Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Jan 13, 2020 7:44:52 GMT -5
For those who weren't here when I did this in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 and this is part of a tradition of year-end rituals I put together each year and I'm ready to go through with this once again. Basically what I want to do here is post one category a day for four weeks. The First week will be scene based categories (best chase etc.), The second week will be technical awards (best editing etc.), The third week will be acting awards, and the last week will be genre awards and will culminate in Best Picture which will be announced in a top ten format. These awards will be entirely based on my opinions, but I don't plan to have this being an entirely self-indulgent pursuit. I hope that each category will lead to discussion and that people will find themselves playing along and giving their opinions about these various categories. So, without further ado I'll give out the first of the scene based awards: Blanket Spoiler Warning Please note I have not held back when discussing spoilers of certain movies. On the old forum I could black these spoilers out but here I can't do that so easily. Fight of the Year
This is an award for the best fight scene that largely exists within a melee context. Characters can use handheld weapons, but the use of firearms should be kept to a minimum. Also I should probably give the disclaimer that I’m not really up to date with the year’s Asian martial arts films so there’s a very good chance that the year’s real best fight scene isn’t going to be on here. Knife Museum – John Wick: Chapter 3: This scene from early in John Wick: Chapter Three commences when some bad guys chase wick into an antiques museum and begins as a standard fist fight before the combatants suddenly realize they’re surrounded by vintage knives. Quickly they begin shattering the displays and coming at one another with blades. Wick finds himself throwing knives at on comers to keep them out of the way while he fights the guys who are closer and we eventually get a close-up of a knife slowly going into a dudes eyeball. Cliff Booth vs. The Manson Family – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Critics are pretty used to describing Quentin Tarantino’s films as “blood soaked” and yet for much of its running time his latest film primarily sticks to profanity and drug material to earn its R rating, but then it really lets loose in its finale which re-imagines the Manson murders with the shoe placed on the other foot. In the scene Cliff Booth, with assists from his dog Brandy and his friends wife end up using objects like a phone and a can of dog food to leave Tex, Sadie, and Patty a bloody mess. Endor Fight – Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker: In the entire original trilogy Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader only went up against each other face to face twice but Rey and Kylo have been facing each other through much of their trilogy but this is the first time one of their face-offs really felt earned and which seemed to really be decisive in its ending. Conducted on the top of the wreckage of the second Death Star amidst the high waves of Endor’s ocean the fight is rife with mixed emotions between the two combatants and ends in a way that shows both the dark and light sides of Rey and really feels like it would have an impact on Kylo. Final Fight – Us: This is not necessarily a movie I would have expected an amazing fight scene in it but by the time that Lupita Nyong'o meets her tethered counterpart you definitely want a confrontation. In the fight Red (as Adelaide’s evil counterpart is known) starts to harken back to the pair’s dance background and starts to come at her surface level counterpart with a scissors like a sort of ballet Freddy Krugger. It’s also very much a horror villain fight rather than an action movie fight with Red coming at the encounter from a place of mysterious invincibility rather than martial prowess. Train Fight – X-Men: Dark Phoenix: I didn’t hate this movie as much as some people did but it definitely felt second rate for much of its runtime but it did start to redeem itself in its final moments with this action sequence which is actually reported to have been a last minute reshoot. In it most of the X-Men are trapped on a moving train which comes under attack by the alien bad guys. Their guards are quickly killed but not before freeing the heroes who immediately begin fighting back in unison. The X-Men each use their powers here in unison effectively and it’s the one moment in the film where it really feels like a worthy last hurrah for this series that has defined the last twenty years of Hollywood cinema for good or ill. And the Golden Stake goes to…
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
 Part of me really wanted to give this to Tarantino but upon reviewing how meticulously this thing was choreographed it became pretty obvious that there was only one legitimate choice. This scene is like a spectacular orgy of murder and watching it I did sort of start to wonder if there was something kind of sick about gaining so much pleasure from seeing all these people get murdered in front of me… then I was like “fuck it, it looks really cool when Wick throws that hatchet into that dude’s skull.” |
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Virus
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Post by Virus on Jan 13, 2020 20:29:54 GMT -5
Finally, I’ve been checking these boards so much the past couple days for this!
