Final Oscar Predictions: Better Late than Never

Feeling blogged out yet? No lie, I am too (still shocked that I can hit a point where I feel like I've talked too much about movies), but this is what I get for leaving all of my movie-writing compulsions to the last second, and now I get to visit my procrastinating sins on all of you. For all of our sakes, I'll try to keep this brief-ish, but wild horses couldn't keep me from writing about Oscars (even if they had swords). I've been breathlessly predicting Oscars since the beginning of high school, and the day that I stop wanting to word-vomit into the ether about the Oscars is the day that I have permanently died on the inside. So I'm jumping back onto my keyboard (for the fourth time in three days, which is more than a little excessive), and heaven help anything that stands in my way.


This Oscar season has been a fascinating--by turns chaotic, predictable, and completely wide open. I fully anticipate getting a good half of these wrong. So maybe don't come to this space looking for guidance to win your local Oscar pool. Where's the fun in these things if you don't get to be a bit silly with your predictions? And dammit, I am going to have fun. So gird your loins, cuz it's about to get silly up in here.

Best Picture
The nominees:
Call Me by Your Name
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Get Out
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
The Post
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen here--and that's a crazy rarity. There hasn't been a race this open since 2006. And here's the thing: every possible winner is absolutely impossible as a winner, in that every movie that could win has to break some long-standing Oscar statistic.
First thing to know: Best Picture operates on a preferential balloting system, in which voters rank all films from best to worst. To win, a movie has to get 50% of the entire voting body's #1 votes. This more or less can't happen from the initial vote, so after ballots have been tabulated, the movie with the fewest #1 votes is removed, and those ballots are placed into their #2 piles (so if someone voted for Darkest Hour as #1 and Get Out as #2 for instance, and Darkest Hour got the fewest top votes, this person's best picture vote would now be for Get Out). And this process of elimination and redistribution continues until one movie has 50% of the votes. What that means: it's very important to have a passionate fanbase, but it's even more important to be widely liked, especially in a year this open. The winner here is probably going to be determined by the #2 and #3 votes on any given ballot.

So what do we have?
The Shape of Water won the Producers Guild, Directors Guild, and Critics Choice awards, is widely loved, and has the most nominations. *But* it wasn't nominated for the Screen Actors Guild ensemble award--which doesn't seem like a big deal, unless you know that only one movie in the history of the awards has won best picture without that nomination (this stat was an early signpost that La La Land would lose last year, despite its monolithic frontrunner status).
Three Billboards won the Golden Globes, the British Academy, and the Screen Actors Guild, and going into the nominations was the indisputable frontrunner. *But* it wasn't nominated for best director, and only four movies in Academy history have won picture without director (and two of those were in the first five years of the Oscars, in which they were still figuring out what they even were). Plus, Billboards is...polarizing. It'll get plenty of #1 votes, but it'll get plenty of #9 votes too.
Get Out and Lady Bird are in the same boat--they're both well-loved and respected, and it's tough to imagine anyone ranking them too low on their ballots, so they could easily capitalize on the preferential ballot system. *But* neither were nominated for any below the line categories, and only five movies in Academy have won in a similar situation. Add to this the general rule that best picture winners have to be nominated for film editing, and these two have another hurdle. And as if that weren't enougb, Get Out only has four total nominations, which would make it the best picture with the fewest total nominations since 1933. Plus both have subject matter that's inherently not Academy-friendly--Lady Bird is a high school movie about teenage girls, and Get Out is a racially charged horror-comedy.
Finally, Dunkirk could coast through by being inoffensive and impressive, *but* it wasn't nominated for either screenplay or acting awards, and only Grand Hotel in 1932 won best picture without support from either of those branches.

So what's the lesson of that big wall o' text? All of the top competitors would be far-fetched as winners (and the other four have the same obstacles, plus others still), but somebody's got to win. So who takes it? Absolutely no idea. Smart money is probably on The Shape of Water or Three Billboards, but the past few years of Oscars have established a trend of big movies winning a boatload of Oscars but losing best picture to a smaller competitor (Gravity won 7 but lost best picture to 12 Years a Slave, Mad Max won 6, The Revenant won 3, but Spotlight took picture, La La Land won 6 but Moonlight took the top prize, etc.)--and all of that speaks well for Get Out and Lady Bird. It's a total toss-up.

Will Win: Get Out
Could Win: The Shape of Water
Should Win: Call Me by Your Name
Should Have Been Here: Lady Macbeth

Man, Get Out is absolutely not winning. What a silly prediction I've just made.

Director
The nominees:
Guillermo Del Toro-The Shape of  Water
Greta Gerwig-Lady Bird
Christopher Nolan-Dunkirk
Jordan Peele-Get Out
Paul Thomas Anderson-Phantom Thread

Here's something much easier--Del Toro's got all the momentum, Shape of Water's arguably one of the biggest (or most flashy) 'directorial' achievements in the category, and he's at a point in his career where people want to acknowledge the great work he's been doing for years. Some people have whispered about a Nolan upset, but I honestly think Gerwig or Peele would be more likely.

Will Win: Guillermo Del Toro-The Shape of Water
Could Win: Jordan Peele-Get Out
Should Win: Greta Gerwig-Lady Bird
Should Have Been Here: Luca Guadagnino-Call Me by Your Name

Actress
The nominees:
Sally Hawkins-The Shape of Water
Frances McDormand-Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Margot Robbie-I, Tonya
Saoirse Ronan-Lady Bird
Meryl Streep-The Post

The narrative for all four acting categories is the same: the same person has won every televised award (critics choice, golden globes, screen actors guild, british academy)--the first time this has ever happened. So pick anyone other than those four winners at your own peril. In this category, that means McDormand takes the cake. It's a shame--this category looked to be so competitive at the beginning of the season, and it certainly should have stayed that way, but everything just stagnated.

Will Win: Frances McDormand-Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Could Win: Sally Hawkins-The Shape of Water
Should Win: Saoirse Ronan-Lady Bird
Should Have Been Here: Florence Pugh-Lady Macbeth

Actor
The nominees:
Timotheé Chalamet-Call Me by Your Name
Daniel Day-Lewis-Phantom Thread
Daniel Kaluuya-Get Out
Gary Oldman-Darkest Hour
Denzel Washington-Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Oldman's the one to beat here. I wish Chalamet could upset (as seemed much more likely in December), but he'll have to content himself with being the youngest best actor nominee since the 30s.

Will Win: Gary Oldman-Darkest Hour
Could Win: Timotheé Chalamet-Call Me by Your Name
Should Win: Timotheé Chalamet-Call Me by Your Name*
Should Have Been Here: James McAvoy-Split

*I haven't seen Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Supporting Actress
The nominees:
Mary J. Blige-Mudbound
Allison Janney-I, Tonya
Lesley Manville-Phantom Thread
Laurie Metcalf-Lady Bird
Octavia Spencer-The Shape of Water

Janney's in the pole position, with Metcalf snapping at her heels and Manville hoping to sneak between the two.

Will Win: Laurie Metcalf-Lady Bird (look, Janney's going to win, but I just can't predict those top four, and this category feels like the likeliest place for an upset)
Could Win: Allison Janney-I, Tonya
Should Win: Laurie Metcalf-Lady Bird
Should Have Been Here: Tiffany Haddish-Girls Trip

Supporting Actor
The nominees:
Willem Dafoe-The Florida Project
Woody Harrelson-Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Richard Jenkins-The Shape of Water
Christopher Plummer-All the Money in the World
Sam Rockwell-Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Another snoozefest--Rockwell wins.

Will Win: Sam Rockwell-Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Could Win: Willem Dafoe-The Florida Project
Should Win: Willem Dafoe-The Florida Project
Should Have Been Here: Armie Hammer-Call Me by Your Name

Original Screenplay
The nominees:
The Big Sick
Get Out
Lady Bird
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

One of the closest races of the year, and one to keep an eye on for clues to best picture. Get Out, Lady Bird, and Three Billboards have been locked at the top for months, and each could conceivably walk away with it. Slight advantage goes to either Get Out (if they want to reward the movie somewhere, this is the easiest place to do it) or Three Billboards (a very verbose, flashy script, plus best picture heat).

Will Win: Get Out
Could Win: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Should Win: Lady Bird
Should Have Been Here: The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Adapted Screenplay
The nominees:
Call Me by Your Name
The Disaster Artist
Logan
Molly's Game
Mudbound

This should be an easy call--Call Me is the only best picture nominee, has been universally praised for its script, and was written by James Ivory, a monumentally important director of the 80s and 90s who 89 and as-of-yet Oscarless. Still, part of me worries whether Call Me is too divisive or off-putting to straight voters, leaving a hole for Mudbound's fans to slip through. Still, Call Me is definitely the odds-on frontrunner.

