Dracula Presents: The Eleventh Annual Golden Stake Awards

As great as Laurie Metcalf was in Lady Bird, she was the best thing about it, I think Allison Janney is the hands down favorite to win which is unfortunate. She basically did the 'dirty old woman who swears a lot' routine and people are going bonkers about it. Unless I'm wrong which I hope I am I think Janney is going to steal it.

Best Supporting Actor

This year for the supporting actor category we seem to have come across some stark contrasts. Most of the characters here are either contemptable villains or they’re these rather aspirational paragons of human decency. That is perhaps emblematic of 2017, a year when we encounter a lot of the former and desperately desire that latter.

Mark Rylance – Dunkirk: The most famous (if slightly exaggerated) element of the historical Dunkirk evacuation was the use of small civilian vessels to assist in picking up soldiers stranded on the beach. This is where Mark Rylance comes in as he plays one of the mariners at the helm of one of these boats and in some ways acts as the soul of the movie. Embodying this kind of quiet patriotism is not as easy as it looks and it easily could have gotten corny, but Rylance manages to make it believable.

Willem Dafoe – The Florida Project: Willem Dafoe has had a long career which, let’s be honest, is built around the fact that Willem Dafoe is kind of creepy looking. He’s played several villains and several seedy characters, so it’s maybe an interesting irony that one of the newest career highlight is for playing a complicated if ultimately very good hearted character in The Florida Project. As the caretaker of a hotel/apartment complex for the very poor he manages to seem like a guy who’s sometimes needs to put his foot down while also seeming to have a lot of patience and a willingness to go out of his way to make things just a little better for the people he’s the landlord for.

Barry Keoghan- The Killing of a Sacred Deer: Yorgos Lanthimos’ movies don’t really trade in naturalistic acting at all. A lot of actors come off kind of awkward in his movies but Keoghan, who impressed earlier in the year in Dunkirk, managed to really stand out as a highlight. Keoghan plays a villain of sorts, but one who thinks he’s in the right and is operating out of a sense of vengeance. You never exactly know who or what this guy is and Keoghan consistently makes this character interesting to watch.

Patrick Stewart- Logan: Much has been made about the fact that Logan will likely be the last film where Hugh Jackman will play Wolverine, but it’s also probably a swan song for Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier. If you look back to the original X-Men you find that Xavier’s defining trait is that he’s calm, collected, and completely in control. In this movie though he’s a mess. He’s essentially senile and he’s downright dangerous when he loses control of his powers, and yet Xavier’s compassion and wisdom does still come through more often than not.

Sam Rockwell - Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri: In Three Billboards Sam Rockwell has a bit of a tricky role as he’s playing someone who’s one part villain, one part comic relief, and one part complex human. As a dimwitted sheriff’s deputy who has a skewed idea of what a police force is supposed to do Rockwell needs to make his occasionally over the top character believable and also find the humanity in someone most would want to dismiss as a boogieman.

And the Golden Stake Goes To…

Competitive category. I'm glad Stewart got a nod.

Best Actress

The Best Actress field is another category with a wide range of nominees, perhaps skewing a bit younger than usual. These were the five female actresses who most impressed me this year.

Saoirse Ronan – Lady Bird: There have certainly been solid teenage performances in the past but these characters are rarely played by two time Oscar winners, in part because child performers are rarely stable for long enough to be seasoned vets by the time they’re twenty two, but most people aren’t Saoirse Ronan. Ronan, who had taken to playing older in 2015’s Brooklyn slides back into teenager-dom without missing a beat and also puts on a seamless American accent and brings the title character to life.

Jennifer Lawrence – mother!: In mother! Jennifer Lawrence has the tricky task of playing a character who is as much a symbol as a person while not showing here hand too quickly. Occasionally this means her character acts in ways that are not entirely logical and she needs to make that sort of believable. Most of all Lawrence is able to convey her frustration and anxiety during the scenes where no one is listening to her and she’s desperately trying to keep things together.

Vicky Kreips – Phantom Thread: Not since Quentin Tarantino discovered Christoph Waltz has a European actor or actress just shown up in a major filmmaker’s film and so completely establish themselves after seemingly coming out of nowhere. In Phantom Thread Kreips walks this odd line between having genuine affection for the Day-Lewis character and being frustrated with him and can go from being victim to co-conspirator to puppet master, sometimes all in the same scene. It’s a mysterious character and a fascinating performance that keeps you riveted.

Sally Hawkins – The Shape of Water: To play Elisa in The Shape of Water Sally Hawkins had a lot of challenges to overcome. Most obviously she needed to do most of her acting without being able to speak. She presumably needed to learn some sign language and she also needed to really convey a specific personality without a voice. Additionally she needs to make the idea of a woman falling in love with a fish man believable. That’s not easy. And yet Hawkins still manages to fill this character with life and make you really get on her side.

