From Mary Burgan.

There are two unexpected nominations in the Best Supporting Actor and Actress categories in this year’s list of Oscar-nominated actors.

One is for the role of a hothead foster brother to the hero in The Town — Ben Affleck’s film about a crime family in Boston’s Charlestown. The other is for the role of the sentimental matriarch in Animal Kingdom, a film by the new Australian film-maker, David Michôd, about a crime family in Melbourne.

Each offers some ripe roles for actors, but although both make occasional stabs at probing the sources of familial pathology, neither seems very interested in getting beneath the violence of the crime movie genre.

I don’t want to deny any hard-working actor his or her due, and the supporting actors nominated from each film do their jobs very well. However, I am not sure why  Jeremy Renner of The Town or Jacki Weaver of Animal Kingdom should be singled out just for doing their bits in two movies that are so seriously flawed.

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