Cold War
Hereditary
Lean on Pete
The Other Side of the Wind
Roma
Winner?: I don't really subscribe to the concept of a ten-wide or "random-wide" list, so you're getting my Top 5 pictures of 2018 here. For the winner, I have to go with Cold War, a brief ode to romance, jazz, and the connections we make with our fellow human beings. It knocked me in the stomach the first time I saw it, and feels like the rare movie that actually gets better upon repeat viewings.
Runner-Up?: It's occasionally hard to tell whether I love The Other Side of the Wind because I just love Orson Welles, and what a joy it is to see his final landmark erected on the cinema firmament, or whether it's just a truly great picture, one last lion's roar from the cinema's best American filmmaker. Either way, it's the type of movie that I continually find myself recalling, thinking about different brief moments in its chaotic, thickly-dialouged run.
Jimmy Chin & Elizbaeth Chai Vaserhelyi, Free Solo
Alfonso Cuaron, Roma
Andrew Haigh, Lean on Pete
Pawel Pawlikowski, Cold War
Orson Welles, The Other Side of the Wind
Winner?: I go again with Cold War, as Pawlikowski (thankfully honored by Oscar) is giving us a marvelously compact movie, one that feels like another minuet from a master director just coming into his own.
Runner-Up?: Welles probably takes this, in a rare year where both winner and runner-up match for me. In third, it's hard to argue with what Cuaron is doing here-while my vote would be for Cold War, it's impossible to begrudge Cuaron an Oscar for something so towering, which is as much an ode to cinema itself as to his childhood.
Ryan Gosling, First Man
Lucas Hedges, Boy Erased
John Huston, The Other Side of the Wind
Tim Kalkhof, The Cakemaker
Charlie Plummer, Lean on Pete
Winner?: Andrew Haigh's films are lovely little character studies, frequently featuring actors who have never been given such a treatment (plus, Charlotte Rampling). Here he gives us Charlie Plummer, in a role that would be so easy to play as conveniently extroverted, but instead he keeps his Charley (character and actor both sharing a homonymic moniker) inward, only letting Pete be the sounding board for his dreams. Joining Rampling and Tom Cullen, Haigh is three-for-three in knockout lead performances in his films.
Runner-Up?: It's hard to tell if he's playing Welles, John Ford, or himself, but Huston's work as Jake Hannaford stands tall alongside his work as Noah Cross, about as high of a compliment as you can get from me (who considers Huston's Cross to be perhaps the best Supporting Actor performance of all time). If this is what "borrowing from yourself" looks like, who the hell considers that an insult?
Toni Colette, Hereditary
Olivia Colman, The Favourite
Joanna Kulig, Cold War
Emma Stone, The Favourite
Rachel Weisz, The Favourite
Winner?: No category fraud to be had here, but perhaps part of me wishes there was room for a tie. I'm going to give this very strong (and considering where this year was headed, that was a question mark) field to Weisz, giving perhaps her best work to date as Lady Sarah. Every line, every nuance, that turn toward tenderness when you'd least suspect is beautifully-drawn.
Runner-Up?: I picked a winner, I can't pick a silver as well. Colette is giving career-best work as well, going back to the horror well with dramatic precision, while Kulig is giving us the actual star-is-born turn in Cold War, playing a woman drifting further-and-further away from us as we learn more about her. The former borrows a bit from Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby and the latter recalls Jeanne Moreau in Jules and Jim, but both are wholly original creations within their own story, and would be worthy winners by themselves.
Hugh Grant, Paddington 2
Michael B. Jordan, Black Panther
Josh Hamilton, Eighth Grade
Alessandro Nivola, Disobedience
Alex Wolff, Hereditary
Winner?: Jordan is doing something that we haven't seen yet in a Marvel Universe movie-giving us a fully-fleshed villain that is actually better than the movie it houses, which is no small feat because Black Panther is pretty darn good. I honestly think that we're in Nicholson/Ledger as Joker territory here in terms of memorable, though Jordan doesn't have makeup & tricks to rely upon (unless you count his scars). Instead, he has a righteous anger that makes him so potent-you actually understand where his frustration with Wakanda is coming from.
Runner-Up?: Nivola & Hamilton are so reliant upon strong, wonderful monologues it's difficult to pick between them. Nivola finds his voice in real-time, while Hamilton's feels like a speech he's been practicing for years. Both land what are crucial moments in their films, and prove that we should be shoveling scripts at them if they can pull off this kind of work.
