So 2020 invites the first really unique aspects of the "My Ballot" process for two reasons. First, this is the first year we've profiled (we've done all of 2003-2019 so far, a rare moment where we're actually all chronological, something that in the next six months will change based on the pace I'm getting through certain years, almost certainly for the remainder of the project) where Oscar cut a category. We no longer have the category of Best Sound Editing mirroring what we're doing for the Oscars. Secondly, Oscar for the first time since 1933 had multiple years eligible for the statue. This invites a question-how do we handle the 2020 ballot? Do we stick to our own rules or do we mirror Oscars?
This is the Oscar Viewing Project, so in terms of eligibility, I've decided we'll stick with Oscar. There are a few caveats, specifically, the film Undine which I don't know if it was eligible in 2021 but I saw in the same fashion I saw several of these movies in 2020 so I'm counting it as a 2020 release, but we're sticking with Oscar's rules for now for the rest. As we get into much older years, and we have situations where (particularly non-English language films) are released literally years away from Oscar's eligibility, I reserve the right to challenge this rule, but for 2020 we will include films like Judas and the Black Messiah and The United States vs. Billie Holliday that were technically released in 2021.
We will not, however, be joining Oscar in eliminating Sound Editing, a decision I don't really agree with from the Academy. Going forward, for the My Ballot's we will stick to the twenty categories that Oscar has had for the bulk of this century at least until the mid-1990's, when I may abandon Animated Feature, and the further back we go something like Sound Editing or even Original Score (the first couple of years musical scores are very hard to tell what was original and what was added later) might be at a loss, but largely the My Ballot will be our traditional twenty categories, even if Oscar occasionally adds in his own randomness (particularly with writing...the writing Oscars from the 1930's to the 50's were confusing). All of that housekeeping done, let's get into what I would've picked had I been the Oscars in 2020.
And Then We Danced
Emma
The Father
Mank
Never Gonna Snow Again
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
Quo Vadis, Aida?
Soul
Undine
Gold: A deep dive into the sordid underbelly of Hollywood, Mank takes on a film noir atmosphere with a ticking clock look at Herman Mankiewicz, deciding if he will pursue his own destiny...and at what cost?
Silver: Chloe Zhao's gorgeous look at an America that still has hope, even if it is not the conventional opportunity we associate with our country's dream. Frances McDormand is sensational as a woman who is using the wide expanse of the nation's roadways to handle grief & discover new hope.
Bronze: The Father takes everything that we expect from a staged play and upends it, making the world we're encountering feel not only important but critical to the story we're telling. Contains a career-best performance from Anthony Hopkins and continued excellence from Olivia Colman.
Levan Akin (And Then We Danced)
David Fincher (Mank)
Christian Petzold (Undine)
Florian Zeller (The Father)
Chloe Zhao (Nomadland)
Gold: David Fincher's work in Mank is so linked to another man's tale (Orson Welles's Citizen Kane) you think he would suffer by comparison. But instead of making a companion or an homage, he makes a movie weighted by the complicated history of Kane, and in the process becomes inextricably linked to the other tale.
Silver: Chloe Zhao's steady hand at the camera is needed in Nomadland. The movie's complex critiques on capitalism while also giving us a reason to find refuge in a world where it is not the central landlord is tough, but she does it beautifully while giving us swaths of the American outback.
Bronze: Christian Petzold continues his journey as one of our most imaginative filmmakers with Undine, a movie that takes a love story and gives it real consequences-even the smallest of waves can have the biggest of ripples.
Levan Gelbakhiani (And Then We Danced)
Anthony Hopkins (The Father)
Delroy Lindo (Da 5 Bloods)
Gary Oldman (Mank)
Franz Rogowski (Undine)
Gold: Hopkins gives a towering performance built on a lifetime of screen work in The Father. He makes his Anthony bold, a totally inhabited creation filled with life that is slowly drifting with his memories. Most actors would've fallen in this part with cheap sentimentality or bombastic monologues...but Hopkins makes every moment feel real.
Silver: Franz Rogowski is maybe my favorite new actor of the past five years. His work in Undine is so thoughtful, so full-of-life and raw feeling, in many ways the opposite of his opportunistic figure in his equally-marvelous work in Transit. At some point Oscar needs to notice this guy.
Bronze: Levan Gelbakhiani gets a tricky part here, playing someone who is discovering himself while also defiantly proclaiming who he is. That he has to do so in the confines of a deeply homophobic country (no, not the United States...though if they remake this here & set it in Florida it'll feel pretty accurate) only adds to the challenge of his lovesick dancer.
