the-domestication-of-the-dog

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

The 13th Annual(??) L.A.O.K. Awards

The Lazy Sack-of-Shit Award Me

For, in the second time in the history of the awards, posting this list after the completion of the following awards year. Wow, the first two-time winner of the Lazy Sack-of-Shit Award. This is so unexpected, I uh- I didn't even have a speech prepared. Uh, but I would like to say this: tardiness, is not something you can do all on your own. I'd like to thank my two-year-old daughter Rosie, for needing and deserving constant attention, a brain disorder called adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and the engineers at Reddit, Instagram, and YouTube for creating systems of crippling dopamine feedback loops, without which, I might never be tardy.

Now I know you've all been opening this site every morning and hitting refresh to see when these would finally be posted, so without further ado...

The most dangerous thing about the Layokies…is that you may grow to love them too much. [This is a reference to Avatar: The Way of Water. Remember that movie? It grossed $684 million domestically.] The people (3) have spoken, and the Layokies, even if massively delayed, must go on. [At the time of writing this, I was a month or two behind, but then instead of finishing and posting it, I just…didn’t. But here we are a year later, and I do want to post my 2023 Layokies (also massively delayed), but it seems weird to do that without first posting the 2022 Layokies, so hey let’s blaze through this thing and you can find out what I thought about some movies from over two years ago.]

I love celebrating movies, so it’s kind of a bummer to me that this year felt like Dullsville, U.S.A. But I’ve said that previously, then reread years later and thought, ‘what was I thinking, these movies were great!’ So here’s to the perspective you get when time passes. What’s that called? Retrospecticus or something.

I’ll also note that, as listed in last year’s post [a.k.a. two-years-ago’s post], I had a baby, which, as predicted, severely limited my in-theater viewing. I also moved to Pasadena, which meant those films I did see in the theater were relegated to the AMC Santa Anita. You know my thoughts about AMCs (and pretty much all megaplex chains), but even AMC Century City has the big IMAX seats. AMC Santa Anita’s IMAX is in just like, a normal theater?? I just saw The Super Mario Bros. Movie in this exact theater and it was SO. QUIET. But that’s a Layokies for another year [which is actually this year. Also this has since been remedied, and now they have one with the big seats and all, and I recently saw Dune: Part Two there, and it looked and sounded great so woohoo.]

Narrative Film Everything Everywhere All at Once TÁR Thirteen Lives Top Gun: Maverick Women Talking

Boy this is a real bummer. FOUR out of my five favorite movies were nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and maybe that’s why I never posted this edition of the Layokies. What fun is talking about movies without also being contrarian? Typically there’ll be some movie I see in the middle of the summer that wows me, which absolutely no one else cares about, talks about, or even watches. That movie never came, because Everything Everywhere All at Once was already being talked about as one of the best movies of all time a week into its release, so much so that it felt like you were some weird guzmo if you gave it 3.5 stars on Letterboxed instead of 5, where it currently sits as the 25th highest-rated narrative film of all time [but actually currently at #103; whoops just checked again: #118]. I was more in the latter camp, and we all know the rest. Even the “irrelevant” Academy agreed. Okay then, let’s look to my second-favorite movie of the year, a drama about women who sit around debating in a barn for 90 minutes. Ah, that’s more like it, who would want to watch that? Except…another Best Picture nomination. This is really annoying! You have to scroll all the way down– [and here my commentary from early 2023 broke off. Scroll all the way down for what?! We shall never know. While I had slotted everything in for awards, all prose after this point was composed on or after February 3, 2024, so I’ll do my best to remember.]

And the Layokie goes to… Everything Everywhere All at Once

“EEAAO” as they call it, was truly a great film, and it was cool and weird to see it garner such recognition. The last time my own pick won Best Picture was 12 Years a Slave, which of course it did. The momentum behind this one, however, I still can’t understand. Looking back, it still feels like it should have been normie repellant. I can only guess that the efforts made by the Academy in the decade-long wake of #OscarsSoWhite is actually changing the demographics as intended, not just for race, but age and all other types of diversity.

Honorable Mentions Avatar: The Way of Water Bones and All The Menu Pearl The Whale

Documentary Film Bitterbrush Cow Claydream A House Made of Splinters Navalny

You might have heard of A House Made of Splinters (which is devastating btw—the only other movie to put me in literal racking sobs beside Benjamin Button [and wouldn’tcha know they’re both about child abandonment?]) and Navalny from their Oscar nominations (and Navalny’s win)[RIP], but the other three on my list weren’t even shortlisted, and they were all incredible. Bitterbrush follows two cowgirls as they work the sprawling ranges of the American West and wax poetic on a number of subjects. Its incredible vistas are paired with an amazing classical score and soundtrack. Claydream is the story of how the animator behind classic works like the California Raisins eventually had his studio hostilely taken over by Phil Knight’s son (which if you don’t know who that is and what the studio became, is very worth not spoiling). I’m an animation fan, but this was still a gripping story of a generally unknown American master which is both worth your time, and worthy of a Moneyball-style narrative adaptation. Lastly Cow…well let’s just say if you enjoyed Gunda, give this one a watch you sick bastard.

And the Layokie goes to… Bitterbrush

Naturally, the best doc of the year wasn’t even shortlisted. A trend we may see continue in 2023…? However, you can watch Bitterbrush now on Hulu, and I suggest you do.

