All right, it is the 98th Academy Awards tomorrow, and while I have never been able to do this before, thanks to efficient viewing (and, let's face it, seemingly less films at year-end that I have to track down...it does with each passing year feel a bit like Hollywood's output is getting smaller), I'm going to do something I've never done before: release the My Ballot Awards before the Academy Awards for that year. If you haven't already seen it, check out the Oscar Viewing Project article I did for this year here, where I pick solely based off of Oscar's choices, but for those uninitiated, the My Ballot Awards are where I turn the tables and pick who I think should've been nominated for (and won) the awards that year. Given that Oscar is adding a new category this year to the OVP (the Best Casting prize), I will be adding that as well, but that is the only change you'll see (also a reminder that for Animated Feature Film, I only pick three nominees & honestly think Oscar should do the same). As a reminder for these awards, while I have seen all of the Oscar-nominated films in the narrative, feature-length categories (including Best International Feature Film, which I don't pick here but do see all five nominees), I can't see every film. If you have a question about "why wasn't X included?" you can check to see if I've seen it yet by following me on Letterboxd here, or by sounding off in the comments (I do take recommendations). With that said, here is our 32nd (we are one year away from being a third done with this project, and for the curious that year will be 1964 which I'm working on ardently). Enjoy!
Editor's Note: A quick reminder that these My Ballot Awards, like the Oscar Viewing Project, are done entirely in a vacuum...I don't take into account people being overdue, an artist's personal life or politics, or if they've won before, just solely based on who was the best in that specific category. There are times when you might put the hand on the scale for such things, but this project is not one of them.
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Black Bag
Hamnet
Jay Kelly
The Life of Chuck
The Mastermind
Materialists
One Battle After Another
The Secret Agent
Twinless
Gold: About once a decade Oscar & I match up, and if One Battle After Another wins tomorrow (which I'm predicting it will, even if I'm not certain about it), we'll have our first overlap since Moonlight in 2016. Paul Thomas Anderson's crackling, relevant look at a dictatorial USA and the way that it treats its citizens through a frequently comic lens is the sort of film you can watch and know it will become a classic.
Silver: In second, we have Chloe Zhao (who also got second in 2020) doing her thing once more, showing the meditative search for meaning in a world that offers little (and yet, offers it aplenty if you allow it to come in). Hamnet is a thoughtful and heartbreaking look at what we give to our children, knowing that love cannot be taken back once it's given, even if fate or cruel destiny intervene.
Bronze: If there's a movie this year that is going to eventually be a "I knew this was great before anyone else did" picture, it's Black Bag, which had critical love early this year but got not a single Oscar nomination, something you'll find I rectify for this sleek, sexy thriller many times over in the coming categories.
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
James Cameron, Avatar: Fire and Ash
Kleber Mendonca Filha, The Secret Agent
Steven Soderbergh, Black Bag
Chloe Zhao, Hamnet
Gold: Paul Thomas Anderson and I got off to a rocky start (I will own that I was one of those people who didn't really get into Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love is not a movie I reference regularly as a favorite). But I've been kinder to him than Oscar has in the years since (he got Best Director from me in 2012, and Best Screenplay in both 2012 & 2021), and this being his magnum opus, I cannot deny him his laurels.
Silver: There is a part of me that wishes I had room for Chloe Zhao's beautiful use of nature in Hamnet. A film that is about the stage, a place literally alien from the natural world, seems to feel such an odd place for us to connect to the quiet, but that is how her camera moves, pushing us into the sphere outside our homes.
Bronze: We're going 3/3 with the same medals for all three films, something we generally don't do (even with a voter of one), and there was part of me that debate giving this to Cameron for his gigantic expansion of the planet of Pandora. However, I cannot deny the tension-building cosmopolitan spy ring he has crafted for Black Bag.
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another
Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Paul Mescal, Hamnet
Dylan O'Brien, Twinless
Josh O'Connor, Wake Up Dead Man
Gold: Easily the best of the four acting lineups (and maybe one of the best lineups I've pulled together for Best Actor), I was torn between all three medalists, and at times felt all of them deserved the gold. I'm going, though, with the unlikely choice of Dylan O'Brien, whose beautiful dual performance (of very different, and yet connected, twins) gives the film so much of its fire (and is the source of James Sweeney's obsession).