Frances McDormand - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri: Frances McDormand is one of those actresses that you sort of take for granted most of the time until she gets the right role and reminds people how great she can be. Three Billboards was actually written with McDormand in mind and she really runs with it. Playing a small town character who is the complete opposite of her upbeat and profoundly decent character from Fargo, instead she is beaten down by life and angry to her core and McDormand plays it with conviction and solid comic timing.

And the Golden Stake Goes To…

Ronan was excellent in Lady Bird, don't get me wrong, but personally I feel like both McDormand and Hawkins turned in stronger work overall.

Best Actor

Best Actor is pretty self-explanatory, an award for the best performance by a male actor. Our nominees run the gamut from seasoned vets to total rookies but all of them managed to impress in a big way this year.

Demetrius Shipp Jr. – All Eyez on Me: It kind of sucks when great performances get stuck in not so great movies. That’s what happened when Demetrius Shipp’s incredible portrayal of Tupac Shakur got stuck in this average-at-best biopic, but in and of itself this performance really is quite impressive. Shipp looks and sounds uncannily similar to the real Tupac and he also does a good job of capturing the slain rapper’s fiery persona and charisma while also recognizing how some of those tendencies could be a double edged sword. It’s in a much different mileu but in many ways he does just as good a job of portraying a real person as Gary Oldman did this year in Darkest Hour, and given that this is the very first acting role the guy has ever had that’s saying something.

Timothée Chalamet – Call Me By Your Name: Timothée Chalamet had quite the breakout year in 2017 between his work here and in Lady Bird. Chalamet is 22 but he looks real young here, almost too young, and though he’s playing a highly educated and multi-lingual young man he does grasp that he’s still playing a teenager and knows when to tap into that emotional immaturity. This is a movie where people don’t always come out and explain what they’re thinking and feeling out loud so his ability to emote the unsaid is important here and that reaches a crescendo in the film’s closing moments.

James Franco- The Disaster Artist: The Disaster Artist is kind of a biopic, but not necessarily one about somebody who is a great icon, instead it’s a biopic about a really weird dude who is nonetheless memorable. To play the infamous auteur Tommy Wiseau, Franco needed to adopt Wiseau’s strange accent and syntax as well as his misguided confidence and his weird “malevolent” look. Pretending to be a bad actor is not as easy as it might sound and Franco manages to establish a distinction between the “real” Wiseau and Wiseau’s persona in “The Room.”

Robert Pattinson – Good Time: I think it’s time to finally fully put Twilight behind us and accept Robert Pattinson as a solid actor. Of all the actors here Pattinson is the one who probably does the most complete transformation as the New York lowlife he plays in Good Time is pretty far removed from the plastic British guy with slicked back hair that Pattinson normally seems like. Here he’s passionate and desperate, it really feels like the kind of performance you’d expect from a much different actor.

Daniel Day-Lewis – Phantom Thread: Those expecting Daniel Day-Lewis’ supposedly final performance in Phantom Thread to be a barn burning swan song might be a little disappointed, but performances where Day-Lewis is kind of restrained like this are in some ways rarer than the ones where he’s completely transforming himself and that makes this kind of valuable in its own way. Playing this somewhat prim and proper clothing designer with a dark side, Day-Lewis manages to pull off some tricky mood swings and makes a larger than life character oddly human.

And the Golden Stake Goes To…

Still need to see Phantom Thread.

...And...?

Best Acting Ensemble

The Best Acting Ensemble award is generally meant to reward movies for the efforts of their entire casts rather than individual actors. Over the years I’ve increasingly begun to view this as a place to reward true “ensemble films” that don’t naturally lend themselves to award worthy performances by individuals and which pose unique casting challenges that are worth bringing attention to.

BPM (Beats Per Minute): BPM (Beats Per Minute) is in many ways the kind of movie a category like this is made for. The film is about a group of ACT UP activists in Paris during the late early 90s and the movie is at its best when it’s about the entire group rather than any individual. I hadn’t heard of any of the actors in the film prior to this and I don’t know how many of them we’ll see again but they all have real chemistry and they feel like real bickering parties during the activist meetings that are the heart of the film.

The Florida Project: While there are individual cast members in The Florida Project who were worth highlighting but the film does such a great job of bringing together unconventional performers that it feels like it really belongs in this category. There are a couple of professional actors here, but for the most part director Sean Baker filled the film with non-actors who either live in the area of filming or who he found in such places as Instagram. What’s more he makes all of these people feel like pros. Bria Vinaite is amazing in the film, Brooklynn Prince is amazing in the film, people in smaller roles like Mela Murder are amazing in it. I don’t know how he does it.