Honorable Mentions All That Breathes Bad Axe Children of the Mist Nothing Lasts Forever The Territory

Actress Mia Goth - Pearl Cate Blanchette - TÁR Michelle Yeoh - Everything Everywhere All at Once Aubrey Plaza - Emily the Criminal Leslie Manville - Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Okay this would have been a pretty cool category at the time, highlighting unsung performances by Mia Goth, Aubrey Plaza, and Leslie Manville. Here are three movies worth seeking out just for their leads (Okay, you probably won’t miss anything not seeing Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, but for Pearl and Emily the Criminal, I sincerely mean this. Aubrey Plaza has serious chops.) And if you’re not a horror fan, please know that Pearl is so much more, and you’ll miss absolutely nothing by not watching X first (or at all [unless you are a Kid Cudi stan like me]).

And the Layokie goes to… Cate Blanchette - TÁR

Another tossup, but the Layokie way seems to be, when in doubt, give it to Cate Blanchette. Unlike one dear reader, I’ve only seen TÁR once, but perhaps because the character is so commanding and desperate for attention, so is the performance. 

Honorable Mentions Viola Davis - The Woman King Carey Mulligan - She Said Tilda Swinton - Three Thousand Years of Longing

Actor Tom Cruise - Top Gun: Maverick Brendan Fraser - The Whale Idris Elba - Three Thousand Years of Longing Park Hae-il - Decision to Leave Ralph Fiennes - The Menu

And the Layokie goes to… Brendan Fraser - The Whale

Let me tell ya, the people were maaad that Austin Butler didn’t win best actor for Elvis last year. For whatever reason, members of the public call and email the Academy every year to provide their opinions on who and what should and shouldn’t have won (I got a call six months into 2020 to tell me how shameful it was that Parasite won Best Picture, not because it was a bad movie, but because there were so many American movies worthy of attention. I asked her if she had seen Parasite. She hadn’t.), but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a strong  reaction to someone not winning more than Austin Butler. But the Academy got it right, in my opinion. Brendan Fraser played this role with simultaneous sadness and pathos and optimism. It was really remarkable. Typically, the strong performances I’m drawn to, and which generally receive recognition, project outwards. Brendan Fraser’s character in The Whale, perhaps appropriately, seems instead to draw everyone and everything else into himself.

Honorable Mentions Ram Charan - RRR Felix Kammerer - All Quiet on the Western Front Viggo Mortensen - Thirteen Lives (because why the hell not)

Supporting Actor  Colin Farrell - The Batman Barry Keoghan - The Banshees of Inisherin Mark Rylance - Bones and All Ke Huy Quan - Everything Everywhere All at Once Miles Teller - Top Gun: Maverick

And the Layokie goes to… Colin Farrell - The Batman

Colin Farrell is showing up a lot in this edition of the Layokies, but nothing was more impressive than his complete transformation into the Penguin. I watched this a couple times, and if I was into conspiracy theories, I still might not believe it was him. Also shoutout to one of my boys, now three-time Layokie-nominee Barry Keoghan. Where y’all been? We done been hyping Barry Keoghan over here since 2017.

Honorable Mentions Christopher Abbot - On the Count of Three Christian Bale - Thor: Love and Thunder Paul Dano - The Batman (Did you know he had to pull out of The Power of the Dog for this role? Ouch.) Paul Dano - The Fabelmans Colin Farrell - Thirteen Lives Nicholas Hoult - The Menu Aaron Taylor Johnson - Bullet Train Ben Whishaw - Women Talking

Supporting Actress Nicole Beharie - Breaking Angela Basset - Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (thought this before everyone else said it) Jessie Buckley - Women Talking Claire Foy - Women Talking Hong Chau - The Menu

Another actor getting nominated for the wrong role, Hong Chau was hilarious in The Menu. I watched that once and still think of her line delivery every time I eat a “tortilla.” But it was basically the whole cast of Women Talking that stole it this year, and this could have gone to anyone one them. (Three years too early for that casting Oscar!)

And the Layokie goes to… Jessie Buckley - Women Talking

Honorable Mention Dolly De Leon - Triangle of Sadness Stephanie Hsu - Everything Everywhere All at Once Rooney Mara - Women Talking

Best Director Edward Berger - All Quiet on the Western Front Daniels - Everything Everywhere All at Once Todd Field - TÁR Ron Howard - Thirteen Lives Joseph Kosinski - Top Gun: Maverick

And the Layokie goes to… Joseph Kosinski - Top Gun: Maverick

Absolutely incredible that both this and Spiderhead were directed by the same person. If you have no idea what Spiderhead is, it’s a Netflix movie that came out the same year about a guy who goes to an island prison where they test potions on you and Chris Hemsworth is the head potion-making guy and also he’s evil, which is supposed to be a big reveal but is obvious from the beginning. Anyway it was super forgettable and got dumped to the recesses of the algorithm in about a week, while Top Gun: Maverick is indelible and single-handedly saved movies after the pandemic. The second time I watched this, I paid attention to all the little things: driving shots, dialogue shots. It hits such a sweet spot between invisible and obvious style. No big surprise, however, as Tron: Legacy and Oblivion are also supremely well-directed action movies.

Honorable Mentions Park Chan-wook - Decision to Leave Ruben Östlund - Triangle of Sadness Maria Schrader - She Said Ti West - Pearl

Original Screenplay Park Chan-wook & Chung Seo-kyung - Decision to Leave Daniels - Everything Everywhere All at Once Seth Reiss & Will Tracy - The Menu Todd Field - TÁR Ruben Östlund - Triangle of Sadness

And the Layokie goes to… Daniels - Everything Everywhere All at Once

Pretty sure these guys went to the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon school of screenwriting, as this movie has everything: action, sci-fi, romance, about four different levels of family drama, and plays on all our deepest emotions: acceptance, ambition, self-worth, existentialism.

