Final Oscar Predictions 2021: Drench Me, Lucifer!

 

If there's one thing we can agree about at the end of another COVID-extended awards season, it's that the upcoming Oscars telecast sounds dumb and bad, and the Oscars booting eight categories from the show to make room for *checks notes* Shaun White, Kelly Slater, and a twitter award that will probably go to Minimata (a Johnny Depp vehicle mostly known for having really intense online fans) is whole volcanic slurry of bad choices. But if we can agree on a second thing (maybe a dubious proposition), it's that having the Oscars at the end of March makes for a real slog to the finish line. Don't get me wrong, I love the Oscars more than anything else on this planet, and when a comet ends all human life, Don't Look Now-style, I only hope that someone thought to stuff Tilda Swinton's Oscar and a couple envelopes into a mini-rocket and send them to the moon or wherever in the universe they're most likely to be appreciated (Ganymede? No one and nothing named Ganymede could be neutral about televised awards shows.) That said, three full months into the new year is maybe a little late to delay the inevitable. Just let us watch Diane Warren mask her disappointment yet again and let the world get on with its cinematic life (celebrating how great a year it is to be a Channing Tatum fan)! 

But the Oscar year, such as it was, is coming to a fiery and infuriating end tomorrow night, and we might as well be there to stare at the ruins of Shaun White and attempt to pick up the pieces. I'm ready to move on to the new movie year, but not before I self-flagellate in front of a TV while eating Oscar-shaped foods, as is my destiny. 

While the extended season makes for some exhausted conversation (there was nothing more to say about Belfast six months ago, but somehow we've all had to persevere), it has made for some wacky narratives, throwing seemingly sure winners to the dirt and melting Oscar dreams into scrap in favor of what we all found to talk about in the past few weeks. If these Oscars were being held at the end of February, we'd be having very different conversations about the winners--some better and some worse, but universally less chaos, so it all evens out. There are three whole categories where absolutely any nominee could win, and the main race might upset nearly a century of statistics. I don't know if I can recall there ever being such last-minute instability, and I'm here for the insanity, if not necessarily for the winners it might enable. Still, we'll see how it goes--maybe I'm reading too heavily into the very small and echo-chambered world of awards blogging, everyone here just desperate to find something new to talk about, and things are much more predictable than I'm assuming. At any rate, I'm nothing if not well informed, as this year marks the second in a row (second ever, in fact) in which I've been able to see every nominee in every category. So now, I'll be able to let my personal opinions cloud my judgment in all 24 categories--oh happy day! Last year I wrote that I hoped that the widespread online availability of movies that Covid forced would continue, and it has, though that same availability might be low-key killing movie theaters forever. Mixed blessings. Still, I'm glad that the years in which I'd miss huge swaths of nominees because they simple wouldn't open anywhere with 1000 miles of me feel so far away.

So let's get to it! Do note that I predict more for fun than I do for accuracy. There are lots of sites online that can help you ace your Oscar pool, but I'm going to use my space to encourage the Academy to release the hounds.

Best Picture
The nominees: 
Belfast
CODA
Don't Look Up
Drive My Car
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story

Until about three weeks ago, the conversation wasn't about what would win here--it was about how many Oscars The Power of the Dog and Dune could split between them, with the latter being a forgone conclusion. And then a funny thing happened: Sundance favorite CODA started winning an untenable number of major awards (the Screen Actors Guild ensemble award, the Producers Guild award, the Writers Guild award, among others), and the momentum lurched into reverse, abandoning Power of the Dog and dragging everyone's favorite mildly gifted high school singer closer and closer to the podium. Is it safe to predict CODA? It's certainly the frontrunner in terms of narrative, momentum, and maybe even popularity, but Academy history is not in its favor. Generally, movies need to be nominated in directing, acting, writing, and editing to win best picture. Though it's possible to win while missing one of those categories (about a quarter of all best picture winners have), only one movie has ever won while only missing two (at least in the era after all of those categories were introduced). And even that movie was a Shakespeare adaptation, so it's lack of a writing nom comes with a huge asterisk (the Academy generally presuming that Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and requires no adaptation). Which means that CODA, missing both directing and editing nominations, faces a massive uphill battle. Add to that the fact that it would be the best picture winner with the fourth fewest nominations of all time--and all three with fewer nominations than it came within the first five years of Oscar history, when there were less than half the number of categories that are currently present. These two statistics together would make CODA's win entirely unprecedented--and yet I can't pretend that it's absolutely in control of the conversation. And the Academy's preferential balloting system (just getting #1 votes can't secure a victory, it needs widespread support and general love) probably favors CODA here. But then again, the Academy's much vaunted new international membership, responsible for upsets like Moonlight and Olivia Colman in recent years, probably favor Power of the Dog. 
Long story long, this will be a real nail-biter right to the end, and will probably feel surprising no matter what wins.

Will Win: CODA
Could Win: The Power of the Dog
Should Win: Drive My Car
Should Have Been Here: Days

Director
The nominees:
Paul Thomas Anderson-Licorice Pizza
Kenneth Branagh-Belfast
Jane Campion-The Power of the Dog
Ryusuke Hamaguchi-Drive My Car
Steven Spielberg-West Side Story

Far less intrigue here--almost unthinkable for Jane Campion to lose, given the film's popularity/industry respect, its obvious and showy formal control, and the fact that none of the other nominees has the narrative or momentum to upset her.

Will Win: Jane Campion-The Power of the Dog
Could Win: Paul Thomas Anderson-Licorice Pizza
Should Win: Jane Campion-The Power of the Dog
Should Have Been Here: Julia Ducourneau-Titane

Actress
The nominees:
Jessica Chastain-The Eyes of Tammy Fay
Olivia Colman-The Lost Daughter
Penelope Cruz-Parallel Mothers
Nicole Kidman-Being the Ricardos
Kristen Stewart-Spencer

The first category which anyone could win, so let's just go down the line. Chastain is the nominal frontrunner right now, having won the past couple awards, she's starring in the Academy's favorite genre for actors (the biopic), she has a makeup-aided transformation, and she's been working long and hard enough to claim a 'due' narrative. Colman is obviously beloved by the Academy (see her previous upset, and her not-a-given nomination for The Father last year), and she's stellar in a film that the Academy might be looking to reward. Cruz is similarly staggering, is hugely respected and also seems due (even though she's won already). Kidman was the frontrunner a couple months ago, and the Academy always struggles to turn down the chance to reward a famous person playing someone famous, but this probably feels like the least likely result. And finally dearest KStew, who was the frontrunner before Kidman, which means it's been long enough that voters have stopped being bored with her as a frontrunner and have started looking at the performance, which is fantastic--plus she is the only nominee other than Chastain not to have won before. But is all that enough to overcome the inexplicable anti-Stewart brigade? 
Simply put, this is probably Chastain's to lose, but Cruz has been coming on as a dark threat, and Colman and Stewart both have clear shots at victory. It's everyone's favorite kind of Oscar bloodbath!

Will Win: Kristen Stewart-Spencer (maybe voting with my heart)
Could Win: Penelope Cruz-Parallel Mothers
Should Win: Penelope Cruz-Parallel Mothers
Should Have Been Here: Renate Reinsve-The Worst Person in the World

Actor
The nominees:
Javier Bardem-Being the Ricardos
Benedict Cumberbatch-The Power of the Dog
Andrew Garfield-Tick Tick Boom
Will Smith-King Richard
Denzel Washington-The Tragedy of Macbeth

Far less intrigue here--Smith has been way out in front since the beginning, and is just the kind of movie star the Academy loves to award when given the chance, and he's giving just the big biopic-y performance the Academy loves to see. If The Power of the Dog had more staying power, I'd argue that Cumberbatch had a stronger chance, but I don't see it. Ditto Garfield/Tick Tick Boom.

Will Win: Will Smith-King Richard
Could Win: Benedict Cumberbatch-The Power of the Dog
Should Win: Benedict Cumberbatch-The Power of the Dog
Should Have Been Here: Hidetoshi Nishijima-Drive My Car

Supporting Actress
The nominees:
Jessie Buckley-The Lost Daughter
Ariana DeBose-West Side Story
Judi Dench-Belfast
Kirsten Dunst-The Power of the Dog
Aunjanue Ellis-King Richard

You'll find a similar argument in almost every acting category--a strong frontrunner, a Power of the Dog star that probably can't go the distance, and not much to hold your breath over. Here, it's DeBose playing Anita--a role that wins almost everyone who plays it major award hardware of some kind. I've heard whispers of an Ellis upset, and it could be true if King Richard goes harder than we expect, but I don't know that I buy it.

Will Win: Ariana DeBose-West Side Story
Could Win: Aunjanue Ellis-King Richard
Should Win: Kirsten Dunst-The Power of the Dog
Should Have Been Here: Martha Plimpton-Mass

Supporting Actor
The nominees:
Ciaran Hinds-Belfast
Troy Kotsur-CODA
Jesse Plemons-The Power of the Dog
JK Simmons-Being the Ricardos
Kodi Smit-McPhee-The Power of the Dog

Earlier in the year, this looked a duel to the death between Kotsur and Smit-McPhee, but CODA's emergent Oscar juggernaut status means that Kotsur's going to body his opponent, acceptance speech in hand.

