Oscar Week: Best Actor

We're getting close now, we are up it best actor. Remember, character and/or movie spoilers ahead.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond

Danny Archer (DiCaprio), an ex-mercenary from Zimbabwe, who has been arrested for smuggling diamonds, meets Soloman Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), who has found and hidden a large pink diamond. He was smuggling for a South African mercenary named Colonel Coetzee, his former commander in 32 Battalion, the most decorated unit of the South African Border War made up of Angolan soldiers and white South African officers. Archer is desperate for a way to repay Colonel Coetzee for the diamonds he lost when he was arrested. When he overhears Captain Poison ranting to Solomon about the discovery of the pink diamond, Archer makes plans to hunt down the stone. Hilarity ensues when he offers to help Solomon find his family in exchange for the diamond.

Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson

Dan Dunne (Gosling) is an eighth-grade history teacher in an inner-city school deep in the heart of Brooklyn. He eschews the provided curriculum in favor of off-the-cuff, but deeply heartfelt lectures about the importance of understanding history, rather than just memorizing it. He speaks primarily of dialectics, the tensions between two opposing forces. He is torn between his desire to change the world and his increasingly desperate realization that he can't, at least not in the grand, awe-inspiring ways that he envisioned as an eager, idealistic college student. Hilarity ensues when he started using drugs as a way to escape the pain of life, and it has turned into a crutch that bears increasingly heavy loads of psychological weight. In his classroom, which is populated almost entirely by black and Hispanic students, Dan lectures about how the world is structured into opposing forces, illustrating it at one point by arm-wrestling one of his students. His unorthodox approach inspires them during class, but interestingly enough we don't see its effects outside the classroom. The film focuses on Dan and his relationship with Drey (Shareeka Epps), a 13-year-old student of his who catches him in the bathroom smoking crack after school one day. Drey understands Dan's frustrations with life; she is the child of an overworked single mother whom she barely sees, and spending so much time on her own has made her self-reliant, but also hard on the edges.

Peter O'Toole, Venus

Maurice (O'Toole) is an elderly actor who finds himself attracted to his friend's young great-niece (Jodie Whittaker) whose nickname later becomes Venus. Maurice finds Venus initially unfriendly but succeeds in befriending her in part due to the appeal of his celebrity. He takes her to the National Gallery in London, England to view his favorite painting, The Rokeby Venus by the Spanish artist Velazquez. Hilarity ensues when Maurice arranges for Venus to model nude for an artist, partly because he is attracted to her and hopes to watch the artist at work. When he is asked to step out he finds a bucket to stand on so he can peep into the room but falls and is found out. Maurice and Venus develop a passive/aggressive friendship and she takes him to the sea where he dies in her arms.

Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness

In 1981, Chris Gardner (Smith) was a struggling salesman in little needed medical bone density scanners while his wife toiled in double shifts to support the family including their young son, Christopher (Jaden Smith, Will's real life son). Hilarity ensues as in the face of this difficult life, Chris has the desperate inspiration to try for a stockbroker internship where one in twenty has a chance of a lucrative full time career. Even when his wife leaves him because of this choice, Chris clings to this dream with his son even when the odds become more daunting by the day. Together, father and son struggle through homelessness, jail time, tax seizure and the overall punishing despair in a quest that would make Gardner a respected millionaire.

Forest Whitaker, The Last King Of Scotland

The new Ugandan President Idi Amin (Whitaker) meets a scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), and makes him his personal physician, and also his advisor. The doctor soon starts to discover that Amin is a brutal dictator and hilarity ensues. Garrigan descends ever deeper into the moral corruption of Amin's Uganda. At first Garrigan ignores the crimes Amin is committing across the country, but he is forced to acknowledge their reality when a comment of his leads Amin to kill the health minister. Garrigan tries to quit working for Amin only to discover that Amin has confiscated his passport. Confronting the reality of Amin and the consequences of his own actions, he is encouraged by a British diplomat to assassinate Amin. Garrigan, seeing no way out, falls further when he enters into an affair with one of Amin's wives, and impregnates her. Garrigan's reckless actions inevitably lead to Amin finding out. Amin kills her in a brutal way. Garrigan attempts to poison Amin. Amin's suspicion is confirmed during the Air France hijacking at Entebbe International Airport: Garrigan prevents a Ugandan soldier taking the poison which he had intended for Amin, after which he is brutally tortured. He is saved by a Ugandan doctor who dies as a consequence of his actions. Garrigan escapes with a group of released hostages.