Honorable Mentions John Patton Ford - Emily the Criminal William Nicholson & Don MacPherson - Thirteen Lives

Adapted Screenplay Samuel D. Hunter - The Whale David Kajganich - Bones and All Rebecca Lenkiewicz - She Said Sarah Polley - Women Talking Ti West & Mia Goth - Pearl

I don’t know why, but after listening to the audiobooks for She Said and Catch and Kill, I wholly expected She Said to come in and ham it up big time. But where lesser filmmakers would have attempted to erect a monument to the #metoo movement, She Said played it totally straight. It was more akin to Spotlight than any other film I could think of, and as worthy of praise. It’s too bad the subject matter was already 1,000 times bigger than the movie, because I think the film audience missed out on a real gem here. 

And the Layokie goes to… Sarah Polley - Women Talking

That said, there’s another movie about women talking I liked even better, Women Talking. I’m still stunned this was nominated for Best Picture. In what world? It’s currently on Prime, so if you haven’t seen it, add it to your list. It’s also the perfect companion to any movie that receives my wife’s most common film criticism: “It was just a bunch of men talking.” (Think: any war movie.)

Honorable Mentions Like five different guys - Top Gun: Maverick

Now onto the fun stuff:

The Something Award Prey

The Nothing Award Amsterdam

Worst ADR in the History of Movies Hustle

Okay I can’t find this clip online, but it is so egregious, I think it’s worth the effort. Go on Netflix and start watching Hustle starring Adam Sandler at the 17:00 mark. Note how echoey the office is, then give it until Ben Foster’s line “You find me that missing piece, and you’ll be right back on the bench coaching.” I’ve watched this clip probably 25 times, and I absolutely love it. For me, it’s impossible not to picture him in a little sound booth reading that line with headphones on. 

Now I’m guessing if any of you did go and watch this, you might be thinking, yeah okay, so what? And already knowing what’s coming and watching it in this manner, maybe it is a so what. But to watch as many movies as I do, and to have heard as much bad ADR as one would, and then to have Ben Foster reach out and smack you in the face with this poorly done a line of ADR…ah, it’s like a holy grail of lazy/rushed/bad filmmaking. It’s like up there with the Batman & Robin reverse shot. Let’s just say it was probably some studio executive’s fault.

Weeird Doubles Burning down rural Irish houses - The Banshees of Inisherin, The Wonder Doing donkeys dirty (oh baby a triple!) - EO, Triangle of Sadness, The Banshees of Inisherin Boring documentaries slowly zooming in on a few pixels - Three Minutes: A Lengthening, Riotsville, U.S.A. Fatties who just gotta stuff their face with candy - The Whale, Piggy

Best Song Naatu Naatu (of course) - RRR

Take it from someone who literally Naatu Naatu’d so hard that he fell over (but was Naatu Naatu-ing as a joke, but falling over wasn’t part of the joke, even though that’s exactly what happened the movie).

Also, The Whale Rap from Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers. (You can take this one from someone who as a kid did many freestyle raps with friends on the Windows sound recorder, and this is about how it usually went.)

The Michelle Williams Loves Getting Divorced Award The Fabelmans

I love Michelle Williams and I wish her and her characters all the best, but why is she always divorcing good men who love her?? Don’t make the vow then!

Previous examples include Take This Waltz and Blue Valentine (okay “good” might be a stretch on the latter, and I actually remember thinking they would get back together at the end anyway, though I will not be watching it again since that seems not to be how every other single person read that movie).

Finally Got the Thor Movie Poster Right Thor: Love and Thunder

Best Scenes After Yang - Opening credits Barbarian - Calculating the square footage The Batman - The car chase Bitterbrush - Saddling the horse Bones and All - Maren visits her mom Children of the Mist - The final kidnapping Everything Everywhere All at Once - Rocks with subtitles Navalny - The phone interview Nope - Aliens in the stables Pearl - Pearl’s dinner confession Top Gun: Maverick -  Boy you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a fantastic scene in this one, but if I had to pick one…no, literally sitting here thinking, and I can’t decide. All so damn good. Buzzing the security checkpoint; Great Balls of Fire; any time Jon Hamm yells or gives a stank face; Maverick/Iceman reunion; dogfight football; Maverick doing the solo training run; the actual climactic run; and the hug at the end. Triangle of Sadness - The food poisoning (a sequence really) RRR - Naatu Naatu (again, undeniable)

Here’s where I usually link to the A.V. Club’s annual list of best scenes. Sadly, they stopped producing it starting the 2022 awards year.

The 3rd Annual Oklahoma Connections Award Pretty sure one of the girls in Bitterbrush moves to Oklahoma at the end of it or something. Otherwise not a banner year for Oklahoma mentions, except…

The 2nd Annual Shawnee Honors Two years, two shoutsout for my hometown of Shawnee, OK:

2022 - Babylon: Brad Pitt gets told off for pretending to be Italian when he is actually from Shawnee. (And Brad Pitt actually was born in Shawnee. YouTubers doing the Lord’s work.) 2021 - Stillwater: Matt Damon did some work down in Shawnee (mispronounced Shawny instead of Shaw-NEE; shameful, Matt!) 

Good in Everything Award Colin Farrell - After Yang, The Banshees of Inisherin, The Batman, Thirteen Lives Tilda Swinton - Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, The Eternal Daughter, Three Thousand Years of Longing

Destigmatizing Fatness Award The Whale (in some ways but also mostly not) Three Thousand Years of Longing (in some ways but also mostly not) Piggy (in some ways but also really mostly not)

Worst Movies

Mad God

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

Lightyear

Luck

Deep Water

White Noise

Hocus Pocus 2

Halloween Ends

Ambulance

Scream (2022)

Best Visuals Avatar: The Way of Water The Bad Guys Bitterbrush EO Everything Everywhere All at Once Fire of Love Puss in Boots: The Last Wish Three Thousand Years of Longing 😎

Movie That Deserves Discussion The Northman

I am usually so down for folklore, medieval period pieces, and a bunch of crazy shit happening, but for me, this was a big miss. Already discussed in my Letterboxd review.

