Dracula Presents: The Ninth Annual Golden Stake Awards

Best Adapted Screenplay
Usually there’s a clear split between the qualities of the adapted screenplay roster and the original screenplay roster, but this year they seem to be fairly evenly split. What interests me is that this year the adapted screenplays seem to be passion projects to a greater degree than the original roster. Also, while some of these are based on fairly popular works, none of them are adaptations of properties that were household names before they were turned into films.

Anomalisa: The status of Charlie Kaufman’s Anomolisa as an adapted screenplay is interesting in that it’s actually based on a “sound play” that Kaufman himself wrote and put on in collaboration with Carter Burwell in which the same voice cast used in the film would sit on chairs in front of the audience and read their lines while accompanied by an orchestra and foley artists. I’m not sure how different the puppet version is from the original, but whatever form it takes it’s a fascinating piece of writing.

Carol: Carol was based on a novel called “The Price of Salt” by Patricia Highsmith and its screenplay was written by a playwright named Phyllis Nagy who had not previously written a produced theatrical film. Nagy actually knew Highsmith before her death in 1995 and had been developing this project for well over a decade before it was finally made and you can tell she had thought out every last interaction and line and the attention to detail is palpable.

The Martian: Drew Goddard is quickly becoming a major force in Hollywood after working on a number of hit TV shows and getting writing credits on a number of cool movie projects. He’s now hit a new level of prestige after writing the feel-good screenplay for Ridley Scott’s The Martian. This adaptation retains the sense of humor and scientific interest of Andy Weir’s bestselling novel and finds ways to keep the film moving along at a good clip and make all of the characters interesting and likable.

Phoenix: Phoenix took an interesting journey to being a film in 2015 as it is based on a somewhat obscure novel called “Return from the Ashes” by a French novelist named Hubert Monteilhet which J. Lee Thompson actually made into a now mostly forgotten 1965 film under that original title. Both the original novel and that earlier adaptation were set in Paris, but this new adaptation moves the action to Berlin, adding a whole new thematic layer in which the Jewish victims must decide if it’s possible to forgive their home country for what they’ve gone through.

Room: Emma Donoghue is an Irish novelist who now lives and works in Canada. Her 2010 novel Room became her biggest success to date and when there were overtures to turn it into a film she opted to adapt the novel to the screen herself. The film’s screenplay walks a very fine tightrope and very subtly shifts perspectives over the course of the film in order to make it work and also manages to make material that easily could have come off as corny and somehow makes it work.

And the Golden Stake goes to…

Yeah, pretty soon. I usually do that a week or so before the Oscars so that people have the maximum amount of time to catch up.

Best Trailer
Trailers have become more important than ever now that they’re readily available online and this award seeks to reward the movies that do the best they can within the format. Bear in mind this is an award for the best trailer to a 2015 movie, so trailers for movies that come out next year will not be eligible. Also I’m limiting this to trailers for movies I’ve seen so I can make sure that the trailers don’t give too much away, are in keeping with the movie’s spirit, and aren’t misleading.

Creed:

A running theme through Creed is that the protagonist wants to make a name for himself without living in the shadow of his father and this trailer respects that by waiting a while before revealing that this movie is part of the Rocky franchise and even when that becomes apparent Sylvester Stallone never finds himself front and center in the trailer. But even beyond that this is an exciting and well cut piece of advertising that represents the movie well.

Beasts of No Nation (Teaser):

I always like teaser trailers that decide to focus in on a single scene from a movie and the is a pretty good example of that. The trailer plays an abridged version of a scene from the movie where the commandant orders the protagonist to deliver a summary execution of a man claimed to be among those who massacred the child’s village. The trailer cannily intercuts scenes from earlier in the film of that family as the child decides what to do. It’s a bit of a ripoff of last year’s American Sniper trailer but it’s still an effective trick.

Goodnight Mommy:

This is a trailer that gets bonus points for degree of difficulty. Goodnight Mommy is certainly a horror film of sorts but it doesn’t really have a monster and isn’t filled with jump scares, so the trailer needs to sell the movie on its tone and mystery and this trailer really does that while also avoiding the film’s twists and playing along with its misdirection. Also one of the more effective use of critics quotes I’ve seen in a while.

Mad Max: Fury Road:

This trailer had the somewhat unfair advantage of being for a movie that is filled with interesting imagery that probably could have been turned into a great trailer even in the most inept of hands, but this one does sort of go the extra mile in its ability to fill the trailer with short blink and you’ll miss it cuts of some of the film’s most memorable shots and also doesn’t shy away from the film’s political undercurrents.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Teaser #2):

There were a number of trailers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens but this is the one that really had people talking, in no small part because it finally revealed Han Solo and Chewbacca at the end. There is however more to its appeal than that. It does a great job of giving the audience just the right taste of what is to come without telling them much of anything about the plot or spoiling any secrets.

And the Golden Stake goes to…

Doesn't he say "And now YOU have it" in some trailer? That's not from ROTJ.