Will Win: Call Me by Your Name
Could Win: Mudbound
Should Win: Call Me by Your Name
Should Have Been Here: Lady Macbeth

Production Design
The nominees:
Beauty and the Beast
Blade Runner 2049
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water

Tight race between Blade Runner and Water, with the latter probably pulling in more votes due to its beloved/BP nominee status. As long as those Beauty and the Beast hate crime visuals don't win, I'll be happy.

Will Win: The Shape of Water
Could Win: Blade Runner 2049
Should Win: Blade Runner 2049
Should Have Been Here: War for the Planet of the Apes

Costume Design
Beauty and the Beast
Darkest Hour
Phantom Thread
The Shape of Water
Victoria and Abdul

Phantom Thread seems like the easy call--a movie about fashion in which the costumes are front and center--but if Shape of Water is going to sweep, look for this category to be an early indication. And there's always the chance that voters lose their minds and go for Beauty and the Beast, just to spite me.

Will Win: Phantom Thread
Could Win: The Shape of Water
Should Win: Phantom Thread*
Should Have Been Here: Blade Runner 2049

*I haven't seen Victoria and Abdul

Visual Effects
The nominees:
Blade Runner 2049
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Kong: Skull Island
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
War for the Planet of the Apes

The poor Apes franchise is always a bridesmaid and never an Oscar winner, and this might be the year they can rectify that, but I'd imagine that love for Blade Runner's eye-popping visuals will carry the day.

Will Win: Blade Runner 2049
Could Win: War for the Planet of the Apes
Should Win: Blade Runner 2049
Should Have Been Here: Thor: Ragnarok

Makeup and Hairstyling
The nominees:
Darkest Hour
Victoria and Abdul
Wonder

Darkest Hour wins, no contest.

Will Win: Darkest Hour
Could Win: Wonder
Should Win: Abstain (I've only seen Darkest Hour)

Film Editing
The nominees:
Baby Driver
Dunkirk
I, Tonya
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Conventional wisdom that suggests that this category is a place for the eventual best picture winner gets thrown out the window today as Water and Billboards take the back seat. Will voters warm more to the fractured timelines and war action of Dunkirk or the impeccably choreographed mayhem of Baby Driver? Tough question. Smart money's probably on Dunkirk, but...

Will Win: Baby Driver
Could Win: Dunkirk
Should Win: Baby Driver
Should Have Been Here: Lady Bird

Cinematography
The nominees:
Blade Runner 2049
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Mudbound
The Shape of Water

Roger Deakins, arguably the greatest living cinematographer, has been nominated 14 times for an Oscar without a win, and this year's work on Blade Runner seems like his best chance in a looooong time to finally take home a little gold man. Still, both Dunkirk and Shape of Water feature arresting visuals in more widely loved movies, so he's definitely not safe.

Will Win: Blade Runner 2049
Could Win: Dunkirk
Should Win: Blade Runner 2049
Should Have Been Here: All These Sleepless Nights

Original Score
The nominees:
Dunkirk
Phantom Thread
The Shape of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I'd love to see Johnny Greenwood/Phantom Thread come out on top, but it'll probably Hollywood composer royalty Alexandre Desplat for The Shape of Water. If Water loses here, look for it to lose just about everywhere else too.

Will Win: The Shape of Water
Could Win: Phantom Thread
Should Win: Phantom Thread
Should Have Been Here: Wonderstruck

Sound Mixing
The nominees:
Baby Driver
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi

This is a to-the-wire race between Baby Driver and Dunkirk, with Shape of Water as a possible dark horse if the movie begins to steamroll.

Will Win: Dunkirk
Could Win: Baby Driver
Should Win: Baby Driver
Should Have Been Here: mother!

Sound Editing
The nominees:
Baby Driver
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Same nominees, same argument.

Will Win: Dunkirk
Could Win: Baby Driver
Should Win: Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Should Have Been Here: mother!

Original Song
The nominees:
"Mighty River"-Mudbound
"Mystery of Love"-Call Me by Your Name
"Remember Me"-Coco
"Stand Up for Something"-Marshall
"This is Me"-The Greatest Showman

Dead heat between Coco/former winners for Frozen and The Greatest Showman/former winners for La La Land. Could Mudbound or Call Me capitalize on the close race/their respective status as major nominees in other categories and pull of an upset? Probably not, but who knows?

Will Win: "This is Me"-The Greatest Showman
Could Win: "Remember Me"-Coco
Should Win: "Mystery of Love"-Call Me by Your Name
Should Have Been Here: "Visions of Gideon"-Call Me by Your Name

Animated Film
The nominees:
The Boss Baby
The Breadwinner
Coco
Ferdinand
Loving Vincent

Coco wins, in the easiest call of the night.

Will Win: Coco
Could Win: Loving Vincent
Should Win: Abstain (I've only seen Coco and The Boss Baby)

Foreign Language Film
The nominees:
A Fantastic Woman-Chile
The Insult-Lebanon
Loveless-Russia
On Body and Soul-Hungary
The Square-Sweden

Impossible to say--this seems like a legit five-way race. Loveless is arguably the biggest and most significant, The Square was the odds-on frontrunner at the beginning of the season, The Insult seems like the kind of big, emotionally open traditional winner, On Body and Soul is one of the most unique, and A Fantastic Woman hit at just the right time and captured the zeitgeist. So throw a dart or something.

Will Win: A Fantastic Woman
Could Win: The Square
Should Win: Abstain (haven't seen any of these, sadly)

Documentary Feature
The nominees:
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
Faces Places
Icarus
Last Men in Aleppo
Strong Island

Also tough to call. Last Men and Strong Island are emotionally resonant, Icarus is timely (it's about the Russian Olympic doping scandal), and Faces Places was made by French New Wave legend Agnes Varda, who's never won a competitive Oscar.

Will Win: Icarus
Could Win: Faces Places
Should Win: Abstain (I've only seen Last Men in Aleppo)


So that's that. By my predictions, The Shape of Water wins the most of the night (Director, Production Design, Original Score), but Get Out squeaks through to be the smallest best picture winner in 80 years. I'm probably wrong, right? We'll find out tonight!




Aaaaaand here's an extra bonus post! Note--feel free to check out here. I thought about doing this as a separate post, but decided to minimize the number of times I assault your facebook feed. As a nice summary of the year, and as a reminder that, despite my preocuppation with them, The Oscars aren't the be-all end-all of the cinematic year, underneath you'll find my anti-Oscar ballot. The only rule: I can't nominate anything that was nominated for an Oscar. What you'll find is that the cinematic talent displayed this year runs deep, and even if the Academy made some good choices, there is still a massive pool of accomplished artists who didn't aren't getting the attention they deserve.

So here we go! No commentary, no rankings--just alphabetical nominees, with winners in bold.

The Anti-Oscars

Best Picture
BPM
Casting JonBenet
The Florida Project
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Lady Macbeth
mother!
Nocturama
Raw
The Work

Director
Darren Aronofsky-mother!
Luca Guadagnino-Call Me by Your Name
Yorgos Lanthimos-The Killing of a Sacred Deer
William Oldroyd-Lady Macbeth
Denis Villeneuve-Blade Runner 2049

Actress
Gal Gadot-Wonder Woman
Vicky Krieps-Phantom Thread
Florence Pugh-Lady Macbeth
Kristen Stewart-Personal Shopper
Michelle Williams-All the Money in the World

Actor
James McAvoy-Split
Robert Pattinson-Good Time
Nahuel Perez Biscayart-BPM
Jeremy Renner-Wind River
Arnoid Valois-BPM

Supporting Actress
Naomie Ackie-Lady Macbeth
Betty Gabriel-Get Out
Tiffany Haddish-Girls Trip
Bria Vinaite-The Florida Project
Allison Williams-Get Out

Supporting Actor
Armie Hammer-Call Me by Your Name
Barry Keoghan-The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Sebastian Stan-I, Tonya
Patrick Stewart-Logan
Michael Stuhlbarg-Call Me by Your Name

Original Screenplay
BPM
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Nocturama
Personal Shopper
Phantom Thread

Adapted Screenplay
Blade Runner 2049
Lady Macbeth
The Lost City of Z
Thor: Ragnarok
Wonder Woman

Production Design
Atomic Blonde
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
mother!
Thor: Ragnarok
War for the Planet of the Apes

Costume Design
Atomic Blonde
The Beguiled
Blade Runner 2049
Lady Macbeth
Wonder Woman

Visual Effects
Alien: Covenant
Dunkirk
Okja
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Thor: Ragnarok

Makeup
Atomic Blonde
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Raw

Film Editing
Get Out
Good Time
Lady Bird
Logan Lucky
Nocturama

Cinematography
All These Sleepless Nights
The Beguiled
Call Me by Your Name
Lady Macbeth
The Wound

Original Score
Darkest Hour
Good Time
Logan
Mudbound
Wonderstruck

Sound Mixing
Atomic Blonde
The Florida Project
The Lost City of Z

mother!