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Jan 14, 2020 7:05:38 GMT -5
Best Musical Performance
This award is for sequences in movies where a character is singing a song on screen as opposed to scenes where music is present in the background. It should be re-iterated that the award is for the scene itself and it’s effect on the movie, not necessarily for the quality of the song or how well it’s sung, but those can of course play a role as well. It should also be noted that there are a handful of real musicals I missed this year including Cats, Frozen II, and the Disney remakes so those aren’t being considered. “Heaven” by Bryan Adams – Her Smell: Her Smell is something of a movie in five parts and the first three parts show its protagonist, a self-destructive rock star named Becky Something, at her most strung out and dysfunctional. The fourth part shows her as she’s trying to change and the centerpiece of that is this moment when her young daughter asks her to sing “a song that reminds you of me.” She responds to this by playing, in its entirety, a stripped down piano cover of Bryan Adams “Heaven.” The original “Heaven” is kind of terrible, just the corniest of love songs by one of the worst commercial rock musicians, but somehow its corny lyrics feel remarkably sincere and meaningful when re-contexutalized here as a song sung by a mother who made a lot of mistakes in her past but finds peace in motherhood. “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” – The Last Black Man in San Francisco: The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a film about gentrification and rising property costs in San Francisco and how this pushes out residents like the film’s protagonist. It couldn’t be a more different environment from the San Francisco that was immortalized by Scott McKenzie’s in his flower power anthem for the city which is given a mournful cover here by Mike Marshall. Marshall (an R&B lifer who is also responsible for the hook to the song “I Got Five On It”), personally appears in the movie as a street performer and gives the song a remarkably emotional take which speaks volumes about how much the city has changed. It’s quite the “fuck you” to boomer values. “Being Alive” – Marriage Story: I wasn’t really sure what to make of this scene from Marriage Story the first time I saw it. The movie felt like it was winding down at that point and the last thing I was expecting was a showtune sung in its entirety but it’s sort of grown on me. In the scene Adam Driver’s character is in a piano bar commiserating about his divorce with friends and decides to lighten the mood by going up to the mic and breaking out this song from Stephen Sondheim’s “Company. I’ve done some reading on that musical and the song is apparently the expression of a womanizer’s conflicted feelings about love and commitment, so it fits pretty well in this story of the love and pain of marriage. “Siúil a Rún” – The Nightingale: By the end of The Nightingale you have in many ways forgotten that it gets its title from the fact that its troubled protagonist was a singer but it reminds you of that in a key moment where the movie finally allows her to confront the man she’s been chasing face to face and rather than murder him she simply speaks her mind. He tries to brush her off but she then begins singing the traditional Irish song about a woman sacrificing everything for a husband who was being forced into the military or exile by the British. It’s the character’s way of keeping her murdered husband alive and peacefully protesting the freedom of her oppressor. “Rocketman” – Rocketman: The film Rocketman does a pretty good job throughout of integrating Elton John’s music into sequences from the man’s life but the one that stands out to me as the best fusion of musical performance and biopic scene was this treatment of the title track. In it a drunken and depressed Elton walks down to a pool party and announces he’s going to kill himself before jumping fully clothed into a swimming pool. Here the film transitions into a sort of fantasy reality and John sees a vision of his younger self who begins a rendition of the song. The scene then holds off on the rousing chorus until he’s revived at the hospital and transitions to him singing the song at a stadium. It’s a smart expression of the ups and downs of being a rock star and an addict. Probably could have done without the literal rocket launch t the end though. And the Golden Stake goes to…Her Smell
 I think I need to re-iterate that Bryan Adams really sucks and I do not take pleasure from giving an award to something that’s tangentially related to one of his works. But in some ways that speaks well of the scene, to make something this profane seem sacred speaks volumes about what’s being done here. Moss is not necessarily the world’s best singer and her character in the film is not necessarily famous for this kind of balladry but the way her voice kind of wavers here only adds to the scenes power. It’s a stand-out scene in the movie that acts as something of a relief and finally lets you see a different and more sympathetic side of this difficult character.
