Jibbs
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Post by Jibbs on Feb 25, 2018 21:17:15 GMT -5
Kong was stupid, Baby Driver was stupid, Logan was stupid. He had a tough job.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Feb 25, 2018 23:47:34 GMT -5
I pretty strongly disagree here. Baby Driver had some cool action, but it doesn't have nearly the same emotional or visceral effect Logan does. The finale in the woods is both badass and awesome while also being very moving.
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Feb 25, 2018 23:58:17 GMT -5
Get. Out. I pretty strongly disagree here. Baby Driver had some cool action, but it doesn't have nearly the same emotional or visceral effect Logan does. The finale in the woods is both badass and awesome while also being very moving. While I DO still love Baby Driver...preach. |
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Post by Neverending on Feb 26, 2018 2:04:04 GMT -5
Kong was stupid, Baby Driver was stupid, Logan was stupid. He had a tough job.  |
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Wyldstaar
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Post by Wyldstaar on Feb 26, 2018 8:00:50 GMT -5
Holy crap! Mickey Rooney is still alive? He seems really pissed about it, too!
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 26, 2018 19:50:06 GMT -5
Best Comedy
It’s not really a secret that 2017 was an absolutely abysmal year for mainstream studio comedy. The usual stars of mainstream comedy seemed to either sat this year out or contributed to relatively idiosyncratic projects. In fact you need to go all the way down to number 26 on the top box office earners of the year to find a live action film that’s purely a comedy. As such I’ve looked outside of the usual model of what Hollywood calls a comedy, but I don’t feel like I had to stretch anything too far. The Disaster Artist: I was pretty skeptical when I first heard that James Franco was making a movie about the making of “The Room,” assuming it was going to be one of his goofy vanity project, but he seems to have proven me wrong, in part by delivering a film that with a lot more mainstream appeal than what I was expecting. In fact of all the nominees here this is probably the closest to what people generally think about as being a “comedy” today. The movie mines all kind of hilarity out of how awful “The Room” is and how weird its creator is, but it never stops being legit storytelling either. I, Tonya: Knowing that the story they were covering was salacious and had tabloid-ish the people behind I, Tonya opted to approach their subject as a dark comedy rather than as some kind of dramatic re-enactment and boy do the people involved in all of this deliver. Tonya Harding was clearly surrounded by some astonishingly stupid people and the likes of Shawn Eckhardt give them quite a bit of material to work with. The Square: Ruben Östlund’s The Square isn’t exactly a laugh-a-minute exercise, but at its heart is a satiric wit that drives the movie forward. The film is a pastiche of the modern art world, but one that generally avoids the obvious jokes about pretentious abstract art and instead focuses its aim at the whole of the intellectual class that often adopts an affinity for its message more in theory than in practice. Additionally the film often adopts a sort of Office-like cringe comedy, especially when its protagonist interacts with a reporter character played by Elizabeth Olsen. Thor: Ragnarok: In slow comedy years I’ve long found myself nominating Marvel films that emphasize jokes over action or drama. Previous nominees have included Iron Man 3 and The Guardians of the Galaxy and this year I’m bringing in the Thor series as the latest installment really doubled down on the comedic elements, in part because they realized that no one was too invested in any character arc that Thor was on. Taika Waititi was brought in as a director and brought his brand of deadpan New Zealand humor with him and it made for a very enjoyable movie. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri: Martin McDonagh made his career off of writing dark comedy that constantly teeters between highly irreverent dialog and serious themes like guilt, violence, and in this case anger. McDonagh’s script for Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri is filled with his signature dialog with its outbursts of profanity and willingness to “go places” you don’t expect it to and it also mines dark comedy out of just how incompetent the Same Rockwell character can get. And the Golden Stake Goes To…
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri
 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri certainly isn’t exactly the first thing that people think of as a comedy, in fact they didn’t even submit to the Golden Globes as a comedy for some reason, but it certainly has more jokes than something that would strictly be called a drama. Of course I’ve long believed that people’s traditional idea of what constitutes a comedy is overly narrow. This is a really ballsy exploration into what can and can’t be funny.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Feb 26, 2018 23:14:22 GMT -5