Will Win: Troy Kotsur-CODA
Could Win: Kodi Smit-McPhee-The Power of the Dog
Should Win: Troy Kotsur-CODA
Should Have Been Here: Vincent Lindon-Titane

Original Screenplay
The nominees:
Belfast
Don't Look Up
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
The Worst Person in the World

Another category that's completely open. Belfast feels like the most traditional winner, and this is the easiest place to honor one of the most nominated movies of the year as well as 8-time Oscar nominee Kenneth Branagh. Don't Look Up could easily benefit from the Academy's inexplicable Adam McKay love, and stands out against the other nominees as a wacky sci-fi satire. It's tough to gauge King Richard's momentum, given the constant CODA/Power of the Dog slugging match, but it's clearly a popular film, and could theoretically triumph here. I'm tempted to give it to Paul Thomas Anderson and Licorice Pizza, as Anderson is hugely respected, is squarely in his loved-by-the-Academy phase, and has never won an Oscar. And there seems to be tons of chatter online about The Worst Person in the World upsetting here, but it's hard to tell if that's a legitimate possibility or if it's just the kind of thing we chat about when we're bored with a long Oscar season.

Will Win: Licorice Pizza
Could Win: Belfast
Should Win: Licorice Pizza
Should Have Been Here: Bergman Island

Adapted Screenplay
The nominees:
CODA
Drive My Car
Dune
The Lost Daughter
Drive My Car

Probably a solid bellwether for what wins best picture. I think Power could lose this and still take picture, but I don't know if CODA can lose here and still take picture--it needs to be strong enough to win every category it's in if it's going to take the main prize. That said, there's more than a small possibility that The Lost Daughter wins this instead and leaves us all scratching our heads.

Will Win: CODA
Could Win: The Power of the Dog
Should Win: The Power of the Dog
Should Have Been Here: West Side Story

Production Design
The nominees:
Dune
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story

Moving into the crafts categories we'll have the same question basically everywhere: can ________ beat Dune? Here, at least, I think the answer is no. Nightmare Alley might put up a good fight, but I think Dune's massive and brutal worldbuilding will be too much to pass up.

Will Win: Dune
Could Win: Nightmare Alley
Should Win: Dune
Should Have Been Here: The French Dispatch

Costume Design
The nominees:
Cruella
Cyrano
Dune
Nightmare Alley
West Side Story

Hard to imagine that Cruella's elaborate wacky fashions will lose here, but could theoretically fall to a Dune sweep. Still, if Dune loses any craft Oscar, I'd bet on it being this one.

Will Win: Cruella
Could Win: Dune
Should Win: Dune
Should Have Been Here: The Green Knight

Visual Effects
The nominees:
Dune
Free Guy
No Time to Die
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Spider-Man: No Way Home

No way Dune loses here.

Will Win: Dune
Could Win: Spider-Man: No Way Home
Should Win: Dune
Should Have Been Here: Godzilla vs. Kong

Makeup and Hairstyling
The nominees:
Coming 2 America
Cruella
Dune
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
House of Gucci

The Academy has been trending toward prosthetic-heavy biopic transformations of late, which bodes well for The Eyes of Tammi Faye, as does Jessica Chastain's possible Oscar (this award also gets paired with best actress with some frequency). If Dune wins this, you can expect a significant Dune sweep. Look out for Cruella, I suppose, but in a pretty tenuous and goofy kind of way.

Will Win: The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Could Win: Dune
Should Win: Dune
Should Have Been Here: Titane

Film Editing
The nominees:
Don't Look Up
Dune
King Richard
The Power of the Dog
Tick Tick Boom

The last totally open category--and it's wild that it's this one, given how non-adventurous the category normally is, and how often it's linked with best picture. Don't Look Up has the exact kind of jangly and frenetic rhythm that plays as 'best' or 'most' editing, which gibes it a leg up. Dune is the kind of action film/genre epic that frequently gets rewarded here, but misses just as often. King Richard recently won the American Cinema Editors award, and might have way more momentum than we expect--if it wins here, look for it to show up elsewhere. The Power of the Dog feels like the obvious call, given it's most likely to win best picture, but it just doesn't feel like a traditional editing winner (but if it wins here, you can pretty much take to the bank that it's winning best picture). Finally, Tick Tick Boom, the only nominee that isn't also up for best picture. It's got a lot of popularity, and its editing might also be the flashiest (give or take Don't Look Up). A fascinating and unpredictable category, and it's a shame and an insult that the Academy will be presenting it on twitter before the ceremony instead of during the live show. On the very off chance that the producer of the Oscars telecast reads my blog, I hope you feel terrible about yourself. Exiling these categories is so, so stupid, and goes against everything that the Oscars are supposed to be. Aaaaghggh it makes me want to rage-vomit.

Will Win: Tick Tick Boom (my no guts no glory pick)
Could Win: Dune
Should Win: The Power of the Dog
Should Have Been Here: Zola

Cinematography
The nominees:
Dune
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story

Dune's desert bonanza against The Power of the Dog's Montana hellscape. This probably goes to Dune (the Academy does love a big cgi eye-popper in this category), but my fingers are crossed for Dog's Ari Wegner, who, if she wins, will become the first woman to win this category, which is the last category that no woman has ever won.

Will Win: Dune
Could Win: The Power of the Dog
Should Win: The Power of the Dog
Should Have Been Here: Days

Original Score
The nominees:
Don't Look Up
Dune
Encanto
Parallel Mothers
The Power of the Dog

a clear three-way race between the electronic weirdness of Dune, the angry strings of Power of the Dog, and the warmth of Encanto. Probably comes down to which of the three films are most popular, which is anyone's guess. I may pick Power of the Dog here--not because I necessarily think it's got the best chance of winning, but if I don't, then I'm predicting that Power wins only one of its twelve nominations (and that one is director), which just doesn't feel right.

Will Win: The Power of the Dog
Could Win: Dune
Should Win: The Power of the Dog
Should Have Been Here: Luca

Sound
The nominees:
Belfast
Dune
No Time to Die
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story

Another easy Dune victory. If West Side Story were more of a force, I'd say it had a chance, but it's been quietly sinking on the awards circuit pretty much since it released.

Will Win: Dune
Could Win: West Side Story
Should Win: Dune
Should Have Been Here: Titane

Original Song
The nominees: 
"Be Alive"-King Richard
"Dos Oruguitas"-Encanto
"Down to Joy"-Belfast
"No Time to Die"-No Time to Die
"Somehow You Do"-Four Good Days

Probably a photo finish between Billie Eilish/No Time to Die and Lin-Manuel Miranda/Encanto, which is just the competition we expected to see at the Oscars. If Miranda wins this, he'll complete his EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony). Kind of weird to count out Beyoncé/Be Alive, but I can't imagine her pulling it out.

Will Win: "Dos Oruguitas"-Encanto
Could Win: "No Time to Die"-No Time to Die
Should Win: "Down to Joy"-Belfast (although Van Morrison is an anti-vax pile of garbage)
Should Have Been Here: "Gales of Song"-Belle

Animated Film
The nominees:
Flee
Encanto
Luca
The Mitchells vs. The Machines
Raya and the Last Dragan

Easy to assume that it's Encanto's to lose--watch how it performs in the music categories to see if Mitchells or Flee have a chance to upset.

Will Win: Encanto
Could Win: The Mitchells vs. The Machines
Should Win: Flee
Should Have Been Here: Belle

International Film
The nominees:
Drive My Car-Japan
Flee-Denmark
The Hand of God-Italy
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom-Bhutan
The Worst Person in the World-Norway

No international film ever nominated for best picture has lost this award (since the award's inception), so Drive My Car probably has this in the bag. I've heard tons about a Worst Person upset here too, but I am not sure if that's a thing to expect or if this movie has some fans in the Oscar blogging world that are trying to manifest the upset into reality.

Will Win: Drive My Car
Could Win: The Worst Person in the World
Should Win: Drive My Car
Should Have Been Here: Titane

Documentary Feature
The nominees: 
Ascension
Attica
Flee
Summer of Soul
Writing with Fire

Summer of Soul has all the momentum going in, and is your probable winner, particularly given that Ascension, Attica, and Writing with Fire already feel like also-rans. The only question is whether Flee, a clearly beloved film that was the first to score nominations in all three 'specialty' categories, can convert any of those nominations to a win. Here feels like the only possibility--no way it muscles past Drive My Car/Worst Person in international film or past Encanto and Mitchells in Animated, but being the clear alternate to Summer of Soul might work in its favor.