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Jan 14, 2020 10:22:15 GMT -5
Rocketman for me.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Jan 14, 2020 10:32:35 GMT -5
Woooo Golden Stakes!
Having seen all the films in the Best Fight category, I think you made the right choice. Great as the climax to OUATIA is, the choreography in John Wick is simply glorious.
Having seen only one of the films in the Best Musical performance category, I have little to add. I will agree that Bryan Adams sucks though.
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SnoBorderZero
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Post by SnoBorderZero on Jan 14, 2020 14:46:28 GMT -5
Oh, I loved that knife museum scene. Possibly my favorite scene in terms of pure entertainment of the entire year. In fact, definitely.
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Virus
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Post by Virus on Jan 14, 2020 16:52:14 GMT -5
I’m shocked Cats got snubbed!
Also, I liked “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” better than Rocketman in that movie
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Jan 15, 2020 6:59:10 GMT -5
Shootout of the Year
This award is for action scenes in which one or more characters are fighting one or more characters with guns or equivalent ranged weapons. Both sides should be fighting back to some extent so these do legitimately need to be fights rather than, like, massacres. Bridge Sniper – 1917: This sequence is not a bit different from most shootouts in that there are only two participants and neither is overly successful at actually shooting the other. The scene begins with our protagonist trying to cross a river using a bridge that’s been broken in half. That’s enough of a tense task but things get much harder when out hero finds himself under fire from a sniper in a nearby building. He’s forced to take hide and then take tactical cover shots in order to make his way to the sniper’s location and bring the fight to him. It’s more of a suspense sequence than an action scene, but still a highlight in a movie with a lot of exciting scenes. Sniping Bad Guys – Doctor Sleep: Doctor Sleep spends much of its first half building up its villains as these murderous monsters so there’s a certain catharsis to be found when, toward the end of act two, out heroes get the drop on them by luring them out to the woods and then opening fire on them with hunting rifles from in the woods. The villains attempt to shoot back and escape and eventually do deliver a blow to our heroes by one of them using mind control but it is satisfying to see a bunch of them crumble into dust as they’re fucking shot. The Joe Gallo Hit – The Irishman: Calling this scene a shootout is a little borderline as the opposition really doesn’t do much in the way of fighting back, but in some ways that’s kind of the point. The violence in The Irishman is made to be deliberately fast, blunt, and unglamourous and this scene which lasts all of twenty six seconds is about the closest thing to an action scene in the whole movie. In it De Niro simply walks into a clam house with two meticulously chosen .32s, wounds Gallo’s body guards and then chases him out the broken back door and executes him on the ground. This brutality is meant to be contrasted with the impersonal way that Sheeran ‘s voiceover discusses how he carried this grim task out and what killing means to him. The Continental Siege – John Wick: Chapter 3: The John Wick series specializes in shootouts and for this most recent installment they opted to put one of their most ambitious gunfights yet. In it Wick, Winston, and The Concierge are barricaded in the New York Continental while assassins from the High Table stream in. These troops are wise to Wick’s combat prowess and come prepared with helmets and Kevlar armor, which forces Wick to focus his shots to certain weak points and also to change weapons several times. Chewbacca Breakout - Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker: While hardly the biggest and most “spectacular” action scene in The Rise of Skywalker, this sequence in which our heroes break into a star destroyer to save their captured friend had a certain intensity to it that I appreciated. For one thing, Finn and Poe are not fucking around here, they blast the living shit out of a whole bunch of Stormtroopers and there’s a real intensity to how they make their way through these hallways. For a movie that has a lot of space battles and lightsaber fights this was a really nice moment for the non-force powered heroes to shine. And the Golden Stake goes to…
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
The John Wick franchise is kind of overdue for this award. I hadn’t seen the original John Wick when I was handing out that year’s awards and the second film lost to a rather impactful shootout from the movie Wind River. But this scene isn’t just being given this as a make good, it was a relatively easy choice. The team behind this franchise have developed a style of gun violence that really stands out and delivers and while this scene isn’t necessarily the franchise’s best it does have certain moments like the shallow pool moment and a moment where Wick nails like five guys in a row with a shotgun that really puts it over the top.