Additionally the film often adopts a sort of Office-like cringe comedy, especially when its protagonist interacts with a reporter character played by Elizabeth Olsen. Moss. Anyway, great choice. Glad to see The Square get a well-deserved nod. I also found The Killing of a Sacred Deer to be pretty damn funny in a dark sort of way. |
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 27, 2018 1:14:34 GMT -5
Additionally the film often adopts a sort of Office-like cringe comedy, especially when its protagonist interacts with a reporter character played by Elizabeth Olsen. Moss. Not the first time I've made that mistake, won't be the last. If Elizabeth Moss didn't want people making that mistake she shouldn't have become famous playing someone with the last name Olsen. |
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 28, 2018 0:39:28 GMT -5
Best Horror Film
There’s never been a clear and concise definition of what a horror movie is and it’s seemed particularly contentious this year for the subject. As audiences are increasingly hungry for movies where ghosts make loud noises a lot of horror movies entered theaters trying to do different things and were kind of shunned for their trouble. I’ve decided to throw a pretty wide net and nominate the films that try to expand the genre. A Cure for Wellness: A Cure for Wellness makes a handful of mistakes, mistakes like casting Dane DeHaan as its lead and running for nearly two and half hours, but at its heart it has some really original ideas for a Hollywood production. It doesn’t cast a ghost or demon as its villain or a conventional serial killer and instead brings in some interesting images like all the business with the eels and whatnot. It: It is obviously a horror movie, but in many ways it seems like much more than one. In fact in many ways the horror seems like a secondary draw behind the nostalgic setting and the cast of likeable characters, but of course at the center of it is a creepy fucking clown. Director Andy Muschietti is sometimes a bit impatient about revealing his monsters, a problem that also existed in his previous movie, but when those images are certainly worth getting to. It Comes at Night: There was a lot of debate around the time It Comes at Night came out as to whether they should have advertised it as a horror movie at all. I certainly think it was fair to call it a horror movie, it just isn’t a horror movie that follows the same formulas that mainstream audiences have come to expect from the genre. The horror here comes from a place of rising tension as well as from the way the characters are haunted by their pasts. mother!: While I thought It Comes at Night was clearly a horror film, mother! is in many ways a movie whose ambitions role right past horror, but to get where it wants to go it does use the language of a horror film, especially in its first half and that’s why it belongs here. Much of the tension here is actually based less on the threat of something jumping out and killing the protagonist so much as it comes from worry about her situation and the way you’re unsure about what’s going on around her, at least when reading the film on the surface level. Raw: This Belgian movie isn’t necessarily a horror movie in the sense that the protagonist is in mortal danger all that often but is instead more of an exercise in the disturbing and the unsettling as well as a vision of paranoia. Set in a veterinarian Academy, the film follows a freshman girl as she sort of starts to lose her mind after eating meat for the first time (she was raised vegan) as a hazing ritual leaving her with a hunger she doesn’t understand. And the Golden Stake Goes To…
mother! I was hesitant about even putting this in this category but once it was in it became the clear winner. In some of the film’s most compelling moments it plays out like an introvert’s nightmare with the main character suddenly forced to interact with a crowd of people who are taking over her house in an almost violent way. You really want to step in and saver her, then when things get literally violent at the end it gets even more tense.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 28, 2018 22:40:17 GMT -5
Best Documentary
