This has been a pretty rocky year for the movies (and an even worse year for awards) so I now would like to take the time to share with you the best of the movies I saw this year. In total, the number of 2018 releases I have seen and assessed up to now is 55.
But first, a few notes on some of these categories:
I considered the animated films for all the categories except for makeup and costume design, since there are technicians behind the editing, cinematography, and set design that deserve every bit as much recognition as those who work on live action films. So it's virtually free for all in everything.
I also consider all films that feature visual effects shots a chance in Best Visual Effects. I say that it should be the goal of any VFX artists to make the effects invisible, so that's what I've been judging this year.
I'm not following the same judgment as the Oscars, who like to judge based on technical achievement. While that's important to acknowledge to make sure the artistry of filmmaking continues to grow with its discoveries, my focus is on how the practical elements contribute to the film's unique needs, so you may find nominees in some of these categories you'd never expect to find in any other awards show lineup. I'm not saying I'm better than any of them, but rather this is my two cents on what's important in filmmaking.
So now without further ado, here's my nominees, starting with...
But first, a few notes on some of these categories:
I considered the animated films for all the categories except for makeup and costume design, since there are technicians behind the editing, cinematography, and set design that deserve every bit as much recognition as those who work on live action films. So it's virtually free for all in everything.
I also consider all films that feature visual effects shots a chance in Best Visual Effects. I say that it should be the goal of any VFX artists to make the effects invisible, so that's what I've been judging this year.
I'm not following the same judgment as the Oscars, who like to judge based on technical achievement. While that's important to acknowledge to make sure the artistry of filmmaking continues to grow with its discoveries, my focus is on how the practical elements contribute to the film's unique needs, so you may find nominees in some of these categories you'd never expect to find in any other awards show lineup. I'm not saying I'm better than any of them, but rather this is my two cents on what's important in filmmaking.
So now without further ado, here's my nominees, starting with...
Best Film Editing
| The Nominees:
Right from the opening to the closing vlog, the editing of Eighth Grade is done to keep the rhythm alive and strong so that you feel the sense of pressure growing and dying over what's actually not that long of time. With each of the images that it lingers on, whether it's teens glued to their phones or a simple SpongeBob flashdrive, the immense meaning in every single frame keeps your attention so you don't want to look away. |  |
Best Sound
| The Nominees:
The sound design work of Eighth Grade is not what you traditionally hear in a teen comedy: the little noises on a phone often become the only things heard, and even the sole source of noise when we learn about the main protagonist primarily through her adorably awkward video blog. The music and overlapping dialogue is used wisely to make you feel the immense pressure that anyone of that age feels when it's time to get out there. |  |
Best Cinematography
| The Nominees:
The black-and-white photography of Roma makes everything look more crisp than color could ever hope to achieve, almost like you're looking at real old family photographs merged with home video. As the camera slowly pans through the home, you notice the details of the architecture, ultimately sucked into these bleak, joyless memories of a woman who suffered through what wasn't her ideal living predicament. By then, through the pictures alone, there's no denying how she felt. |  |
Best Makeup
| The Nominees:
Eighth Grade shows how effective subtlety is when deciding what the character should wear on her face throughout the film. Whether her hair is down like an overused mop, or her face is buried under makeup to gain attention from the popular girls she idolizes, you just need to take one look at her, and instantly know where she is in this stage of life. It makes you easily comprehend how to be confident with your truest self, with or without a mask on her skin. |  |
Best Costume Design
| The Nominees:
The 18th century British monarchy setting is already very familiar to Hollywood, but what The Favourite does with dressing its characters stretches the boundaries of what is acceptable and what is tasteful. The queen's dress always makes her seem to burst from the inside out as her female servants always want to compete with how high they can press their corsets. It's a collection of traditionally classic designs with a scattering of mud to show the true history of matriarchy. |  |
Best Production Design
| The Nominees:
Almost the entire picture takes place within the walls of a single castle, and it appropriately takes that to its fullest advantage by burying these three women in a horde of tapestries. Even when the candle lights and blaring windows try to shed some holy light in this very not-so-holy place, the grotesque underbelly of this castle projects exactly what the queen would look like if she was a building. It literally takes the typical Oscar bait stereotypes and chucks it into quicksand. |  |