Best Poster
One would think that posters would be a nearly obsolete form of advertising at this point, but in many ways they’re more important than ever because they have become these little avatars that follow their respective movies about whenever they come up on the internet. To be eligible it needs to be a poster for a film that came out in 2015 and I have to have seen the movie (so I’ll know it captures its essence) and it also needs to be a poster that the studio officially released, no fan made posters.

Chi-Raq:

Chi-Raq is a proudly liberal, perhaps even radical, film in its politics and often draws on the kind of imagery that would have been seen in the hippie era. This poster certainly draws on agit-prop iconography like the way it has Teyonah Parris proudly sporting an afro and wearing military fatigues (in another version of the poster she’s giving a black power salute) and the peace signs both on her hair and in the film’s title firmly place it into a 60s tradition. If there’s any real demerit it’s that censorship kind of screwed over the tagline, the real slogan in the movie is “no peace, no pussy,” “no peace, no piece” is an interesting play on words but doesn’t really make sense when you think about it.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (Closet Arsenal):

This teaser poster for Kingsman: The Secret Service is clearly the strongest example of a high concept poster this year with its depiction of a perfectly organized closet arsenal. This is drawn directly from a scene in the movie in which we see a secret Kingsman haberdashery that’s loaded with guns and spy gadgets but even if it wasn’t it would be a perfect illustration of this organization’s style. I love how naturally the guns seem to blend in with the clothing. See how perfectly those shotgun shells are lined up and how those knives just look like regular clothing accessories if you don’t look close enough.

Mad Max: Fury Road (teaser):

Easily the most detailed and most meticulously drawn of the posters here, this Mad Max poster shows us Max looking like a badass while standing with his back turned to the camera but also shows him being dwarfed by Immortan Joe’s caravan of freaky death cars, which are shown from a different angle than we usually see them in the actual movie. Joe’s Herz/mosntertruck vehicle is really imposing heading right towards Max and that amplifier car looms large in the background but Max just stands there and seemingly dares them to mess with him.

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens:

There’s no grand concept here, in fact one could almost accuse the poster of just being a “photoshoped heads” poster if not for the fact that it’s actually an illustration. There are definitely imperfections: that rebel pilot in the center is really poorly drawn and the line of stormtroopers at the bottom is kind of odd, but it make up for it in its sheer geeky coolness. Love the way Rey’s staff and Kylo’s saber meet and how Finn’s saber makes it into a sort of makeshift triangle. Also love how it fits the design set out by the prequel and special edition posters. I look forward to when there will be nine of these things we can line up.

Tangerine:

This poster certainly takes the cake as far as creating an iconic image in the simplest way possible. The purple color scheme generally fits really well with the femininity of the film and the way it mixes with pink to depict the sun setting over this L.A. neighborhood is decent reflection of the film’s general photographic aesthetic. The real kicker of course is the way the poster puts both the neighborhood and the two characters into silhouette, which blends things together nicely and by putting the figures to the two characters into silhouette it really emphasizes their feminen aspects even though they’re… less entirely feminine… when photographed in other ways.

And the Golden Stake goes to…

Yeah, you seem to talk about that movie a lot.
As for posters, the Kingsman one ws neat.

Action Film of the Year
If there’s one thing Hollywood is usually willing to make it’s action movies, and as such this is usually a fairly competitive category, but this year even more so. Maybe it’s because there are a couple of action movies that have been accepted as prestige films this year or maybe it’s because the action movies on the sillier side of the spectrum really stepped up their spectacle factor, but there was something of an embarrassment of riches for action fans this year.

’71: ’71 fits well in a recent trend in post-Hurt Locker war films that are unafraid to delve into relatively recent conflicts and take them serious while also being willing to function like action movies and have fun with the action scenes along the way. Whether it’s the footchase that sets the film in motion or the tense cat and mouse chase that characterizes the film’s final third, this movie never lets up on the tension.

Furious 7: This is probably the… stupidest… of the five nominees here, but scene for scene it’s also one of the strongest on a pure action front. It came out early and was somewhat overshadowed in the popular conversation by other movies that came out later but individual set-pieces like the chase in the caucuses are some of the best action scenes this series has produced yet and really fun and exciting to boot.

Mad Max: Fury Road: George Miller has had the odd distinction of having made landmark action films within a single series but has pretty much shunned the genre at every other turn in his career, which is why it was a bit of a shock that he was able to return to his signature series on such strong footing. This movie is almost entirely composed of action scenes and hardly lets up as it goes from stunt to stunt but it’s almost never tedious in doing so.

Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation: The Mission: Impossible series is for all intents and purposes a delivery method for action sequences in much the way tortilla chips are a delivery method for salsa. When you go to one you can pretty much count on there being at least two or three really solid and elaborate action scenes in which Tom Cruise risks life and limb for our amusement and this latest installment did not disappoint.

The Revenant: People will tell you that The Revenant is pretentious, don’t listen to them. It’s perfectly possible to ignore the film’s environmental and historical themes and to simply view it as a straight-forward wilderness survival adventure film in the vain of The Grey or Apolcalypto. The opening action scene is right up there with the most exciting action scenes of any movie this year and even when we aren’t straight-up seeing people fight each other there’s a certain macho man vs. nature excitement to the whole thing.