I don’t think I’ve been the best documentary watcher this year, though I’m not exactly sure why. I saw fourteen documentaries from this year which is one more than I watched last year and only about two less than I did in the two years prior. I also watched most of the year’s most acclaimed docs including all five of the ones nominated for Oscars, and yet I still feel like there had to be some better stuff out there I missed. Please note that I have disqualified multi-part docs made for TV/Streaming like Wormwood, Five Came Back, and The Defiant Ones. Abacus: Small Enough to Jail: The subtitle “Small Enough to Jail” is meant as a contrast to the phrase “Too Big to Fail” as it is about the one bank that was prosecuted in the wake of the 2008 housing collapse: not a giant investor bank but a tiny family owned bank operating out of New York’s Chinatown. The film raises plenty of questions about whether this bank should have been prosecuted in the first place and also whether they were simply chosen as a target of convenience. Directed by the legendary Steve James, this film looks at an interesting family as they deal with this crazy situation. Faces Places: Faces Places was made by the great French New Wave director Agnes Varda and is ultimately something of a self-portrait. During the film Varda and a French street artist who goes by JR go into the French countryside looking for interesting people and set up these elaborate art installations where photographs are blown up and pasted to walls in interesting way. That alone would seem rather slight but as the film goes along you come to realize its real objective is to watch Varda herself in her later years and appreciate her legacy as an artist. Icarus: Sometimes amazing documentary material just falls into people’s laps. That’s what happened to the movie Icarus, which started out as a Super Size Me style high concept documentary where an amateur cyclist would try to see if he could take steroids and still beat out doping tests, suddenly turned into a front row seat into an international scandal when its director realized that his advisor had played a key role in Russia’s systematic doping scandal. LA92: This year there were two major documentaries examining the 1992 L.A. Riots (which had their 25the anniversary this year) and you can tell why people would find that event especially relevant now. The other documentary took a more straightforward historical approach but this one, which was funded by the National Geographic cable channel, eschews most of the narrative tricks documentaries rely on like talking heads and narration and instead relies entirely on stock footage from the riot which it edits together to form a narrative of what happened during that period. Strong Island: Strong Island is an example of a documentary that takes a personal rather than detached approach to a subject as the man who made it, is an example of a documentary that takes a personal rather than detached approach to a subject as the man who made it, Yance Ford, is more or less making a documentary about his own family’s history. Examining the murder of his brother several years prior, Ford examines what it means to be black in a country that’s often hostile towards blackness as well as the personal fallout of loss on a family. And the Golden Stake Goes To…
Faces Places
I was a little conflicted about this one because there are elements of Faces Places that do fall outside of the traditional confines of what constitutes a documentary. There are definitely aspects of the narrative that I suspect were staged and many aspects of it are unambiguously set up and planned by the filmmakers. However, this is not a scripted movie per se and there is precedent for documentaries like Exit Through the Gift Shop to win here despite not fitting the traditional mold.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Mar 4, 2018 0:30:14 GMT -5
Top Ten Films of 2017 Sorry for the delay on this, been a bit distracted by some bullshit at work this week. 2017: #10
It Comes At Night
Directed by: Trey Edward Shults Written by: Trey Edward Shults Starring: Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Kelvin Harrison Jr., and Riley Keough Distributor: A24 Country: USA Language: English Rating: R Running Time: 91 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Format: Digital Date released: 6/9/2017 Date seen: 6/18/2017 Worldwide Box Office Gross: $19 Million # of Oscar nominations: 0 # of Golden Stake Nominations: 4 (Best Shootout, Best Makeup, Most Under-Rated, and Best Horror) # of Golden Stakes Won: 0 If you’ve been following my top tens for a while you’ll know that I often leave my tenth slot reserved for a movie that’s a little bit outside of the usual top ten conversations come year end but which deserved to be taken a little more seriously. This year that fell on the thriller It Comes At Night, which proved to be a rather polarizing movie when it came out this summer and which critics did not keep on defending after it left the news cycle but which remains one of the more thoughtful and interesting horror movies of the year. Depicting what would be a more realistic look at what could be interpreted as essentially a zombie apocalypse, the film establishes a world within a world that has been created by the characters and examines them as grief and paranoia tear away at them. I can sort of see why audiences might have felt a bit betrayed by the film as Trey Edward Shults does try to bring the audience in on the characters’ paranoia but unlike Roman Polanksi the paranoia here is not necessarily justified and some people might see that as a bit of a betrayal but I would argue that the ending they went with is way more intense than any confrontation with any literal monsters. 2017: #9
Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri
Directed by: Martin McDonagh Written by: Martin McDonagh Starring: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage, Lucas Hedges, Caleb Landry Jones, Željko Ivanek, and Clarke Peters Distributor: Fox Searchlight Country: USA Language: English Rating: R Running Time: 115 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Format: Digital Date released: 11/10/2017 Date seen: 11/23/2017 Worldwide Box Office Gross: $114 Million # of Oscar nominations: 6 (Best Editing, Best Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, Best Actress, and Best Picture) # of Golden Stake Nominations: 7 (Best Use of Source Music, Best Supporting Actor, Best Actress, Best Line, Best Original Screenplay, Best Trailer, and Best Comedy) # of Golden Stakes Won: 3 (Best Supporting Actor, Best Line, and Best Comedy) Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri has been cleaning up on the award circuit but along the way it picked up a lot of controversy and has become a fairly divisive movie. I’m not entirely unsympathetic to the film’s naysayers and I do think the turn that the Sam Rockwell character makes towards the end could have been handled a little bit better, but I still think this needs to be on this list in part because it’s simply the most 2017 movie of 2017. We’re living in a time where entrenched power structures are in place and are causing lots of trouble but the anger against those institutions causes a lot of nastiness and sometimes consumes people and makes them act out in ways that are not productive. On top of the film’s relevance it does simply have value in being the next film from Martin McDonagh and a clear rebound after the overly hyper and conceptual Seven Psychopaths. McDonagh is as witty as ever and fills the movie with all sorts of hilarious angry dialogue but this time adds more real world weight to the proceedings. 2017: #8
Logan
  Directed by: James Mangold Written by: James Mangold, Scott Frank, Michael Green Based On: Characters from the X-Men Comics and Theatrical Films Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Richard E. Grant, and Dafne Keen Distributor: 20th Century Fox Country: USA Language: English Rating: R Running Time: 137 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Format: Digital Date released: 3/3/2017 Date seen: 3/4/2017 Worldwide Box Office Gross: $616 million # of Oscar nominations: 1 (Adapted Screenplay) # of Golden Stake Nominations: 7 (Best Fight, Best Chase, Best Sound, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Trailer, and Best Action Film) # of Golden Stakes Won: 1 (Best Trailer) We constantly tell people working out of Hollywood to try different things when they make big budget superhero movies and the people behind Logan certainly gave us that, at least within the confines of its ostensible genre. Presenting something of a possibly non-canonical final adventure for the Wolverine character from the X-Men movies, the film looks at a fatigued and finally aging Logan as he goes on a mission that could finally give him some degree of peace but which will make him go through hell to get it. Director James Mangold, who had just come off making the rather lackluster The Wolverine managed to convince 20th Century Fox to take things a lot more seriously for what is reported to be Hugh Jackman’s final performance in the role that made him famous. The film is notably more violent and profane than other X-Men films but the bigger thing that sets the film apart is that it takes a much different approach and almost feels more like a western than a true superhero movie and could fit well alongside movies about aging gunfighters like Unforgiven, The Searchers, and of course Shane, which the movie references by name. I do worry that in some ways the film has become something of a beneficiary of lowered expectations because of its status as a studio superhero movie, but at the same time it’s hard not be overjoyed when you see filmmakers finally deliver what you’ve been asking for from these kinds of movies. 2017: #7