Paula Beer (Undine)
Jasna Duricic (Quo Vadis, Aida?)
Frances McDormand (Nomadland)
Carey Mulligan (Promising Young Woman)
Kate Winslet (Ammonite)
Gold: Gone is any sense of the McDormand tenacity we've come to love & expect from the four-time Oscar winner. Instead, we get a Fern that wears every scar on her heart, even the ones she won't admit to herself, and feels true to who she is even if it's hard to tell what is choice & what is forced upon her.
Silver: Carey Mulligan, in turn, also plays against type as a woman hellbent on revenge, even if she has given up on her own self long ago. Like Hopkins above, there are a lot of ways to play Cassie that would've ruined the movie (as a superhero, as a villain), but Mulligan goes right down the middle, and gets a much stronger film as a result.
Bronze: Jasna Duricic has two characters to play in Quo Vadis (metaphorically). The first is a woman desperate to save her family, and to get out of a situation that spells certain doom for hundreds of young men. The second is a woman who lives with that day decades later, the consequences of which are written on her face in a fully-felt performance.
Bo Burnham (Promising Young Woman)
Charles Dance (Mank)
Arliss Howard (Mank)
Josh O'Connor (Emma)
Bachi Valishvili (And Then We Danced)
Gold: Charles Dance will forever by Tywin Lannister, lording over Castilly Rock, but had it not been for Game of Thrones, a fitting legacy might have been his work as William Randolph Hearst in Mank. His parable of the organ grinder's monkey is a thing of creepy beauty.
Silver: Close behind Dance is another actor who will surely be remembered for other things (Burnham made, for my money, crafted the best art to come out of the pandemic with his revolutionary Inside), but whose work as a good-natured guy whose character goes through some twists when faced with consequences...few actors could play this part with such well-timed privilege.
Bronze: Tasked with playing the other half of a forbidden love, Bachi Valishvili in And Then We Danced is terrific at giving us the heartache of being able to "pass" as straight despite not having that in your heart in a country where homophobia dictates so much of your life.
Alison Brie (Promising Young Woman)
Olivia Colman (The Father)
Miranda Hart (Emma)
Sophia Loren (The Life Ahead)
Amanda Seyfried (Mank)
Gold: I love what Amanda Seyfried does in Mank. An actress who has spent much of her career playing sidekick & girlfriend roles, she knows exactly what this part meant, investing a world savviness into the ditzy blonde who knows exactly how to maintain her place, even if she wants more.
Silver: Colman's role is so heartbreaking in The Father. She has to deal with a man she's spent years wishing loved her as much as her sister, and also is finding a newfound lease on a life that has not always delivered on its promise-balancing familial obligation with a growing loss of hope, she proves why she's one of the best actresses in movies today.
Bronze: Sophia Loren brings a lifetime of film memories into her work (which, yes, I think is probably supporting though I'm not going to complain about a lead placement). You can see the way that she not only wears the scars of her character, but also the expectations of being one of our last remaining links to the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Emma
The Father
Nomadland
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
Shirley
Gold: The key word here is "adaptation." Because while all of these films have fine scripts, none of them approach the genius that we get with bringing the staged world of The Father to the big screen in such a remarkable way, making it feel like the only home for this story could be the large yet claustrophobic apartment that haunts Anthony.
Silver: It'd be easy to chalk up Nomadland as simply a movie with pretty rivers & roadways & a grand Frances McDormand, but it's more than that. Chloe Zhao's script has something to say, giving us a look into the ways that grief can feel expansive & everlasting, and how our society doesn't allow us that time to process...encouraging some to find their own way.
Bronze: I've seen Jane Austen so often onscreen that it's almost like watching a Marvel movie at this point. But that's what I found so delicious about this Emma-she blends the modern with the classic, the tepid with the sexual, all while being terribly amusing.
And Then We Danced
Mank
Promising Young Woman
Quo Vadis, Aida?
Undine
Gold: Jack Fincher's peering look into a writer who is coming to terms with not just the dumpster fire of his life, but the reality that his own point-of-no-return has come, whether he will embrace his fate or avoid it is truly astounding, particularly the clever ways it mines Citizen Kane for allegory while never feeling like a copycat.
Silver: A bold love story, Undine is yet another complicated tale from the mind of Christian Petzold. There is no point in this where we know entirely where we're going, where we're headed...it's all a blur in a film that is about how decisions, even small ones, cannot be undone.
Bronze: Emerald Fennell's brash screenplay also upends expectations. Coupled with a casting department from heaven, we get to see character tropes slashed to ribbons by a screenwriter who is ready to show how we all contribute to rape culture...and the ramifications of our silence.