Silver: Leonardo DiCaprio is too big of a movie star to be positioned for a "comeback," but for an actor who has been nominated for six acting trophies so far in the My Ballot (if you want to see past contests, I have links to all of them at the bottom of this article, but know we haven't gotten to his Gilbert Grape and Titanic era quite yet), and he's giving some of his best work here as a neurotic, baked-out revolutionary who is trying to find his footing in the political chaos while also being a good parent.
Bronze: Speaking of "trying to be a good parent" we have Paul Mescal, our most consistent movie star in the 2020's (give or take his fellow nominee Josh O'Connor who could've been nominated for multiple movies this year without any shame), giving us a unique take on the Bard, one that feels appropriately selfish, lusty, and heartbroken.
Cate Blanchett, Black Bag
Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Dakota Johnson, Materialists
Amanda Seyfried, The Testament of Ann Lee
Emma Stone, Bugonia
Gold: Mescal's romantic partner in Hamnet is our gold medalist, playing a sort of bewitched version of Anne Hathaway, one whose performance really comes to life as the film progresses. In the final theatrical production scene of Hamnet, we see an openness to the world, which Buckley plays not just as a way for her to be able to connect to her dead son, but also to a community-at-large that shunned her.
Silver: Emma Stone has yet to get an acting gold medal from me, but lord knows she's trying, playing every part the way that Meryl Streep did in the 1980's or Jane Fonda did in the 1970's-as if it's an event. Her terrifying embodiment of a toxic girl boss (the 5:30 PM scene will send chills down the spine of everyone who's ever worked in corporate America and had that boss), makes her the only person who can escape the preposterous nature of the film's final moments.
Bronze: I debated pretty hard between Seyfried and Blanchett for the final medal (Dakota is just happy to be here), which is hard to do given this is a very divergent pair of performances, but I ended up picking Amanda's Ann Lee. I think what she does here is so fully-committed, not just to the unique vision of Mona Fastvold's musical, but also to the selfless egoism that it takes to believe you might be a deity.
Tom Burke, Black Bag
Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another
Noah Jupe, Hamnet
Jack O'Connell, Sinners
Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Gold: Sean Penn is one of those actors who is almost certainly crazy (and would've gotten fired a lot more in a different field). He's also an actor of great talent who frequently overacts or gets cast in bizarre roles. But damn it if he isn't selling the hell out of his racist military man in One Battle After Another, playing appropriately over-the-top a cruel embodiment not just of hate, but its close sibling stupidity. Those "greatest actor of his generation" plaudits he got in the 2000's sometimes feel deserved with work this good.
Silver: Tom Burke suffers from me giving this to Penn, as this is the closest in my mind of the four acting prizes between Gold & Silver. Burke's role here, as a drunk, sexed-up (but charming) louse is marvelous, the best performance in a film brimming with them, and I love the way that years of stealing scenes with such a part culminated in this. Can't wait for the role that is going to inevitably get him on Oscar's radar.
Bronze: A comeback of sorts for Benicio del Toro, who took the My Ballot gold medal from me in 2000, and hasn't been back since. In a very quiet, limited bit of screen-time in One Battle After Another, he leaves an intense impression of a man you know will survive even as everything else is crumbling around him.
Marisa Abela, Black Bag
Glenn Close, Wake Up Dead Man
Regina Hall, One Battle After Another
Amy Madigan, Weapons
Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another
Gold: Giving the best performance of her career, Amy Madigan's Aunt Gladys is a spooky creation to haunt the dreams, and a turn that belongs alongside Ruth Gordon in Rosemary's Baby and Kathy Bates in Misery. So much of the role is rounded in a cartoonishness, the garish way we look past aging women who try to show a bit of life and heap pity on them, that her big scene where she shows her plan feels all the more horrifying. We all would fall in her wake.
Silver: You'll note that I don't have lead performances nominated in my supporting fields (Paul Mescal is where he's supposed to be), and what that opens up for us is the ability to nominate true supporting work that doesn't have a lot of screen-time, but is vital for a movie's success. Such is the case for Regina Hall, a longtime comedic champ who aces this dramatic part, giving us a woman decades into the trenches, jaded but still nervous enough to feel fully vested.
