Well, shall we just say that a nefarious conspiracy exists to keep me from writing these at full power? And maybe rightfully so, since me writing movie lists at full power is (according to all my movie-related employers) something that no one is ready to see.
While I wish I could deliver on the promised thousands of words singing the praises of the robot sounds in The Creator or the sunburn makeup in Society of the Snow, enough things have gotten in the way that I'll have to truncate things a bit (though, because it's me, 'truncated' still means something along the lines of 'like 38,000 words'). Because I procrastinated starting this series and because I'll be traveling soon, I've only had a few days to write everything and have to finish today. So there we have it! If anything below feels rushed, less spirited than usual, or carrying some wild-eyed scent of panic, it's because all of those things are true! Still, wild horses couldn't keep me from waxing poetic about the crafts categories (and they keep trying, despite my many strongly worded letters to the Horse Council). None of the movies you love, and none of the movie moments that have moved you, could exist without hundreds of artists and craftspeople working to bring them into reality. So let's talk about the important stuff! Anyone can applaud Robert Downey Jr. and then reflect ruefully on what they've done, but not everyone can spend the better part of two days deciding which clip from Napoleon best encapsulates its sonic approach to battlefield violence. And if there's one (very dumb) reason I was put on this earth, it's to do exactly that. So let's dive in!
(Note: all the pictures should enlarge if you click on them.)
5. Production Design
5. Wonka
Frozen cities! Wonky confections! Human trafficking, but in technicolor!
4. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Evil Laboratories! War-torn dystopias! Lavish sets for all your kid-killing needs!
3. Asteroid City
Meticulous pastel desert oases! Furious right angled wastelands for little green men to float over!
2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Exciting and distinctive world for every character, some of which are the most amazing things you've ever seen in your stupid, hollow life!
1. Barbie
Your childhood memories brought to person-sized life and ready to think about death! Aqua warned us about this!
Honorable mention: The Creator
Costume Design
5. Passages
All the see-through knitwear you need to ruin someone's life with!
4. Bottoms
High fashion for anyone's who's ever wondered what it'd look like to fall clothes-first into a thrift store and then beat up a football player!
3. Saltburn
Lifestyles of the rich and famous! Clothes to consume their various fluids in!
2. Barbie
More pink than you can handle, spiritually! So many different eye-popping fashions that you will eventually give up on having eyes!
1. Poor Things
Architectural gowns birthed by the end of the world! Obscene power-clashing! The only wedding dress you'll ever want to wear (to the wedding you don't want to go to)!
Honorable mention: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
(or Killers of the Flower Moon--what stacked category this is this year)
Visual Effects
Visual Effects
5. Oppenheimer
(source)
All practical effects! Atoms and explosions!
4. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
(source)
Wacky creatures! Massive cities and underground hellscapes! All the things your dnd group could totally do, probably, if they really wanted to, but just leave it alone, ok!
3. Napoleon
(source)
Brutal battles! The even more brutal process of walking slowly into 19th century Russia! Lots of ways to watch horses die! An upsetting lack of gifs online that I could use here!
2. The Creator
Robot-human hybrids and all the various ways they can be ripped limb from limb! Evangelion-style floating death platforms! Ethical filming practices (for VFX artists, if not for the aforementioned robots)!
(source)
1. Godzilla Minus One
The meanest Godzilla since 1954! City-sized destruction on a human scale! Spectacular images on a tiny budget!
Honorable mention: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Makeup and Hairstyling
5. Barbie
Did staring longingly at your Barbie's slovenly and unkempt hair inspire you to cosmetology school to prevent such an atrocity from ever happening again? If so, you might have made this movie!
4. Poor Things
Long hair! Rebuilding Willem Dafoe from scratch (again)! Someone probably had to apply foundation to Mark Ruffalo's skyward ass!
3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Human-animal hybrids (who all perish in a world-sized apocalypse)! New aliens! Will Poulter's entire body is painted gold, for some reason, but why look a gift golden horse in the mouth!
2. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Clever character details for all the leads! Long-dead pranksters who want to share their zombie humor! The entire zoo near you came alive, started walking on two legs, and wants you to roll initiative!
