wears thick, dark-framed glasses. T-shirts with "Atari" or "Wang" printed on 'em? Double-cool. It's a dork's world — the Internet has made it so —- and at the center of that world, standing on the summit of the Mountain of Geek Coolness, is Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

Mintz-Plasse (his name alone taunts 1985 to head back to the future and kick his ass) plays Fogell, third wheel to Evan (Michael Cera) and Seth's (Jonah Hill) comedic Superbad duo. He is a dork's dork. Glasses, goofy smile, slight, ever-present discomfort. At the start of the movie he brags to his buddies about following a hot girl (i.e. her exposed thong) through the school hallways — when she deigns to talk to him he stammers the time and runs off — but Fogell ends the film sitting between two cops on the bed where he's just lost his virginity to Thongy. First they clap him on the back, then they take him on a shooting spree. But could this happen for reals, yo? Minus the cops, absolutely.

Soon after the hallway thong incident Fogell adopts a new identity: he becomes McLovin, a suave, 25-year-old Hawaiian organ donor (based on his brand-new fake I.D.). Whether it's Mintz-Plasse's acting genius, a key bit of casting or a combination, his transformation from dork with zero self-confidence to totally cool cat is believable on a cinematic level because in 2008 it's an actual societal possibility. In 1985, geeks weren't cool. They never had been, and they were never going to be. It's just the way high school worked. Today's geek functions in an entirely different Zeitgeist, and he's got no idea how good he has it. Whatever the reason, today's geeks command respect. And they get laid, which is what Fogell realizes as he evolves through the course of Superbad. He starts his life with hyperventilating breaths while illegally buying alcohol, but after being punched in the face by a masked robber and downing a few beers with the cops, he knows all he really has to do is be himself, join Thongy in the middle of the dance floor and bust the moves that'll land her in bed.

Superbad was big, and whether he's slept with them or not the now-famous Mintz-Plasse has hung with Jessica Alba, Stacey Ferguson and who knows how many other hot Hollywood babes. Y'know why? The same reason he was so good in Superbad: He is McLovin. — Chris Shadoian (chris at popcornpicnic dot com)

Simon Pegg
Hot Fuzz

There is something compellingly innocent in Simon Pegg's gruesome and hilarious film projects, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. He has explained that he "used to lie in bed in my flat and imagine what would happen if there was a zombie attack," and he claims to be not much different from Shaun, the hapless schlub who literally rises to just such an occasion. He clearly had steeped himself in zombie how-to, and thus was able to reference the entire zombie-cinematic canon in his breakout film. He seems also to have studied the cop-buddy-action genre with considerable care, and as co-writer and star, he brings all this erudition to bear in Sergeant Nicholas Angel, hero of Hot Fuzz. Angel is a surprisingly well-rounded character, a super-cop, strong, brave and yet caring, but also a doormat, pining pitifully for the girl who's fed up with him.

Angel's superiors in the London PD despise him for making them look bad (cops are government workers, too), so they dispatch him to Sandford, a backwater burg of Stepford-perfect tranquility, where he fits in little better. True, a lot of people do seem to suddenly start dying in grisly and suspicious ways, but the local detectives would rather watch porn and dismiss the deaths as accidents than actually investigate. But Angel teams up with the Inspector's dim and cop-show-addicted son to get to the bottom of Sandford's dark secret. As it turns out, the secret puts a capital B in the Banality of Evil, and then its discovery prompts a pyrotechnic climax that makes From Dusk Till Dawn look like Disney. In fact, Hot Fuzz might have the same sort of saccharine smirk that has marred Tarantino's later projects, were it not for Pegg's considerable comic range. He somehow can manage to pack formidable and befuddled, pathetic and deadly into the same conflicted skin, and be believable, sympathetic, hilarious and oddly hypnotic in the process. — David Essex (djessex@earthlink.net)

Adam Sandler
Reign Over Me

Adam Sandler's best "serious" roles are, essentially, the dark side of Happy Gilmore. Punch-Drunk Love featured Sandler as Barry Egan, an angry man-child who can't talk to women and lashes out at the world with astonishing physical violence — like the Waterboy, but played for tragedy. Sure enough, the DVD cover is a profile of Sandler with a shadow creeping across his face, just as Barry's tire iron is the shadow of Happy Gilmore's fairway iron.

In Reign Over Me, Sandler plays a different type of counterpoint to his Happy Madisonian persona: Charlie Fineman, the father of a family who dies in the 9/11 attacks. A mild-mannered Manhattan dentist, Charlie is grief-stricken to the point of social paralysis: He quits his job, grows his hair out, takes up the drums, remodels the same kitchen for three years and rides around the streets after dark on his Segway listening to The Who. Sandler gives Charlie a slow shuffle and a distant stare, keeping his head down so he doesn't have to look anyone in the eye.

Still, Sandler has to make this shell of a man accessible to the audience so that we understand the depth of his trauma. Sandler's skill is to reveal glimpses of the cut-up Charlie used to be — guffaws at a Mel Brooks film festival, subtle jokes at co-star Don Cheadle's expense, wry smiles underneath his mangy locks. As Charlie creeps toward breakthrough, a reminder of his family thrusts him back into denial, and Sandler unleashes astonishing, animalistic violence: ripping pictures off a wall, raging eyes while threatening to beat people to a pulp. Sandler's range makes Charlie likeable and sympathetic, but also maddening and threatening. In a better movie, we might be talking about Adam Sandler, Oscar nominee. — Stephen Himes (stephenhimes@hotmail.com)