In interest of putting a face on some of these things, I've added some visuals to the lists. They should enlarge when you click on them, but I make no promises, as my technical skills are less than garbage.
Note: I didn't include pictures or videos for film editing or the sound categories, because I don'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 still love to do some year).
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. Crazy Rich Asians-The draw is right there in the title, and the film delivers, providing set-piece after set-piece of Dionysian excess that throws itself at you like a candy-striped privilege parade.
4. The Favourite-Rabbit hutch palatial fantasies, all oppressive tapestries and lye-soaked floors and eternal ramrod halls with no seeming end or beginning.
3. First Reformed-Am I totally bonkers for putting this exercise in absolute minimalism so high--are all those empty rooms that impressive? First Reformed needs to feel like the book of Revelations come to plague yellow life, and that would have been impossible without the festering wounds its characters are forced to inhabit.
2. Suspiria-A haunted kaleidoscope house of horrors--how can floors look this malevolent? Restaurants, cottages, walls lost in time, drifting helplessly from one supernova to another.
1. Black Panther-a dizzying and joyous anti-history whose technocratic window dressing never strays from the rigorous research the team did in designing a world based on actual sub-Saharan cultures.
Honorable mention: what's that on the horizon? It's THE ENTIRE CITY OF LONDON ON WHEELS in Mortal Engines
Costume Design
5. Mary Poppins Returns-like 70% of this nomination is for those jaw-dropping expressionist drawn costumes in the china bowl scene, but the rest of the costumes--all primary colors and sharp lines--are no slouch either.
3. A Simple Favor-Tearaway suits! Glass Shard Business Casual! Dorky mom vlogger skirts! Every outfit here is perfect.
2. Crazy Rich Asians-more oozing decadence, this time in fabrics that smell like cocoa butter and cash. And there's such a streak of casual wackiness here--everything Awkwafina and her on-screen family wears is totally nuts, and I'm here for it.
1. Black Panther-I'm sorry, is there any other right answer here? (Spoiler alert--no.) Costumes as electric and overflowing with creativity as they are essential to signaling the characters inside them--and all while pointing everyone's attention back to the cultures that inspired them. This is top tier legend stuff.
Honorable mention: I *hated* leaving The Favourite's architectural and sarcastic finery out of this category, but that's the way it shook out.
Visual Effects
(Both practical effects--e.g. things created in-camera--and CGI (animating, compositing, modeling, etc.)
5. Ready Player One-sure, I'm not always convinced by some of the more gumby-esque character moments, but the pristine created environments warrant mention (like the Shining scene below, which was done entirely in computer). ...That said, it's not necessarily a banner year in this category when this movie makes the top 5 (from what I've seen, at least).
4. Mission: Impossible - Fallout-for its completely unhinged commitment to practical effects: crashing helicopters, drowning villains, nauseous wire work, and everything in between.
3. Mary Poppins Returns-Like in costumes, this makes it in almost entirely due to that absolutely ravishing china bowl sequence, but who can deny the mid-air joyous singalong at the end either?
2. Ant-Man and the Wasp-thank goodness for Marvel movies with humor! Much of Ant-Man's success comes from its reality-breaking visuals that toggle effortlessly between the giant and the microscopic without upstaging the actors or plot.
1. Avengers: Infinity War-I may hate this movie, but I can recognize game. Thanos is a singular accomplishment, and the rest of meticulously rendered maelstrom ain't bad either.
Honorable mention: big ol' cities in Mortal Engines
Makeup and Hairstyling
3. Mary Queen of Scots-who doesn't love Margot Robbie fully poxed and powdered, or Saoirse Ronan with a period-inappropriate updo?
2. Black Panther-Killmonger's body testimonies, ceremonial war paints, little character details--all great work here.
1. Suspiria-Most of the press has been for turning Tilda Swinton into an old man (pictured below), and that's definitely great, but I'm much more excited by the world-ending horror gore (Olga's death scene! Viscera! Dislocating jaws! The stuff of nightmares) and the equally apocalyptic stage makeup (any given dancer from the 'Volk' number would be anyone's worst nightmare if encountered in a back alley).