Best Title Our Father

This was a (pretty poorly made) documentary about a religious fanatic and sick-in-the-head fertility doctor who fraudulently used his own sperm to impregnate over 100 women. So, Our Father. I’ve always been a sucker for a double meaning, but damn.

Worst Title Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Remember the megahit Knives Out? Well now there’s a sequel; it’s called Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. It is the sequel to Knives Out.

Worst Line “That’s a great time hack! Thank you kindly” -One of the witches in Hocus Pocus 2, not 10 seconds after struggling to pronounce the word lotion (“loh-shun, lohh-shuun”), you know, because they’re from the past and don’t know modern terms, like lotion.

Worst Restraint for the Criminally Insane The shackle around the Riddler’s neck that was so large he could have just lifted it over his dern head

Where Were the Bones?? Bones and All

Many LOLs Everything Everywhere All at Once The Menu RRR

(not too many LOLs this year)

Absent on Purpose Aftersun Causeway Elvis Living

Still Haven’t Seen I don’t remember

One cheeseburger to go. And a gift bag. Thank you for dining at Hawthorn.

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

The 12th Annual L.A.O.K. Awards

Connie O’Conner here for Showbizz News.

It feels like a very, very long time ago that I saw my first post-pandemic (lol) movie in the theater, but I can remember it like Jason Statham karate chopped me in the neck only yesterday. It was May 12, 2021, and the movie was Wrath of Man. Not fantastic for a Guy Ritchie movie, but excellent for a Jason Statham movie (and about time we got another armored car heist movie). After that, Nobody; starting to get a little better. Raya and the Last Dragon; ok they can’t all be winners. And then Becca got her horror fix: Conjuring number whatever, A Quiet Place Part II. So on and so forth. The point is, we were free people. Free to go see In the Heights in with a giggling pack of 12-year-olds the row in front of us who entered and exited the theater no less than four times, free to ask the woman in front of me to stop texting and then get cussed out in front of the whole audience in the middle of Zola, free to watch The French Dispatch with the titles cut off because AMC forgot to make that movie better.

Sidetrack to talk about AMC and their new slogan, “We Make Movies Better.” Okay first of all, I still say fuck AMC because of what they pulled on MoviePass. Remember when MoviePass first debuted, and AMC released a statement saying that MoviePass lowering their subscription fee to $10-a-month was “not in the best interest of moviegoers, movie theatres and movie studios”? Not in the best interest of moviegoers??? Then remember when they entered into the subscription space themselves to compete with MoviePass? And then remember when MoviePass went bankrupt and AMC did away with their subscription plans because they didn’t have to compete anymore? No? Oh that’s right, because they didn’t. They kept it. Well, now I can watch three movies a week for close to the cost of a single movie ticket, which is great for me, the moviegoer, and it’s clearly profitable for AMC, or they wouldn’t do it. So I guess it’s safe to say that the existence of MoviePass was indeed in the best interest of both moviegoers and movie theaters. So that’s strike two (strike one is putting the lights up while the credits are still rolling). Then AMC has the audacity to release a slogan like “We Make Movies Better,” when even in the biggest moviegoing city in the world (probably), you can go and find shadows cast on the screen from floor lights (The Grove), broken center speaker channels (Black Panther at AMC Santa Monica 7), the aforementioned cut-off on-screen titles (AMC Century City 15), and black bars on the screen (everywhere, since screen masking is apparently a thing of the past [by the way, this is what you get if you do a Google image search for “movie theater masking,” so if you don’t know what it is, have your local projectionist explain it]). To find any sort of projection and sound standards, you nearly have to go for the premium experience (IMAX, Dolby Cinema, or whatever tf “Prime at AMC” is), so perhaps this is all by design. Luckily if you are a sucker like me and after the demise of MoviePass you did subscribe to the AMC Stubs A-List—a promo at the beginning of every showing tells you you should—it’s all the same price anyway. In the before days, you could also trust that you’d of course get a good experience at any Arclight (R.I.P.) or Landmark (who is also guilty of doing away with masking), but then that of course takes us once again back to MoviePass. Interestingly, this email landed in my inbox two days ago (before I wrote any of this), so maybe the subscription battles are here once again. Or could it be something else?

Whatever it is, I’ll be watching from the sidelines to find out, because, like all those before me who got left dead and bloodied and dying along the way, I am now a father, and Becca is now a mother, and we are now parents, and we don’t get to do it two or three times a week anymore. In fact, we can't even go to the movies two or three times a month, or even once a month. I’ve seen one movie since Rosie was born: West Side Story, on a Sunday morning at 10:00am when my mother-in-law was here to help watch the baby. I can specifically remember cringing at hearing friends with kids say some shit like, “Oh yeah, we saw maybe one movie in the theater last year…wait, when did Toy Story 3 come out?” So basically my life is over. Luckily all the good movies pretty much start on streaming platforms anyway these days. The ones you can only see in theaters are usually like Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Escape Room: Tournament of Champions. Speaking of great movies that go straight to streaming platforms…

Best Narrative Film Annette Candyman Dune The Green Knight The Power of the Dog

I’ve seen The Green Knight twice and didn’t really like it either time. It’s too slow, too confusing, too proud of being cryptic. But on the other hand, it starts out by crowning its hero with a flaming crown, there’s a tree man, Barry Keoghan, giants, little details hidden in the background of so many shots, that scene where he rides out on his journey and you can see the city behind him which looks like a Lord of the Rings illustration. It’s just all very badass. Of my [used to be] three unexpected choices here, Candyman might be the most surprising. Candyman doesn’t do anything quite as artistically interesting as the recent prestige horror fare of Ari Aster or Robert Eggers, but it certainly has a more interesting aesthetic (and is scarier) than the most-lauded of all recent horror films, Get Out (though in fairness, Jordan Peele did co-write and produce this one as well). From the opening shot you know you’re in the hands of a supreme talent, and I still think about the (truly horrific) sub-story told through incredible cutout animations. More on The Power of the Dog below, and I loved Dune. But what I really loved was…

And the Layokie goes to… Annette

I’ve already written about Annette twice on Letterboxd, but suffice it to say, it’s just a hell of a lot of fun. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you give into its antics; go along for the ride. If you’re not into it, just put it on in the background and tune in for the bangers. If you can make it through Hamilton (boring), you can make it through Annette.