Lady Bird Directed by: Greta Gerwig Written by: Greta Gerwig Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Lois Smith Distributor: A24 Country: USA Language: English Rating: R Running Time: 93 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Format: Digital Date released: 11/3/2017 Date seen: 11/18/2017 Worldwide Box Office Gross: $44 Million # of Oscar nominations: 5 (Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Actress, Supporting Actress) # of Golden Stake Nominations: 5 (Best Editing, Best Soundtrack, Best Supporting Actress, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay) # of Golden Stakes Won: 2 (Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress) I’ve long been kind of critical of young filmmakers who choose to start their careers by making semi-autobiographical coming of age movies. It’s a tactic which always seems unimaginative reeks of narcissism, a sort of over-literalization of the phase “write what you know.” The thing is, that outlook can work out in a film’s favor because whenever a filmmaker is able to make one of these things and actually make it work I tend to be doubly impressed by it. That was certainly the case of Lady Bird, which managed to be this really clear-eyed look at teenagerdom which didn’t have to resort to the usual tricks like voice-overs, indie-rock soundtracks, or Wes Andersony quirks. There’s a lot in the film that rings true to me, especially the characters, who are all brought to life by excellent performances and it was certainly a trip seeing a film like this look back at the early 2000s. When I first reviewed the film I was a bit put off by the ending and I still think that could have been handled better, but it does seem like a smaller quibble in hindsight. The movie does sort of live in the shadow of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, which also examined this generation in a similar fashion but with added scope, but in its smaller ambitions Lady Bird manages to impress quite a bit as well. 2017: #6
BPM (Beats Per Minute) Directed by: Robin Campillo Written by: Robin Campillo and Philippe Mangeot Starring: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Arnaud Valois, Adèle Haenel, Antoine Reinartz, Felix Maritaud, Médhi Touré, Aloïse Sauvage, Simon Bourgade, Catherine Vinatier, Saadia Ben Taieb, Ariel Borenstein, Théophile Ray, Simon Guélat, Jean-François Auguste, and Coralie Russier Distributor: The Orchard Country: France Language: French Rating: Unrated Running Time: 140 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Format: Digital Date released: 8/23/2017 Date seen: 11/11/2017 Worldwide Box Office Gross: $110,000* (International box office unknown) # of Oscar nominations: 0 # of Golden Stake Nominations: 2 (Best Ensemble and Most Under-Rated) # of Golden Stakes Won: 0 BPM (Beats Per Minute) was a movie that was difficult to honor during the Golden Stakes, which in some ways speaks to its unconventional nature. There’s nothing terribly special about its technical merits, it doesn’t have a ton of major set pieces, and its ensemble nature makes it hard for individual performances to really stand out, but the things it does do it does very well. Specifically this is one of the best depictions of grassroots activism that I’ve seen on film. Depicting the Parisian branch of the ACTUP movement for AIDS awareness back in the 90s, the film shows these young activists, many of them HIV positive, as they go on various protests. The film is at its best when it is in the group’s meetings and acts as a sort of fly on the wall as they debate amongst themselves in various fascinating ways. These scenes are of course reminiscent of another film that Robin Campillo had a writing credit on, the 2008 drama The Class, which to me is the greatest film ever made about high school classrooms. The movie isn’t quite as strong when it tries to look at the activists’ personal lives but it remains a film that provides something that few other movies are interested in. 2017: #5
Phantom Thread
 Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lesley Manville, and Vicky Krieps Distributor: Focus Country: USA/UK Language: English Rating: R Running Time: 130 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Format: 35mm Date released: 12/25/2017 Date seen: 1/13/2018 Worldwide Box Office Gross: $18 million # of Oscar nominations: 6 (Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress, Score, and Costume Design) # of Golden Stake Nominations: 5 (Best Score, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Line, and Best Original Screenplay) # of Golden Stakes Won: 2 (Best Score and Best Actor) If there’s any movie from this year that I can pretty easily see myself ranking a lot higher in a couple of years after giving it some extra viewings it’s probably Phantom Thread. On first viewing I was completely enraptured by the movie, almost to the point where I don’t think I was analyzing it as much as I should have, and I left the movie not quite knowing what to make of it entirely except that it was great. Echoing Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca the film looks at a relationship that is seemingly toxic but often understandable and much of the tension in the film comes from trying to figure out what makes these people tick and how you feel about what they’re doing. Even if there wasn’t this complex character study at the center the film’s look at the inner workings of a 1950s fashion house is in and of itself pretty fascinating and the whole cast is really incredible. I think what might be holding it back might simply be the incredibly high standard that Paul Thomas Anderson has set for himself. This is certainly a movie that deserves to be in the same filmography as films like There Will be Blood and The Master but it doesn’t quite spark my fancy like those other movies do. 2017: #4