Honorable mention: period western grossness in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
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. Widows-knife-edge tension and relentless pacing that knows just when to pause for breath, and just when to grind its knuckles a little deeper beneath your ribs.
4. Cold War-a quietly unsettling tempo that never allows you to settle comfortably into one timeline--note how scenes begin and end abruptly and unexpectedly, as even the sound struggles to track where (and when) it should be, and the little slivers of blackness that punctuate the entire affair.
3. Minding the Gap-decades of archival footage forged into a canny narrative that toys with audience expectations--the film's narrative arc refuses to reveal itself until the audience's tether to the movie they thought they were seeing has been well and truly severed.
2. BlacKkKlansman-a propulsive film that never struggles to juggle genres or tones, skipping lightly from comedy to horror without leaving its audience behind. Extra points for its casual violation of chronologies, in which 100 years of footage and history (Birth of a Nation to 2017) are skillfully interwoven.
1. A Star is Born-The kind of cutting that should guide a film about music (*cough*, Bohemian Rhapsody is an atrocity, *cough*), guiding our eyes without pulling them out, keeping the music engaging without letting it overwhelm the movie, and keeping an arguably overstuffed narrative as light on its feet as could be.
Honorable mention: The Favorite makes us fear confusion and accidents
Cinematography
(Essentially how pretty a movie is. Lighting, composition, camera choreography, etc.)
5. Suspiria-a movie that totally internalized the New German Cinema aesthetic and then vomited it out onto a pile of dirty needles.
4. First Man-equal parts grandeur and rattling intimacy, First Man captures the broad strokes of the impossible scope required to send a man to the moon, as well as the cover-your-eyes immediacy inherent to locking yourself into a rocket-propelled capsule.
3. A Star is Born-the loveliest lighting of the year? Floods of blues and purples and reds that write emotion in color.
2. Cold War-super tempting to put this one in the #1 slot, as its stark compositions that isolate its characters in various prisons are some of the most arresting images of the year...
1. Roma--..but it was ultimately impossible to deny Roma's sheer audacity and overwhelming beauty. Just look at this movie! What a crime that it was hardly released in movie theaters.
Honorable mention: once again, The Favourite is on the outside looking in, this time with its candlelit depravity and fish-eye observations
Original Score
5. Vice-While I mega-loathe this movie, Nicholas Britell's oppressive and damaged score is the only part of the whole affair that understands what it needs to be doing. It's queasy, unsettling music that keeps shifting under the movie's feet like rotten garbage, which is exactly the tone the movie needs.
4. Black Panther-a raucous mix of tribal drums, chanting, hip hop beats, and traditional string accompaniment, Ludwig Göransson's music works as emotional through-line, as killer hype music, and as the inspirational anthem every good hero needs.
3. If Beale Street Could Talk-Oh look, Nicholas Britell's back on the list! This time, its with a movie that wears its score like a winter coat--amplifying and intensifying what's there, but with a gentle warmth.
2. Suspiria-I'm sure you're getting sick of hearing about how great Suspiria is by now, so suffice to say that the music crawls under your skin and dies there--and is lovely while doing it.
(Note: for some reason, this soundtrack refuses to show up on Youtube, but this one piece still gives you a great taste of what you're in for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpULWBT1WEg)
1. Eighth Grade-I am beyond thrilled that a score as confrontational and over the top and out-and-out bonkers as this one made it into the movies in 2019--and in a movie about kids, no less! This music is a statement: on the ups and downs of adolescence, on the everyday apocalypses fought inside your head, and on the inherent ridiculousness on devaluing narratives about youth.
Honorable mention: the shrill and desperate cries of Annihilation (another really painful exclusion in a year full of great scores)
Sound Mixing
(Blending the four elements of movie sound--dialogue, ambient noise, sound effects, music--into one cohesive and compelling track.)
5. Roma-the Big World--everything you can't touch--and the Little World--everything you can--join hands and walk across a desert. In the distance, screams, but they don't mind, because they can't.