1. Society of the Snow
The very grim process of spending months on a snowy mountain! The even more grim process of dying there! I don't even have jokes, it's just really strong and upsetting work!
Honorable mention: Cocaine Bear
Film Editing
5. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
4. Anatomy of a Fall
3. Priscilla
3. Priscilla
2. Oppenheimer
1. Killers of the Flower Moon
Man, I am so bad at describing what I like about film editing. Clearly I love giving some kind of organic and fluid shape to unbelievably large projects, which applies to everything here but Priscilla, which also does that in its own way. Points to Spider-Man for stringing together more images than can be legally processed by the human eye, to Anatomy and Priscilla for fashioning their own prisons out of time and other people's glances, and to Oppenheimer for managing to be watchable (and intense) across the decades. But the obvious win is Killers, for turning hours of footage into a 3 1/2 experience that never once makes you conscious of its runtime.
Honorable mention: Fallen Leaves
Cinematography
5. Cassandro
Dappled sunsets! Flattering key lighting for slapping other guys around a ring! The aquamarine romance of sneaking off to your married lover at twilight!
4. The Eight Mountains
Using mountains and white light to frame your friendship (or more?), your father, and your flight from reality!
3. Fallen Leaves
Colors and shadows for everyone who ever wondered whether purgatory would share colors with the Easter aisle at CVS!
2. Saltburn
Sparkling facades! Divine decadence! Framing and lighting Jacob Elordi like a sunbathing-based demigod, because why not!
1. Killers of the Flower Moon
Worlds turning from welcome to ugly in a heartbeat! Characters isolated in their own heads! Flights of nature and fancy that never feel quite how they might!
Honorable mention: Oppenheimer
Original Score
5. The Boy and the Heron-feels cheap to just say "it's Joe Hisiashi," but that's kind of the case? Hisiashi doing what he does best, which in this case is cinematic excellence.
4. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse-like the movie itself, the score is moments of stillness punctuated by total, skin-peeling chaos. Very few moments in the movies this year got me more turnt than when the linked track below suddenly switches between those registers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIl_VaWGyGE&list=PLRW80bBvVD3XsSk0eXKIQW_kZMMsQtlz-&index=2
3. Poor Things-puts the 'grand' in grand guignol, going for broke in the most expected-but-right ways (like the organ/voice fanfare below) and some not so expected ones (the rest of the movie, which is largely atonal burbling).
2. Society of the Snow-does any movie this year owe more to its score than Society of the Snow? Giacchino's work builds an entire world (or, uh, society) in the wilderness, toggling between stomach-churning harmonic violence and sculptural melodies carving space into the air.
1. Oppenheimer-the obvious choice, but sometimes that's the right one. Ludwig Goransson's proved time and again that he can hollow out a unique space in which a movie can live, and here's no exception. Would any of Oppenheimer's (many) montages work without his sweeping rhythms, or could the Trinity test even exist without him hiring a whole roomful of people to scrape their fingers against a chalkboard? I'm not sure that they would or could.
Sound Mixing
(note: for first time I'm linking clips that demonstrate what I dig about the movie in question's sound, because how have I been doing this for 15 years and it's only just now occurred to me to do that?)
5. Godzilla Minus One-the holy repulsiveness of an entire city coming apart at once, the whisper-thin tension of a monster casually swimming behind your boat, and sheer horror of everything that's covered in silence.
(the clip has an awful watermark all over it, but hey, it's supposed to be showcasing sound anyway)
4. Society of the Snow-lotta horrors this year! This one, specifically, in which the movie uses every trick in the book to create something immersive so that the audience can be like oh, hey, it turns out I am fine not being immersed in snow-related disasters.
3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse-like with so many elements in this movie--the design, the editing, the score--the sound mix takes an unimaginable number of moving parts and cajoles it into something resembling comprehensibility.
2. Oppenheimer-I'm sure we'll all get tired of praising Oppenheimer eventually, but it deserves a spot on this list just for that *one* moment (linked below), where, instead of doing the expected, the whole world disappears except the sounds of disbelieving breaths.
