From Marty Supreme to One Battle After Another, this awards run has been populated by a harder-to-love group of spiky charactersBroadly speaking, the best way to get an acting Oscar is to play someone lovable, or someone lovably hateable. Not every acting winner fits that binary, of course, but the history of all four categories is filled with fascinatingly bad behavior (Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, Louise Fletcher in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, JK Simmons in Whiplash) as well as expressions of sheer delight at the combination of actor and lovable character (Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love). This year’s crop of acting nominees isn’t exactly short of rooting interests: Michael B Jordan makes his pair of 1930s gangsters charming twice over in Sinners while still distinguishing between their individual nuances, and Benicio del Toro’s even-keeled activist is highly lovable in One Battle After Another. Elsewh...