Bronze: Teyana Taylor gets One Battle After Another its fifth & final acting medal (Chase Infiniti, for the curious, was sixth in Best Actress, so One Battle After Another nearly took up 30% of the performing nomination slots). I loved the impression she made-Taylor's part is tricky, as she's virtually absent past the film's first hour, and needs to leave a long shadow for us to keep thinking back to how she plays a part in what's happening in the "present." Taylor plays her so commandingly that's not a problem.
Hamnet
The Life of Chuck
One Battle After Another
Pillion
Wake Up Dead Man
Gold: So far every year of the 2020's the Best Picture winner has also taken a Best Screenplay gold medal, something I really hope gets disrupted (no category should have a cheat code to winning a tech category-it should always feel fluid). But I'm picking in a vacuum, and in a vacuum the best script of 2025, filled with humor, observation, & terror, was One Battle After Another.
Silver: And this means, yet again, that Chloe Zhao must take a silver medal to Paul Thomas Anderson's gold, with Hamnet getting the second place here. I have not read either source material, but given Hamnet in many ways feels so cinematic, almost to the point where it's too abstract to be written prose, I do wonder if Zhao's task might've been even more challenging than PTA's (though PTA is translating Thomas Pynchon so let's just call it a draw).
Bronze: And we'll end it with a bit of Stephen King, who had a banner 2025 (I nearly nominated The Long Walk here as well which (imho) is the best movie of 2025 I didn't find room for in a single category...weirdly both movies also starred Mark Hamill in very different turns). The Life of Chuck is Mike Flanagan putting a bit of wonder alongside a solid dose of life-affirming sentimentality that I can't help but be consumed by. The script's look at how we value our memories (and how we live in them) is so great (and that Tom Hiddleston dance number is one of the few moments this year where I was crying and smiling while watching at the same time, the best feeling a movie can provide).
Black Bag
Jay Kelly
Materialists
Sinners
Twinless
Gold: We are able to look beyond One Battle and Hamnet for a moment, and that's going to give the warped mind of James Sweeney a chance to shine. In Twinless, we are given a tale of obsession, a friendly and sometimes sexual obsession, where Sweeney is driven mad over dual Dylan O'Brien's, an understandable feeling he turns into a harrowing thriller.
Silver: With Black Bag, we have a thriller as well, one more conventionally situated in the world of espionage, but one that is as much about the sexual dynamics (and the competitive angles) that come from marital love. Soderbergh continues to be one of the best screenwriters for ensembles, making sure every part of this play feels rich & full.
Bronze: Longtime character actress Emily Mortimer joined Noah Baumbach in writing Jay Kelly, a movie that was totally in Oscar's wheelhouse and yet he didn't seem to care. But I cared, and thought the way that they handled it, with a man at the crossroads of his life as he enters what he knows will be the last chapter of it. I love the ways that it plays with age, showing that even as we get older, even with the fullest of lives, it always feels too short.
Elio
Little Amelie, or the Character of Rain
Zootopia 2
Gold: I hate to start out any section like this, saying "this was a weak year" for a category as it feels like such a back-handed compliment to the movies being honored, but...this was a weak year for this category (not the only category I'd say that about either-Cinematography & Costume have both had better days). Of the contenders, though, the one that spoke to me the most was the dazzling colors and thoughtful looks at grief in Elio, the best Pixar has been since at least Luca.
Silver: Another film that is weirdly centered on grief, though here it feels more at-home in a far more grown-up tale, is the Oscar-cited Little Amelie, proof that that Oscar does some good (I wasn't likely to have seen this otherwise), and I loved the ways that it shows how childhood echoes with you the remainder of your life.
Bronze: The first Zootopia movie was a delicious breath-of-fresh air, a mystery that told us a tale about racism that also was some of the best world-building I've ever seen from the Mouse House. With that starting point, Zootopia 2 is merely just fun. I wish it had had the guts to be a romance (given the box office numbers, I'm sure it will get there soon), but instead we just got more of a good thing.
F1
The History of Sound
One Battle After Another
Sinners
Warfare
Gold: In many ways "I Lied to You" was the scene of the year. Sinners surely got most of its critical plaudits from this scene, and if/when it takes Sound at the Oscars tomorrow (it's in a tight race with the #2 on this list), it will be because of this scene, a jammed, ethereal look at the Black experience through music (with an impending horror movie about to take place).
Silver: Coming behind it is F1, a movie whose Sound Mixing is so compelling it could beat the most-nominated film in Oscar history. Here it's a bit of a combination of experiences for Mixing vs. Editing, and some of that work is the way that it incorporates the score on-top of real-world sounds, but they also do a fantastic job of filming in cars so that you get that actual authentic rev & beat of the engine.
Bronze: One of the reasons I still keep these categories separate for these write-ups long after Oscar gave up on such things is that you get a movie like The History of Sound, which has almost no sound editing to speak of, but is a rich, beautiful look at music & nature. You hear these two men falling in love, feeling each other through decades of song and the odes that bind us across communities.
Avatar: Fire & Ash
F1
Nouvelle Vague
Tron: Ares
Warfare
Gold: That being said, F1 may have fine mixing, but it's a sound editors' wet dream. The cascade of multiple cars, told across speeding raceways (oftentimes on different types of material), you are transported into this world that hundreds of millions devote their fandoms toward. The strength of F1 isn't just in the lead performances from Pitt & Idris, but also in how it fills your aural canals so you're in the driver's seat.
Silver: Decades into Pandora, it's hard to top what we've already experienced, and yet...James Cameron knows his way around gushing water and (in something of a new twist) a land of fire. The flame-filled battles and conflicts of Fire & Ash make it a fitting ending (even if that's not what we're getting...someone free James Cameron from this franchise please so I can get one more original idea from him before he goes), and one where the sounds are nearly equal to the visual effects.
Bronze: "War is hell" is a trope nearly as old as war films themselves, and so to say something new about it is nearly impossible. But Warfare's take (not that it's cliche or a revelation, but instead that it's just pointless) is translated through the sounds of war, the omnipresent bullets and the surgical dicing that takes place in this picture in the most graphic scene at the picture's halfway point.
Note: Unlike the Oscars, for the modern My Ballot, I continue to keep the two Sound categories separate, rather than combine them like Oscar did since 2020. If you want a direct comparison for the record, if I had combined them, I would've nominated: Avatar: Fire & Ash (Silver), F1 (Gold), The History of Sound, Sinners (Bronze), & Warfare.
Hamnet
Jay Kelly
The Mastermind
Materialists
One Battle After Another
Gold: First a plug-we need to demand that major, wonderful film scores are available on streaming & physical music channels just as much as we do movies. And that is more-than-true for something like The Mastermind, a movie with jazz-filled touches that will make you spend most of it wondering what 1940's legend did all of these recordings...only to realize this is somehow a 2025 creation.
Silver: That is not true for all of Hamnet, which has at its most critical moment a 20-year-old recording from Max Richter that might (in some worlds) disqualify it here. But I do not have such qualms (I nominated Alexandre Desplat for this prize for The Tree of Life despite such reservations), and the rest of Hamnet is so good "On the Nature of Daylight" feels more like a cherry on a sundae than the main course.
Bronze: Richter, Jonny Greenwood, and Nicholas Britell feel like they are filling the backgrounds of all 2020's movies, the best of the best of this decade, and so it should surprise no one that with all three nominated, I'm going to give a second of them a medal. In this case it's Britell, whose lush, sometimes too much (but it fits the plot so that works) score in Jay Kelly gives the film so much of its cinematic gilding.
"Golden," KPop Demon Hunters
"I Lied to You," Sinners
"Our Love," The Ballad of Wallis Island
"Song For Henry," On Swift Horses
"Waiting on a Wish," Snow White
Gold: Hypocrisy, thy name is John. I spend so much time complaining about how Oscar just nominates end credit songs for his films (this year, he did it three times), and here I have a quartet of songs that were performed in the movie, frequently as big musical numbers or in guiding the plot of the picture. And yes, I'm going to still give the gold to the melodic "Song for Henry," perhaps the tune I listened to the most this year and shaped an otherwise kind of phoned-in movie in ways that made it feel far better than it actually was.
Silver: The best actual song scene of the year, though, was "I Lied to You," one of the best scenes of the year. As a stand-alone piece of music I don't know that it feels in the same league as my personal tastes (I love the blues, typically, so this is more me going on vibes & what I like...I'm a movie guy, not a music guy) for some of the other songs, but damn if this (still solid) song doesn't work magic in Sinners.