Will Win: Summer of Soul
Could Win: Flee
Should Win: Flee
Should Have Been Here: Abastain (I don't watch nearly enough documentaries to pick something)

And that's that! I've got Dune as the biggest winner of the night with four statues, but even that feels like a fairly slight number. Honestly, I can't say I'm too confident about most of these, but that's where the fun comes in! Catch my face tomorrow night, a silent and horrified grimace while all my least-favorite movies march to the stage. (Three Oscars for CODA! Five Oscars for Belfast! Two for Lucifer, to whom the Academy has clearly handed the reins!) Whatever happens, it's sure to be both atrocious and remarkable.

Best of 2021, Part 3: Craft Categories

 During summer 2020, like most people, I was looking for a new and healthy hobby. My sister recommended an at-home workout channel, and I was like great, this is who I'm going to be now! I'm going to do multiple at-home fitness routines every day! And I did--for about five weeks. And then I skipped a day, and because of how my brain is, I knew then that I could never do another at-home workout, and I never did. Cut to summer 2021 and a similar resolution: I'm going to go on walks at least five times a week! And I did for three whole months, and it was great, but then I only went once for a whole week, and then knew that casual walks had to be dead to me forever.

Point is, I'm really good at doing things in streaks, but the second the streak gets broken, it's all over--which will hopefully shed a little light into why I'm writing this last post like two weeks after the others. Every year (for over a decade!), I write these posts in three consecutive days--and then I missed a day, and because my brain is absolute garbage, my first thought was 'ok, well that was fun, guess I can't ever write about movies again.' Now, I'm gonna power through that impulse (much to the unfettered joy of everyone reading, obviously), and I'll do my best to make it seem as though I were writing this two weeks ago, but fair warning! I am a shriveled and empty version of my former self, and I have to assume that my silly metaphoring skills will follow suit.

Of course, the world in the past few weeks has been enough to shrivel and empty most things, and has contributed in some small way to me putting these off. Not to claim that me and my blog are the war in Ukraine's biggest and most important victims, or that I've been effected at all--just that it might have felt a little weird to post a silly movie list on the day the war was declared, and that helped delay me to the point where the delay itself became a deterrent. Anyway.

And all of this to delay my favorite lists--the crafts categories! All of the huge and impactful contributions without which movies would cease to exist but are most likely to be ignored when it's time to give credit for making a movie (I'm looking directly at you, Oscars, who have announced that 8 of their awards--all 'smaller' categories--will be awarded before the telecast starts, and the winners might possibly be announced on Twitter; this is definitely the worst thing happening in the world right now). But I like, love, and adore celebrating all the design elements that breathe life into a movie. You could not pay me $100 million to write 500 nice words about Christopher Nolan, but I would pay you $100 million to write and publish 50,000 nice words about sound effects. A movie's crafts are important--no movie moment you have ever loved would have been possible without committed and enthusiastic production designers, costumers, editors, composers, foley artists, sound mixers, makeup artists, etc.--so let's spend a little time giving thanks!

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 doesn't waste either my time or yours, and I don't have the resources to make audio clips for the sound categories (even though literally nothing would make me happier).

Production Design

5. West Side Story-tough to stack up against the original's riot of color, but the new West Side more than holds its own with an expanded sense of place and time, pushing the musical into a realistic cityscape without sacrificing its flights of fancy.

4. The Power of the Dog-cavernous and unlivable interiors and the tiny buildings that begrudgingly house them, rendered wobbly and insecure by the sheer scale of the worlds around and inside them.

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3. Nightmare Alley-Enough lurid and bloodthirst carnival spaces and malevolent art deco monstrosities to bite the head off a chicken and come back for seconds.

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2. The French Dispatch-It's too easy--even unfair--to expect and demand meticulously realized miniature worlds from a Wes Anderson movie, but they keep providing, so here we are. And what's not to love or be astounded by in this woozy easter basket rendition of France, each story with its own color palette and sensibility, and the central town itself a towering and derelict creature.

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1. Dune-the obvious choice, but the easy one, with Villeneuve's brutalist romp a sparsely populated hellscape of empty pyramids, lumbering sky barges, and intricate, lived-in technologies setting the foundation for one of the more indelible sci-fi spectacles in recent memory.

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Honorable mention: a big year for minimalist sets this year with The Tragedy of Macbeth's Caligari-ass pointed chambers making a strong showing as well

Costume Design

5. Spencer-combining recreations of actual outfits with stifled re-imaginings to create the perfect set of evening wear to swallow pearls, see ghosts, and flirt with Sally Hawkins in

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4. The Harder They Fall-an array of immaculate, rough and ready duds perfect for even the busiest of gunslingers. I'll always go to bat for people who put real thought into the outfit they plan to wear whilst robbing a train.

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3. Cruella-an all-out couture assault on the senses, massive and structured dresses flying by the camera a mile in a minute, like architectural models in a hurricane. Extra points, and my undying love, for the garbage-truck dress that reveals that its train is so big that it covers the whole block as the characters drive away.

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2. Dune-A one-stop shop for hot looks to serve while dying in the desert. Much of the intention (rightly) goes to Jessica's arrival-to-Arrakis dress, or the wilting woven revelries of the bene gesserit, or the upscale fishbowl hats of the imperial dignitaries, but so much care and detail went into creating the armor and stillsuits, all gorgeous and believably functional pieces in their own right.

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5. The Green Knight-finally answers one of cinema's most burning questions: what would it look like if everyone in the Middle Ages dressed like fragile endangered birds? The answer was worth the wait, with The Green Knight's precarious collars, headwear like landscapes, and aggressive slashes of color against a gray world providing some of the year's most memorable visuals in a movie already stuffed with indelible images.

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Honorable mention: I hate leaving out the primary color African Queen cosplay in Jungle Cruise.

Visual Effects

5. Eternals-Ok, so maybe this is partly here because Richard Madden is the movie's (and maybe the world's) best special effect, but I admired how Eternals incorporated its monster mayhem and superhero antics into a more gently lit and outdoorsy environment than the usual marvel movie.

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4. The Tomorrow War-the scale of the alien invasion is so stupid (in the best way) and immaculately rendered, and I love the goopy detail that each alien gets in close-up, all the viscera and spit and generally unpleasant liquids that punctuate how not chill it is to get dropped into the future to get eaten be aliens.

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3. No Time to Die-the Bond franchise has been almost single-handedly (with Christopher Nolan and whatever staggering and impressive tomfoolery Tom Cruise is doing in front of a camera) been carrying the torch for practical effects into the 21st century, seamlessly incorporating in-camera stunts and live effects and digital augmentation, and No Time to Die is another stellar entry into this tradition.

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2. Godzilla vs. Kong-Look, no force of god(zilla) or man is strong enough to keep me from loving these movies, or applauding the skill it takes to make a city-sized radioactive lizard take a punch. Somebody had to wake up that morning like 'what do godzilla jaw physics look like when they're hit be a fist the size of Luxembourg,' and the fact that those people haven't won a Nobel is a sin.

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1. Dune-this post is dangerously close to becoming a total Dune love-in, but what can I do? It's hardly my favorite movie of the year, but it's obvious how well-crafted, ambitious, and successful it is.

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Makeup and Hairstyling

5. The Green Knight-predominantly for the titular knight's intense dermatological situation, but also for Dev Patel's increasing filthiness, the grimy and well-inhabited dirt of characters on the road, and for Alicia Vikander's fancy noble hair (no excuses for her moppet peasant wig though).

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4. Zola-enough big hair and smoky eyes for all manner of Florida shenanigans. Big, dramatic, and silly looks, all of which swell and wilt as the story unfolds.

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3. Dune-while we are all impatient to celebrate transforming Stellan Skarsgaard into an engorged and dying testicle, it's also worth tossing a few appreciative claps toward all the pale and vaguely unsettled Harkonnens, as well as Lady Jessica's always salon-ready hair choices.

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2. Halloween Kills-I hate this movie as much as (or probably more than) the next guy, but I can't deny that its ridiculousness was supported by stellar and eye-popping gore effects. Mounting violence at this level must have been a gargantuan task, and this makeup team was up for it, even if the movie didn't earn their incomparable talents.

(no image for this one, as there aren't a ton of stills of the kills in this movie, and youtube's also somewhat lacking. Still, go watch the movie, if you want to see some great splatter effects/were hoping to watch a bad movie tonight.)

1. Titane-an absolute showcase for everything that movie makeup can achieve: the ridiculous sleazy glamour of the opening scenes, the main character's increasingly horrific physical transformations, and immaculately gross gore effects. Just a total masterclass of makeup as a narrative device.

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Honorable mention: intricate skyscraper hair designs and transformative prosthetics in Coming 2 America

Film Editing

5. The Power of the Dog-exceptionally patient, allowing big moments to sidle quietly into the movie and then leave with just as much fanfare. Trust the audience not to need a permanent marker, and is content to plod forward like hoofbeats.

4. Summer of Soul-crafts both a compelling narrative retelling and a larger cultural/historical structure out of untold hundreds of hours of archive footage. The concert footage is cut together propulsively, and the non-music elements meld seamlessly with the performances.

3. Moffie-vindictive and monotonous rhythms, a treadmill being dragged out further and further into the ocean.  A knifepoint balance of lyrical and furious, the film tipping into one or the other based on when the edit decides to breathe.

2. Titane-If action movies and musicals are the hardest genre to edit, then surely this action-horror-musical-family drama gets all the difficulty points in the world. Titane is pulsing but never frenetic, and quiet without ever relaxing. 

1. Zola-fired off with the same intensity as a breathless twitter thread and occupying a space as big and as small as a single phone speaking to the entire world.

Honorable mention: making musical numbers fly in West Side Story

Cinematography

5. Moffie-like being trapped under a giant yellow-green dome, the dappled light gently strewn across your shoulders pleasant enough, at least until you suffocate.

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4. This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection-a shocking array of saturated blues and blacks to Moffie's summer array, This Is Not a Burial... soaks its characters in shadows and watercolors.

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3. The Power of the Dog-the power of the American west (or New Zealand) gets strangled and slid under a road grader, stretching its images into a looming and inescapable alien tableau, with nothing but the skies and cigarette for company.

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2. The French Dispatch-a never-ending array of swiss watch zoetropes, little self-contained boxes lined up. The framing, colors, lighting, and motion all more or less flawless. It's been tough to capture with a single image or gif, but the in the context of the movie, it's almost overwhelming how gorgeous things are.

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1. Days-the film's central aesthetic conceit--one unbroken and unmoving shot for each scene--couldn't work without spectacular cinematography, and Days does way more than just work. That the camera could capture such constantly arresting and beautiful images while still narrating the story so eloquently within the one shot constrains is something of a minor miracle.

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Honorable mention: painterly compositions and sharp contrasts in The Green Knight

Original Score

5. Spencer-equal parts harpsichord, Vivaldi, free jazz, and sheer insanity, Johnny Greenwood's interpretation of the sounds inside Diana's head--abstract, ambient, sharpening to some melodic point before falling into screams--shapes an already ugly mood to create something alien.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JvCNCjQGTI

(Ok, just imagine the next three movies in a three-way tie. I kept changing the order they were in every single time I tried to write an entry. Really, what a great year for this category.)

4. The Harder They Fall-a full-throated amalgam of traditional western sounds, spirituals, and gorgeous orchestrations--music to play while looking in your rearview mirror one last time, but also while hitting Quentin Tarantino with a stick.

((this link leads to the full soundtrack, instead of one track, but it'll start in a good place)

3. Luca-exactly what it sounds like in your head the moment you decide to act on some dizzy impulse that will send you careening towards something you always dreamed of but were always too afraid to reach for. Just excellent, movie-defining stuff. There's a moment in the track below about fifty seconds in where some hard piano chords chime in, followed by a drumline, that makes me tear up a little, just for how big, bold, and innocent it sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLeChl46bHE

2. Don't Look Up-an absolutely bonkers and unhinged effort, snazzy and sarcastic in one moment (god do I admire how easily Nicholas Britell makes music sound sarcastic) before pitching into anger, or silliness, or actual sadness. Just about any moment that lands in this movie lands because it's got this score backing it up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epwGOIPxSz0

1. The Power of the Dog-astonishing in every way, like the land itself throwing up and spewing forth and eon's worth of resentment and shame. Maddening and cursed and totally essential--the kind of music that elevates the movie itself. Consider the rage and ugliness of They Were Mine, the nausea in Paper Flowers or the extremely tentative loveliness in West Alone. Just great stuff.

Honorable mention: wacky medieval choirs in The Green Knight

Sound Mixing

5. Zola-self-contained worlds--inside your head or your phone--made to rub up against the chaos inherent to making new friends and/or being in Florida. Somehow manages to both under- and over-exaggerate every moment, in the best sense.

4. The Tragedy of Macbeth-life inside a dead giant's sternum, every thought echoing for a thousand miles. Has the courage to be both quiet and exceptionally weird.

3. Dune-another remarkably quiet movie, considering it's largely about explosions and giant space bugs. Silence becomes Dune's secret weapon, brooding pregnant pauses punctuated by moments of staccato shouts.

2. Moffie-the inescapable rhythms of the plain, the water, the camp, the sky--a hundred external voices whispering into the night, offering a hundred ways to define the movie except what the main character wants to let out of his head.

1. Titane-for the stentorian and jagged music sequences alone, but also for way fire feels soft and waiting alone in a room feels loud.

Honorable mention: big ol monster battles made aurally legible in Godzilla vs. Kong

Sound Editing

5. Titane-for the sound of that stool finding its forever home, for the baby-sized tonka truck voices and the squelchy sounds they make on their, uh, way out, and for the wet, hungry slaps of skin against skin--in a slap, a dance, a hug, whatever.

4. The Tomorrow War-aliens like a washing machine full of broken glass, futuristic combat, and the throaty growl of begrudgingly traveling through time.

3. Godzilla vs. Kong-trashing multiple cities and a navy fleet requires a whole symphony of giddy destruction, which this movie provides in abundance. Bonus points for the final villain's analog hums, and for making Godzilla the shriek-y champion he needs to be.

2. The Green Knight-listen to Dev Patel decomposing in real time! Chopped heads! Giant footsteps! Tragic medieval trudging! Barry Koeghan beating people up! A bounty of silly sounds given wildly specific voices.

1. Dune-I swear this is the last of the Dune love (...he says, with one category to go), but how could I deny its brittle dragonfly-winged vehicles, its apocalyptic hellfire battle, the thumping cataclysms brought by the sand worms, or that world-ending hiss that Oscar Isaac's shiny new poison tooth makes? 

Honorable mention: animated grotesqueries abound in The Spine of Night

Original Song

5. "Second Nature"-Don't Look Up-really going all in on the Don't Look Up music, but who doesn't want to die horribly while listening to Bon Iver?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrVxcQp0SR0

4. "U"-Belle-Belle's soundtrack slaps so hard and I don't care who knows it. This song, the film's opener, which the lead character sings while riding a massive, speaker-adorned whale through an apparently endless virtual world, certainly gives you some idea what kind of space you're going to live in for the next couple hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3V4sAXUJ-g

3. "We Don't Talk About Bruno"-Encanto-it's probably cliché at this point to talk about Bruno, but I am nothing if not suggestable, and the crowd has won me over. But so has the song--it's catchy, but its so well-constructed, folding in and out of itself, each mini-section getting its own musical voice before everything comes together in the big finale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IFD4ozm1DA

2. "Someone to Say"-Cyrano-famously, the song that made me give a shit about Cyrano. I had no enthusiasm for this movie, and then I saw the trailer, which is largely backed by this song, and then I was like oh man, would I die for Cyrano? Now that I've seen the movie, the answer is no, but I still love this lilting and wistful ballad about the gap between what love is supposed to be like and what you might have to settle with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq8I6pi7-9E

1. "Gales of Song"-Belle-like it was going to be anything but the protagonist's big 'finding my voice' song from my favorite wacky anime musical this year? A lot rids on this song--we have to get why the entire world is apparently in love with this bright pink fantasy--and it totally works. The quiet build into a huge and percussive chorus are still enough to make me run around punching the air in a show of support.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atPenPe6IhA

Honorable mention: a bubbly way to exit the theater (or for Netflix to cut off) with "On My Way" from The Mitchells vs. The Machines

And that's it for year-end lists--delivered a few weeks late, and with a little less energy than normal, but it's here! You're not entirely done with me yet, as I'll be back in a couple weeks to post my final Oscar predictions, but that's it for long weepy entries about movies (at least until next year). 

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

The Power of the Dog-10

Titane-9

Drive My Car-6

Dune-6

This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection-5

As for wins, it was a spread the love kind of year. Drive My Car, Titane, and Dune tied for the most wins at three apiece (Picture/Actor/Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor/Makeup/Sound Mixing, and Production Design/Visual Effects/Sound Editing, respectively). 

So that's it! As always, thanks much for reading!

Best of 2021, Part 2: Acting, Directing, Screenplays

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Probably the biggest tragedy of my life, and arguably the worst tragedy facing the nation in this trying time, is that I don't really know how to write about acting, directing, and writing. And the second biggest tragedy for me and the continental United States is that I've felt deeply compelled to remind you all of this for a decade and a half, whenever I'm tasked with stringing together a few engaging words about those very things. It's a pickle and a half, but it's my sworn duty to go ahead and eat at least half of that pickle. You don't have to call me a hero; it's enough to know that you're thinking it.

So here's the deal: I have already lost sleep giddily planning what I want to tell you about The Power of the Dog's jangly in glass-filled score, or big dumb fun space prosthetics in Space Sweepers, or why The Green Knight's costumes are absolutely essential for the survival of this (and every) species, and if me losing my shit over film crafts sounds like fun, come back tomorrow and I can guarantee you a metric truckload of lost shit. For now, however, rather than trying to get too in-depth, I'm just going to present my top 5 in each of the acting, writing, and directing categories, with some quick thoughts about the category in general. Which means that, compared to yesterday's truly punishing post, today's might only take you a few minutes to read, and I might not even have to sit, weeping, with my hands in the freezer afterward! Dreams really do come true. So let's get to it! Wild horses couldn't stop me from finishing these posts, but they'll certainly try--they're already on the doorstep, and I don't know how much longer I've got until they get in, so I'll go ahead and get started.