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daniel
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Post by daniel on Jan 15, 2020 8:55:57 GMT -5
"Being Alive" needs context, but damn the context of that performance was in itself the turning point for an extremely well-made movie and an incredible character story. I'll remember that scene as long as I've remembered Bill Murray karaoke in "Lost in Translation."
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Jan 16, 2020 7:55:04 GMT -5
Best Use of Source Music
This is an award for the best use of a pre-existing piece of popular music used to accompany a scene in a film. It can be diegetic or non-diegetic but it has to be popular music (no classical pieces) and it has to be a recording that existed previously, so no original soundtrack songs or new reworkings of songs. Also keep in mind that this is an award for the overall scene and how the song choice impacts it, not strictly about what actual song is the best. “Criminal” by Fiona Apple – Hustlers: I wasn’t quite as enamored with Jennifer Lopez’ performance in Hustlers as some people were but I’ll give her this: she knows how to make an entrance. In this scene we’re introduced to her character the domain she specializes in: the stripper poll. She does a rather athletic and seductive dance set to Fiona Apple’s “Criminal,” a song whose sexual connotation has always been kind of grimey and complicated since the release of Apple’s slightly jail-baity music video. It’s perfect for this scene though and you really do get an idea of why she’s considered better than the rest of the strippers in this weird club where no one actually shows any titties and why the men in the club would shower her in cash. “Rock and Roll Part 2” by Gary Glitter – Joker: On October 4th 2019 upon the release of the movie Joker a new New York landmark was born. The staircase located between two apartment buildings in the Bronx featured in the film has been visited frequently by tourists since, possibly to the annoyance of the locals. You get why the site has become so iconic though because there is something immediately striking about the way Joaquin Phoenix dances down those stairs at a key moment and the use of this pump-up stadium anthem really captures his mindset even if the viewer is still supposed to be rather unsettled by the act of violence that precedes it. It’s like a perverse twist on the triumphant stair ascension from Rocky. “Out of Time” by The Rolling Stones - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: I probably could have filled an entire special category for “Best Needle Drops in OUATIH” but I had to limit myself to one and ultimately I landed on this use of this Rolling Stones deep cut. The song is used right after the film’s time jump right as Cliff and Rick are returning from Italy and Tarantino gives us a short montage of what everyone in the story was doing the day leading up to the faithful night at the end of the movie. Tarantino rarely uses montages in his movies so seeing him tackle one here is special and the Stones song (which has ironic lyrics given what happens to Tate in real life) perfectly covers what’s essentially a nice calm before the storm. “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Huston - Spider-Man: Far From Home: Spider-Man: Far From Home opens rather unexpectedly with Whitney Huston’s hit single from The Bodyguard blaring over the Marvel logo, a choice that makes sense when it transitions to a very poorly edited video tribute to the fallen Tony Stark for the school news station at Peter’s high school. The video itself is a pitch perfect replication of what an amateur video like this would look like right down to the stock footage of candles complete with the Getty Images watermark still in place. But the use of the song isn’t just a joke it’s also serving the purpose of acknowledging the loss of a major character in the last movie while doing it kind of an ironic joking way that give the audience permission to move on and have fun with the new movie. “Good Vibrations” by The Beach Boys/“Fuck the Police” by NWA – Us: It’s probably a bit of a cheat to use two songs in one nomination slot but they’re used in unison in the movie so I think it’s fair. This scene starts with the Tyler family thinking they hear something outside, the husband brushes it off and tells his Alexa-like device to play The Beach Boys, soon though it’s revealed that the Tylers are in the same danger that the Wilsons were in and their doubles move in to murder them. This juxtaposition of violence with pleasant nostalgic music was awards worthy enough, but then the Alexa-like device misunderstands a dying request to call the police and starts playing “Fuck the Police,” another song about young Californians but one coming from a very different persepective right as the Wilsons enter and have to fight the Tethered Tylers. And the Golden Stakes goes to…Joker
 If nothing else no song choice this year gave me more of an immediate reaction than when that familiar percussion that was once a staple of stadiums everywhere being used in this context. It’s probably a shitty thing to admit but I do think this scene get an extra subversive jolt from the fact that this controversial and allegedly #Problematic film went ahead and used a song by a musician who is R. Kelly levels of cancelled in order to coronate its character into the heights of villainous infamy. It’s a ballsy choice that really pays off.