1. The Zone of Interest-difficult to explain or display (or make a joke about) what qualifies this movie for this spot, but it's the right choice. Two hours of something dying somewhere inside your inner ear while everyone smiles at you.
(it's a tiny clip, but it gives you a tiny idea)
Honorable mention: The Boy and the Heron
Sound Editing
5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem-is it possible that I'm just easily impressed by the soundscapes of citywide destruction? Maybe, but like I also think weird mutant sounds are fun too.
(some spoilers here)
4. Napoleon-hard to convey this in one clip rather than by watching a three hour movie but Napoleon deserves credit for crafting a sound environment that we're pretty used to by now (battle scenes) and making them sound wetter, punchier, more chaotic. When was the last time a movie cannon made your diaphragm resonate?
(theoretically spoilers here too, if whether or not Napoleon conquered the known world hasn't been spoiled for you yet)
3. Godzilla Minus One-look, I'm a simple person: if someone--anyone--releases a kaiji movie, my eyes turn into little hearts and I spend the next three years thinking about getting to make sound effects.
2. The Creator-maybe it's easy to see my genre biases here (at least for sound/sound editing) but listen to it! Click that link and listen to that scene and tell me this movie doesn't desire a pile of awards for giving all those elements such unique and expressive voices.
1. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse-a glorious exercise in maximalism. The sheer amount of work alone (just watch that clip below knowing that every character or object you see on screen needed a sound, and literally every sound needed to be created by a hard working sound team) would put this in the running, but the quality carried along in this massive avalanche just helps it grab the top spot.
(some spoilers here as well)
Honorable mention: Society of the Snow
Original Song
5. "Spinning Globe"-The Boy and the Heron-I'm sorry, did you say weepy bagpipes backing a power ballad playing at the end of a Ghibli movie? I'm not made of stone.
4. "Wings of Time"-Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves-in a very similar vein, did you say a Blue Öyster Cult-esque jam session full of good vibes and power chords playing at the end of a DnD movie? However strong you thought I was, subtract this from that amount and find your new total.
3. "Camp Isn't Home"-Theater Camp-ok look, I will try and find some strength somewhere, but did you say a big-hearted summary broadway-style closing number that unites all the main characters in their love for their art and each other and also has a key change into the final chorus? Hope my fainting couch was made in Australia, because I am going down under.
2. "I'm Just Ken"-Barbie-ok so I may be knocked out on my fainting couch, but did someone say a power ballad parody that for some reason plays during a bizarro-world restaging of D-Day sung by Ryan Gosling that includes a dance-off with Simu Liu? Hope someone has a flexible life insurance policy out on me, because I have been dead for several days.
1. "What Was I Made For"-Barbie-ok I may be dead, but did someone say a teary-eyed, piano-heavy Billie Eilish number whose primary purpose is to give us a chance to look at the people in the audience and silently mouth "I love you" while we gently clasp hands, finding for one moment a common resonance on which our constituent molecules can vibrate? Reader, I may already dead, but my body is has now totally liquified and is melting into the earth to nourish the worms and gnomes and whatever.
Honorable mention: "Can't Catch Me Now"-The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
And that's it for this years lists, vaguely truncated and lackluster as they might have been! I'm running a hot streak of doing this in a way/energy level that doesn't totally thrill me, but I am on an even hotter streak of being glad that I did them, and feeling grateful for everyone who stopped by to join me in some movie-related suffering. Thanks for your support, your time, and your mildly interested eyeballs! I'll be back today or tomorrow (or Saturday? no idea) with final Oscar predictions, but that's it for the big lists.
For those playing along at home, these were the movies that showed up the most on my lists:
Barbie-10
Killers of the Flower Moon-8
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse-7
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse-7
Saltburn-6
Godzilla Minus One-6
As for wins, Killers of the Flower Moon dominated, taking Picture, Director, Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, and Cinematography, with only Barbie being able to claim more than one award (Supporting Actor, Production Design, and Original Song).
And that's it! As always, thanks much for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment