Let’s be honest. Awards season feels pointless and even silly. The big event pictures have been held off til next year. The Golden Globes were boring. The Emmys were embarrassing. The Tonys didn’t even happen. The last year has done as much to crush our spirits, and even a vapid evening of whatever Hollywood has to offer this year means very little. Still, it is tradition like the Christmas CD Review that needs upheld, becasue we’ve done away with far too many traditions since quarantine. These awards are kind of a consolation bracket due to the limited number of releases, plus the whole social distancing of these awards means there’s no red carpet tomfoolery to marvel, laugh, or scratch our head at, and the winners are all remote from home, so their Oscar parties are no more glamorous than ours. Anyhow, I watched the movies, I made my choices, but to be honest, I had way more fun doing the research and writing up my own Marco Awards this year (maybe becasue I watched most of them early on in quarantine, not now when life has me beat down, maybe because I just had better entertainment in my pool; check out my awards later if you haven’t already)
But enough of the melancholy. I’m hear to lift your spirits with “humor and brutal honesty”. Here’s my best attempt:
BEST PICTURE
Should Win: Promising Young Woman
Will Win: Nomadland
Spoiler: Judas & the Black Messiah
Got Robbed: The Prom, The Devil All the Time
Nomadland has inexplicably won every major award, there doesn’t seem to be any mystery or any spoilers here. I will make a case that Promising Young Woman is better, tighter, and more thrilling storytelling of a better, more complex and multi-layered story, laced with dark humor. But if there’s an upset, it won’t be that, it will be the bigger profile, bigger issue biopic Black Messiah. But once again, shame on the academy for leaving two slots open and not using them to honor the strong and somehow overlooked The Devil All the Time, and the only feel-good musical in a year where we so desperately needed to feel good in The Prom.
BEST ACTOR
Should Win: Chadwick Boseman
Will Win: Chadwick Boseman
Spoiler: Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins as an Alzheimer’s patient probably gives a most impressive performance, but Bozeman pulled out all the stops as a brash and ambitious musician whose career likewise comes to a devastating end. The eerie parallels add extra layers, and considering the academy has basically cleared the field by placing both of his strongest competitors, LaKeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya, in the supporting category, it leaves Boseman primed to take home the posthumous award, And nobody is mad about that.
BEST ACTRESS
Should Win: Andra Day
Will Win : Viola Davis
Spoiler: Frances McDormand
Day gives a volatile performance as Billie Holliday harassed by the FBI for singing the ode to lynching “Strange Fruit”, checking all the usual Oscar boxes—paying tribute to an actual person, singing, fiery sex scenes, obligatory drug scenes, wild fights while high, and a death scene letting the FBI know they didn’t win. But momentum is swinging for the more centered Viola Davis who concentrates her performance and makes less more. I also have a really hard time voting against Miss Davis for anything. This will also make up for the Oscar they owe her in this category for The Help. But McDormand is the darling of the academy. Never count her out in a Best Picture nominee. This is the most open field where everyone has won an award, even Carey Mulligan who would be a shoe-in any other year.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Should Win: LaKeith Stanfield
Will Win: Daniel Kaluuya
Spoiler: Paul Raci
Got Robbed: Tom Pelphrey (Mank)
This category is so jacked up because you literally have three lead actors in a supporting category, two of which (Stanfield and Kaluuya) are actually the title characters of a movie that leaves you wondering who then is the lead? These two are the front runners, and both get a huge amount of quality stage time (as lead actors should). If Stanfield was in the lead category, Kaluuya would be the runaway would/should. Kaluuya as Black Panther leader Fred Hampton gets all the loud, showy scenes, Stanfield as FBI informant Bill O’Neill has all the introspective and emotional work. Stanton has the harder job, but Kaluuya will earn the win. However, this is the only time the two have gone head to head, in which case they could split the movie’s vote and let Paul Raci, memorable as the leader of a group home for hearing impaired addicts, ease in the back door. The double supporting lead nominations also robbed Tom Pelphrey, an actor who so seamlessly blends into every role that you barely know he’s there, in this case as Mank’s more level headed brother.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Should Win: Yuh-Jung Youn
Will Win: Yuh-Jung Youn
Spoiler: Maria Bakalova
Youn is alternatingly charming and hilarious as the emotional heart of the family as the card playing, hard cursing, “not a real grandma”, trying to preserve their Korean roots in rural America for the next generation. After last year’s debacle of no acting nominees from Best Picture Parasite, she will be a welcome addition as only the second Asian-American acting winner since Myoshi Umeki (Sayonora) in 1957. But Bakalova keeps coming up when everything seems done, mostly for outing Rudy Giulliani as the pervert he is.