Note: I've scattered a few youtube clips of the performances throughout. No rhyme or reason, just whatever I felt like showing off, whenever I felt like doing it.

Best Actress
5. Mary Twala-This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection
4. Renate Reinsve-The Worst Person in the World
3. Kristen Stewart-Spencer
2. Olivia Colman-The Lost Daughter
1. Penelope Cruz-Parallel Mothers

Honorable mention: Isabelle Fuhrmann-The Novice

I love Twala's dogged confidence and anger as well as Reinsve's constantly shifting sense of place and self, like she couldn't settle on a life if she tried. (I really wanted to find a clip for Mary Twala, but there's nothing at all, so here's a trailer, as this movie deserves a bigger audience--and contrary to what the trailer wants you to think, it's not a horror movie). And my girl K-Stew deserves a special shoutout--she's been great for a long time, but the bird-boned alien on a stage that she makes out of Diana is really special. Still, this category was always a death match between the final two, with Olivia Colman's inside-voice tornado of a complicated mother barely getting edged out by Cruz's even intricately detailed mother possessed by the forces of history (or maybe just by herself). Still, this is such a stellar category: if I were only picking 5 performances from the entire year (rather than 20), three of them would probably come from here.

Best Actor
5. Jim Cummings-The Beta Test
4. Udo Kier-Swan Song
3. Benedict Cumberbatch-The Power of the Dog
2. Simon Rex-Red Rocket
1. Hidetoshi Nishijima-Drive My Car

Honorable mention: Nicolas Cage-Pig

A vaguely underpopulated category this year, at least for me, but that doesn't mean there aren't riches to be found, from Jim Cummings--arguably the best there is at high-speed mental breakdown monologues-- Udo Kier, who gets in on sheer star power and gumption alone, throwing himself at long stretches of dialogue-free work, doing drag on a dime, and fighting with Jennifer Coolidge with equal abandon. And I'll always have room in my heart for Benedict Cumberbatch's Bronco-loving, sex-rag rubbing mess of a man in Power of the Dog. Simon Rex would make a great #1 choice--his giddy amorality, the way his eyes light up when he's thinking about himself, the breakneck pace of literally every single line he says. But ultimately I stuck with Nishijima's spells of quiet, the way he delivers Uncle Vanya lines 100 times over, and absolutely for the world-shattering ending of a scene I wrote about yesterday.

Supporting Actress
5. Kirsten Dunst-The Power of the Dog
4. Dakota Johnson-The Lost Daughter
3. Harriet Sansom Harris-Licorice Pizza
2. Park Yoo-rim-Drive My Car
1. Martha Plimpton-Mass

Honorable mention: Anne Dowd-Mass

100% the most difficult category for me to decide on--more than half of that lineup I didn't even have in my top 10 five minutes ago,  but here we are. I think my dilemma stems from a huge list of great contenders (my shortlist has 31 performances on it) and a lack of the kind of head-over-heels love that I've got for performances in other categories this year. Still, who am I to deny the continued (and presumably eternal rise) of Dakota Johnson, for whom I will stan until the day she seals me in the sarcophagus of her choice, and the same goes for Kirsten Dunst, whose frozen mask of mortification and despair during the dinner party piano scene provides some of the best-acted moments of the year. Also thrilled to offer a spot to Harriet Sansom Harris--while everyone was throwing accolades at Bradley Cooper for his short but punchy work, Harris was lurking behind him with her lips bared and a twinkle in her eye. It's tempting to go whole hog for Drive My Car, and for Park Yoo-rim's contributions to that scene I keep going on about--and the subtle grace and warmth she brings to an otherwise cool movie are certainly trophy. But I'll stick with Martha Plimpton to the end, whose gargantuan final monologue hits like a truck, but who resonates just as strongly in her moments of listening and silence (of which she has many), staring like she's carving a book into the walls with her eyes.

Supporting Actor
5. Troy Kotsur-CODA
4. Chaske Spencer-Wild Indian
3. Kodi Smit-McPhee-The Power of the Dog
2. Jeffrey Wright-The French Dispatch
1. Vincent Lindon-Titane

Honorable mention: Alex Wolff-Pig

Another terribly difficult group to narrow down (and with apologies to Anders Danielsen Lie and Mike Faist), but I love the lineup I ended up with. Spencer is unmissable in a little-seen movie, nothing but nerves and pain and guilt mashed together into one slow-motion explosion. Kotsur is the opposite, a constant whirlwind of positivity, humor, and emotion--it's hard to watch any scene he's in and look anywhere else. Kodi Smit-McPhee's is one that's even more fascinating on a second watch, all the little tics, gestures, and tones (or lack thereof) that trace a thin line between what the character's performing for himself, and what he's performing for everyone else. Wright would be a satisfying winner here--why doesn't this man have an oscar, or even a nomination yet--but Lindon is an absolute force in Titane, hulking slab of a physical presence backed by a squall line of something--whatever screaming little monsters live in this man's head, occasionally climbing out his ears or down his nose.

Director
5. Ryusuke Hamaguchi-Drive My Car
4. Steven Spielberg-West Side Story
3. Tsai Ming-liang-Days
2. Julia Decournau-Titane
1. Jane Campion-The Power of the Dog

Honorable mention: Oliver Hermanus-Moffie

Another embarrassment of riches (have we talked enough about how many great movies came out this past year?), one in which Hamaguchi's tightness, formal control, and deep wells of emotion only musters a fifth place finish. I debated kicking Spielberg out for a 'cooler' choice, but the strength and clarity of his vision for that movie is like 90% of why it works (and it really works), so he's earned his place. A real steel cage match between Decournau and Campion for the gold, both women who crafted something strange, tense, sensual, and totally off the wall bonkers. Ultimately, Campion takes it by an anthrax-ridden hair.

Original Screenplay
5. Parallel Mothers
4. Pig
3. This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection
2. Titane
1. Bergman Island

Honorable mention: Mass

A wild variety of movies here, ranging from Parallel Mothers's woozy mashup of melodrama and memories of fascism to Pig's terse and elaborate monologues and This Is Not a Burial's languorous pace, lingering quiets and shocking/transporting ending. Yet again, Titane comes up just short, but not because I don't love a movie that has its serial-killing protagonist murder someone by sticking a stool leg through their head and then sitting on that stool. Still, how could I say no to the bifurcated timelines, fantasies and film plots that fold quietly into the grooves of reality, its pitch-perfect romance and its deep and vaguely pleasant melancholies?

Adapted Screenplay
5. West Side Story
4. Zola
3. The Green Knight
2. The Power of the Dog
1. Drive My Car

Honorable mention: The Lost Daughter

A bunch of these movies offer a masterclass on how to adapt something and make it your own: how West Side Story reimagines and recontextualizes its story and setting for a new century, how Zola takes one huge twitter monologue and imbues it with motion and scale, or how The Green Knight turns a 700-year old poem into a bizarro fantasy road trip movie about contending with the weight of your own future. The Power of the Dog is an admirable and robust piece of work, and deserves all the praise it gets, but I've got to go (once again) with Drive My Car for its insights into the source material and its addition to it (all the Uncle Vanya rehearsal scenes were created for the film), scaffolding something new and improved into the cliffside.

And once again, we've ended for the night! I said that this would only take me an hour to write, but somehow I started at at 10.15 this morning and it's already dinnertime. (...he says 'somehow' like he didn't take a break to watch Dune.) I'll be back tomorrow (or possibly Tuesday, depending on real-world things) to talk about the craft categories, but for now you'll have to make do with wondering how many more times I'm going to mention Drive My Car (is it more than one and less than ten? Maybe!).

Best of 2021, Part 1: the top 20

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Maybe it's because I'm getting older--not old (yet), but older--or maybe it's because of the way time skirts by me, through and around my fingers, just a little faster with every year, or maybe it's because of the way that life continues to pancake into less and less meaningful divisions, 5 and 8 being exceptionally meaningful divisions when I was a child, but 29 and 32 both carrying the same shade of light purple. But for whatever reason, with each increasing year I feel the need to create a something with these blog posts, a way to mark the year, or a way to mark how I perceived it, hoping I can find a way to turn what I think about my favorite movie of the year into something I think about getting older, or maybe just how I think about myself. And why not? For the majority of my life, I've kept time by the movie calendar more than the regular one--I couldn't confidently tell you three things that happened to me in 1999, but I could list 30 movies off the top of the head that came out in 1999, and whether I had any relationship to them. There's no functional difference in my memory between 2014 and and 2015, except maybe that one was the year that I liked Under the Skin best and the other was the year I liked Mad Max best. Maybe it's the pandemic and two years of monotonous anxiety, or anxious monotony speaking, 2020 and 2021 blurring together as an invisible chimera, halves only different if you know how to look, but pulling one year apart from the next seems to grow a little sillier to attempt with each turn.