Honorable Mentions Don’t Look Up Eternals Licorice Pizza West Side Story The Last Duel The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (also didn’t like but also too good to deny)

[I say “used to be three” above because last night I finally rewatched The Power of the Dog, and I had to make the drastic and sad decision to bump it up to my top five and bump Eternals down to an Honorable Mention. Here’s what I had to say about Eternals originally:

What shall I say about Eternals? You either get it or you don’t. If you found it very boring, there are 30 other Marvel movies with a bunch of wise-crackin’ wiseacres where the theme is that you gotta be a real real good boy or girl so that your mom or government will love you. I’ll tell you what’s boring: when every one of your superheroes’ superpower is that they are generally very strong and good at fighting. And if you had trouble following the story, I don’t know, maybe just pay better attention because it wasn’t that complicated.]

Best Documentary Film Ascension The First Wave Julia The Rescue Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

Unfortunately, I only saw half as many docs this year as last year, and I know there’s a lot more out there worth my attention (including four on the Academy’s shortlist), but, like the narrative output, I’m inclined to believe that this year still didn’t live up to last year’s heights, which, if you still haven’t seen the top 10 here, seek them out. Stands to reason, as 2020 had a four-month-longer submission window than 2021.

And the Layokie goes to… The Rescue

This is a tough call, because all these documentaries do different things very well. Ascension, an expertly crafted, Ron Fricke-esque, fascinating look into Chinese corporate and working culture. The First Wave, a gripping, emotional look into the early days of Covid-19 in New York, which quickly reminds you what it was like when the pandemic truly felt like a pandemic (and which will only become more relevant as the years pass). And Summer of Soul, which should have done a tiny bit more of sitting back and letting the music speak for itself—the Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson duet reminds that music can be pure art, while the talking head segments sometimes drag it out, or otherwise just confuse the narrative (*cough* Lin-Manuel Miranda). The Rescue doesn’t expand the documentary form, doesn’t contain the same gripping verite footage, or transport you back to an unseen cultural touchstone, it’s just a very well-made crowdpleaser about a very interesting event. If Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin win the feature documentary Oscar again after only three years, at least this time they’ll deserve it. [Spoiler alert: they won't, since the nominations were announced the morning of this posting, and they didn't make the cut, being beat out by surprise entry Writing with Fire.]

Best Actress Camille Cottin - Stillwater Vicky Krieps - Old Alana Haim - Licorice Pizza Sharon Horgan - Together Renate Reinsve - The Worst Person in the World

And the Layokie goes to… Sharon Horgan

Who is Sharon Horgan, you ask? I have no idea. But incredibly, she and fab-four non-liked actor James McAvoy absolutely carry this life-during-covid feature, which is literally just about being locked down during Covid (with a spouse that you despise, that is), and incredibly, it doesn’t suck totally. It was actually pretty likable, and somehow a poignant commentary on the pandemic, as well as a satisfying chamber piece. Sharon Horgan is hilarious, despicable, and lovable. A quick Google shows that she’s quite popular in her native Britain, and very worthy of breaking through to American audiences, if you ask me.

Honorable Mentions Jessica Chastain - The Eyes of Tammy Faye Jodie Comer - The Last Duel Olivia Coleman - The Lost Daughter

Best Actor Adam Driver - Annette Benedict Cumberbatch - The Power of the Dog Cooper Hoffman - Licorice Pizza Will Smith - King Richard Denzel Washington - The Tragedy of Macbeth

As you can see, I only have extremely normie picks for best actor across the board, so it’s a good thing I was saved by…

And the Layokie goes to… Adam Driver - Annette

Adam Driver is a generally fearless actor (and two-time Good in Everything Layokie winner), but it’s all on display in Annette. Aside from singing 90% of his lines, he performs in two stand-up sets that get…let’s say, really wild. You can’t doubt his commitment—not that we ever did—but for the first time he truly gets a chance to put it all on display (Marriage Story wasn't wacky enough).

Honorable Mentions Andrew Garfield - tick, tick…Boom! Dev Patel - The Green Knight Joaquin Phoenix - C’mon C’mon Simon Rex - Red Rocket

Best Supporting Actor Willem Dafoe - Spider-Man: No Way Home Barry Keoghan - The Green Knight Jared Leto - House of Gucci Jesse Plemons - The Power of the Dog Jeffrey Wright - The French Dispatch

And the Layokie goes to… Willem Dafoe - Spider-Man: No Way Home

I’m always impressed any time an actor can believably play some sort of double by just changing their demeanor or facial expression (think Gyllenhaal in Enemy more than McAvoy in Split, or for a supreme example, Edward G. Robinson in The Whole Town’s Talking). Of course Dafoe slays it. I haven’t seen the original Spider-Man in a long while. Does he do it just as effortlessly and convincingly? We can forgive Aunt May for trusting him. He’s a real chameleon. [In case you’re wondering, there is no good production still of Willem Dafoe in this movie.]