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Jan 16, 2020 7:56:35 GMT -5
Ooh yikes, I've been missing this. First category, yup. You picked the right one.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Jan 16, 2020 9:10:28 GMT -5
100% down with Best Shootout, less so for Best Use of Source Music. Not trying to be a broken record on that movie as I do agree that the choice is pretty bold, but it mostly failed for me.
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Jan 16, 2020 9:21:21 GMT -5
100% down with Best Shootout, less so for Best Use of Source Music. Not trying to be a broken record on that movie as I do agree that the choice is pretty bold, but it mostly failed for me.  |
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Deexan
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Post by Deexan on Jan 16, 2020 13:30:49 GMT -5
Gary Glitter is even more cancelled than R Kelly. The guy is a convicted paedophile.
The song will not be featuring in the home entertainment release apparently.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Jan 17, 2020 8:10:45 GMT -5
Chase of the Year
Chase of the year would seem like a pretty standard action category and can go to any scene where two parties are in motion with one trying to catch the other. Doesn’t need to be a car chase, in fact this might be the first year where none of the nominees are really car chases. In them the main participants are either on foot, on motorcycles, or in the air. Town Chase – 1917: This foot chase kind of comes in two chunks interrupted by another scene but in essence it features our protagonist trying to get through a German occupied French town with his life. The whole scene is plainly gorgeous, the way the city is being lit by flares is a huge flex on the part of cinematographer Roger Deakins and the film’s single shot format really comes into play here by showing the extent of how far he needs to run and how he really doesn’t have much of an escape until he finally finds himself jumping into a damn river. Doppelgangers on a Train – Captain Marvel: This rather early chase scene in Captain Marvel begins with a Skrull trying to shoot Carol Danvers and follows her try to chase him up to an elevated train platform and onto a train she needs to leap onto. Then it has her beat up a skrull disguised as a granny and chase it onto the top of the moving train all while a separate but related chase is going on below with Fury and “Coulson” trying to keep up with the train. There’s a lot going on in the scene with elements of fight scenes also present and yet the scene also doesn’t feel like an overly flashy CGI-fest. Motorcycle Chase – Gemini Man: This scene comes midway through Gemini Man and is a clear highlight of the movie. It comes right after a legitimately entertaining cat-and-mouse moment between the two Will Smiths on the ground before the two get their hands on this speedy and agile motocross bikes and start chasing each other at high speeds through the streets of Cartagena Columbia. There’s definitely a sort of heightened unreality to the scene but the film’s high framerate format really works well with it and its located in a city we haven’t really seen a lot of in action movies. Rodan Chases Airforce - Godzilla: King of the Monsters: Rodan is probably the least popular of the “big four” monsters of the Godzilla franchise but in many ways he was at the center of one of the best scenes from the latest Godzilla film. In it Rodan emerges from a volcano in typically Rodesian fashion and the heroes opt to draw it away from a city by provoking it. What follows is a chase in which Rodan rips his way through a squadron of jets while pursuing the heroes into a Ghidorah related lightning storm in which the two titans clash into each other. It’s a scene that fits well within the running theme of human irrelevance in the face of these creatures and makes good use of color palate and CG. Motorcycle Chase – John Wick: Chapter 3: This chase scene commences shortly after John Wick returns to New York and has him being pursued on motorcycles by a gang of sword wielding Ninjas across the Verrazano Bridge. The scene almost feels less like a true chase scene and more like a fight scene in which all the participants just so happen to be on speeding motorcycles given that Wick finds himself fighting and killing most of his pursuers. The stunt team wasn’t quite crazy enough to do this for real and you can kind of tell this is done with green screen effects, but it’s impressive just the same. And the Golden Stake goes to…Captain Marvel
 I didn’t expect this scene to win here when I started this but when I reviewed the scene I was reminded how effective it was and how much goes on in the sequence. It has a number of interesting stunts, a neat Stan Lee cameo, fairly seamless special effects, and seeming violence against a senior citizen. A solid foot chase, a solid car chase that sort of slyly references The French Connection. Good job.