And what does this deeply maudlin intro have to do with me trying to see how many poorly deployed adverbs I can sling at you in the coming hulking mass of paragraphs? Well, for better or worse, it's a comfort and a pleasure to scrawl a big red X across the year here, reminding myself what I saw, where I was, and what it meant before letting it slip into a murky past. And it's definitely silly, but hey, who doesn't use tangible things or less tangible things, like the concept of a good movie, to narrate their own lives every now and again? So it's a dumb and personal thing I do here year in and year out, but I love doing it, and I appreciate anyone who can get something--even if it's just a fun night with a good movie rental--from me building these yearly monuments to my hobby.

And it sure was a year, even if it didn't feel like it. Last year, I wrote at some length about the changing landscape of moviegoing, and how the concept of movies could survive, and it felt topical and meaningful, and now--I guess we're in the same place? Ticket sales are down, theaters are struggling, a few corporate giants continue to swallow as much space and air as they can, but hey, there's great stuff if you know where to look.  And again, one of the biggest effects the pandemic has had on movies is to demand that you know where to look; if you're looking for a wide variety of films, you can find them, but certainly not in theaters.

But I am who I am, which is to say that I spent far more time looking than I did, say, working on my dissertation. Really, this coming year (I say 'coming' like it hasn't been 2022 for almost three months) will be one of those for me Wherein Nothing Will Be the Same, etc.--honestly, I have no idea where I'll be, or what I'll be doing in a year's time. And to some extent I've been coping with the current malaise and the coming insecurity by watching movies. Which means that this year I've logged 100 movies from 2021 before writing this, a number that absolutely demolishes my previous record of 80-something (I'm too lazy to go look it up), which is ridiculous. I've gone out there and waded through the theatrical releases, the dubious streaming choices, the movies from Bhutan about yaks, to bring you the best of the best--and it really is the best this year, with the top 5 being able to take any top 5 I've ever had, probably. After 2020, a year in which I misplaced my love of the movies, being able to recommit so thoroughly has felt spectacular, and will probably have to tide me over for a while, given the upheaval to come.

If you're new here (and how could that possibly be the case, since I have not met a single new person for like 40 years, and that one person looked at this blog and then ran off screaming), then here's how the format works. I'll rattle off my top 20 movies of the year, while doing my very best hurl brevity into the tornado I keep nearby for just such a purpose. This means that I'll limit myself to two sentences per film, because a) I am old and frail, and my hands are already hurting from typing this, and I've got like four hours to go, and b) I will at least pretend to respect your time, if not my own. Granted, I have never once in my life been able to hold to this rule the whole time, but it's become like a fun little game to see how far I can get before I decide that only five or more sentences can help me communicate the deep and profound emotions I have for Pig or whatever. After all that, I'll offer some thoughts on the best scenes and worst scenes of the year, if you're still looking for ways to kill your time (and who isn't? Time is your only enemy left to kill; let my anger toward Free Guy be your weapon).

In interest of transparency, here's a full list of the films I've seen this year. I covered things pretty well this year, and don't feel like my viewing year has any massive holes, though there are certainly still some international/genre/documentary exceptions. So sorry to Petite Maman, Compartment No. 6, The World to Come, The Card Counter, Jockey, Great Freedom, Cyrano, Prayers for the Stolen, C'mon C'mon, etc. Maybe next year.

Here's what I saw:

Annette, Army of the Dead, Ascension, Bad Trip, Being the Ricardos, Belfast, Belle, Benedetta, Bergman Island, The Beta Test, Black Widow, Candyman, Chaos Walking, CODA, Coming 2 America, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Cruella, Cryptozoo, Days, Don't Look Up, Drive My Car, Dune, Encanto, Eternals, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Flee, Free Guy, The French Dispatch, The Green Knight, Godzilla vs. Kong, Halloween Kills, The Hand of God, The Harder They Fall, A Hero, House of Gucci, I'm Your Man, In the Heights, Jungle Cruise, King Richard, Lamb, The Land of Blue Lakes, The Last Duel, Last Night in Soho, Licorice Pizza, The Lost Daughter, Luca, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, Luzzu, Malignant, Mass, The Matrix Resurrections, The Mitchells vs. The Machines, Moffie, Mortal Kombat, Never Gonna Snow Again, Nightmare Alley, No Time to Die, The Novice, Old, Operation Hyacinth, Parallel Mothers, Passing, Pig, Plan B, Prisoners of the Ghostland, The Power of the Dog, Procession, A Quiet Place Part 2, Raya and the Last Dragon, Red Rocket, The Rescue, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Shiva Baby, Single All the Way, Snake Eyes, Space Sweepers, Spencer, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Spine of Night, The Suicide Squad, Summer of 85, Summer of Soul, The Summit of the Gods, Swan Song, The Tender Bar, Test Pattern, This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection, Those Who Wish Me Dead, Tick Tick Boom, Titane, The Tomorrow War, Together Together, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Werewolves Within, West Side Story, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Wild Indian, The Worst Person in the World, Zola

Just a heads up: a piece of these entries here and there might be stolen from my letterboxd review, because either a) I liked what I wrote there and thought it would add something here, or b) I'm lazy. I'll also take this opportunity to plug letterboxd. Get a letterboxd! Follow on me! Let's yell at each other about movies all year round! Seriously, I have a wonderful time on this site and think it'd be groovy if more people I knew were on there:
https://letterboxd.com/jkuster/

Alright, without further ado (I've pushed all the ado I had left into the aforementioned tornado), let's get to it!

(I'll list with each entry where these movies are available to rent or stream.)

Honorable mentions: though they didn't make the cut, I'm grateful for giddy highs and lows of The Worst Person in the World, the mile-a-minute comedy and zaniness of The Mitchells vs. The Machines, and exquisitely framed melancholy of The French Dispatch. 

20. The Hand of God (dir. Paolo Sorrentino)
At once a woozily remembered memoir of teenaged life gone awry, a love letter to the city of Florence, and a totally bonkers fever dream, Sorrentino's Hand of God covers a whole bunch of bases before it even stops for breath. The margins might be more interesting than the character at the center (which seems the case more often than not), but it's hard to deny a movie with its heart so lovingly sewn onto its sleeve.
(streaming on Netflix)

19. Luca (dir. Enrico Casarosa)
Another movie built from the director's memories of adolescence in Italy, this time with fish monsters, pasta contests, enough gentle homoeroticism to sink several small fishing vessels. The characters, the sense of place, the Dan Romer score, all a breath of fresh seawater: how many movies do we get, animated or otherwise, that don't want much from its characters or its audience other than to sit in a place and near about it and themselves? 
(streaming on Disney+, rentable for a heavy fee on google play, youtube, itunes, etc.)

18. Test Pattern (dir. Shatara Michelle Ford)
Starts low-key and warm as a romance story and then mutates into something still low-key and seething. Ford's film about how hard it is to seek justice--or to be treated like a person, by the system or by the people right next to you--after sexual assault resonates even more its sharp direction and stellar crafting (the editing and the score in particular stand out).
(streaming on Kanopy, rentable on google play, youtube, itunes, etc.)

17. Never Gonna Snow Again (dir. Michal Englert and Malgorzata Szumowska)
Almost impossible to nail down: a black comedy, or a mean-spirited satire, or a straightforward drama about a neighborhood, or sci-fi, centering around an angel, or a superhero, or a radioactive mutant, or a liar as he carries his massage table from one rich home to another, helping where he can. This bizarre story of hypnotism, money, and migration feels of a piece with movies like Werckmeister Harmonies and Wings of Desire, in which super-beings drift from place to place, discovering what trouble means for them this time.
(rentable where things are rented)

16. The Lost Daughter (dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal)
I mean, any movie that lets me watch Oliva Colman and Dakota Johnson be frenemies for two hours is gonna make my top 20 and should also win a Nobel, a Pulitzer, and a Kid's Choice Award, just because. But it helps that this movie is so good beyond its acting--the writing, the jangly sense of time and place, the sure-handed direction, the staggering display of big hats, Olivia Colman threatening to cut some dicks off, etc.
(streaming on netflix)

15. Belle (dir. Mamoru Hosoda)
Maybe writing with my heart over my brain here, but who cares: the animation is brain-melting and lovely, its take on bifurcated virtual and physical lives is sharp, its dramatic aspects land well, and its (shockingly) one of the funniest movies of the year. Sure, it's arguably three movies tangled together, but I loved all three of them.