Last Flag Flying: Last Flag Flying is an odd movie in terms of acting awards in that it has three male co-leads (Steve Carrell, Bryan Cranston, and Laurence Fishburne) who have roles of roughly comparable size and who really play off of each other throughout the movie. Outside of the three leads though the film does have quite a few other less famous actors like J. Quinton Johnson in smaller roles who contribute to the realism of the film.

The Post: When Steven Spielberg offers you a chance to be in a movie he’s making you say “yes” no matter how small the part is, and you can tell that this is the case when you look at the cast here. Above the line you have Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. That’s pretty impressive right there, but even if you ignore them you still have a cornucopia of actors who have been populating “peak tv” like Bob Odenkirk, Sarah Paulson, Matthew Rhys, Allison Brie, Carrie Coon, Jesse Plemons. Add to that some vetran character actors like Tracy Letts, Bruce Greenwood, Bradley Whitford, and Michael Stuhlbarg and things really start to see stacked.

Spider-Man: Homecoming: It’s not necessarily the first movie that comes to mind when you think “acting showcase” but it really is a pretty good example of how you can elevate one of these movies through some smart casting. For one, Peter Parker’s friends and classmates are made up of a carefully crafted roster of upcoming young actors who smartly update some of the dated characters from the comics. We also get Marisa Tomei as a cool new take on Parker’s Aunt May and Michael Keaton as one of the best villains Marvel has attempted and it even manages to incorporate actors from other Marvel movies like Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau in ways that feel like actual story elements rather than synergy. Add to that a cornucopia of cameos by the likes of Donald Glover (neat inside joke there), Jennifer Connelly, and Hannibal Buress and you’ve got a pretty damn impressive cast.

And the Golden Stake Goes To…

Best Line of Dialogue

This is the award I always dread the most each year, in part because I have a history of screwing up and overlooking lines that later become iconic. How was I supposed to know “I drink your milkshake” would catch on like it did? This year I was particularly nervous as I’ve done kind of a poor job of keeping track of these while I was watching the movies this time around, but hopefully it worked out.

"What's my stance on 9/11? Oh um, anti. It was a tragedy, I mean we lost 19 of our best guys."- The Big Sick: There’s a scene in The Big Sick where Kumail Nanjiani is heckled by audience members accusing him of being a terrorist. You get the impression he had to deal with this kind of thing a lot and one can imagine this dark little joke being one of the comebacks he came up with for such occasions. In the film is actually comes up when a relatively sympathetic person asks him his position on 9/11, and his response is a great way to show him he asked a stupid question without coming out and telling him it’s a stupid question.

“I'm sorry. I am so sorry! I just keep imagining you waking up in the morning, sir, looking in the mirror and then in all seriousness saying to yourself, ‘You know what would be a really kick-ass name? Taserface!’” –Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2: Shortly after Yondu’s men mutiny and kidnap Rocket with the assistance of Nebula Yondu’s first mate declares that they would now be led by him, Taserface. Despite being in clear mortal danger all Rocket can do is laugh at this ridiculous nickname and belittle him in front of the men he intends to lead. Taserface insists his name is “metaphorical” but his men clearly start to side with Rocket on this and can hardly hold back laughter.

"This didn't put an end to shit, you fucking retard; this is just the fucking start. Why don't you put that on your Good Morning Missouri fucking wake up broadcast, bitch?" – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri’s screenplay is filled with these immaculately crafted confections of profanity whether it’s Dixon getting a lesson on how he should respond when called a “fuckhead” or Robbie getting a lesson from his mother about using the C-word. But this little gem shouted by Mildred out the window of her car when a local TV reporter is giving a dumb summation of the whole situation really sums up just how beautifully un-PC this screenplay is going to be.

“The tea is leaving, but the interruption is staying right here with me.” – Phantom Thread: Phantom Thread is full of biting one-liners that could be called “sick burns” if not for the fact that the person on the receiving end is probably not really deserving of such scorn. This little gem of meanness occurs when Woodcock’s lady tries to bring him some tea while he’s at work and he is not too happy about it even after she backtracks and leaves with it. Is this all a game for the two of them? Who can say.

“Yes, [he tried to kill] me too. On many, many occasions. There was one time when we were children, he transformed himself into a snake, and he knows that I love snakes. So, I went to pick up the snake to admire it and he transformed back into himself and he was like, "Yeah, it's me!". And he stabbed me. We were eight at the time.” - Thor: Ragnarok: In this scene from Thor: Ragnarok where Thor is responding to someone’s observation that Loki once tried to kill them, Thor reveals this odd little childhood story about a prank/attempted regicide on his brother’s part. Firstly I find Thor’s apparent delight over snakes oddly charming, also the way he just throws in the fact that his brother straight up stabbed him in as an afterthought. The basic gist of the joke is that even literal gods aren’t above a little sibling rivalry.

And the Golden Stake Goes To…

I really want to see Last Flag Flying. I’ll have to track it down soon.