Ann Dowd, Hereditary
Cynthia Erivo, Bad Times at the El Royale
Nicole Kidman, Boy Erased
Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
Lilli Palmer, The Other Side of the Wind
Winner?: King earns this by a pretty comfortable margin (no knock to these women, but this was not a standout year for Supporting Actress work overall). Her work as a mother trying to navigate a world she knows too well, trying to shield her daughter from that truth as long as possible, is awesome, as is her late "wig" scene in the picture. King has had such a great run on TV, a role like Sharon Rivers should have been inevitable. Thankfully, Barry Jenkins afforded her the opportunity to hit a home run.
Runner-Up?: Erivo had a one-two punch between this and Widows, but I'm going with the actual debut, where she lifts her voice in song to carry forward the tension. I'm half convinced that Dakota Johnson wasn't supposed to stop during that looking glass scene, and instead was just in awe of Erivo's vocal and acting prowess. A breakthrough 2018 that rivals Jessica Chastain & Alicia Vikander in recent years, I can't wait to see what she brings next.
Isle of Dogs
Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse
Teen Titans Go! to the Movies
Winner?: I skip foreign & doc because I never feel I see enough to make a list here (it'd be an easy call for Cold War and Free Solo for the wins, though). For animated I do see enough, but think five nominations is absurd so we'll go with three. The best of this bunch is Spider-Man, which came out of nowhere and is a whirl of color and frequently pulls off the impossible-it has something new to say about comic books.
Runner-Up?: Sentiment wants me to go with Teen Titans (I have seen pretty much every episode of this show as it's a personal (smart) guilty pleasure), but I probably have to go with Wes Anderson's weird world, complete with its own universe and only occasionally feeling a bit too "twee" for my hit-and-miss Anderson heart.
American Animals
Boy Erased
First Man
If Beale Street Could Talk
Love, Simon
Winner?: I wasn't as gung-ho on Beale Street as these nominations may make out, but the elements that worked really worked for me, and Jenkins does a strong job of bringing the words of James Baldwin to the screen in a lulling way I wouldn't have thought achievable.
Runner-Up?: This isn't a great year for adapted (original was where it was at), but I loved some of the choices of a film like American Animals, where the documentary elements become more and more pertinent as the film goes. This might not be the best conversation-style screenwriting, but it's surely the best plotting of adapted works in 2018.
Winner?: I wasn't as gung-ho on Beale Street as these nominations may make out, but the elements that worked really worked for me, and Jenkins does a strong job of bringing the words of James Baldwin to the screen in a lulling way I wouldn't have thought achievable.
Runner-Up?: This isn't a great year for adapted (original was where it was at), but I loved some of the choices of a film like American Animals, where the documentary elements become more and more pertinent as the film goes. This might not be the best conversation-style screenwriting, but it's surely the best plotting of adapted works in 2018.
Cold War
The Favourite
Hereditary
Lean on Pete
The Other Side of the Wind
Winner?: No one, at the peak of their game, can rival Orson Welles when it comes to sharp movie dialogue and in Other Side of the Wind Welles gives us a final truly great script, frequently borrowing from Robert Altman's sense of overlapping conversations as much as his own wit & verve.
Runner-Up?: I'm going to pick another film filled with wit & verve, though both are laced with venom in The Favourite, a movie that is endlessly quotable and elevates all three excellent actresses with enough bouncy insults to go around. All-in-all, though this is one of the best lineups this category has produced in a while.
Winner?: No one, at the peak of their game, can rival Orson Welles when it comes to sharp movie dialogue and in Other Side of the Wind Welles gives us a final truly great script, frequently borrowing from Robert Altman's sense of overlapping conversations as much as his own wit & verve.
Runner-Up?: I'm going to pick another film filled with wit & verve, though both are laced with venom in The Favourite, a movie that is endlessly quotable and elevates all three excellent actresses with enough bouncy insults to go around. All-in-all, though this is one of the best lineups this category has produced in a while.
Cinematography
Cold War
First Man
Free Solo
Roma
We the Animals
Winner?: A rich year for this category, and a tough call between Cold War and Roma, but I'm going to go with the latter (for now-reserving my right to change this with the OVP). The camera is so exact that even when it feels too showy to be real (who makes a garage look that gorgeous?) it still works.
Runner-Up?: Lukasz Zal outdoes his work in Ida (already a career-topping film) with Cold War, which finds warmth and bleakness at the right ratio, and I love the way he employs wide and medium shots for both impact & humor.