Nocturama

Sound Editing
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
mother!
Phantom Thread
Raw
Thor: Ragnarok

Original Song
"The Greatest Show"-The Greatest Showman
"Never Enough"-The Greatest Showman
"Proud Corazon"-Coco
"Re-Write the Stars"-The Greatest Showman
"Visions of Gideon"-Call Me by Your Name

(...so I liked The Greatest Showman. Dealwithit.)

Best of 2017, part 3: Acting/Directing/Screenplays

I know, I know, I am absolutely bombarding you with blog posts in the past two days, but I'm desperately thrashing around like a particularly verbose and dying fish, doing my best to get a little bit of cinematic closure before the Oscars tonight--and you all are my hapless victims. But hey, if you're still clicking on these, then the help you need is beyond my power to give. Think about what you're doing.

Funny thing about my relationship with writing about movies: I can write 1,000 words on why the red hotel room in Atomic Blonde is absolutely essential if we are to continue as a species, but if I'm pressed to write about the 'big' categories, i.e. acting, writing, directing, it feels like pulling teeth (not necessarily my own) trying to get myself to write anything more lucid than 'hey, wow, Meryl Streep's not bad, right? Did you see that thing she did with her face? It made water (but only part of it)! Amazing!' And unfortunately for all of us, all I've got left to write about this year (at least as far as big lists are concerned) are the very categories that I've no idea how to address.

So here's the deal: I played around with this post for hours, and just couldn't come up with a compelling way to really present it--I felt fairly list-drained, believe it or not, and didn't want to inflict sub-par work on all of you. So instead, I've decided to just rattle off my top five and provide some basic commentary for the category as a whole. This makes for a streamlined reading experience for you, and didn't require me to spend my next five hours racking my brain trying to come up with a longer (but still readable) version. If you're curious for more in-depth thoughts about anything you see here, don't hesitate to ask!

Best Actress
5. Margot Robbie-I, Tonya
4. Meryl Streep-The Post
3. Vicky Krieps-Phantom Thread
2. Florence Pugh-Lady Macbeth
1. Saoirse Ronan-Lady Bird

Honorable mention: Frances McDormand-Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

A whole flotilla of great work--Margot Robbie convinced me that her opinion of her (charismatic but relatively talentless) was horribly wrong, Meryl Streep gave her best performance in a decade, and Krieps and Pugh gave titanic performances that should catapult them both to the stratosphere. But my love for Lady Bird is well-documented, and I couldn't resist Ronan's climbing narrative as the best young working actress.


Actor
5. Jeremy Renner-Wind River
4. Daniel Kaluuya-Split
3. James McAvoy-Split
2. Daniel Day-Lewis-Phantom Thread
1. Timotheé Chalamet-Call Me by Your Name

Honorable mention: Robert Pattinson-Good Time

Lots to note here--genre emphasis (two horror roles, one villain and one victim, and a western), and Daniel Day-Lewis' alleged last performance--but there's really only room for Chalamet's massive and unavoidable coming out as a huge talent and future star. The sky's the limit for the kid, and I hope his career from here is as big as his obvious talent deserves.

Supporting Actress

5. Naomie Ackie-Lady Macbeth

4. Allison Williams-Get Out

3. Betty Gabriel-Get Out

2. Tiffany Haddisch-Girls Trip

1. Laurie Metcalf-Lady Bird

Big shout-out here to the unsung Get Out girls, without whom the movie couldn't function--imagine it without Allison Williams' perfectly calculated periods of warmth and coldness, or the way Betty Gabriel reinvented the word 'no.' And what kind of year would it be without Tiffany Haddish's mischievously cocked eyebrow right before she explains where she keeps her drugs? This is a great category (maybe the best of the acting categories?), but someone had to come out on top, and Metcalf created one of the most fully realized and tetchily human movie mothers ever, so here we are.

Supporting Actor
5. Sebastian Stan-I, Tonya
4. Barry Keoghan-The Killing of a Sacred Deer
3. Michael Stuhlbarg-Call Me by Your Name
2. Willem Dafoe-The Florida Project
1. Armie Hammer-Call Me by Your Name

Honorable mention: Patrick Stewart-Logan

The big story is of course the tragically oscar-less Call Me boys (seriously, how did the Academy sleep on this?), but that shouldn't overshadow a career re-defining performance from Sebastian Stan, or the utter weirdness that Keoghan brings to his balefully sociopathic teenager in The Killing of a Sacred Deer.


Director
5. Paul Thomas Anderson-Phantom Thread
4. William Oldroyd-Lady Macbeth
3. Darren Aronofsky-mother!

2. Luca Guadagnino-Call Me by Your Name

1. Greta Gerwig-Lady Bird

Honorable mention: Yorgos Lanthimos-The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Another stellar category, and I had one hell of a time picking a winner--I played with having every one of these five take the cake. It was awfully tempting to reward Aronofsky's gleeful and unswerving 'my way' approach to mother!, but ultimately I had to go with one of the helmers of what I called two of the best movies of the decade on Friday, with Gerwig inching Guadagnino out by a hair. I could give it to Guadagnino for his visual panache or his obvious talent with actors, but I decided to side with Gerwig's sharp eye and world-sized heart.

Original Screenplay
5. Phantom Thread
4. Nocturama
3. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
2. Get Out
1. Lady Bird

Honorable mention: BPM (120 Beats per Minute)

In another year, any of these five could have taken the top spot-Phantom Thread's wild sense of humor, Nocturama's terse politics, Killing's jaw-dropping bizarreness, or *especially* Get Out's adept handling of ten different genres and tones. But I figure I've praised Lady Bird enough in the past few days for you to get where this was going.

Adapted Screenplay
5. Thor: Ragnarok
4. The Lost City of Z
3. Logan
2. Lady Macbeth
1. Call Me by Your Name

Honorable mention: Blade Runner 2049

A weirdly franchise/tent-pole heavy category, but they earned it--we'll all be quoting Thor for the next five years, and Logan ripped its genre apart and built it up again from scratch (sidebar: have I mentioned that Logan getting nominated for its screenplay is arguably my favorite Oscar nomination this year? At least in the sense of improbable but totally deserving). But, like with Lady Bird, I've gotten all weepy with praise over Call Me by Your Name lately that all of you already knew how this would turn out.



And believe it or not (and I've a sneaking suspicion you'll believe it), that's a wrap on big list posts for the year. Sometime today or tomorrow I'll bang out some last minute Oscar predictions, but this is where we start to say goodbye to 2017 as a cinematic year (he says, fully aware that it's March, and everyone else stopped thinking about these movies months ago).

For those playing along at home, here are the movies that showed up most frequently in these lists:

Call Me by Your Name-9
Phantom Thread-8
Lady Macbeth-7
Get Out-7
Lady Birth-6
mother!-5
Nocturama-5
Blade Runner 2049-5

As for the most wins, it was a duel to the death between Call Me and Lady Bird (much like plenty of these lists), with Call Me emerging victorious in the end. On the craft end, Phantom Thread, Blade Runner 2049, and Baby Driver hogged more than their share of the spotlight.

Call Me by Your Name-Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Song
Lady Bird-Director, Actress, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay
Blade Runner 2049-Production Design, Visual Effects, Cinematography
Phantom Thread-Costume Design, Original Score
Baby Driver-Film Editing, Sound Mixing


And there's another year gone! Looking forward to see what the next 9 months brings to the movies.

Best of 2017, part 2: Craft Categories

Another day, another crushingly wrong list I've created in my ongoing quest to find new and more terrible ways to brutalize the people who feel compelled by whatever dark monsters in their head to keep clicking on these posts. Hooray for us! Tradition dictates that today's post would be about acting, or directing, or writing, or any of those more well-known cinematic enterprises that people normally tend to care about. But I've decided to buck tradition (not least because I wrote the bulk of this post without access to the internet) and write what I find more compelling--all the craft aspects of filmmaking that never get their due among the moviegoing masses. The artistry that goes into creating a movie is mind-buckling and vast, and I love all of it. Why would I want to try and come up with something nice to say about Gary Oldman when I could spend the next two hours gushing about the sound effects in Phantom Thread? I am who I am.

In interest of putting a face on some of these things, I have finally added visual aids to this list--something I've always wanted to do. Granted, they don't work exactly how I want (I wish you could click the pictures for a bigger version), but I think it's the best we can hope for, considering my limited technical prowess. So here we go! Bask in the luxury of actually being able to see or hear what I'm talking about!

Note: I didn't include pictures or videos for film editing or the sound categories, because I didn't really know how to capture film editing compellingly in a way that didn't waste either my or your time, and I didn't have the resources to make audio clips for the sound categories (which I would have loved to do).