(not available online)

14. The Novice (dir. Lauren Hadaway)
A movie with utterly insane dedication to depicting what someone has to do to go from 0 to rowing crew at a professional level in a matter of months, with every possible cinematic tool getting thrown at the wall to try and capture the protagonist's world-ending dedication to destroying herself just to show she can. Gripping and upsetting from start to finish, plus a huge performance from Isabelle Fuhrmann (seriously, when will she be a bigger star?), and an unassuming and non-sensationalized queer relationship.
(rentable where things are rented)

13. The Green Knight (dir. David Lowery)
Took me a minute to find this movie's wavelength, but once I did (it happened around the time Barry Keoghan romped across the battlefield, bragging about how all his brothers died there), I couldn't pull back out: I'm such a sucker for movies that become more and more unhinged the longer they run, and even more so for movies that double down on their own joyous nihilism. I've thought about this movie's end more than most others this year, as well as its architectural costumes, its wild giant interlude, and the fact that--sorry everyone--based on the rules, Dev Patel kind of still owes Joel Edgerton a handjob.
(rentable where things are rented)

12. Pig (dir. Michael Sarnoski)
Gentle and talkative when pressed, this movie about Nicholas Cage on the search for his stolen pig totally floored me in ways I didn't expect--a movie about chasing someone down to show them kindness, despite the odds. Cage is great (as he is, and can be), but Alex Wolff steals it for me, showing titanic range from Hereditary to this.
(streaming on hulu, rentable where things are rented)

11. Zola (dir. Janicza Bravo)
"Adapted from a series of tweets" hardly inspires confidence, but but Bravo's astounding and green-eyed rendition of the worst girls' trip ever conjures a bizarro cage of expectations in which it's better to stay or be quiet, and hey, at least this is happening in Florida. Has there ever been a voiceover more welcome than Zola's side-eye counterpoint woven throughout the movie?
(rentable where things are rented)

10. Spencer (dir. Pablo Larrain)
Spencer, a look at Princess Diana over the course of a weekend, is like a documentary made by aliens, or maybe a haunted house movie filmed by the handless things living between the walls. I honestly think Spencer's closest cousin is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: worlds where the future doesn't matter, the present is the reified and inescapable past, what matters most in the world is attending unbearable meals and  consuming them without thinking, and the only thing to do is find whatever's jagged or brittle in front of you and use it to crack your own teeth.
(streaming on hulu, rentable where things are rented)

9. This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection (dir. Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese)
Dazzling, hypnotic, moving from one minute to the next like the ocean, inevitable and with equal parts joy and malice, like Dario Argento on ketamine. A ragged, blue-tinged Lesotho-made fairy tale about the importance of community, or, barring that, the importance of screaming, burning, and being reborn.
(streaming on the Criterion channel, rentable where things are rented)

8. Parallel Mothers (dir. Pedro Almodovar)
A real joy to watch Almodovar take some of his most familiar pieces--complicated mothers, women who need to be actresses, naïve young women who learn to feel their pain freely, wisecracking assistants who will still hold your arm while you weep next to someone's grave, fucking off to another city as an escape, or a return--and shuffles them together with some real-world ugliness to create something vibrant and immediate. (In?)arguably the best Penelope Cruz has ever been, and with an upsetting and haunting ending of past and present folding into each other, neither finished with the other.
(rentable where things are rented for a hefty price, might still be playing at a theater near you)

7. West Side Story (dir. Steven Spielberg)
The obvious question everyone asked about this movie was why anyone would remake the original, and the obvious answer this movie gave back was to do a bunch of things better, adding new contexts, new relationships, bold ideas, and--oh yeah--not having the lasting film legacy of a story about Puerto Rican characters be one done almost entirely in brownface. Tony Kushner/Stephen Sondheim/Steven Spielberg, plus Robbins Bernstein, is a ridiculously potent combo, and throwing all of their work in a blender with other ridiculously talented artists is a sight that deserves to be seen projected on a whole-ass skyscraper. It's not perfect (Ansel Elgort's participation notwithstanding, and a difficult pill to swallow), but it's full of lightning, and I'm glad it exists.
(not available online, might be playing near a theater near you)

(I got so far with the 2 sentence rule, and yet here we are. Time to go throw brevity in that tornado, as its ritualistic murder is also an important part of my year-end ritual.)

6. Titane (dir. Julia Ducournau)
Weirdly, I don't know if any cinematic moment this year brought me more joy than when Titane's protagonist sits down on a very special stool (you'll know it when it happens), but it did and it will keep bringing me joy until I too motor off into the sunset, carried by my little motor babies. An absolutely bananas ride from start to finish, just an assault of music and wiggling parts. Your mind might first turn to the graphic violence, or the, uh, having sex with a car, but what really lingers are the musical interludes--Vincent Lindon teaching his new child how to dance, the frat boy firefighter raves, a no-strip striptease that leaves everyone, audience included, unsure how to feel. And the gentleness! The absolute goddamn kindness and humanity that Titane exudes while also containing violence so brutal that several people in my theater audibly gasped or were vocally uncomfortable when they happened. A great entry into the the We All Have Bodies, and What a Shame That Is movie pantheon, an assault on the senses, a sneaky dance movie, and a treatise on cars and family that Vin Diesel and co. could only dream about making. How is this only #6 on my list? Definitely a hard recommend--as long as you're ok with brutality and/or your brain melting a little.
(streaming on hulu--and also the Disney+ bundle, hilariously, rentable where things are rented)

5. Flee (dir. Jonas Poner Rasmussen)
A late entry--I only saw this last week--but this documentary about a queer refugee trying to confront his past and himself (the film is animated, in part, to protect his identity) has been stuck in my head ever since. For whatever reason, the scene that hit me hardest was a small one, Amin talking about a crush he had on a boy he met while moving from one place to another, admiring the gold chain he wears, the way he looks while he's laying down across from him. I started crying for--the mundanity, I guess. The way simple, lovely, everyday things (like light-up sneakers or a soap opera) seep into the cracks of the brutal and extraordinary. How Amin's hands move to that necklace for the rest of the movie--the tokens we use to feel like a person, even if you have to lie about what it means for you. People and objects trying their best to keep those categories separate. A beautiful and surprising watch that always manages to move at a slight angle away from the direction you think it'll end up.
(streaming on hulu, rentable where things are rented)

4. Bergman Island (dir. Mia Hansen-Love)
Fitting, maybe, how many of my top 5 (or the top 20, even) will have to do with remembering, or forgetting, and what to do with yourself as you close your eyes and wake up in the future as a different future. When, with this film as an example, you suspect you've been pretending that the things you have, or want, are off-white, or maybe beige, and have to wonder if this is a problem, and if it means everything, or nothing, or both simultaneously. Bergman Island combines two of my favorite subgenres: people having a few days of romance in exotic locales before parting forever, and movies about how people look at one another when they assume that person isn't looking back. Instances of small romance that add up to--nothing, maybe, or to something, but who has the time to parse them, and even if you do, who has a reason?
(streaming on hulu, rentable where things are rented)

3. The Power of the Dog (dir. Jane Campion)
One of my favorite aspects of this movie is how impossible it is to place in a genre. It could be a western (it's got horses and ranches!), but doesn't move or breathe like one. It's not much of a thriller (unless you are thrilled by Kirsten Dunst playing the piano...and honestly who isn't), or a romance, though it's got elements of both. Very black comedy? Straightforward drama? All appropriate but not. An erotic thriller without sex, a western without the west, a thriller where none of the thrills are ever spoken aloud--all enacted by characters who look, speak, and behave vaguely like aliens. The Power of the Dog is, for lack of a better word, wacky as shit, and I love it. Very few working filmmakers can match Campion in understanding and exploiting the power of touch, of bodies, of textures that you rub your fingers against in lieu of other, more important things to rub against. Add Jonny Greenwood's score that throws a lit match into a lake of gasoline, a quartet of fantastic performances, and the other masterfully wrought crafts, and you get a dead-eyed unicorn of a movie. What a delirious and wonderful world we've created for this horny zombie nightmare to be the undisputed frontrunner for best picture.
(streaming on netflix)

2. Days (dir. Tsai Ming-liang)
I freely admit that this movie--made entirely of long takes watching people do everyday things at length, with little in the way of big characterization and almost no dialogue (and what dialogue there is is in Mandarin without subtitles)--might not be for everyone. Even the trailer seems to know that there's no point trying to sell this movie--you already know if you're interested or not. But if you're looking for a little silence, try this movie on, which remains one of the most absorbing and deeply moving film experiences I had this year. I'm not sure I've ever seen a better filmic representation of how it feels to live a series of days and be aware of how time moves with them, each indistinguishable from the next but intricately bound to the way your life is developing on path from living to dying. And if someone can reach through and halt that progression, even for a moment--. This is a gorgeous and impactful movie, even if--or precisely because--it asks for a little patience.
(streaming on  mubi, otherwise not available online, which, uh, kind of ruins the whole 'hey, go try this thing' angle of this entry)

1. Drive My Car (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
I am honestly a little intimidated by where to start writing because this movie is so huge, so generous, so vibrant with life and thought and emotion. It's easy to say that the three hour runtime flies by faster a movie half its length, and that I could have watched it for another three hours without batting an eye. It's easy to point at the performances, or how cannily the screenplay weaves Uncle Vanya into Murakami's original short story (Vanya only being a throwaway detail in the original) to make the two texts speak to each other, and then again with Hamaguchi's film itself. Or point to the already-famous shot of the two cigarettes through the sunroof as a microcosm for the film's approach to grief, or pain, or being alive--better when shared, but the people around you are fundamentally unknowable, so whatever you do has to start with yourself. Sitting and silence as stand-ins for penitence, or maybe forgiveness, eventually, when the only other option is to say something again and again until it means nothing, or everything. And again, how time passes, or does but doesn't really, distinct piece of your life feeling like a frozen image trailing like kite-strings and everything in between is a motion blur, until it's not--or is--again. Simply put, nothing moved me this year like watching Drive My Car's protagonists try to find their lives by driving, or speaking, or sitting in silence, or maybe finding something to create, some direction to go in so that, years later, when you are in a supermarket or doing some other meaningless meaningful thing, you can smile without thinking about it first. 
(not available online right now, but coming to Hulu on March 2nd, I think. Also could be playing at a theater near you.)