Black Panther
Cold War
Crazy Rich Asians
The Favourite
A Simple Favor
Winner?: I'm going to go with The Favourite, which feels like a weird thing to say considering its a genre we've tread before, but I think that Sandy Powell finds something new and cheeky to say here, adding to Lanthimos's "it's always a little weird" world while the actresses themselves ground the costumes and have them befit their characters.
Runner-Up?: The modern elegance of A Simple Favor is impossible to ignore. Who wouldn't become obsessed with Blake Lively's Emily considering the confidence and daring she puts into this wardrobe? Bonus points to Henry Golding, who looked scrumptious in both this and Crazy Rich Asians.
Cold War
First Man
Free Solo
The Other Side of the Wind
The Other Side of the Wind
Roma
Winner?: I think this has to go to The Other Side of the Wind simply because while frequently people claim a movie is "impossible" to make, in this case it was darn near true, with the picture taking nearly fifty years post-production, and that they managed to make something interesting & meaningful decades after Welles's death is a miracle.
Runner-Up?: In any other year this would be an easy call for Cold War, a movie that has no spare parts, only key, critical pacing & dialogue that keeps you wrapped up in the world of Zula and Wiktor. I will also point out, and I don't want to toot my own horn too much here, but this may be the lineup I most improve on Oscar's choices-man did they take what could have been an outstanding lineup & turn it into a dud. When First Man is arguably the weakest entrant in this list, you know you've got good work.
Winner?: I think this has to go to The Other Side of the Wind simply because while frequently people claim a movie is "impossible" to make, in this case it was darn near true, with the picture taking nearly fifty years post-production, and that they managed to make something interesting & meaningful decades after Welles's death is a miracle.
Runner-Up?: In any other year this would be an easy call for Cold War, a movie that has no spare parts, only key, critical pacing & dialogue that keeps you wrapped up in the world of Zula and Wiktor. I will also point out, and I don't want to toot my own horn too much here, but this may be the lineup I most improve on Oscar's choices-man did they take what could have been an outstanding lineup & turn it into a dud. When First Man is arguably the weakest entrant in this list, you know you've got good work.
American Animals
Black Panther
The Favourite
Hereditary
The House with a Clock in the Walls
Winner?: The inverse of Animated Feature, I don't understand why this category doesn't get five nominations considering it's so crucial to pretty much every film (what movie doesn't feature makeup?). The winner feels like the audacious work on display in The Favourite, so clever with the ways that it finds beauty and ugliness in places you wouldn't expect, and how each character's look so well mirrors their self-worth.
Runner-Up?: Makeup is such a key part of American Animals, though it features almost exclusively into that one scene. However, it's so specific and I was a sucker for the way that they apply it in that scene (I love when a craft gets the spotlight like this), that I'll give it the nod over Hereditary, my other contender for silver.
Black Panther
The Favourite
First Man
Isle of Dogs
Shoplifters
Winner?: This is a close race for me (I honestly could pick almost any of these), but I'm going to side slightly with Black Panther, which has a world-building of its own (look at that great icy mountain sequence with the Jabari for ways they're already thinking of expanding here). The film had the most distinctive, complete look of any picture in 2018.
Runner-Up?: I'm going to go with First Man-the claustrophobia and precise nature of the planes, rockets, and space shuttles that the film has to create to give it a proper 1960's feel is marvelous. Bonus points for making the moon landing scene look totally authentic.
Winner?: This is a close race for me (I honestly could pick almost any of these), but I'm going to side slightly with Black Panther, which has a world-building of its own (look at that great icy mountain sequence with the Jabari for ways they're already thinking of expanding here). The film had the most distinctive, complete look of any picture in 2018.
Runner-Up?: I'm going to go with First Man-the claustrophobia and precise nature of the planes, rockets, and space shuttles that the film has to create to give it a proper 1960's feel is marvelous. Bonus points for making the moon landing scene look totally authentic.
Annihilation
Ant-Man and the Wasp
Christopher Robin
First Man
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Winner?: It's admittedly a place that Oscar has been a few times in recent years (Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian), but the effects combined with Linus Sandgren's exact cinematography are too impossible to ignore in First Man. The moon walk scene wouldn't work so well without such great realism.