Bronze: Do not come at me, KPop Demon Army. I know I didn't nominate your (very average) picture for Best Animated Feature Film, but I am not incapable of enjoying the bouncy beats of your picture. Part of me is still a little mad I couldn't put the infectiously ridiculous "Soda Pop" in as a nominee (it was in sixth), but at least the electric "Golden" will turn a lovely shade of bronze.
Avatar: Fire & Ash
Black Bag
F1
The Phoenician Scheme
Sinners
Gold: Art Direction means not just the buildings, but also the way that we build the sets and even the props that are happening onscreen. I'm more inclined to celebrate this all-encompassing nature with movies like F1, meticulously giving us a world of shiny, flashy cars and curated quiet luxury that feels at once astronomical and realistic (for these people's bank accounts...not yours).
Silver: Behind it is a more conventional type of quiet luxury. The posh office spaces, curated intellectual designs & fashions of Black Bag also give off the aura of "you can't afford this," which is character-building. These people are sexy, smart, and dangerous (even to themselves).
Bronze: I am not someone that automatically name-checks every single Wes Anderson movie in the tech categories (though he's shown up before a few times), but when he gets it right, he really gets it right, and as you're about to see in the coming paragraphs, I was sold on the world-traveling aesthetic of The Phoenician Scheme, another in his increasingly personal string of 2020's films.
Black Bag
Hamnet
One Battle After Another
The Secret Agent
Sinners
Gold: The first year of doing this category, I feel a bit lost on how to grade this, but am going to give it a shot, kind of using the criteria of inventive casting, a solid ensemble feel, and making sure the performances match the script. In this case, Hamnet is the top of the list. Emily Watson's wonderful doom, two top-of-their-game leads, and the stunt casting that totally works of the two Jupe brothers playing mirror images of themselves is really well done, and a worthy inaugural gold medalist.
Silver: Behind it, though, is Sinners, a true ensemble movie where every character feels well-cast, and perhaps most crucially, doesn't necessarily rely upon known names to fill out every player in the plot. When you have people online name-checking minor characters the way they do in major blockbusters, you're doing something right, and that's the case with Sinners, where the whole cast feels like we're in the same place.
Bronze: One Battle After Another can't get ahead of Sinners in part because it does cast big names (save for Chase Infiniti in a star-making role). But even if the call-sheet has three Oscar winners and several prominent character actors, that doesn't mean that every part doesn't fit like a glove for these performers, and in some cases (particularly DiCaprio) it's spinning on its head their star persona.
Anemone
Black Bag
F1
Hamnet
Train Dreams
Gold: Sometimes movies feel like they're being made solely to have us marvel at gorgeous camerawork. That doesn't always make for terrific filmmaking, but this category isn't Best Picture, now is it? And Train Dreams is one of those movies, a film that looks at nature from every angle, and also quietly (I cannot believe a movie that requires you to put your phone down this much is on Netflix) gives us a changing sense of technology as we're going.
Silver: You spend all of Black Bag aware of light. In an industry where most cinematographer's default is to have half of the screen as dark as possible to hide the CGI (looking at you, Sinners), this film has candle-glowing dinners, the natural light of a London sky, the soft humming interior lights of an office...all of this feels at once authentic and cinematic, something we should see more of on the big-screen.
Bronze: We're in our longest Terrence Malick drought this century, and it's getting to me as an ardent admirer of his work. Not only did I shortlist Train Dreams (clearly paying homage to him), but I also have to include Hamnet (weirdly left out of this list with Oscar), a movie that uses natural lighting throughout, but also gives us a green sense of the English countryside, allowing us the same connection to it that Jessie Buckley's lead character feels throughout.
Black Bag
Kokuho
One Battle After Another
The Phoenician Scheme
Wicked: For Good
Gold: I am not afraid of contemporary design if it's done well, and this is a field where, quite frankly, you're seeing a lot of contemporary design honored. Part of what makes Black Bag work is the quiet luxury angle. We need to feel like these people aren't real...there's a level of authenticity in the performances, but these people are not just like you and me. That's translated in the leather jacket and black jumpsuit Cate Blanchett wears while potentially committing treason (the jacket costs $5k if you want to try to emulate it), or in the black form-fitting turtlenecks in which Michael Fassbender instills a sense of "you'd fuck him too" vibes.