The Square Directed by: Ruben Östlund Written by: Ruben Östlund Starring: Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss, Christopher Læssø, Dominic West, and Terry Notary Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics Country: Sweden Language: Swedish Rating: R Running Time: 142 minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Format: Digital Date released: 8/25/2017 Date seen: 11/12/2017 Worldwide Box Office Gross: $8 million # of Oscar nominations: 1 (Foreign Language Film) # of Golden Stake Nominations: 3 (Best Set-Piece, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Comedy) # of Golden Stakes Won: 1 (Best Original Screenplay) I was not the world’s biggest fan of Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure when it came out in 2014. In part I think that was because that was a movie about a guy trying to look tough and brave to his family, which is not necessarily something I relate to in any profound way, but I most definitely can relate to the people in his follow-up who are more interested in looking smart and in looking moral. The film is set in a modern art museum in Sweden and focuses on a curator there who has just acquired a piece called “The Square,” which he thinks is based in this utopian vision of a world where everyone trusts each other and everyone is treated equally, but that is in part a misinterpretation. The art piece is in fact something of a critique of how museums and by extension the elites seem only interested in creating culture within these isolated little boxes while generally feeling free to be assholes everywhere else. The film ends up being something of a testament to exactly how these wealthy elites go about undermining their professed ideals in their day to day lives and in many ways proves to be a more adept critique of elite hypocrisy than the much praised Get Out. Add to that the fact that the movie is often quite funny and some rather inspired set-pieces like Christian’s quest to retrieve his wallet and of course the monkey man performance art piece and you’ve got quite the film to contend with. 2017: #3
Dunkirk Directed by: Christopher Nolan Written by: Christopher Nolan Starring: Mark Rylance, Fionn Whitehead, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Harry Styles, Jack Lowden, Barry Keoghan, Aneurin Barnard, Tom Glynn-Carney, James D'Arcy, and Kenneth Branagh Distributor: Warner Brothers Country: UK/USA Language: English Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 106 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.43:1/2.20:1 Format: IMAX/65mm Date released: 7/21/2018 Date seen: 7/22/2018 Worldwide Box Office Gross: $525 Million # of Oscar nominations: 8 (Picture, Director, Cinematography, Editing, Score, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Production Design) # of Golden Stake Nominations: 6 (Best Set-Piece, Best Sound, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Score, and Best Supporting Actor) # of Golden Stakes Won: 2 (Best Set-Piece and Best Editing) That Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is a triumph of craftsmanship is hardly something that many people need to be convinced of as that’s pretty clear just from looking at it. Nolan uses every shred of his blockbuster talent in in recreating the chaos of the Dunkirk Evacuation in the air, on the seas, and on the beach. All three of these theaters of war have been immaculately cast, expertly recreated, and woven together in a way that’s both temporally fascinating and which also helps put you into the confused and shell-shocked minds of the soldiers experiencing this historical event on screen. If you ever get a chance to watch the making of documentary on the Blu-Ray you really should because it lays out in even more detail the great lengths these filmmakers went to render this as authentically as possible and it gives you an even better sense of this accomplishment. That said, there is a more here than just the film’s attention to detail and general excitement. The film is awash in questions of what it means to be a hero and about what happens to people when put under pressure. And if those ideas aren’t topical enough for you I do stand by my theory that this is, perhaps unintentionally, something of the perfect film for the mood of a post-Trump and post-Brexit world in that it’s a movie about a bunch of people on the right side of history who just suffered a huge defeat but still have the resolve to come back and resist. 2017: #2
mother!
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky Written by: Darren Aronofsky Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Brian Gleeson, and Kristen Wiig Distributor: Paramount Country: USA Language: English Rating: R Running Time: 121 Minutes Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Format: 16mm Date released: 9/15/2017 Date seen: 9/16/2017 Worldwide Box Office Gross: $45 Million # of Oscar nominations: 0 # of Golden Stake Nominations: 7 (Best Set-Piece, Best Editing, Best Cameo, Best Supporting Actress, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Horror) # of Golden Stakes Won: 1 (Best Horror) I’m honestly kind of surprised that Darren Aronofsky’s mother! was as controversial and divisive as it was. I get why the basic people who went to it expecting a normal horror movie didn’t like it, but there are plenty of people who should have been a bit more open minded who also seemed to dismiss it and make no mistake the people who hate this movie seems to REALLY hate it. For me though this was like sweet sweet nectar in a cinematic landscape that so often lacks any real adventurousness. Influenced by the likes of Roman Polanski and Luis Buñuel, mother! is a cinematic freak out steeped in symbolism and metaphor which can be interpreted multiple ways and viewed through multiple lenses. Whether you view it as comment on the relation between artist and muse or as a biblical allusion or as an environmental metaphor or just as a highly impressionistic character drama there’s interest to be found pretty much anywhere you look in this movie. I’m not just honoring the film for its audacity and ambition though, it’s also just a perfectly engaging piece of cinema that really brings you into the experience and makes you not want to look away for even a second. 2017: #1
The Florida Project
 Directed by: Sean Baker Written by: Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch Starring: Willem Dafoe, Brooklynn Prince, Bria Vinaite, Valeria Cotto, Christopher Rivera, and Caleb Landry Jones Distributor: A24 Country: USA Language: English Rating: R Running Time: 111 minutes Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Format: 35mm Date released: 10/6/2017 Date seen: 10/23/2017 Worldwide Box Office Gross: $6.7 million # of Oscar nominations: 1 (Best Supporting Actor) # of Golden Stake Nominations: 4 (Best Cinematography, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Ensemble) # of Golden Stakes Won: 1 (Best Ensemble) One of the interesting things about the Golden Stake Awards I put together is seeing how much an abundance of individual elements make up a great film and how much they don’t. This year the movie that won the most Golden Stake Awards, by far, was Baby Driver but as much as I enjoy that movie I never really considered it for a place on my top ten list. Meanwhile, my number one film The Florida Project only had four Golden Stake nominations and was on track to have zero wins until I decided at the last minute that having an amazing set of performances by non-actors was more award worthy than assembling a bunch of celebrities to star in The Post. Ultimately this lack of individual achievement awards may have less to do with the film failing assemble amazing elements and more to do with the fact that the award categories I came up with over ten years ago mainly exist to assess the elements of conventional Hollywood cinema. There are no categories in The Golden Stakes (or the Oscars for that matter) for things like “best location scouting” or “best insight into income inequality” or “most humanistic” but The Florida Project excels in all sorts of intangibles like those. This also isn’t the kind of movie I’m usually a sucker for. There are all sorts of micro-indies out there that do this sort of slice of life poverty films with non-actors and while I don’t exactly dislike these movies that also usually don’t really rock my world so much as they just seem like noble little projects, but this movie felt like something special. Between this and his last movie Tangerine it’s clear that Sean Baker is playing a game that few other directors out there are playing. He’s showing sides of America that we don’t normally see and he’s showing them with incredible empathy but he doesn’t forget that he’s making a film and manages to make his movies look kind of beautiful without sacrificing their grittiness and he also finds ways to inject them with quite a bit of humor without making it feel inappropriate or like a mockery of the kind of people he’s depicting. |
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PG Cooper
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And those who tasted the bite of his sword named him...The DOOM Slayer
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Post by PG Cooper on Mar 4, 2018 1:14:05 GMT -5
Awesome work, as per usual. Great presentation and lots of fun to follow. Cool top ten though. I feel like Blade Runner 2049 deserved to make the list and I also think Phantom Thread should have been higher. I get where it feels lesser compared to There Will Be Blood or The Master, but it really feels special all the same. Speaking for myself I can't wait to see it again.
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Mar 4, 2018 1:39:36 GMT -5
I really wanted to try to include It Comes At Night on my list, but in the end, I just felt stronger about the other movies I have on there.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Mar 4, 2018 8:20:30 GMT -5
Awesome work, as per usual. Great presentation and lots of fun to follow. Cool top ten though. I feel like Blade Runner 2049 deserved to make the list and I also think Phantom Thread should have been higher. I get where it feels lesser compared to There Will Be Blood or The Master, but it really feels special all the same. Speaking for myself I can't wait to see it again. I left the theater thinking Blade Runner 2049 was a top five movie for sure but its plot just didn't hold up to scrutiny in the long run for me. It's still probably in the top fifteen just because of how well made it is but I didn't find a place in the top ten. |
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