Note Note: I've included a brief description of some categories, in case you need a couple signposts for what i"m talking about. 

Production Design

(designing, creating, and building the world of the movie--sets, props, art direction, etc.)

5. Atomic Blonde-for a hedonistic, Schumacher-esque neon Berlin hellscape, dripping with blood, sweat, and secrecy.

sourcce

4. War for the Planet of the Apes-you’d think I’d be tired of cinematic dystopias by now (and you wouldn’t be wrong), but the ice palace hotels, arboreal hideaways, and Bosch-inspired army camps won me over.

3. mother!-If you’re going to ask one house to stand in for all of creation, it needs to be one hell of a house—and the one in mother! certainly is, equal parts feigned Better Homes and Gardens and oozing crimson pits.

2. The Shape of Water-I really didn’t get the appeal of this movie like the rest of the world apparently did, but I can’t deny its green-is-the-future Baltimore, replete with fairy tale laboratories and time machine cinemas.

1. Blade Runner 2049-Come on, what else would I have put here? The original Blade Runner is one of the signature design achievements in all of cinema, so the new one had some shoes to fill; the fact that its grungy, neo-noir world delighted when it could have so *easily* disappointed is something of a minor miracle.

Honorable mention: God planets and angry little ships in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Costume Design

5. Wonder Woman-arguably on the strength of that blue dress alone, but also for Diana’s London tomboy chic, and Glamazon battle-gear that is both battlefield and runway-ready.

4. Atomic Blonde-speaking of runways—the East German pawn shop of your dreams comes to slinking life, bedecking the spies and runaways of another world to resemble the dizzy daydreams of themselves they carry in their heads.

source

3. Lady Macbeth-an exercise in vivid character-defining minimalism: each figure gets one or two costumes tops, so the designer has to make them speak. And speak they do: is it possible to imagine the titular bloodthirsty housewife without her dresses shaped like prisons?

2. Blade Runner 2049-feel free to copy and paste what I wrote in the last entry and apply it to clothes. Harrison Ford’s ‘screw it, I tried’ t-shirt notwithstanding, the lifestyles of the synthetic and infamous all look like rack-ready options in a fashion show in Phillip K. Dick’s nightmares.

1. Phantom Thread-again, what else could possibly have taken the top spot other than Paul Thomas Anderson’s ode to clothes as a language? We should all be so lucky to have Daniel Day-Lewis (or costume designer Mark Bridges) dressing us in the kinds of outfits hand-picked to reveal our hidden selves in the mirror.

Honorable mention: deceptively steamy Southern formalwear in The Beguiled

Visual Effects

(Both practical effects--e.g. things created in-camera--and CGI (animating, compositing, modeling, etc.)

5. Okja-for making the titular super-pig tangible and touchable—a real feat of emotional and character-based CG heavy lifting.

4. Thor: Ragnarok-somewhere, last year, a team of dedicated men and women with art degrees had to spend a significant portion of their week deciding how to animate the Hulk’s naked ass, and I think they need to be commended for that.

3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2-sure, Groot and Rocket are always a well-rendered treat, but what about that swarm of mind-controlled, bee-like spaceships, or Michael Rooker’s vindictive and playful arrow? Great stuff all around.

2. War for the Planet of the Apes-the artists behind these series have painted themselves into a corner, in that we now casually expect such photorealistic excellence from them that it’s now come to seem commonplace when they deliver exactly that. And sure, the visuals in this latest Apes movie aren’t reinventing the wheel, but when the wheel already looks like this, why would you need to?

1. Blade Runner 2049-are the visual effects here as technically impressive as the War for the Planet of the Apes gang? Arguably not, but good grief how they linger—that double hologram love scene, or the jagged cityscapes, or that haunted encounter between K and Joi on the bridge. The effects team on Blade Runner didn’t come to make friends—they came to leave a vibrant and bloody hand print across this movie’s forehead.

Honorable mention: Eh, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I guess, if only for that final color-saturated battle on the salt planet.

Makeup

3. Atomic Blonde-who doesn’t want to hire these stylists after watching Charlize Theron romp around Berlin looking like a power-hungry CEO/lady of the night?

2. Raw-look, I’m not saying that I would ever eat my siblings’ fingers or my significant other’s leg, but if I did, I’d kind of hope it looks like the frenzied edible delights served up here on a bloody platter.

1. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2-I’m always a sucker for well-executed sci-fi in this category, and this year’s no exception. Elizabeth Debicki pancake head! Taser-face! Little ladies that look like bugs! Now they’re speaking my language.

Honorable mention: the fast and loose Olympic train-wrecks in I, Tonya.

Film Editing

(Cutting--generally responsible for a film's pace, continuity, keeping the audience focused on the right details, and keeping a consistent emotional and visual tone.)

5. Logan Lucky-see, Christopher Nolan? This is how you do competing time lines and perspectives—like your life depends on it, not because you just can.

4. Get Out-a movie that vacillates this wildly between comedy, violence, and drama shouldn’t feel as tonally consistent and narratively tight as it does, and yet here we are—kudos to the editor for managing to tame what must have been an impossible-to-tame movie.

3. Lady Bird-I’ve already waxed effusive about how much Lady Bird packs into its brisk running time, but seriously HOW did they pack this much character detail, wit, and heart into 90 minutes without it feeling like a whirlwind sprint? Crazy.

2. Nocturama-the movie whose editing most made me blink my eyes in disbelief. Nocturama giddily leaves editing norms behind: scenes repeat for no apparent reason, time jumps forward and backward by seconds or hours, and all of this happens without losing one iota of the film’s claustrophobic tension.

1. Baby Driver-this is arguably a feat of choreography as much as anything else, but it’s such a feat of everything that I can’t deny it. Edgar Wright’s latest opus choreographs each action scene—down to individual movements and sounds!—to match to its soundtrack, creating a perfectly controlled rat-a-tat-tat musical tragicomedy of errors. Wrangling such a woolly film into such swiss-watch precision must have been a herculean exercise.

Honorable mention: scenes like piano wires and pipe bombs in Good Time

Cinematography

(Essentially how pretty a movie is. Lighting, composition, camera choreography, etc.)

5. Hoyte Van Hoytema-Dunkirk-ugh, FIIIIIIIIINE Christopher Nolan, take this stupid nomination for this stupid pretty movie. This doesn’t let the movie off the hook—it’s still needlessly showboat-y and contentless, despite its arresting compositions.

4. Ari Wegner-Lady Macbeth-dazzling brights and even more glaring darks, Lady Macbeth is nothing if not eye-catching: an entire world tuned a little too brightly and situated too symmetrically to be comfortable.

3. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom-Call Me by Your Name-the sun-dappled Italy of every world-weary teenager’s dreams, a world in sepia punctuated by deep blue nightscapes and gossamer lace windowpanes.

2. Michal Marczak, Maciej Twardowski-All These Sleepless Nights-how have I not mentioned this movie yet? A Polish pseudo-documentary (in that the filmmakers said ‘hey, let’s just carry a camera around with our friends’) that disrupts its own faux-verisimilitude with sporadic dance-breaks, fourth wall breaking performances, and the improbable twilight mosaics of Warsaw streets.

1. Roger Deakins-Blade Runner 2049-I may or may not be running out of ways to praise this movie’s visuals, so just go watch a trailer. It’s really pretty. Roger Deakins is a demigod. We can all agree on this, right?

Honorable mention: quiet, malevolent tapestries in The Beguiled

Original Score

5.  Marco Beltrami-Logan-lilting mournful piano melodies and adrenaline-fueled Ennio Morricone-esque trumpet and harmonica riffs: Beltrami operating in his comfort zone (the Western) is always worth listening to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be1HdTnSGZo

4. Dario Marianelli-Darkest Hour-a propulsive and urgent engine to drive a movie about words, all arpeggio pistons and scales cascading like steam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esjAINmH4Vs

3. Hans Zimmer-Dunkirk-how much of this movie's success is due to its claustrophobic, nauseating nightmare soundcloud of a score? A pretty significant bit, I'd wager--Zimmer's full-on assault on the senses raked a rusty nail across my brain pan in a way that the rest of the movie couldn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1VJ39nVIBk

2. Carter Burwell-Wonderstruck-What a multi-faceted thing this soundtrack is, tripping lightly from comfortingly Burwellian warm and weirdly orchestrated chamber pieces to silent era-inspired organ riffs. It's gorgeous work that deserves a more compelling movie around it.