Honorable Mentions Matt Damon - The Last Duel Colman Domingo - Zola Fred Hechinger - The Woman in the Window Jonah Hill - Don’t Look Up Ralph Ineson - The Green Knight

Best Supporting Actress Cate Blanchette - Don’t Look Up Kirsten Dunst - The Power of the Dog Harriet Sansom Harris - Licorice Pizza Tilda Swinton - The French Dispatch Kathryn Hunter - The Tragedy of Macbeth

And the Layokie goes to… Cate Blanchette - Don’t Look Up

I know I just talked last year about how this was always my favorite category, but I struggled to pull performances here that wowed me. Tiny performances from Harriet Sansom “Sammy, it’s time for my shot” Harris and Kathryn Hunter were incredible, but Cate Blanchette does it again as a stock Fox News correspondent (Or was it a Morning Joe parody? The only thing I know about any news show is what I see on SNL.) who is at the same time detestable, hilarious, and even to some extent, sympathetic. I didn’t say anything about Don’t Look Up in the Best Narrative Film section, but I thought it was above all, hilarious, and I mean, it was a comedy right? It’s one thing for something I loved to just get crickets (Annette). That’s par for the course. But it seems like everyone both watched and hated Don’t Look Up. Me and Becca were rolling. Also just realized while watching the scene above, Aviator reunion!

Honorable Mention Jessie Buckley - The Lost Daughter Devyn McDowell - Annette Olga Merediz - In the Heights Charlotte Rampling - Dune

Best Director Leos Carax - Annette Jane Campion - The Power of the Dog Nia DaCosta - Candyman David Lowery - The Green Knight Denis Villeneuve - Dune

And the Layokie goes to… Jane Campion - The Power of the Dog

So I gotta admit, I was in a pretty weird headspace watching The Power of the Dog. First, I had a 10-day-old baby, and was also on day too-many of family staying with us to help out with said baby. This movie sent me and a family member into our second knock-down drag-out fight about gay rights/lgbt acceptance (I was pro), and whether it was that or just me being a real dunce-head, I totally missed a very important plot point that changes the meaning of the whole film. (Apparently I wasn’t the only one.). That definitely colored my experience, and I’ve yet to revisit finally rewatched this last night. [I suspected I would like it quite a bit more on the second watch, and I did, moving it into slots for Best Narrative Film, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. Best Director was clear from the first watch, however.] Still, one thing was very clear: this is Jane Campion’s masterpiece (of the three Jane Campion movies I’ve seen). Take away the story, and the compositions, tone, and pacing still speak volumes. Keep the story in mind, and on the second watch a subtle glance or lingering shot, which once felt like an indulgence, is revealed as an important piece of foreshadowing.

Honorable Mentions Paul Thomas Anderson - Licorice Pizza Wes Anderson - The French Dispatch Joel Coen - The Tragedy of Macbeth Mike Mills - C’mon C’mon Ridley Scott - The Last Duel Stephen Spielberg - West Side Story Chloé Zhao - Eternals

Best Original Screenplay The French Dispatch - Screenplay by Wes Anderson; Story by Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Hugo Guinness, & Jason Schwartzman King Richard - Zach Baylin Red Rocket - Sean Baker & Chris Bergoch Stillwater - Tom McCarthy & Marcus Hinchey and Thomas Bidegain & Noé Debré The Worst Person in the World - Joachim Trier, Eskil Vogt

And the Layokie goes to… Tempted to say, “I’ve been monitoring the films closely, and this cinema production here clearly stood out among the rest.” But in the event you think The French Dispatch’s inclusion here is a qualification of anything other than it’s technical prowess, I will hereby give this prestigious award to The Worst Person in the World instead.

Honorable Mentions Don’t Look Up - Screenplay by Adam McKay; Story by Adam McKay & David Sirota Dream Horse - Neil McKay Licorice Pizza - Paul Thomas Anderson

Best Adapted Screenplay CODA - Siân Heder Drive My Car - Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Takamasa Oe Nightmare Alley - Guillermo del Toro & Kim Morgan Old - M. Night Shyamalan The Power of the Dog - Jane Campion

And the Layokie goes to… The Power of the Dog - Jane Campion

For turning this paragraph:

Into this scene:

Couldn’t find a clip, but it’s at the 00:24:45 mark if you’re interested.

Honorable Mentions The Last Duel - Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, & Nicole Holofcener West Side Story - Tony Kushner Zola - Screenplay by Janicza Bravo & Jeremy O. Harris; Story by Andrew Neel & Mike Roberts

Now onto the fun stuff:

The Something Award Shiva Baby

The Nothing Award Those Who Wish Me Dead

Weeird Doubles

Latent assassin comes out of hiding by fighting a bunch of bad guys on a city bus - Shang-Chi and Nobody

Awkwafina movie about a water dragon that fights a faceless, soul-eating horde - Shang-Chi and Raya and the Last Dragon

Timothée Chalamet is slightly embarrassed about getting new muscles - Dune and The French Dispatch

Black-and-white New York movies featuring prominently repeating Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou songs - C’mon C’mon and Passing

Best Original Song Tie:

And

I wish they had clips for these online, as these versions are not nearly as charming as the ones recorded (presumably) on-set in the film. I guess it’s just another reason for you to go and watch Annette.

But also:

Best Unoriginal Song Tie:

And

Best Line “I’ve got no guts for merriment this year.” - The Green Knight

Best Scenes

The Alpinist - Solo ice climb

Annette - The opening number (“So May We Start?”); The birth of Annette (”She’s out of This World,” above); The finale duet (”Sympathy for the Abyss”)

Candyman - The opening credits; The mirror sequence

The Card Counter - The final confrontation

Dune - Gom Jabbar; The transfer of power

The French Dispatch - Morning comes quick in Ennui

The Green Knight - The first conversation with the scavenger (Barry Keoghan)

In the Heights - Pacencia y Fe (see above)

The Last Duel - The last duel

Nightmare Alley - The final scene

Nobody - The bus fight

Old - The cliff climb

The Rescue - The rescue (admittedly more of a long sequence than a scene)

Shang-Chi - The fight on the scaffolding

West Side Story - America

As you know, I always like to compare my list with the A.V. Club’s. This year we combined on four.