Silver: On the flip side, One Battle After Another does give us that realism. Not only do we get Leo wearing that "retired dad" flannel night shirt & stocking cap that counters with the effortless cool of Teyana Taylor's character earlier in the film (hell, she wears the same outfit earlier in the picture and gives off totally different vibes), but we get to see that same sense of style in her daughter...even though they haven't met. Talk about story-building through clothing.
Bronze: If you want to get into something more traditional (i.e. period or fantasy) with the third medalist, I'll give you that. Costuming goddess Milena Canonero gives us the alabaster white nun's uniform, the impeccable suits and Scarlett Johansson's napkin-checkered shirt with sky high shorts in The Phoenician Scheme, every outfit feeling like a shorthand introduction for the audience to these characters.
Black Bag
Hamnet
One Battle After Another
The Secret Agent
Sinners
Gold: Balancing multiple plot lines, told decades apart, is the sort of thing that most filmmakers can't handle, and they get lost in the editing room where we stop caring about what happened before since it's not happening now. But that's not how One Battle After Another works. Instead, we spend it recalling, wondering how this story will be told in full, a 2.5-hour tale that doesn't once let up or make you want to look at your phone for the time.
Silver: Thrillers live-and-die in the editing room, and that's the case with Black Bag, a movie that always seems to be aware of the giant elephant in the room, whether that's a dinner party where we know a lie is about to be exposed, or something grander, like a literal ticking clock counting down if a man can trust his wife.
Bronze: Part of the genius of The Secret Agent (a great movie I really wanted to put into our stacked Best Actor field, and I'm feeling bad only got one medal in this whole article, but that's how it goes in the best year for movies since 2017) is that it is telling so many tales at once. You have a seemingly arbitrary tale of a shark coming in at points, as well as looking back-and-forth as this story is told from the vantage of decades after-the-fact, and yet still feeling like a proper mystery.
Frankenstein
Kokuho
The Phoenician Scheme
Sinners
Weapons
Gold: The makeup effects in Kokuho are some of the best I've seen in a long time. Usually when Oscar cites a random film out of nowhere, I roll my eyes and give it three stars because it's not that impressive...here, he outdid himself, not just giving us mountains of character-telling Kabuki makeup, but also some of the most impressively realistic aging makeup I've seen onscreen.
Silver: The Phoenician Scheme does what Wes Anderson does best-gives us a sea of the most famous actors working today, and lets them play pretend. That shines in the way that we get a quirky business tyrant in Benicio del Toro, debonair (you can see a bit of Howard Hughes here) but still consistently ruffled, along with the gaudily over-enunciated nun played by Mia Threapleton. It's makeup that not just tells a joke, but also looks good.
Bronze: Sometimes you get a nomination just from one creation in this field (indeed, that's true of two of these nominees), and no character this year was quite as singular as Aunt Gladys. The way that we unfold her in three acts, a gigantic orange clown, a spooky under-the-mattress freak show, and then a stripped-down monster...it's Madigan working hand-in-hand with the makeup chair to make this woman an icon.
Avatar: Fire & Ash
F1
How to Train Your Dragon
Thunderbolts
Tron: Ares
Gold: It almost feels tired to give yet another gold medal to a James Cameron movie, but if there's a less lazy way to pick the best of the cinematic VFX in a year, it didn't come in 2025. Avatar stands so far above these with its realistic animation, body-capture tech, and gorgeously-lit cascades through land, fire, & water in Pandora, nothing else can compare. This isn't quite in the same league as The Way of Water, but that's a bit like comparing Nadal's Grand Slam wins at Roland Garros...they're all works of art.
Silver: That said, I did really like the five films I picked here (I think this is the category I most outdid Oscar), and I'm going to remain surprised for a while that the Academy didn't see the glorious effects in Tron: Ares, filled with so much red, blue, & black cleverness in design, and didn't instantly want to put their stamp on it.
Bronze: It's always fun to chase two CGI-heavy films with a movie that (while very CGI heavy too, let's be real) also has some practical effects in the ways we handle these cars. The combination of subtlety with the creation of some of these race tracks with the practical endurance of actual race cars in many scenes is a fitting close to honestly a terrific year for movies.