(for some reason, the score just isn't on youtube, but here's a five-minute preview of its various tracks, if you want a taste of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewAxfbB5xeI)

1. Johnny Greenwood-Phantom Thread-What an absolutely perfect and totally ravaging piece of movie music--Greenwood's compositions mimic the shrieking violins and big weepy strings of 50s melodramas, but infuse them with their own slippery, subversive skin, which makes the music go down like pieces of candy dipped in raw egg. Perfect for what the movie itself is--sickly romantic, furiously funny, and just a little bit uncomfortable.

(I couldn't pick just one track from this score--seriously, just go take an hour and listen to the whole thing--so here's one track that really brings home the more unsettled elements of the score: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjw9AbHFMow

And here's the score at its lushest and most lovely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT_XjcdgT6g)

Honorable mention: Daniel Lopatin's driving electro work on Good Time

Sound Mixing

(Blending the four elements of movie sound--dialogue, ambient noise, sound effects, music--into one cohesive and compelling track.)

5. The Lost City of Z-the everyday business of listening to your sanity wander through the jungle, all echoing, stentorian silences and earthy hums.

4. Nocturama-as weird and tight-lipped a mix as this movie deserves, weaponizing silence, pop music, and the timid little bumps in the night that signify that someone's been shot.

3. Dunkirk-livid shrieks from beasts of war, coupled with Zimmer's deathgrip of a score and the ever-present sonic presence of the waves.

2. mother!-arguably for that final rush of chaos in the last 20 minutes, but also for everything that comes before--the way the movie makes its audience lean forward to listen to the way the house breathes.

1. Baby Driver-I mentioned earlier how this movie precisely choreographs everything in it to fit to the music, and sound is perhaps its best tool for that--I legitimately just cannot get over how much work went in to making this movie happen just the way it did.

Note: I feel like what I'm talking about--the choreography, etc.--is maybe hard to visualize if you haven't seen this movie, so watch this scene and see what I mean (Stop around 3.30 if you don't want big spoilers for the movie):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsWJ3aSa3ts

(Sidebar: how is no one talking about the fact that the camerapeople hired for this movie were clearly olympians?)

(Side-Sidebar: in an alternate universe, Ansel Elgort got nominated for an Oscar for this performance, and it's not even that bad of an alternate universe.)

Honorable mention: crystalline action and frozen cities in Atomic Blonde

Sound Editing

(Creating the sound effects for a film--all the things that need to be added in post-production.)

5. Raw-Want to know what casually chewing on a finger sounds like? You probably don't, but Raw's going to make sure you're going to bath in the spongy smacking glory of it all.

4. Blade Runner 2049-isolated cityscape howls, choking and guttural ship engines, and a malevolent ocean where each wave arrives like thunder.

3. Phantom Thread-impossibly loud knives against toast like nails on a chalkboard, whispered rushes of different fabrics, and the quiet simmering of rage-filled skillets seasoned with bemused affection.

2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi-I'm always such a sucker for this series in the category, but who am I to turn down plucky little one-legged speeders, lightsabers on futuristic staves, and that perfect moment of nothing?

1. mother!-for that sound, a horrific and resonating little click, for the chem trails of panic that surround it, and for a house that speaks in its own dust-choked voice.

Honorable mention: space battles straight out of an 80s arcade in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Original Song

5. "This Is Me"-The Greatest Showman-How do I turn down this vaguely authoritarian self-empowerment anthem? During this exquisitely caterwauled yawp to the heavens, the audience is going to learn to love themselves OR ELSE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEJd2RyGm8Q

4. "Re-Write the Stars"-The Greatest Showman-Look, I'm just not strong enough to resist The Greatest Showman, a monumental morass of cheese and glitter if ever there was one. And the day I stop loving Zac Efron and Zendaya singing on a trapeze is the day you need to come to my apartment and quietly and humanely destroy me.

(Also, this makes me realize that somehow I didn't put this scene on my best of the year list, and HOW COULD I--nothing in the cinema this year made me feel the same giddy joy as watching Zac Efron whoosh around in suspenders trying to convince Zendaya to take a leap of faith and jump onto his bones. Who wouldn't see stars?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdjR2lvIfJ4

3. "Proud Corazon"-Coco-"Remember Me" has kind of stolen all the air in the room as far as the Coco soundtrack is concerned, and sure, it's the movie's anthem, but this song and this scene had me weeping actual buckets in the theater.

(Here's the whole scene that had me sobbing like a pudgy little baby--it's the very last scene of the movie, so maybe don't watch the video and just listen to the music if you don't want spoilers:
https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=yoX88L5Ig7Y)

2. "Mystery of Love"-Call Me by Your Name-the second I heard Sufjan Stevens--my all time favorite singer, the guy who made me cry with the first four notes he played when I saw him in concert--was writing songs for the movie adapted from my favorite book, I knew he'd be taking the top spot in this category, whether i wanted him to or not. And then lo and behold, he wrote two songs for the movie, so he gets to be here twice. "Mystery of Love" is classic Sufjan, delicate plucking that grows and swells (but never too much).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0CP9zpbmAQ

1. "Visions of Gideon"-Call Me by Your Name-if the last shot of the movie, over which this song plays, didn't emotionally wreck you, then I don't know how to help you. The song's a perfect capper to the movie, capturing everything said and unsaid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJLs-4J5ZYk

Honorable mention: the aforementioned Coco anthem "Remember Me"

And there we have it! I'm sure I'll return later today to finish all the categories I've missed (namely, the ones people care about), but I'm gonna go ahead and give you (and me) a break for the moment.

Best of 2017, Part 1: Top 20

Last year I made a resolution--a promise to myself, really--to try and make more time in my life for movies. The sneaky thing about grad school is this: even if you're there because it's what you love, or it's the only way to get the life you want, and even if you love every mind-bludgeoning moment of it--even if all these things are true, the other things you love tend to get put on hold. You find yourself saying (all too often) that you'll pursue your hobbies tomorrow, or the next day; if only you weren't so tired today! So many aspects of your life fade by subtle degrees: small things at first, then larger, more frequent, until that thing you loved--the reason you went to school to begin with--has become the thing you have to feed, the book-shaped pet monster chained to your ankle. And you may still love it, but eventually its tendency to assert itself into the furthest-flung corners of your life can become tiresome.

So the kind of promise that involves investing your time and energy into pulling something out of that monster is...complicated. This time last year (approximately--I'm writing these awfully late this year), I was lamenting the fact that I'd only made time for 50 movies. Both the years before that (aka my other grad school years) saw me clocking 60-ish movies. Which inspired me to make my first New Years resolution in a decade: this year, I was going to make time for movies. And going into this year knowing full well that it would be a period of upheaval, one of those breathless caesuras after which Nothing Would Ever be the Same, etc.: suffice to say I was daunted. My silly January resolution seemed like a the kind of dream you find in someone else's garbage.

All of this is a very long and melodramatic wind-up to the reveal that this year I saw 74 movies. It's still not quite where I was when I was younger (I was so hoping to hit 80 this year, but events conspired in the past weeks to put that goal just outside my reach), but it's a far cry better than what I've done for a while. I pulled movies out of my monster, dammit. And honestly, I'm not really sure how it happened. I was travelling for the first four months of the year, and didn't see hardly anything. The next four months I spent totally destitute, which kept me from the theater. And the last months I spent moving to a different state, starting a PhD, getting sick, and generally getting buried in the kinds of things people tend to get buried under. But it happened, and I'm grateful for that. I'm afraid to jinx the coming year by making another resolution, so I'll leave it at this: I'm glad I made the time to go to the movies in the past 12 months, and I hope I'll remember how glad I am for the next 12 as well.

And what a year to see so much! Maybe I'm just feeling overly sentimental (he says, as if he's not a constant quivering ball of weepy reveries), but this felt like something of a banner year. I can't wait for you to get a glimpse at what's in the top 10. The top three, in particular, feel as though any one of them could have been the best of this or any year--and I'm honestly still not sure what will take the top position.

If you're new (and who knows? Maybe my loyal-ish eastern European fan base will share this link to their friends in Samoa and I can become the #1 twice-annual movie blogger in the South Pacific), here's how the format works: I'll rattle off my top 20 (an indulgent number, but this is the 12th year running of top 20, so dealwithit). In interest of brevity (and also in interest of brevity's rough-and-tumble cousin, oh-my-god-I-have-so-much-to-do-why-am-I-spending-three-hours-writing-this...ity), I'll try to keep my gushing about each movie to two sentences. Let's see how far I get before kicking brevity's teeth in! I am dentist's worst nightmare. After that, there's a deviation from the norm: usually I follow the list with my Zen Awards, which allow for a bit of fun with silly categories. And I just...don't have that in me right now. Maybe I'll come back to it--but time is short, and I'm very tired, so for now I have to forgo trying to make you laugh with the strangest category I can pull out of my head. Apologies! For what it's worth, I've still come up with a list for the best scenes of the year, as well as the worst movies, for those of you who have plenty of time/a really deep masochistic streak.