2nd Annual Oklahoma Connections Award Stillwater - Partly set there (and named for our worst town) Ghostbusters: Afterlife - Fully (though confusingly) set there

Why Did I Watch This? Fear Street: 1994

OK But Why Did I Watch This Then? Fear Street: 1978

Is Something Wrong with Me? Fear Street: 1666

BDE Candyman’s backwards production titles

LDE Disney putting Luca on Disney+ at the last second

Good in Everything Award Thomasin McKenzie - Last Night in Soho; Old; The Power of the Dog Willem Dafoe - The Card Counter; The French Dispatch; Nightmare Alley; Spider-Man: No Way Home

Inaugural Bad in Everything Award Based on her turns in Here Today and The Card Counter, I don’t think Tiffany Haddish is poised to break through to serious, dramatic, acting. Great in Bad Trip though.

Way More Than Enough Time to Die No Time to Die

Most Different Times I Started Crying in One Movie (Ever) The First Wave

Said They Did Their Research But Clearly Didn’t Matt Damon, who shadowed roughnecks in Northern Oklahoma, but then pronounced my hometown “SHAW-nee” when everyone in Oklahoma knows it’s “Shaw-NEE.”

Good but Weird Attention to Detail Florence Pugh’s suit being baggy instead of skintight because she borrowed it from older (and bigger?) sister The Black Widow.

Worst Movies

The Tomorrow War

Here Today

Willy’s Wonderland

Free Guy

Last Night in Soho

Together Together

The Tender Bar (turn-off, and thanks for the reassurance, Cliff)

The Matrix Resurrections

Thunder Force

Cruella

Best Visuals The Alpinist Belle Candyman Dune The Green Knight The Tragedy of Macbeth (for the 2nd time)

Coolest Robber Masks No Sudden Move

Many LOLs Don’t Look Up Eternals

Squandered Potential The Night House

Frustratingly Short Theatrical Window Antlers - They showed this dang preview for two whole years and then released it in theaters for a week. And it’s still not streaming. How are Jesse Plemons completionists supposed to deal??

Absent on Purpose Belfast Being the Ricardos Cyrano Pig Spencer Titane

Still Haven’t Seen Benedetta Bergman Island Compartment No. 6 The Hand of God A Hero Memoria Parallel Mothers The Souvenir Part II (not falling for that again)

In case you’re wondering, the rest of the fab four: Kiera Knightley, Jesse Eisenberg, and Anna Kendrick.

One. Year. Hence.

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

The 11th Annual(?) L.A.O.K. Awards

The Lazy Sack-of-Shit Award Me

For pretty much writing this whole thing out in the early part of last year, but then for some reason just never finishing and posting it. But since I had as much done as I did, I still thought it was worth publishing. Three author’s notes: 1) Usually on these I try to be funny. Whether I succeed is up to you, but fair warning, I didn’t even try this time. There’s nothing funny in this post! Get ready to not laugh. 2) Because much of my access to watching movies has to do with The Academy, I decided to match their eligibility window, which typically runs for the calendar year, but was extended until Feb. 28, 2021 for 2020. 3) This was all written before the Oscar nominations were announced (‘cause you know I hate copiers).

[So what I was gonna say was…]

Anyone who ever wrote that movie theaters wouldn’t last because of home entertainment sure ate a big ol’ fat one this year, eh? For all their wayward phone screens, missing masking, too-bright floor lights/exit signs, and talking/shuffling/eating patrons, there have been so many days over the last year when either Becca or I sighed and said to the other: I wish we could go see a movie.

On the other hand, streaming access definitely seemed to democratize the movie watching process, and I think this awards season has been better for it. Now, because I’ve waited until the last minute to post this, let’s get on to it.

Best Narrative Film Blow the Man Down I’m Thinking of Ending Things Nomadland Pieces of a Woman Sound of Metal

And the Layokie goes to… I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Until the last moment, I had Blow the Man Down in my top position. Streamers have made a happy home for low-budget crime dramas, and Blow the Man Down elevates the category with, yes, its female-driven cast, but also layered character relationships which gird all those plot twists that are a hallmark of the genre. Stylish direction, some literal and figurative winks to the audience, and an anchoring performance by Margot Martindale make it the catch of the year. If only it weren’t for I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which was just an absolute stunner. It’s confusing on purpose in the absolute best way and does all the things that makes cinema an art form. The cast is excellent, as well as the production design. I think it’ll go down as another masterpiece for Kaufman.

The Next Five Emma. First Cow Kajillionaire Minari Tenet

Best Documentary Film Dick Johnson is Dead The Mole Agent The Painter and the Thief The Truffle Hunters Some Kind of Heaven

I decided to make the distinction of “Narrative” for the Best Film category this year, because some of these titles easily rank among the best films I’ve seen all year, but it’s tough for me to rank docs among narrative features (it really feels like apples and oranges). But if you were going to watch either my top ten narrative features or my top ten documentary features, I would tell you to watch the docs with absolutely no hesitation. All the ways in which you want narrative films to affect you, these films do more often and to a greater extent. They are funny, enraging, uplifting, heartbreaking, and heartwarming. #WatchDocumentaries

And the Layokie goes to… Some Kind of Heaven

Though I’m sure it’s just coincidence, an interesting theme emerged here with four out of top five dealing with the elderly. Again, for most of the year, I didn’t think anything would unseat the outlier, The Painter and the Thief. However, a late entry from Some Kind of Heaven blew both me and Becca away. Director Lance Oppenheim was only 24 when the film released, which is enough to make any wannabe filmmaker sick to their stomach if he wasn’t such an obvious talent. Even more astounding, this beautiful, incredible film somehow failed to make the Oscars doc feature shortlist. 😩 Again I say, if I were to lump all the films together in the same category, this would be my #1 [and as of posting it’s available to stream on Hulu].

