(My) Best of 2010: Supporting Actor.

5. Andrew Garfield in Never Let Me Go

We're never really sure why Kathy (Carey Mulligan) falls in love with Tommy (Garfield).

We're never really sure why Ruth (Keira Knightley) steals him from her either.

The thing about Tommy is that he's barely there and as such serves as a perfect canvas for others to imprint their feelings and idealism on him.

Garfield plays the part with a heartbreaking lack of self awareness. Tommy is one of the first characters we meet in the film and as often as we forget he's there, his bittersweet smile stabs our heart when we least expect it to.

4. Armie Hammer in The Social Network

"I'm 6'5, 220 and there's two of me" says an angry Tyler Winklevoss (Hammer) to his friend Divya (Max Minghella) and his brother Cameron (Hammer again).

They're talking about ways they can find to gut the friggin' nerd (Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg) who stole their website from them and Hammer does it with such grace that we think we're watching a hybrid of Clint Eastwood and Sir Laurence Olivier.

The Winklevi's commitment to Harvard law and their need to fulfill a social role is only overpowered by a rash masculinity they let us see flashes of now and then.

Hammer is remarkable in both roles and thanks to the editing and visual effects he creates two characters that are completely different and unique.

His inclusion here might be owed to the fact that nobody in the movie delivers Aaron Sorkin's lines with the elegance he does. When you multiply that plus two, you're prepared to have your mind blown away.

3. Sullivan Stapleton in Animal Kingdom

The Cody family knows good violence and isn't afraid to ask. Yet when recently orphaned teenager Joshua (James Frecheville) arrives to live with his uncles and grandmother things take an unexpected turn.

As the consequences of their acts begin to catch up with them, no other family member is as hypnotic to watch as Craig (Stapleton). Watching his descent into a self made hell is a thing that's both morally expected and completely devastating.

Stapleton plays Craig like someone who's half regretful, half surprised about the events that begin to unravel and this is what makes his performance so effective (His final scene is astonishing!)

He has an almost childlike innocence about him that make us believe that as much as he was a criminal, he was a victim.

2. Vincent Cassel in Black Swan

If someone was ever casting the role of the snake that tempted Eve to taste the apple in the Garden of Eden, Vincent Cassel should instantly win the part.

He embodies sliminess and seductive cruelty as Thomas Leroy in Black Swan. He's the creative director for the ballet company that psycho ballerina Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) attends and as such he gets the opportunity to tease, seduce and even destroy the fragile women at his command.

Cassel gets stuck with some of the most preposterous lines in the screenplay ("The real work would be your metamorphosis into her evil twin", "you could be brilliant, but you're a coward", "to beauty!","my little princess") but the actor is so aware of the theatricality and darkness in his character that he's always ready to give us more of that bite.

1. John Hawkes in Winter's Bone

Teadrop is an enigma. Everything he does seems to be coming from an impulse deep within that not even he knew existed. His quiet presence when we first meet him is perhaps more unnerving than the eventual outburst of violence he shows.

Yet there is something almost primal hiding under the surface; the way he acts with Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) lets us know that he may not be a man of sweetness but he's certainly a man of conviction.

We often are terrified whenever he comes onscreen, then we are soothed by the fatherly way in which he defends his niece but when the movie ends we are left waiting for a revelation that never comes. Ree might be Winter's Bone heart but Teardrop gives it its haunting soul.

Animal Kingdom ***

Director: David Michôd

Cast: Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce

Jacki Weaver, Luke Ford, Sullivan Stapleton, James Frecheville

Dan Wyllie, Laura Wheelwright, Justin Rosniak

Films that deal with crime either have a tendency to romanticize it or moralize it. It's surprising to see a movie that does neither and even more than that, actually takes a look at it from an "objective" point of view.

Animal Kingdom is a chilling family drama that just happens to have elements of crime in it. The film begins with the death of Jay's (Frecheville) mother. As if he'd been expecting this to happen at any moment, after the paramedics take his mom, he pragmatically grabs the phone and calls his grandma Janine (Weaver) to let her know he needs a place to stay.
He moves in with her and his uncles: armed robber Pope (Mendelsohn), drug dealer Craig (Stapleton) and soon-to-be criminal Darren (Ford).

Considering his mom dies from a heroin overdose and she'd tried to keep him away from her family, we understand that Jay has been raised under a different code of ethics and writer/director Michôd's first great step is establishing that we can not judge Jay or any of the other characters for that matter.

They all exist in a world where keeping the family together, regardless of their criminal activities, is more important than adjusting to societal rules.

Of course this means that they will clash with the rest of the world and as Jay explains "crooks always come undone, always". Things begin to spiral out of control when a group of detectives led by officer Leckie (Pearce) try to get Jay on their side in helping them stop his family, soon the young man find himself in the middle of a battle between law and family (not precisely right and wrong).

Coolly shot by cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, who doesn't let his camera intrude, Animal Kingdom becomes a documentary of sorts as we merely observe these people act as their nature moves them to and this is ultimately what the film is about: people being driven merely by their instincts.

Frecheville's Jay serves as an ambiguous guide through this maze seeing how it's easy to deem him as too passive and be annoyed by him; however, taking a closer look we realize that he's not just an accessory, he's giving a simple but effective performance of someone under a lot of stress, channeling it in the only way he can.

In a way we see Jay develop something that resembles Stockholm Syndrome, as he becomes settled in his new life with his family. The double life we see him lead when he hangs out with his girlfriend (Wheelwright) gives the film a strange, surreal tone.

The rest of the cast is impressive with Mendelsohn creating a man who could represent some symbol of evil yet instead just chooses to be someone who's taken very bad decisions in life and is merely striving for survival.

Edgerton is strangely moving as their friend Barry Brown, while Stapleton delivers a heartbreaking performance, especially towards the end of the movie. However, it's Jacki Weaver who remains with you long after the film has ended.

Her Janine is someone who has adapted to a lifestyle that will help her provide for her boys. "I've been around a long time" she declares with a sweet smile when an accomplice is surprised by the reach of her influence. The way in which Weaver delivers her lines makes for a beautiful complex, given that, as with most of the film we don't know whether she's being psychotic or just "being".

However beyond the sometimes heartless actions and lovable "sweeties", we can see an entire history of pain in her eyes. Perhaps at one time she was just like Jay, being swallowed by a world she couldn't understand but had to be a part of to be with the people she loved.

"There are certain things you don't tell girls about" says family lawyer (Wyllie) to a confused Jay and in Janine's sensitive acknowledgement we know that this never really applied for her, at one moment she just had to make a choice. Weaver makes it impossible for us to believe that someone would just be born this way.