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
Soul
Wolfwalkers
Gold: Pixar's most grown-up feature gives us a look at one man's life, and the ways that it did & didn't go as planned. Pixar frequently is willing to go for the allegory within its work to make it more child-friendly, but here it's pretty literal. I just wish I had been able to see it on the big-screen where it would've played best.
Silver: A glorious mix of green, brown, & gold, Wolfwalkers is director Tomm Moore's best and most beautiful tale to date, feeling like it's plucked out of the illustrated manuscripts of a 14th Century Irish tome.
Bronze: I am consistently a sucker for the inventive handiwork of Aardman, and here they have another hit with Farmageddon, taking the Shaun the Sheep we know & love and adding in an adorable alien sidekick to up the ante in this silent comic treat.
Mank
The Midnight Sky
Nomadland
Soul
Sound of Metal
Gold: A potentially controversial take, but I loved the "heard on the radio" feel of Mank's sound design, making the film feel like an old serial that you'd listen to where Orson Welles reads about the end of the world.
Silver: A more conventional but still superb choice is Sound of Metal, which uses its sound design as its greatest asset. As the movie continues, we get inside the world of a man who is losing his only way of communication...and through it learning more about himself.
Bronze: Beautifully melding a jazz score with several different soundscapes (both the earth-and-heaven bound of this world), Soul is a movie that knows how to aurally tell us where we're headed.
Greyhound
Mank
The Midnight Sky
Onward
Soul
Gold: We're giving this one to Soul, which feels appropriate given the ingenious design of the Great Beyond, which gives us a plethora of iconic sounds & opportunities for world-building innovation that stands out amongst its competitors.
Silver: In second I'm going with Mank, which has to meld a number of inorganic sounds from a film set (and a random private zoo) into an already highly-stylized soundscape. I particularly liked the scene with Mank & Marion walking through San Simeon's grounds.
Bronze: The Midnight Sky struggles with its scripting & occasionally even its acting, which is a pity as much of its technical aspects are first-rate. Particularly when you look at some of the space scenes, and George Clooney marching through the bitter cold, we get really well-constructed sound work.
Note: Unlike the Oscars, for the modern My BallotI continue to keep the two Sound categories separate, rather than combine them like Oscar did in 2020. If you want a direct comparison for the record, if I had combined them, I would've nominated: Mank (Gold), The Midnight Sky (Bronze), Nomadland, Soul (Silver), & Sound of Metal.
Emma
The Life Ahead
Mank
Minari
Soul
Gold: While Ross & Reznor are geniuses (see also the bronze medal), it's hard not to point directly at Jon Batiste as the person who is making the melodic ballads of Soul feel so right. This music is so important (it has to not only resonate with our lead character, but we as an audience have to understand it's special), and it works both in the background & as part of our character's backstory.
Silver: A year after his flawless work in The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Emile Mosseri gives us a completely different treatment but one that fits his movie just as well with the lush lullaby strings of Minari.
Bronze: Similarly to their Soul, Ross & Reznor are borrowing heavily not only from Bernard Herrmann's classic score for Citizen Kane, but from other doomed noirs that they are finding so much of Mank's power from. A haunting, pleasing-but-dangerous melody hangs on every corner of Mank.
"Born to Die" (Trolls World Tour)
"Husavik" (Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga)
"Io Si" (The Life Ahead)
"Queen Bee" (Emma)
"Rocket to the Moon" (Over the Moon)
Gold: I'm as stunned as you are, but there is no musical moment in a film that works quite as well as "Husavik," which is a genuinely emotional bop. The movie surrounding it is a needless Pitch Perfect knockoff whose comedy feels at least a decade behind-the-times, but this song works & I'm not going to fault it for the film it comes from.
Silver: I love the way that "Queen Bee," finds a way to connect with the audience in a way few end credit songs are able to achieve-by feeling like a modern extension of the story. It helps that it's sung by one of our lead actors in the film, Johnny Flynn.
Bronze: If you want to go for animated films trying to achieve what Disney musicals used to be able to pull off with ease, look no further than Over the Moon and its fantastic "Rocket to the Moon," a self-awareness ballad that recalls in some ways "Belle" and "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" in the way it character-builds while shooting the plot (literally) forward.
Emma
The Father
Mank
The Midnight Sky
Tenet
Gold: Even its detractors can't deny Mank is in its own class when it comes to the meticulous details that it brings to its set design, totally giving us realistic, pulled together recreations of a Hollywood long since passed.