In interest of transparency, here's a list of what I've seen this year. If something you love didn't make my list, check to see if I actually saw it first--and if I did, tell me why your movie should have made the list! As always, I'm woefully lacking foreign films and documentaries. Normally this is where I'd say that we don't get those kinds of movies in the middle of the country, but my new home is shockingly not terrible at getting the littler movies. So this year, it's on me: apologies to things like Thelma, The Square, A Fantastic Woman, On Body and Soul, Columbus, and others--you did open here, I just managed to miss you. (Although maybe consider not all opening at the same time during finals week. You get a little bit of the blame here, movies.)

And a special 'I'm so sorry' shout-out to Princess Cyd from Stephen Cone, who is one of my absolute favorite indie filmmakers (both The Wise Kids and Henry Gamble's Birthday Party got written up in my best-of lists in their respective years), and is streaming on Amazon. But somehow I just haven't managed to sit down and watch it. So go watch it, even if it's not on this list--I'm sure it would have been, if I'd seen it before press time.

47 Meters Down, 50 Shades Darker, Alien: Covenant, All the Money in the World, All These Sleepless Nights, Atomic Blonde, Baby Driver, Beach Rats, Beauty and the Beast, The Beguiled, The Big Sick, Blade Runner 2049, Born in China, The Boss Baby, BPM (120 Beats per Minute), Call Me by Your Name, Casting JonBenet, Coco, Darkest Hour, Detroit, The Disaster Artist, Downsizing, Dunkirk, The Florida Project, Get Out, A Ghost Story, Gifted, Girls Trip, God's Own Country, Good Time, The Greatest Showman, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Handsome Devil, I, Tonya, Ingrid Goes West, It, It Comes at Night, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Kong: Skull Island, Lady Bird, Lady Macbeth, Last Men in Aleppo, The LEGO Batman Movie, Logan, Logan Lucky, The Lost City of Z, The Lure, Molly's Game, Mother! Mudbound, Murder on the Orient Express, Nocturama,, Okja, One of Us, The Ornithologist, Personal Shopper, Phantom Thread, The Post, Raw, The Shape of Water, Shock Wave, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Split, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Stronger, Thor: Ragnarok, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, War for the Planet of the Apes, Wind River, Wonder Woman, Wonderstruck, The Work, The Wound, The Zookeeper's Wife


If I haven't lost you yet (and if I haven't, you probably need to do some soul-searching of your own re: how you spend your free time), let's jump into it! It's already after 9.00 and I have to be up at 6.00 tomorrow, so I'll try to crack these out as swiftly and pithily as possible.


Honorable Mentions: though they didn't make the top 20, I'm thankful for the see-saw tragicomedy of I, Tonya, the grimy, shame-soaked lust of Beach Rats, and the dazzling ingenuity and bonkers spirit of Okja.

20. God's Own Country (dir. Francis Lee)
Though it's tempting to file this one away as a more upbeat and British Brokeback Mountain, Lee's peon to gruff ranchers, sheep entrails, and the immigrants who love them is a vital and impassioned exercise in silence. Muddy hookups, romantic candlelit dinners in a highland cabin, puffy sweaters, and unsimulated sheep birth--what more are you looking for in your indie queer romance?
(available to rent on Amazon)

19. Wonder Woman (dir. Patty Jenkins)
Most importantly, Wonder Woman gets that for superheros (and their movies) to be great, they first need to be good. Wonder Woman radiates kindness and hope, even in its darkest (and clunkily CG-ed) moments, harnessing the iconographic shorthand that lets these characters keep popping 70-plus years after their inception.
(not available to stream yet)

18. The Big Sick (dir. Michael Showalter)
Hoisting the flag of that most reliable of genre punching bags--the inspirational rom-com--is no easy task, but The Big Sick cuts through the cynicism by being unrelentingly sweet and honest. Doesn't hurt that it earns its share of belly laughs along the way: who among us didn't giggle at that 9/11 joke?
(on Amazon Prime)

17. Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve)
Points have to be given here on raw ambition alone: Villeneuve set out to craft a sprawling sci-fi thriller, a brooding think-piece on the pitfalls of the 'chosen one' narrative, and a piano wire character study of love on the cold, dark fringes. The fact that the movie succeeds at all is somewhat astounding; that it manages to succeed on all of these fronts (and others besides) is nothing short of miraculous.
(rentable on Amazon)

16. Logan (dir. James Mangold)
The superhero movie we need, and perhaps the one we deserve as well: Logan is a brutal, chaotic slog through the decades-long consequences of being placed on a pedestal. By harnessing the Western genre to his own devices, Mangold crawls under the skin of a cultural touchstone (the not-so-indefatigable Wolverine) and lets him look death in the eye--creating a stripped-down, cold-eyed anti-superhero movie for the ages.
(on HBO Go)

15. Personal Shopper (dir. Olivier Assayas)
I've no idea how to sell you on this one--a small-voiced ghostless ghost story in which Kristen Stewart does her best to get the abyss to stare back--but if you can stomach its muted, languorous charms, you'll be rewarded with a singularly thorny exploration of the permeable spaces between life and death. Not for everyone--but if you're feeling patient and melancholy, seek this one out.
(no streaming, sadly)

14. The Lost City of Z (dir. James Gray)
I'll admit that this movie's logline isn't the most compelling--Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson get lost in the jungle!--but Gray's aching, lyrical ode to shades of madness, gentle, wild, or otherwise, presents on of the most hypnotic and transporting experiences of the year. What's more, he coaxes a bevy of fantastic performances from unexpected sources--who knew that Charlie Hunnam could act?
(on Amazon Prime)

13. Raw (dir. Julia Ducournau)
If you've ever wondered how French vegetarian veterinarians might react upon discovering they have an insatiable taste for human flesh (and who hasn't wondered that, at least once), have I got news for you--this sneaky little horror movie from across the pond gives you a blood-splattered front seat to a cackling cannibal cadre just trying to sneak a few meals between classes. Raw is the most tactile movie of the year--all delicate masticating, red splashes on white jackets, and the oh-so-relatable sound of accidentally eating your sister's finger while she's trying to give you a Brazilian wax.
(on Netflix, also rentable on Amazon)

12. The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker)
A steady-eyed, candy-striped study of life on the margins, Baker's Project takes a potentially exhausting trope--life through the lens of wide-eyed childhood innocence--and infuses it with a dogged honesty that never talks down to its characters, fighting for scraps of dignity thrown to them from an unfathomably distant table. Using the same handheld, non-professional actor approach that the director brought to Tangerine, The Florida Project manages to seem fundamentally grounded, despite its 6-year old protagonist who can't help but seeing her world as what she wants it to be, rather than what it's becoming.
(rentable on Amazon)

11. The Work (dir. Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous)
A documentary exercise in minimalism--here there are no facts, no talking heads, no reenactments, no moralizing or opinions of any kind. McLeary and Aldous just stick their camera into the middle of a three-day therapy session inside a prison, and the results are astounding: a painful, profound humanity full of joys and deep wounds, quietly rebuking the audience for the thoughts they might have had when the prisoners walked through the door.
(rentable on Amazon)

Hey look! We've made it to the top 10 and I haven't even broken my two-sentence rule yet! Granted, I've had to brutalize your time, decency, and the English language itself to do so, but I'm not even gonna apologize. And again, what a top 10 it is! You need to go find every single one of these movies.

10. BPM (120 Beats per Minute) (dir. Robin Campillo)
A dramatized version of How to Survive a Plague--or better yet, the movie that Dallas Buyers Club *should* have been--BPM shines a spotlight on the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s by thrusting the viewer into the thick of the ACT Up movement in Paris, in which committees of ravaged and ravaging men and women fought on the front lines to have their deaths taken seriously. This film is a deeply moving mosaic of the nitty-gritty of social change, the kinds of unapologetic sacrifices communities make to buy their place at the table.
(rentable on Amazon)

9. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
What even is this movie--one of the more disturbing and subtle horror film of the year, the most underrated comedy, or an exercise in brutal absurdity? It's all three at once, seesawing, wild-eyed, between Stepfordian suburban antics, existential body horror, and extreme violence. The premise--a teenager whose father died on the operating table returns to exact revenge on the surgeon by forcing him to choose which one of his family to kill--hardly allows for either comedy or sci-fi trappings, but Lanthimos juggles each disparate ball with the same alien eye he brought to Dogtooth and The Lobster.
(rentable on Amazon)

(Take that, brevity! You thought you could hide, but I found you and now I'm going to make you pay.)

8. Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele)
One of the best debut films in the past decade, a by-turns gleeful and pained mirror held up to a neo-liberal world all too pleased with its own tolerances. The sunken place is real, and Peele makes sure the audience knows what role they've played in creating and maintaining it. The metaphor is on point, sure, but would the movie have reached the heights it has if it weren't also firing on every other level? Get Out is a successful comedy, a successful horror movie, a successful drama, a successful satire, and a successful call to arms, populated by one of the best ensembles of the year and architected with an assured hand by Peele.
(streaming on HBO Go)

7. Nocturama (dir. Bertrand Bonello)
I don't know that I have the words to do this movie justice, and honestly am not sure that you should read anything about it at all before watching it: French teenagers are part of a terrorism plot. Things happen. Go watch this and report back. What an intricate curio of rage this movie is: placeless protagonists in a shop-window Paris, drifting from port to explosive port. Nocturama is punctuated by surreal, unsettling, gorgeous images: a golden face on fire, a dragged-out teen lip-syncing down the stairs, sterile mall environments shaping a world unseen. All of this stapled together by a writhing, aggressive editing that casually undermines what we think we know about how movies should run. This is a breathtaking and confrontational piece of cinema--seek it out!
(on Netflix)

6. mother! (dir. Darren Aronofsky)
I get it--this is either a love-it-or-hate-it scenario. mother! is claustrophobic, chaotic, brutal, and subtle as a bag of hammers. But what can I say--how could I not vibe to something as giddily, mind-bogglingly off-the-rails as Aronofsky's latest ode to intimate violence and Biblical morals gone wrong? Anchored by an unfairly dogpiled Jennifer Lawrence (who, sidebar, rocks the best movie hair since The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), mother! wound its way through all the various cracks in my psyche and ripped them apart with a smile on its face. The final 20 minutes--that eye-popping and unbelievable crescendo of sudden violence--is unlike anything else at the movies this year. Is mother! a re-telling of the Bible, a parable about exploiting the environment, an examination of the artistic process, a story about how people justify staying in abusive relationships to themselves, or a relateable movie about just wanting to brace your sink, but Ed Harris just won't leave you alone? It's all of these things, and more: a breathless whirlwind of a movie designed to make you grasp for your pearls.

5. Casting JonBenet (dir. Kitty Green)
What a strange, curious and beautiful soul this movie has: a documentary-experiment in which actors are cast to play the Ramsey family in a movie that will never exist. The resulting film, in which a group of local actors share their own versions of JonBenet's murder while pretending to be the people involved, is unlike any I've ever seen, and you should go watch it immediately. The cumulative weight the film piles on--the crime, the lives it changed, the dark undercurrents eddying out into the community--are crushing in their sincerity and irreversibility. The final shot, in which every actor simultaneously acts their own piece of the story as the camera pulls out and around to reveal the entire sound stage, completely knocked me off my feet. A documentary to change how you think about what documentaries can achieve, and how they can do it.
(on Netflix)

4. Lady Macbeth (dir. William Oldroyd)
A savagely precise knock-out punch of movie, and criminally underseen: Lady Macbeth adopts a 19th century Russian novella and births it, fully formed, red-eyed and screaming, into present day, flooding the source material with tensions of race, gender, voyeurism, and the hath-no-fury scorn of a woman trapped in a system not meant for her. Transplanted to Victorian England, the story details the misadventures (a soft word for a rough situation if ever there was one) of a young wife in an arranged marriage whose reach far outreaches the grasp that the role of submissive wife demands. What emerges is an ice-cold character study of a life lived, despite the cost: Lady Macbeth is stuffed to the gills with bitterness weeping down the ladder for centuries, finally emerging in a few moments of wanton, chaotic agency. Hard to believe that this is Oldroyd's first movie--if this is his starting point, I can't wait to see where he goes from here.
(rentable on Amazon)

3. Phantom Thread (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
A thread (heh) that I keep returning to in this post is some kind of loss of words (despite the already prodigiously indulgent word count)--how do I describe movies that, by their nature, buck attempts at description? Like most PTA movies, Phantom Thread is just that kind of stallion of a movie--a writhing, furiously happy palette of purple and beige and malignant glares over breakfast. How can I sell you on this, other by telling you it's fantastic? Firstly: the trailers make it seem as if this is another slog of a movie about a suffering genius and the supportive woman who sees him through--and this couldn't be any further from the truth. What we get instead is an unexpectedly hilarious, grimly melodramatic tete-a-tete in which an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, and both decide to settle down with each other and argue over how to serve asparagus. It's a gorgeous, Sirkian romp through the pitfalls of love that finds the well of lies we tell ourselves in order to cohabit spaces, and it drinks deeply. And all of this against a gloriously heightened backdrop--those costumes! That wailing and sappy Johnny Greenwood score!--made to feel like walking through someone else's taffeta fantasies.

2. Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig)
Has there been any movie recently--or ever, in fact--that is so openly empathetic, that has so much time for every character, that grants everyone it sees a perspective and a future? And does so in 90 minutes? What Gerwig accomplishes here is nothing short of miraculous--a quick-paced, uproarious, moving, and above all relateable movie about learning how to occupy a world in which everyone you meet is another person. I cannot get so many of this film's small moments out of my head, little perfections stacked on top of each other to create a monument to the way people brush up against each other as fingerprints: how casually cruel Lady Bird is to her friend, who meekly says 'this is probably the only chance I'll ever get at that' when Lady Bird complains that *she's* not the one who gets time to flirt with hunky Danny, or the conversation with the preppy friend in the pool, who sees herself sending her daughters to catholic school, or the look on Lady Bird's mother's face when Danny says that she lives on the wrong side of the tracks (ohmygod you guys Laurie Metcalf), or the way Tracy Letts straightens his son's tie when he finds out they're both interviewing for the same job. More than anything, this movie is human: an ethereal and multi-facted morass of lives, all regarded with the same kind eye. Is there anything we need more than that in an era defined by joyfully creating categories of otherness? Don't get me wrong: this is my #2 pick of the year, but it's top 5 of the decade material. Lady Bird is absolute perfection--it's one of the most vital experiences of the year in this (or any other) medium.
(rentable on Amazon)

1. Call Me by Your Name (dir. Luca Guadagnino)
The first time I remember encountering anything that I could identify as gay was at Disneyland. Two men holding hands asked my Dad to take a picture of them together, and he obliged. Afterward, he made sure to point out what they were--make sure we knew--and my mother asked, not without disgust, how they could hold hands in this place that was meant for families.
Maybe three years later, some tremulous impulse me led me to look up 'homosexuality' in the dictionary of my middle school library. I remember standing there, staring at the page, realizing that what I read was talking about me. Putting the book back as quickly as I could, in case someone saw. Trying not to cry. Deciding to push that page of the dictionary out of my mind. And out of mind was how my relationship with myself would be characterized for years. I remember seeing a poster for Brokeback Mountain in 2005--two men holding each other--and looking at it with surprise, shock, disgust: look at those two men holding each other, I thought, like that is something you can just do. I did not meet an out queer person until college, and even then, I approached them with something like suspicion. How can they do that in public. Where there are families.
But when someone could push through all that; when someone could cut through all the hatred I held in my head, all the little cuts like glass and the ramparts I had in place to keep the world from ever, ever seeing what I carried inside me; when someone, however briefly, could make me feel as if I could be touched without dissolving into molecules--. I don't know that any straight person can ever completely experience the way that this is like holding electricity in the palm of your hand. The way your world multiplies and stretches exponentially, the sound of it like a hurricane, something primordial and ancient and inevitable, swelling inside of you until it feels as though your soul is going to spill out like light through your mouth. The first time in my apartment: he was in the shower, and I was making us breakfast (omelettes), and I started crying and couldn't stop. Just because of--this. How normal and domestic. Here was a boy I cared about, who seemed to care about me, and we had been together and the world had not turned inside out, the curtains hadn't been rent in two--I was simply there, making an omelette for a boy in the shower. And I hate to think it, but I don't know if I will ever be able to recapture that exact kind of thankful, bewildered joy--the sublime sense of being, for the first time ever--and being with another person who could be like me. The way entire planets moved because of the little mole on his cheek. I was young, and knew nothing, but I knew that suddenly I contained in myself a cosmos, and so did he, and we could see it inside each other when we opened our mouths.
I write all this because this is what Call Me by Your Name feels like to me--it cannons me back into the moment of realizing that it is possible for me to exist as a person, and that there are other people on this Earth who might exist in just that same way. That sense of discovery, shame and heartbreak and joy and terror all roiling into me at once. And I'm grateful to it for that--for spending two hours visualizing all the things I never had the courage to say. For extracting the cosmos from my mouth and letting me look at it for what it is.
(on iTunes and in theaters)


Well that got heavy. Alright, let's all take a collective deep breath, go eat a few of our feelings, and then get back into it.