Best Music
| The Nominees:
The music is scarcely used, but when it is used, you feel it. With the electrical influence, it suggests everything that teenagers really hear when they put in their earbuds: pressure, insecurity, self-awareness, and an inability to translate the noise from their phone into legitimate symphonies. This is not your typical musical score: it's something greater than music, it connects with your soul from when you were in Eighth Grade. |  |
Best Visual Effects
| The Nominees:
It's a world full of puppets, matte paintings, and table models, and somehow, never does it appear out of place when all these elements come together to form a gorgeous "Anderson-ified" picture. The jittery style of Isle of Dogs' stop-motion remains consistent as the Japanese art style allows the foreground and background to become a single unit. What do you wind up with in the end? An effective piece of propaganda against government-funded lies guaranteed to catch your eye. |  |
Worst Picture
| The Nominees:
The Happytime Murders is the perfect example of how you can have a fun idea for a film and do everything wrong with it. As much as it tries to force in humor, none of it even comes close to landing; the timing of the direction is so lazy and without a hint of effort to make Melissa McCarthy anything but unbearable to watch. Although it's directed by Jim Henson's own son, you wouldn't believe that as the puppetry looks like it was done by people who never held a puppet before. |  |
Best Actor in a Supporting Role
| The Nominees:
His performance is brief, but what Brian Tyree Henry does with his standout scene in If Beale Street Could Talk sums up exactly what it's like to be a common Black male in 2018. While this one he plays in particular was just out of prison, he's seen things no human should ever see. With the tears he jets out to counteract his forcibly genuine grin, you want nothing more than to meet this fictional man in person to hear the rest of his story without the interference of a limited narrative. |  |
Best Actress in a Supporting Role
| The Nominees:
Regina King depicts exactly what every mother of a nineteen-year-old pregnant daughter would feel: trying to keep peace with everyone when the only solution to get there is to accept confrontation. Once she looks into a mirror with and without a certain wig on, her look of dismay alone tells you the true meaning of If Beale Street Could Talk- mom doesn't always have it together, but will go past her fear to bring back justice and control into the family. |  |
Best Actor in a Leading Role
| The Nominees:
With every step, every smirk, every note sung, Rami Malek perfectly embodies every video archive of Freddie Mercury ever filmed. But he goes beyond simple accuracy of how this man moved, he shares with you why he did the things he did, whether it's out of fear, out of hatred of his family name, or whether it's out of how much he wants the crowd to shout his name. From this entire year, Bohemian Rhapsody offers the most transparent look into a self-corrupted spirit, fictional or nonfictional. |  |
Best Actress in a Leading Role
| The Nominees:
Toni Collette doesn't shy away from how she's really feeling in Hereditary, not what her character's feeling, how SHE's feeling. Every time she curls up in sorrow, pleads in guilt, gives in to self-sacrifice, explodes out of hatred, she was never once acting: everything she did was a genuine expression of whatever trauma she may have felt in the past. It results in one of the most terrifyingly open depictions of motherly grief that cinema has ever seen, and maybe ever will see. |  |
Best Screenplay
| The Nominees:
Here's a script that knows how to make you laugh at something that's deceptively true to the here and now. A lot happens between the three women depicted in The Favourite as their hatred and lust for one another penetrates deeper. The crap about women in leadership it's throwing clear punches toward is handled with such sharp attention to the motives and tension, ending with not something preachy, but a harsh attitude about how much leadership must suck. |  |
Best Director
| The Nominees:
The attention to detail Alfonso pours his heart into is one for the books. It's slow in its progression of events yet never wastes a pixel of screen space; Roma becomes a study of how so much truly can be done with so little. It's not big in scale, but as proven here, as long as the artist has a lot to say, and a lot of ways to say those things through pictures, not words, the scope of emotion generated far surpasses what any major moneymaker will make in the long run. |  |
Best Picture
| The Nominees:
No other movie this year could depict the realism of today's generation better than Eighth Grade. It tells the hard truth to the parents: they're partially responsible for the trouble their kids get into. Yet it lets kids know not to sweat the small stuff. As the influence by technology becomes slowly more prevalent in our society, Bo Burnham's masterpiece reminds us it must never dictate our perception of anything, that the best things to seek after is simply being you. |  |
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