Silver: The Father uses its set decoration not just to visually please (is there anything about this apartment that doesn't recall money & a once important man), but also to confuse, the way that we have a shifting world that has even the audience asking "what has changed in my world?"
Bronze: Ornate to the point of camp, Emma is filled with the drawing rooms that we expect from an Austen comedy, but it's so deliciously put together to make it feel eccentric & filled with personality, you'll be forgiven for thinking you've never been here before (I adore the wallpapers in particular).
Gunda
Mank
News of the World
Nomadland
A Rainy Day in New York
Gold: In a tight race, I'm going to give this by a hair's breadth to Mank, as the way that it captures the hazy black-and-white of film noir (and specifically Citizen Kane) while also finding the modern sophistication reminiscent of Fincher's best movies is exhilarating.
Silver: Right behind is Nomadland, which gives us some of the best use of natural light I've seen outside of a Terrence Malick movie in the past decade. Every scene is filled with wonder, making sure you're constantly looking at the world the way our protagonist does, finding beauty in every corner.
Bronze: Gunda is a strange choice for a nomination, I'll grant you that; a documentary about pigs is hardly a place you'd expect particularly compelling camerawork. But the animal's eye view into this world, with virtually no words spoken so it's just us in an arresting (though not always pleasing) purview of the life of a mother hog.
Emma
Mank
The Personal History of David Copperfield
Promising Young Woman
Summer of '85
Gold: One of the things I look for in costume design isn't just that it looks fantastic, but also that it genuinely matches the characters. Emma does both-we get smart, playful designs, but also we grow these characters (see how pretty much every woman, with varying degrees of success, are trying to emulate our titular popular girl).
Silver: While the men of Mank generally look good (love the overdone formality of Charles Dance's Hearst), it's Amanda Seyfried's Marion who gets the best moments. She has a sophisticated, girlish glamour that radiates from every scene, particularly the year's best costume, her sexy drum majorette outfit.
Bronze: Contemporary costume design doesn't get its due, and rivaling Seyfried for best costume design is the oversexed video game nurse guise that Carey Mulligan puts on in Promising Young Woman. A perfect fit for the movie's climactic standoff.
The Father
Mank
Nomadland
Quo Vadis, Aida?
Undine
Gold: No movie does more with its editing than The Father, and not in a showy way, but in an in almost invisible way. There will come a point the first time you watch this where you understand that the screen is lying to you, and by the time you realize, it's too late-what's happened cannot be undone, and like our main character, you're left playing catchup.
Silver: I've talked about it so much to be redundant, but what Mank is doing in trying to play with the literal Welles legend, the actual film Citizen Kane, and the legitimate history of Herman Mankiewicz all while playing as a Fincher drama (and not a standard-issue biopic) is very hard to do, and deserves plaudits.
Bronze: Nomadland, with its minimal cast, has to find a way to both give us the world around Fern (which is itself a major character in the film) without, well, boring us into looking at a bunch of pretty pictures. The editors do that through nature shots that actually move the story along without ever feeling too expositional in structure.
Emma
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Mank
The Personal History of David Copperfield
Pinocchio
Gold: The movie surrounding it rarely works, but that doesn't mean the makeup design in Pinocchio isn't insane & wonderful. The movie makes our lead puppet look extraordinary, and the side characters of the Cricket & Snail are grotesque in the best way possible.
Silver: While I can certainly get behind something like Pinocchio (so over-the-top but fitting of the director's vision), I am not as subscribed to the idea that best makeup is about making the ugliest looks onscreen. Case-in-point, the gorgeous hair design & modernized period of Emma works meticulously and stays-on-theme.
Bronze: The same can be said for Mank, which has meticulous period work as its backbone, but its showstopper is Amanda Seyfried's Marion Davies, constantly changing her look & hair to match with her shifting vision of glamour, combined with the slight lack-of-confidence that comes from knowing she'll never be the brightest star.
Mank
The Midnight Sky
Onward
Soul
Tenet
Gold: In one of the strangest years for this category ever, Tenet stands apart to the point of being Everest to the remaining foothills. Stylish, sophisticated, and with on-point action set pieces, Christopher Nolan's complicated thriller is in a class by itself in terms of effects.
Silver: While most of The Midnight Sky has solid visuals, no effect quite haunts the way that Tiffany Boone walks in space. The slow, dawning horror of her watching droplets of blood float in the air is chilling and disarming.
Bronze: Mank finishes off our VFX medalists with a mix of really subtle effects that go unnoticed because they're so seamless. Blending in with real sets & scenery, this is what visual effects used to do best-add on rather than giving us just actors walking through a mountain of green screen. Job well done.
Also in 2020: Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2020