Runner-Up?: This wasn't a great year for this category-even the franchise films have been better in previous iterations. So I'm going to surprise myself and give this to Christopher Robin, whose effects work was not only impressive, but felt crucial to us believing the story. Pooh, Eeyore, and the Gang look beautiful and match the English countryside flawlessly.
Bad Times at the El Royale
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
First Man
If Beale Street Could Talk
Puzzle
Winner?: Britell two years ago created one of the most haunting scores I've heard from an unknown in a while. This year, he brought his skills to different heights with the melancholic trumpet that never seems to leave Beale Street, in many ways recalling Jerry Goldsmith's iconic score to Chinatown.
Runner-Up?: A solid duel between Britell and Justin Hurwitz's masterful work in First Man, which uses period-specific instruments (theramin, anyone?), as well as appropriately space-y contenders to craft a specific, film-appropriate score.
Winner?: Britell two years ago created one of the most haunting scores I've heard from an unknown in a while. This year, he brought his skills to different heights with the melancholic trumpet that never seems to leave Beale Street, in many ways recalling Jerry Goldsmith's iconic score to Chinatown.
Runner-Up?: A solid duel between Britell and Justin Hurwitz's masterful work in First Man, which uses period-specific instruments (theramin, anyone?), as well as appropriately space-y contenders to craft a specific, film-appropriate score.
"Alfie's Song," Love, Simon
"Maybe It's Time," A Star is Born
"The Place Where Lost Things Go," Mary Poppins Returns
"Revelation," Boy Erased
"Shallow," A Star is Born
Winner?: I had a lot of problems with A Star is Born, but the music (in the first half) was not one of them-Gaga has one of her best hits with "Shallow," staged marvelously in the picture. If the rest of the film had been half as good as this one sequence, it would have been an actual star.
Runner-Up?: It feels kind of cheap to say "Maybe It's Time" and not highlight one of the other three nominees, but if we're being honest that's where I would have gone. I didn't love the rest of the soundtrack nearly as much, but these two songs were home runs for me.
Winner?: I had a lot of problems with A Star is Born, but the music (in the first half) was not one of them-Gaga has one of her best hits with "Shallow," staged marvelously in the picture. If the rest of the film had been half as good as this one sequence, it would have been an actual star.
Runner-Up?: It feels kind of cheap to say "Maybe It's Time" and not highlight one of the other three nominees, but if we're being honest that's where I would have gone. I didn't love the rest of the soundtrack nearly as much, but these two songs were home runs for me.
Bad Times at the El Royale
Cold War
First Man
Hereditary
Roma
Winner?: The sound work in Roma is so precise, key to your enjoyment of it. Think of how much better the movie is without a score, with us simply falling into the universe of Cleo, hearing the sights and streets of Mexico in the 1970's.
Runner-Up?: Probably Cold War, in a slight nod over First Man. This category is usually home to a lot of musicals for the Oscars, but I'm a bit more discerning-not all musicals sound great. That's not the case for Cold War, which (while not a musical) uses its musical content with great ease, coolly going in and out of the sequences with the same sense of shifting nostalgia to our now familiar tunes.
Winner?: The sound work in Roma is so precise, key to your enjoyment of it. Think of how much better the movie is without a score, with us simply falling into the universe of Cleo, hearing the sights and streets of Mexico in the 1970's.
Runner-Up?: Probably Cold War, in a slight nod over First Man. This category is usually home to a lot of musicals for the Oscars, but I'm a bit more discerning-not all musicals sound great. That's not the case for Cold War, which (while not a musical) uses its musical content with great ease, coolly going in and out of the sequences with the same sense of shifting nostalgia to our now familiar tunes.
Annihilation
Bad Times at the El Royale
First Man
Roma
Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse
Winner?: Interspersing the theramin alongside actual rockets and sound effects, I was beyond impressed with what First Man was doing in its film, particularly the way that it fell into its nostalgia with rustic, realistic, loud effects.
Runner-Up?: The giant whirling vortex at the end of Spider-Man is just the tip of the iceberg. I grew to love this one more and more once the hyperbolic praise had subsided-its sound work is a lot of what makes it so memorable.
Winner?: Interspersing the theramin alongside actual rockets and sound effects, I was beyond impressed with what First Man was doing in its film, particularly the way that it fell into its nostalgia with rustic, realistic, loud effects.
Runner-Up?: The giant whirling vortex at the end of Spider-Man is just the tip of the iceberg. I grew to love this one more and more once the hyperbolic praise had subsided-its sound work is a lot of what makes it so memorable.
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