Best Scenes of the Year

10. Welcome Back-Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Generally I haven't responded to the Guardians series like everyone else seem to, but I can't deny that the opening sequence of the latest one, in which a dancing baby Groot pulls focus (literally) from the massive action scene happening behind him is just the right, subversive note to get the ball rolling.
(You can kind of piece the scene together by watching this first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjPe9gcXtT4 and then this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeL1cg_-eqY&t=5s

9. Mall chase-Okja
What a bonkers, visually inventive movie this is--imagine the world we'd live in if every movie had even a tenth of the style and pep that Bong Joon-Ho brings to his anti-meat-industry romp (am I regretting not having this in the top 20? Maybe a little). Nowhere is that style more evident than in the film's breathless mid-film centerpiece, in which the titular super-pig flees through an underground mall and is subsequently rescued by the Animal Liberation Front, unleashing commercial chaos for everyone involved.
(This is just the very end of the scene, but it's on Netflix, so go watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh23BrGOk18)

8. Hedwig's Dance-Split
Shyamalan may be an overly confident hack most of the time, but credit where credit is due--he can *really* string together some compelling moments every now and again. Split was a definite return to form after two-ish decades of garbage, and the movie's shaggy weirdness and James McAvoy's and Anna Taylor-Joy's performance coalesce into one perfect moment of surreal horror-comedy, as one of the villain's personalities (the one convinced it's a 9 year old kid) dances for the girl he's kidnapped. It's arrestingly staged (those angular planes! The linear motion!) and ferociously performed--scary and surreal and strangely silly, all at once.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnFMS11g4fM

7. Don't Tell My Mom-Lady Bird
It feels reductive and wrong to reduce this perfect movie about women to one scene in which the lead character comforts a boy, but here we are. Maybe part of what makes this scene so moving for me is that it's one of the first times we see Lady Bird pushing her own problems out of the way for someone else's--when former boyfriend Danny loses it over how to come out to his parents, she glimpses, however briefly, a world larger and more alien than her own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdqP0xZunao

6. Love and other Holograms-Blade Runner 2049
This one earns its place for sheer fascination alone. As Joi--a sentient housekeeping/love/servant? program--maps herself onto the body of a prostitute so she can finally try to touch replicant K, I couldn't turn away. The eye-popping just-this-side-of-the-uncanny-valley, the music, the almost-but-not-quite fingers brushing through space: it's just mesmerizing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su6TrKgGNFk

5. Meet Pennywise, the Dancing Clown-It
Though maybe a little over-hyped for what it (heh) is, It was nevertheless a rare studio horror movie that succeeded both as a chamber piece about childhood under assault and a source of dead-under-the-skin jolts. And right from the get-go, It shows that it's not planning on pulling its gruesome punches. A lot of the credit here has to be given to Skarsgard, whose Pennywise is never scarier--or more charismatic--than when he's convincing a little boy to come play in the sewer. The way his voice changes at the end--"Bill's going to kill you" still manages to freak me out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAWVC71nzyA

4. No Man's Land-Wonder Woman
I'm a sucker for big moments that lean on their own iconography, and this moment from Wonder Woman--in which our titular ass-kicker proves why the phrase 'no man's land' is correct and not--has that in spades. I'm still not sold on how comfortable the movie is with having its anti-violence characters casually killing Germans (I think they mixed up WWI and WWII?), but I can't deny the raw cinematic joy this scene possesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlwHKphUU_Y

3. Mr. Perlman's Monologue-Call Me by Your Name
What can I write about this scene that hasn't already been said? A beautiful monologue, perfectly written and performed, the kind of support and open-mindedness that everyone dreams about getting from their parents, couched in its own examination of love, loss, and the things we give away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3T6kdwYDdo

2. The Sunken Place-Get Out
What Daniel Kaluuya accomplishes with his eyes alone would get this scene on the list, but all the elements swirling around his performance--that scraping teacup, Catherine Keener's tiny smile, the immediately iconic Sunken Place itself--illustrate in one fell swoop what makes Get Out an all-timer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBwVWrBk_uo

1. The Peach Scene-Call Me by Your Name
The film's most infamous scene, but I don't have it here for that reason ('hey, let's all watch Timotheé Chalamet have sex with fruit!'); it's here for what comes after--when Oliver sees what Elio has done, makes light of it, goes to eat the peach and--. Things for which there aren't words: the joy of finally acting on your desires and the shame of now being one of those people, the shame of doing the thing that you've been told will send you straight to hell, and the fire of finding someone who will be in that moment with you, who, when you hate yourself for wanting what you want, can stand next to you and love you for wanting exactly that. Points to Timotheé Chalamet for getting across all of that complexity in the space of a few moments, one strangled sob, followed by 'I don't want you to go.'
(This clip has the author of the book talking over it, but it's the only version on YouTube, so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BOgQlS9Uto)


Note: I normally try not to do ending scenes here, cuz spoilers, but know that the last seven minutes of Casting JonBenet and the last shot of Call Me by Your Name are also ones for the history books.


Aaaaaaand now:

The Worst Movies of the Year

I know, I know, maybe it sends the wrong message to end all this on a negative note, but you know what? There's a joy to recognizing that some things are garbage, to gleefully calling them out for all their glorious garbosity. Sometimes it's cathartic to share a little rage among friends. And hoo boy do I have some things to share with all of you.

5. Kong: Skull Island
Overblown, tone-deaf, bizarrely exoticizing in its attempts to refute the original's legacy of racism. Kong is two hours of sound and bloody fury, signifying that this whole 'every tentpole is a franchise waiting to die' movement needs to stop.

4. Alien: Covenant
Is it fair to rank any movie so low that has Michael Fassbender doing a gay penny whistle duet with his own copy? Maybe not, but man did I hate the experience of watching this joyless and dead-eyed movie. Everything that made the original movies special has been carefully sifted out and replaced with casual brutality and the very kind of corporate soullessness that keeps making problems for the people in these movies. Movies like this make me root for the xenomorph to get all of us in the end.

3. The Boss Baby
I honestly can't be sure that I didn't hallucinate this in a horrific fever dream. Baby violence! Fart jokes! Alec Baldwin as a baby in a suit! The fact that 'Boss Baby' is a character's ACTUAL NAME. What even is this candy-colored hate crime? How do we live in a world where it's ok to make this movie happen to children?

2. Downsizing
If Alexander Payne set out to make a two-and-a-half-hour illustration about what the road to hell is paved with (spoiler alert: it's whatever drugs he took while writing this movie!), then he succeeded. What a waste of a potentially interesting plot, and what a mind-bogglingly ill-fated last-minute genre turn. Hey, did you know this movie is about the apocalypse? Cuz I sure didn't, and I don't think the people who made the trailers (...or the movie, for that matter) did either. Extra points (nega points?) for having the most ill-advised romance sub-plot I've maybe ever seen in a movie. I will never get this time back.

1. Beauty and the Beast
I am honestly not sure I can write about this movie without breaking my keyboard. You know what we don't need? How about a soulless, ham-handed and inept Kidz Bop version of a classic that has nothing but dollar signs in its eyes? Ok, now that we've got that, what if we add a messy CG-eyesore of a design that had me wanting to rinse my eyes with lye? Oh wow, we've got that too? Ooh, what about some half-hearted 'musical' performances that make Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone look like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers? Wow, we've got that too? (Seriously, this movie made me hate Dan Stevens. DAN STEVENS, DAN goddamn "No, I'm going to kill you!" STEVENS. I didn't know that was possible. And kudos to Emma Watson for not sinking into drug-fueled misery after Hermione, but I don't know, maybe rethink some of your choices here) (to be fair, Luke Evans as Gaston was surprisingly good) (Kevin Kline can die in a fire though). And have we talked about that script yet? That scene where they compare their taste in Shakespeare ('Romeo and Juliet? Poppycock! Smart people like Hamlet!') is the kind of dialogue that only someone with 'who wuz William Shakspeers' in their search history could write. Oh and hey, if that weren't enough, I haven't even mentioned the ridiculous Le Fou gay baiting, that plays like 90s-era homophobic comedy, but this time I'm supposed to kiss Bill Condon's perfectly bleached ass for deigning to let Josh Gad flop around like a Liberace cos-player?
This movie is the worst. What a stupid, stupid movie. This movie alone proves that we as a species have nowhere left to go and have earned every bit of the nuclear hellfire that will eventually consume us all. And you know what? This movie's so bad that it's probably going to find a way to survive the nuclear apocalypse, just so that someone thousands of years from now can re-watch it and steer what's left of humanity back into extinction as atonement for their horrendous sins.


So there we have it! I'll try to do all my other lists--acting, directing, screenplays, crafts--within the next couple days, but we'll see how that goes! I'd love to finally get some closure for 2017 as a cinematic year, and would love even more if I could manage to do that before the Oscars (...which are on Sunday).

In the meantime--what'd I get wrong? Right? Let me know!