And there we are! I've been working for at least three hours (somehow, keeping up the brevity rule took me longer than just not being brief?), but I am going to stagger desperately around my garden shed for a minute and then soldier on with the best scenes and worst movies of the year.

(I'll try to link to a clip of the best scenes if possible.)
(Note: generally I try and avoid spoilers or picking endings here, but I haven't quite done that this time around. I'll mention which clips might be spoilers when I hit them, but still, be forewarned.)

Best Scenes of the Year

10. Firehouse Dance-Titane
One of two Titane dance sequences on this list, this one's fairly late in the film, so don't read any further if you want to keep Titane's surprises to yourself (which you ought to). But the main character's reluctant and than committed sexy dance atop a firetruck for her skeptical peers and then her 'father,' melding both of her personae into one shimmying body, is beautifully strange and strangely beautiful, just like the film itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDms1IXNI7A

9. Stopping Time-The Worst Person in the World
In this kind-of romcom about a woman who's never sure what she wants, the protagonist stops time so she can run across a frozen Oslo to imagine life with the man she's considering leaving her boyfriend for. It's a dizzy, whimsical headlong rush:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyT2jpyu3VY

8. A Nice Night at the Movies-The Lost Daughter
Leda, played by Olivia Colman, decides to spend the night at the movies, but shares the theater with some rowdy members of a family that she has secretly wronged. When the theater attendant comes to check, the kids quiet down--just long enough for her to leave. The unbroken closeup on Colman's face as she realizes how easily they'll get away with it, and how easy it is to leave her powerless, is pretty astounding. And then, of course, there's the part where she snaps and screams that she's going to cut all their dicks off. Fun times at the theater!
(no clip, unfortunately)

7. The Winner Takes it All-Bergman Island
Who hasn't cryed while listening to/dancing to ABBA? Spoilers for the end of the story within a story in Bergman Island, but this moment, in which Mia Wasikowska seals her relationship's fate when she takes to the dancefloor, had me (and everyone) dancing and weeping in equal measure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-jdKw1ruQ

6. A Crush-Belle
There's no way that this scene plays without all the context before it, but within the confines of the movie this was one of the funniest scenes of the year. A whole comedy of errors featuring secrets coming to light (or not) and misinterpreted jokes from before coming back to bite people on the ass (again), all held in a dopey and perfect long take.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmdNo6D9agM

5. A Cool Platonic Dance with Dad-Titane
Again, a few spoilers for Titane if you want to go in fresh, so stop reading now! The protagonist--a serial killer on the run, hiding with a man who believes she's his son who's been missing since childhood--is having trouble relating to their new father, and the father (god Vincent Lindon is so good in this role) is having trouble why his long-lost son doesn't seem to love him. It all comes to a head in one of the weirder dance/fight scenes I've ever seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heJlyo-Ziv4

4. Bus Fight-Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
I am as loath as anyone to send positive attention Disney's way these days--actually, strike that, I am much more loath than most everyone to do that--but I'm not going to pretend that I don't see quality if I see it, and the bus fight in Shang Chi (itself a strong movie) is one hell of a well-conceived and entertaining set piece.
(Not the entire scene, but you get the point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jFOrP5l1bE

3. and 2. Scenes about Boys-Flee
I rarely do two scenes from the same movie in these lists, and I avoid scenes without clips or with spoilers, but I'll break all of those rules to talk about two scenes from Flee--maybe recency bias is playing a role here, but I can't help that both represent some of the best moments the year has to offer. #2 I already discussed up above--the scene where Amin meets and crushes on another teenager while he is crossing borders. It's small but packs a huge punch, and moved me more than almost anything this year. #3 comes third because it has spoilers--skip ahead if you're not into that. When Amin comes out to his family, his brother wordlessly drives him to an undisclosed location, during which we all imagine the worst--until it's revealed that his brother has taken him to a gay club. He tells him they've always known, that it's fine, and presses some money into his hand, leaving him for the first time in a world where he can exhale--at least this part of himself, anyway.

1. Uncle Vanya-Drive My Car
I know, I keep saying that I avoid endings and spoilers and then I keep putting them here. But I think this scene would make a strong contender if I were to pick a scene of the decade. Honestly, it's hard to think of many more scene ever that are as beautiful and moved me as much as this one. Even though this is almost the end of the movie, I'm not sure it actually spoils anything. Much of the film has been about staging a version of Vanya in which an international cast all performs in their native language. In the final scene, the woman who performs in Korean sign language gives the plays final monologue with her hands in front of Uncle Vanya (played by the main character), her arms acting like his arms, using his face to sign, while the emotions of the play, and the events of the film, run through them. It'll lack a punch if you haven't seen the movie and don't have the whole emotional context with it, but if you do, then I can't imagine this not knocking you off your feet. Hell, I've watched it like 8 times and I still tear up a little. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y77FELZaE6c

And finally, the worst movies of the year! While I don't want to dwell on negativity or end on a down note, there's some catharsis to be found in throwing the things that hurt you off of the proverbial cliff. So let's get to throwing! Note that I generally avoid movies that are supposed to be awful, so this can just as easily be seen as a list of most disappointing movies.

5. Being the Ricardos
If this had quietly shuffled out in August, I probably could have watched it as mediocre and harmless, but since it's out there selling itself as The Best Thing of the year, I've got to read it in that context, and as a potential Best Thing, this movie is dumb trash that only makes me angrier the further I get from it. Most everything (give or take some of the performances) a total catastrophe. Fundamentally a movie The same kind of historical revisionist bullshit ending that Sorkin did with Trial of the Chicago 7, where the flaws and ugliness of an era are trotted as a feel-good moment while the insipid soundtrack rises, everyone clapping themselves on the back.

4. Single All the Way
Maybe it's too tough for me to relate to bougie family holidays, or families getting *really* excited about gay romance, but this felt like watching aliens, and not even interesting ones. I get that some kind of parity is due between straight and queer romance movies, including poorly made ones, but I don't know if it would cost anyone much to put even a little effort into this thing, even if it's clearly made as grist for the Netflix content mill. Not even the way Jennifer Coolidge says 'Maaaahh-rey' can save it.

3. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
Yeah, no, the devil wouldn't put his name on anything this half-ass and lackadaisical. Look, we all love looking at Lorraine Warren's ruffled tops, and we all like looking at Patrick Wilson in his little pants, but can we just stop this train? Can the Warrens contend with something doesn't involve a loud noise and spooky cgi monster, just this once? At the very least can the next movie be about who the shit in Kansas or wherever had a haunted Samurai hat and why the Warrens ever took it away from them.

2. Free Guy
I know, kicking Free Guy is like kicking a baby--too easy. But you *cannot* write a movie about how evil corporations are ruining art and then makes this goddamn movie. How is that not a jailable offense? Speaking of jail, I like Taika Waititi, and Ryan Reynolds totally exists, but maybe both of them don't spend any more time in front of a camera for a little while? An extra pox and a half for the unholy and stupifying places the romance element went, and for, jesus, I don't know, literally every piece of this stupid movie.

1. Halloween Kills
It kind of pains me not to have Free Guy at the bottom, but Halloween Kills is the kind of movie that made me wish that I didn't like movies. I know the 'look how they massacred my boy' things has been done to death, but I don't know if it's ever been more appropriate to shriek into the wind than when thinking about George Washington, Undertow, and All the Real Girls and then going to see this execrable pile of stupid trash. I lay awake at night, unable to sleep because I'm worried that whatever happened to David Gordon Green might one day happen to me.  Deeply stupid in a way you can tell it's proud of, its utterly inane mob justice metaphor (is it fair to call something a metaphor if that thing doesn't mean anything?) and truly remarkable character work (a very nice way to say that everyone is bad all the time). One of those movies that made me legitimately resent the concept of filmmaking.

Well, there you have it, wherein 'it' means 'too many of my opinions and a ton of my time!' I'll be back tomorrow with directing, writing, and acting categories, and I'm sure each will be even more stupendous than the last. In the meantime, what are your thoughts? What did I miss? What deserves more of a chance?