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thebtskink
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Post by thebtskink on Jan 17, 2020 8:43:58 GMT -5
Gary Glitter is even more cancelled than R Kelly. The guy is a convicted paedophile. The song will not be featuring in the home entertainment release apparently. Dumb. I think most people are aware of what he did, using the song isnt an endorsement. And he's probably not getting any money in prison either. |
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thebtskink
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Post by thebtskink on Jan 17, 2020 8:46:17 GMT -5
Would've gone Stones myself.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Jan 17, 2020 16:03:10 GMT -5
Personally I'd have preferred 1917 or Wick to take Best Chase, but it probably helps that it's been the longest since I've seen Captain Marvel.
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1godzillafan
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Post by 1godzillafan on Jan 17, 2020 20:49:17 GMT -5
Gary Glitter is even more cancelled than R Kelly. The guy is a convicted paedophile. The song will not be featuring in the home entertainment release apparently. As someone who owns the 4K version of Joker on disc, I can debunk this. The song is fully intact. Also, Rodan all the way baby. |
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Jan 18, 2020 9:14:21 GMT -5
Best Set-Piece
The Best Set-Piece Award is meant as a bit of a catch all for action scenes, or any kind of expensive visually oriented sequence, that doesn’t fit well in categories like “chase” or “shootout.” I try not to define it with more detail than that as it covers a pretty wide variety of sequences. Plane Crash – 1917: This sequence from 1917 starts out feeling like a sort of lull in the movie. Our heroes have escaped from a collapsing trench and have walked across an open field and come across a farmstead. After a brief rest they spot a dogfight that’s happening in the skies above. A German plane is shot down and comes right for the barn they’re hiding in, at which point they have to deal with the pilot. Both an effects sequences and an exploration in how danger is around every corner in a warzone, it’s one of the film’s highlights. The Fall – Ad Astra: This opening sequence from Ad Astra starts at the top of a building called the Space Antenna, which appears to be some kind of immensely tall structure that reaches all the way into the thinnest parts of the atmosphere. Brad Pitt’s character is working on this rig when some sort of malfunction happens and he’s knocked off and goes into a free fall of epic proportions. Fortunately for him OSHA appears to still exist in the future and he’s been equipped with a parachute he deploys but still needs to avoid debris. It’s a scene that’s all about showing how calm this character can be under pressure and it gets the movie off to a good start. Battle - Avengers: Endgame: Avengers: Endgame is of course the year’s biggest movie on almost every level and despite being a rather thrilling action movie it actually didn’t have many scenes that fit clearly in my usual fight/shootout/chase division. Really the movie was holding back a lot of its action budget for this epic Lord of the Rings style battle sequence between past-Thanos and the newly resurrected superheroes of the Marvel universe. Was it all maybe a little too busy for its own good? Maybe, but you know, after all these movies I think we earned a big fan servicey battle that brings everyone together like this. Maypole – Midsommar: Of all the scenes in all the horror movies this year, few were as tense as this scene in which there is actually no overtly clear sense of danger and people are ostensibly actually having fun. In it Florence Pugh’s character is conscripted into joining in on a dance around a Maypole in which all the participants are kind of high and are being knocked out of the dance one by one as they get dizzy or bump into each other. The basic visuals of the dance are intriguing in and of themselves, but what makes it tense is that we know this cult is dangerous and we don’t know what’s at stake in this game. You have a bad feeling the whole time that winning this thing is going to lead to some messed up things. Hiding – Parasite: Here we’re looking at one part of a very long and elaborate sequence set over a single night in which the Kim family has been scuffling with two other people and have made a mess only to suddenly realize that the Parks are going to be coming home early and will be there any minute and expect the housekeeper to have made Ram-don made for them. What follows is a desperate attempt to clean things up which ends with every member of the insurgent family stuck hiding under a table or bed when the family gets home and they need to find a way to escape unnoticed. And the Golden Stake goes to… Parasite This might not be the most expensive of the scenes here but it’s the zenith of a lengthy sequence that constantly builds on itself until it gets to this point where things really start to boil. Bong Joon-Ho really manages to convey the tight spot each of these characters are in and mines some real suspense out of watching the rich family do fairly mundane things that could get our protagonists caught. It’s like the central suspense of the rest of the film made literal and you let out a real sigh of relief once the Kims find a way out of their predicament only to then find themselves run into another indignity caused by the thunderstorm that’s been going on this whole time.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Jan 18, 2020 9:42:42 GMT -5
Yeah, that scene is fantastic. I think for a lot of us that was probably the moment that the film clicked as something truly special.
