I just realized that for every year since 1998, I find an popular Supporting Actress choice to be either extremely overrated, or just plain bad. (Here's me being grumpy again.) So, here they are.
1998: Joan Allen, Pleasantville (you know how sometimes, you just don't see what other people see in a performance, and you can't really explain why? Yeah. That's the case here. So well-described, I know.)
1999: Thora Birch, American Beauty (as far as supporting actresses in that film go, Mena Suvari schooled her. Thora pouted a lot and was terribly boring, but she flashed her boobs at 16 so the guys liked her. Thora Birch is really a pretty awful actress; she doesn't add any depth to her performances, but because people tend to relate to her characters, they like her more. Except for Paradise, I've never liked her in anything.)
2000: Kate Hudson, Almost Famous (more ridiculously overrated than bad. I wouldn't have screamed and cried had she got the Oscar, though Harden was better.)
2001: Jennifer Connelly, A Beautiful Mind (utterly awful. Her Oscar win is a joke)
2002: Julianne Moore, The Hours (like Hudson, not bad, just ridiculously overrated. And lead. Can't touch Zeta-Jones or Streep as well as several others, way outclassed by Collette in the scene between the two, and wayyyy inferior to her turn in Far from Heaven. I've found more than one person that considers this the best performance of her career, and one of the best of all time...frightening.)
2003: Patricia Clarkson, Pieces of April (oh Patty. You're capable of so much more. Like The Station Agent and All the Real Girls this very same year.)
2004: Cate Blanchett, The Aviator (I'll never understand the praise for this. Shallow, empty, one-dimensional, and without an ounce of the fun Hepburn exuded.)
2005: Amy Adams, Junebug (good, yes. Better than a lot of other supporting actresses that year [Bello, Linney, Weisz, Williams, Zhang, Gyllenhaal, Johansson, Keener in 40-Year-Old-Virgin...], no. Heck, she wasn't even the best red-haired supporting actress that year; that honor goes to Isla Fisher. The way some people were calling this the "best performance ever" caused me to think this chick was so overrated. I still like her, though. She's adorable, and a great example of how an annoying performance can be good.)
2006: Emily Blunt, The Devil Wears Prada (need I say more? [I will anyway] Remember how I was saying Cate was one-dimensional? Well, Emily might get away with it a little better, because her character isn't as well-written, but it doesn't mean she gets away with it. Not even people who are good at writing about movies can defend her properly. They're all just like "err...she's funny! And then her character gets desperate! Funny! Ha!" Emily's hardly alone, though; Blanchett in Notes [a blatant co-lead] and Kikuchi in Babel are also hideously overrated. Blanchett was both unspecific in her character choices and way over-the-top, and though I hate to simplify performances like this [though I did it for Thora up there, I suppose], all Kikuchi did was flash her vagina a lot and make odd faces.)
ranking these, best to worst:
Amy Adams
Kate Hudson
Julianne Moore
Joan Allen
Emily Blunt
Patricia Clarkson
Thora Birch
Jennifer Connelly