BEST DIRECTOR
Should Win: Chloe Zhao
Will Win: Chloe Zhao
Spoiler: David Fincher (Mank)
Again, Fincher turned in the more impressive movie and recreated all the old trappings of old Hollywood, but if there is any force behind Nomadland, it’s Zhao who pieced together a movie from concepts and visuals of the American landscape. Plus she’s Asian and a woman, which will make Hollywood feel extra good about voting for her. Fincher brings a screenplay to life. Zhou breathes life into what she had accumulated along the way.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Should: The Father
Will: Nomadland
Spoiler: Borat Subsequent Movie Film
I am struggling to understand how Nomadland and Borat, made-up stories improvised in ambush style on unsuspecting “costars”, then “adapted” from these situations they made up, are in this category, but, if that’s the case, no one separates screenplay from film, even when there’s not even a screenplay to work off. The Father is a great adaptation of a play and should win, but Nomadland will because, Hollywood. Borat could be the dark horse though, again basically for outing pervert Rudy Giulliani.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Should Win: Promising Young Woman
Will Win: Promising Young Woman
Spoiler: The Trial of the Chicago 7
Black Messiah could win with an outstanding screenplay, both volatile and emotional. But Promising Young Woman is the movie it is because of the storytelling, and Carey Mulligan gives the performance she does because the words are so strong. Plus it’s seriously the only movie of the eight where anything happens, and do things ever happen! It’s constant twists and turns and evolves many times from the movie you think it is into the movie it turns out to be. But never count out Hollywood’s love affair with Aaron Sorkin, and Chicago 7 is him at his best in years.
BEST EDITING
Should Win: Sound of Metal
Will Win: Sound of Metal
Spoiler: Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal does double duty on editing, balancing the hearing with the unhearing, and the results are the movie, a success because of it’s editing. But again, Promising Young Woman is so complicated and complex that it has the most editing and it helps tell the story seamlessly.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Should Win: Nomadland
Will Win: Nomadland
Spoiler: Mank
Like it is a director’s achievement, it is Zhoa’s vision and commandeering that make the American Heartland McDormand’s real costar in this picture, as shots of nature as breathtaking as Brokeback Mountain’s Montana. Personally, I would love to see a Mank upset with its breathtaking recreation of golden era Hollywood, from the costumes, to the amazing sets, to the black & white execution that all make a movie about the filming of Citizen Kane feel like the sequel to Citizen Kane, 80 years later.
BEST SET DESIGN
Should Win: Mank
Will Win: Mank
Spoiler: The Father
Here is where Mank excels, recreating old style, old glamour Hollywood, the piece de resistance of which is recreating the Hearst castle. Mank got everything right, and here is where it pays off. But watch The Father because, told from the perspective of an Alzheimer’s patient, the set reflects his varying state of confusion, almost as a supporting character.
BEST SOUND DESIGN
Should Win: Sound of Metal
Will Win: Sound of Metal
This should be the no-brainer of the evening. Sound design for a movie literally about sound. And it is brilliantly executed.
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Should Win: Mank
Will Win: Mank
Spoiler: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Old school Hollywood looking as glamorous and timeless as it is in our minds. Designed for the black & white cinematography, Mank is the clear winner. Ma Rainey is a one costume show, but that costume, like last year’s The Joker, is a doozy and makes the character, no small achievement.
BEST HAIR & MAKEUP DESIGN
Should Win: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Will Win: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Spoiler: Mank
Flip the story here. Viola Davis singular look—makeup marvelously messed just so, mouthful of gold teeth—is halfway responsible for her amazing characterization. Mank gets it right too, it’s just not nearly as crucial.
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Should Win: Tenet
Will Win: Tenet
It’s the only action film this year where they blow shit up. What else is this award about?
BEST DOCUMENTARY
Should Win: My Octopus Teacher
Will Win: My Octopus Teacher
Spoiler: Crip Camp
Crip Camp has a human edge, but My Octopus Teacher is a fascinating human interest movie where the interest is….an octopus. It’s that rare documentary told so well that it feels more like a real movie about animals in their environment, like Born Free or Free Willy.
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Should Win: Onward
Will Win: Soul
Spoiler: Wolfwalkers
Got Robbed: My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
Even with two Disney entries, this was a slow year for animation. Soul got unwarranted amazing advance press but the movie was strictly average Disney. Not even top 30. Onward is the better movie, but cops out with an ending that feels like a cheat. Also, everyone was told that Soul was better and that’s how America votes (remember the last Democratic primary?). Small chance that the dueling Disney’s split the vote and renegade Wolfwalkers wins. And a big boo to the academy for neglecting the real best animated film of the year, My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising. Yes, my kid is the star, but good Funimation trumps average Disney every year.
BEST SONG
Should Win: “Húsavík”
Will Win: “Húsavík”
Spoiler: “Speak Now”
Unless it’s a mega-platimun, top 40 instant classic sung over the end credits (which with the state of top 40 radio hasn’t occurred in almost 40 years), I will always favor a song that is sung live in the movie that adds to the story of the movie, and that is the function “Húsavík” plays in Eurovision all the way. “Speak Now” is the suddenly-hot Lesley Odom’s contribution to One Night in Miami, but it’s no “The Spy Who Loved Me” or “Goldfinger”. It’s not even “Up Where We Belong” or “Let It Go”.
MY TOP 10 FILMS OF THE YEAR
1) Promising Young Woman
2) Judas & the Black Messiah
3) The Devil All the Time
4) Minari
5) Mank
6) Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
7) The Prom
8) Trial of the Chicago 7
9) The United States vs. Billie Holliday
10) Sound of Metal
If you haven’t checked out my Marco Awards for this year, its a different blend of arguably more varied and interesting movies. Here are the links to all 3 installments.