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Jan 18, 2020 9:52:02 GMT -5
Yeah. that's a good pick. Was tense. The final battle for Endgame was good when characters were actually fighting Thanos himself, but otherwise it was kind of mind-numbing.
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Deexan
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Post by Deexan on Jan 18, 2020 10:22:14 GMT -5
Fuck you for not picking endgame.
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Deexan
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Post by Deexan on Jan 18, 2020 10:23:11 GMT -5
You clearly didn't fucking see endgame.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Jan 19, 2020 8:42:49 GMT -5
Best Makeup
It was kind of tough filling out the slate for best makeup this year because they really are transitioning to digital makeup for a lot of things. There were a couple of movies that I was planning to honor here only to research them and realize that they were using more digital effects than actual makeup. Maybe I’m going to have to just include digital makeup here someday but for now I’m trying to be more strict. Bombshell: Kazu Hiro is one of the most prominent make-up artists working today. He came out of retirement to work on Gary Oldman’s Winston Churchill makeup for Darkest Hour and he appears to have kept working as he has now brought various characters to the screen for this film about sexual harassment at Fox News. The most extensive work here was probably done on John Lithgow to make Roger Ails to the screen in notably decrepit form but there was also work done on the rest of the main cast to make them look like their real life counterparts. Captain Marvel: The plot of Captain Marvel focuses heavily on a war between alien species called the Skrull and the Kree, which are mostly brought to life using traditional makeup effects rather than CGI. The Kree are fairly simple makeup to make them blue people but the Skrull are a bit more complicated given that they’re green and have elf-like ears. That design isn’t entirely groundbreaking but as the Skrull become a bigger part of the movie they need to be distinguishable and expressive in a way that isn’t easy. The Irishman: Much press has been made of the digital de-aging in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman but there’s been less talk about the fact that there’s some pretty good traditional makeup used to age the characters up for certain scenes. My understanding is that every scene of De Niro and Pesci starting with the “road” trip are done practically and there are a number of scenes making the characters older than they really are quite convincingly. Pet Semetary: People having been bringing the “walking dead” to the screen almost since the birth of the medium but not all undead things are the same. For this Pet Semetary remake they needed to do some of the usual gore effects for a horror film and they do them well but the real highlight is how they bring the main character’s daughter back to life in a way that is unsettling but not so unsettling that you think the main character is completely crazy for seeing his actual daughter in this walking corpse. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: The exact definition of “make-up” is a bit up in the air at times. Most of the monsters in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was created using largely practical effects but they could be said to be something more akin to large prosthetic body suits rather than true “make-Up” that is applied with brushes. That could be said about a lot of the movies that end up in this category but it’s a little more extreme here. Oh well. And the Golden Stake goes to…Bombshell This was probably the least fantastical of the nominees here but also probably the most seamless. In the case of Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman it was hard to tell how much of the performance was just a matter of the actors resembling their counterparts and how much was makeup because there was some really nicely subtle work done and while you can more clearly see the work being done on Lithgow it kind of fits the monstrousness of the character.
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