4. Ready Player One-I am now and have always been a sucker for well-choreographed aural chaos, and what was more chaotic this year than Ready Player One? That initial car chase sequence alone (the first trial) presents enough drum-banging insanity to get me through any given week.
3. A Quiet Place-In space, no one can hear you scream, but on Earth everything can, and every note you sing is a deadly crescendoing symphony of noise preparing to rip through the atmosphere.
2. Eighth Grade-This movie is like the inside of an eighth grader's head: it is LOUD. Levels cranked to punish your innermost self as the world imposes its own draconian order on the way you try to navigate the world.
1. First Man-Speaking of draconian symphonies--First Man conducts its own cacophonous miasma of shivering plates, yowling flames, and chattering teeth. Totally transporting work.
Honorable mention: the wonderfully thumpy fisticuffs in Mission: Impossible - Fallout
Sound Editing
(Creating the sound effects for a film--all the things that need to be added in post-production.)
5. Solo-Honestly, I'm just a serial nominator of Star Wars movies in this category, and as always, I can't turn down the beeping and the buzzing and all the other little flourishes needed to create distant galaxies.
4. Incredibles 2-it's a bit of an underwhelming movie, but the zip-bang Saturday Morning Cartooniness of it all is fed by all its sounds--think back to the malevolent hypnotic screens or Elastigirl's chipper separating motorcycle.
3. Annihilation-if the only sound in the entire movie were the sound the freaky mutant bear makes, then Annihilation would still deserve a spot here, but it also gets credit for the melancholic warbles of the alien world--all muted howls trying to impose themselves where they don't belong.
2. Avengers: Infinity War-the whispering hiss of Thanos' illusions, the pop rock incantations of Iron Man's vast menagerie of exploding toys, and the not insignificant joys attached to listening to Thanos rip apart an entire moon with his bare hand.
1. First Man-Copy and paste what I said above--all the details knit together to create such an immersive aural environment are completely staggering.
Honorable mention: underwater silliness in Aquaman
Original Song
5. "Ashes"-Deadpool 2-Yeah, like I was gonna pass up a massive and sweeping Celine Dion power ballad, even if the movie tries to ironically? Joke's on you, Deadpool, Celine is beyond irony.
4. "All the Stars"-Black Panther-an appropriately two-handed credits anthem from Pulitzer winner Kendrick Lamar--both ebullient and conflicted, questioning the idea of celebration on the heels of a seemingly triumphant narrative.
3. "Unmade"-Suspiria-Oh, you thought you were done with Suspiria? Well strap in, because here's another nomination for the uexpectedly elegiac and weeping piano setup for one of the film's most violent moments.
2. "Suspirium"-Suspiria-MORE SUSPIRIA. You will never escape. While "Unmade" is maybe more necessary to the narrative, how do I turn down this absolutely gorgeous ballad that sets the scene for the whole movie? (Real talk, why am I not re-watching this movie right this very instant.)
1. "Shallow"-A Star is Born-No surprises here. All of our lives our now forever divided into before-Shallow and after-Shallow, and before-Shallow has no meaning. Now everyone join me in yawping along with Gaga one more time before the oscars!
As an aside, how absolutely fantastic is this category? Each of these five is a totally essential part of your existence, even if you don't know it.
Honorable mention: grandiose and silly cowboy ruminations with "When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings" in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Well, that's the last of the lists for the year, if you can believe it (and I don't know about you, but I can definitely believe it). Sometime tomorrow (in the morning, I assume), I'll rush out some final Oscar predictions, but this here is our farewell to the 2018 cinematic year! Tomorrow night is Oscars New Years Eve, and come Monday we (...or just I) can finally look toward all the movie gifts that 2019 has in store for us.
For those playing along at home, here are the movies that showed up most frequently in these lists:
Suspiria-10
The Favourite-8
Black Panther-8
Roma-6
Can You Ever Forgive Me?-5
Eight Grade-5
A Star is Born-5
As for most wins, Suspiria walked away with four (Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Makeup), while The Favourite, Black Panther, First Man, and A Star is Born each claimed two apiece.
And there we have it! Here's to a wonderful year at the movies (and the chance to get to see them all)!
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