And the Golden Stake goes to…

Comedy of the Year
This was a pretty good year for action and horror… comedy not so much. Honestly the blame for this one might sort of be on me, there were some promising comedies this year like The Night Before which I neglected to see, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that a lot of the mainstream comedies like Sisters and Ted 2 which seemed to underwhelm and kind of looked like a waste and there weren’t even many purely comedic indies to make up for it, so this is largely going to consist of borderline cases.

Chi-Raq: Spike Lee has always kind of secretly been a comedy director but sometimes he’s more overt about it than others. With Chi-Raq he’s in full-on rip-roaring satire mode and is more than willing to break the common rules of respectability to get a good joke in. Sometimes he goes a little too far like in a scene involving a confederate flag enthused military figure, but for the most part this feels like some really righteous comedy.

The Martian: When The Martian was nominated in the comedy category at the Golden Globes a lot of people thought it was a cynical ploy, and it very well might have been, but I actually think they have a fairly strong case. The movie makes a very deliberate decision to drive the screenplay in a jokey direction and put humor front and center and it knowingly lessens the tension and suspense by doing so. If The Big Short is a comedy then so is this.

Mistress America: I generally hate indie comedies about hipsters living in Brooklyn, but this one worked for me for some reason. I think it has to do with the fact that all the hipster stuff is being seen through the eyes of a college student who has a slightly different perspective than the usual and it isn’t content to just rest on the laurels of being “relatable” to a tiny subset of the population. Also, the movie comes close to transforming into a full on screwball comedy in its third act and is really amusing when it does so.

Tangerine: I’d be lying if I said that this movie really made me laugh all that much, it isn’t really the kind of comedy that’s going for belly laughs, but it is a movie that has a real wit and energy going for it. For a movie that’s trying really hard to make its audience empathize with its outsider characters it’s also very willing to show just how dysfunctional and crazy they can be. At times their lives can feel like something out of the Jerry Springer show, but the film never feels like its leering in and laughing at them so much as chuckling with them in a warm sort of way.

Trainwreck: The best no-question 100% bona fide mainstream comedy of the year was probably Trainwreck, a film which merged the comedic talents of this generation’s most influential comedic filmmaker Judd Apatow with comedy it-girl Amy Schumer. The film is basically an extension of both Schumer’s wild party-girl persona and Apatow’s interest in deconstructing the romantic comedy and it offers quite a few laughs along the way.

And the Golden Stake goes to…

Documentary of the Year
Every year I do the best I can to see as many of the year’s biggest documentaries as I can and I think I kind of outdid myself this year. I watched 21 docs, which isn’t a particularly high number but thanks to wide distribution on formats like Netflix and HBO I think I hit most of the major title with only a couple exceptions like Listen to Me Marlon and In Jackson Heights. Also it should be noted that this is limited to feature length documentaries, so I won’t be including any extended made-for-TV docs like “The Jinx” or “Making a Murderer.”

Cartel Land: You’d think that the drug wars in Mexico would be an even bigger story than they are given that there’s mass violence going on right beneath the U.S. border and I think part of the reason people don’t talk about it more is that no one on either end of the political spectrum has much of anything in the way of solutions for the problem. Fortunately there are documentaries like this coming along that at least lays out the problem. Cartel Land specifically focuses on the a Mexican vigilante group and their mixed legacy and is one of the better shot current events docs in recent memory.

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck: The film Amy is one of the most celebrated documentaries of the year but my “look back on a musician who died young” documentary of choice this year was Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. This film succeed in part because it is laser focused on one thing: painting a portrait of Kurt Cobain’s personality and way of thinking, and it does this through a number of clever ways like digging into his backlog of art projects and home movies.

The Look of Silence: The Look of Silence is the second film that Joshua Oppenheimer has made about the mass killings that occurred in Indonesia in 1965, and while it lacks the initial shock value that 2013’s The Act of Killing Had it perhaps has a deeper goal: to examine why Indonesian society has engaged in a sort of conspiracy of silence regarding these killings. Oppenheimer once again uses a fairly minimalist style in order to let people hang themselves with their own words, but this time he allows an interviewer confront them and watch them squirm.

Meru: There have been a lot of documentaries about mountain climbing and I haven’t seen a lot of them so I’m not exactly sure how this one stacks up but I definitely liked it a lot. The film is about two attempts to climb what was thought to be an unclimbable peak and while it does have some good footage of mountaineering shot by the participants, what really drew me in was the film’s unsensational depiction of what it’s like to be a professional mountain climber and plan out one of the ascents.

The Nightmare: It’s always a little tricky to try to weigh documentaries that use extensive reenactments against documentaries that stick strictly to unscripted footage, but there’s little doubt that The Nightmare is a very cool use of the non-fiction form. Using the language of horror cinema, the film brings various real people’s descriptions of their experiences of sleep paralysis to life while also using their research to look into what this condition is all about and what it’s like to live with.

And the Golden Stake Goes To…

Soaked in Bleach is better.