The Next Five 76 Days All In: The Fight for Democracy Boys State Gunda Time

Now on to the acting awards. You all know what acting is, so I’m going to stop trying to come up with interesting things about these categories.

Actress Elizabeth Moss - The Invisible Man Evan Rachel Wood - Kajillionaire Vanessa Kirby - Pieces of a Woman Frances McDormand - Nomadland Anya Taylor-Joy - Emma

And the Layokie goes to… Frances McDormand

Honorable Mentions Haley Bennett - Swallow Julia Garner - The Assistant Sierra McCormick - The Vast of Night

Actor Riz Ahmed - Sound of Metal Chadwick Boseman - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Anthony Hopkins - The Father Caleb Landry Jones - The Outpost John Magaro - First Cow

And the Layokie goes to… Riz Ahmed

Honorable Mentions Ben Affleck - The Way Back Steven Yuen - Minari

Supporting Actor David Thewlis - I’m Thinking of Ending Things Daniel Kaluuya - Judas and the Black Messiah Kingsley Ben-Adir - One Night in Miami Shia LaBeouf - Pieces of a Woman Richard Jenkins - Kajillionaire

And the Layokie goes to… Kingsley Ben-Adir

Honorable Mentions Chris Messina - I Care a Lot Robert Pattinson - The Devil All the Time

Supporting Actress Margot Martindale - Blow the Man Down (69) Toni Collete - I’m Thinking of Ending Things (48) Leslie Manville - Let Him Go (65) Youn Yuh-jung - Minari (73) Ellen Bursten - Pieces of a Woman (88)

And the Layokie goes to… Youn Yuh-jung

Honorable Mentions Candice Bergen - Let Them All Talk (74) Gail Cronauer - The Vast of Night (72) Valerie Mahaffey - French Exit (67) Dianne Wiest - I Care a Lot (72) Dianne Wiest - Let Them All Talk (72)

Damn, is this my favorite category every year or what? I’m so sick of leading actresses that happen not to be protagonists getting relegated to the supporting actor category, and then stealing the award away from true supporting actresses! I noticed another trend here, and again it has to do with age. I realized there were no what you might call, young, actresses in this category, so I started looking up their ages, which I’ve listed here. Again, does it mean anything? Again, no it does not. I guess it's just, what you might call, r/mildlyinteresting.

Director Charlie Kaufman - I’m Thinking of Ending Things Justin Kurzel - True History of the Kelly Gang Kornél Mundruczó - Pieces of a Woman Christopher Nolan - Tenet Chloé Zhao - Nomadland

I think Tenet might be the “huh?” entry on this list, so allow me to tell you a story. I happened to be on a plane the first time I ever saw Tenet, except I had no idea what I was watching. It was playing on two different seats the row in front of me, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. ‘Who is this director, because this movie looks freakin’ great,’ I thought. 'Must be some hot new foreign director.' It reminded me of the opening to The Raid: Redemption, which is a huge compliment. A few minutes in, I realized it was in fact Tenet, and did my best to avert my eyes and stop watching. Then I laughed at myself for “discovering” Nolan’s technical mastery.

And the Layokie goes to… Chloé Zhao

Nomadland is both incredibly beautiful and stylish without being flashy. Though I’ve yet to see Songs My Brother Taught Me, I don’t remember shots like this in The Rider. Perhaps the location-hopping taking place here gave Zhao and her cinematographer lots of opportunities to capture beauty--and it is those romantic vistas that make a viewer sit up and take notice--but everything here is so cohesive. Even the intimate moments inside the van feel like they’re saying something visually. Watching it again today [a year ago] makes me wonder if everything Chloé Zhao did before this was leading up to a confluence of this particular story with this particular lead actress, and whether Nomadland could have been as successful in literally anyone else’s hands.

Honorable Mentions Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy - Blow the Man Down Ciro Guerra - Waiting for the Barbarians Natalie Erika James - Relic Miranda July - Kajillionaire Andrew Patterson - The Vast of Night Kelly Reichardt - First Cow Thomas Vinterberg - Another Round Malgorzata Szumowska - The Other Lamb

Original Screenplay Michael Angelo Covino & Kyle Marvin - The Climb Darius Marder & Abraham Marder - Sound of Metal Bridget Savage Cole & Danielle Krudy - Blow the Man Down Andy Siara - Palm Springs Kata Wéber - Pieces of a Woman

And the Layokie goes to… Darius Marder & Abraham Marder - Sound of Metal

Sound of Metal didn’t do anything as interesting stylistically as The Climb, Palm Springs, or Pieces of a Woman, and the end product didn’t wow me as much as Blow the Man Down. In fact, it almost feels like a stock plot. But it plays so well within the subtleties on the fringe of that plot through its character development and supporting cast, and then its perfectly poignant ending, that I came away from it feeling incredibly satisfied. It did all the things a good movie should do, and made me feel like a movie should make you feel.

Honorable Mentions Lee Isaac Chung - Minari Deborah Eisenberg - Let Them All Talk Brad Ingelsby - The Way Back Carlo Mirabella-Davis - Swallow Aaron Sorkin - The Trial of the Chicago 7 Remi Weekes - His House

Adapted Screenplay Tom Hanks - Greyhound Brad Ingelsby - Our Friend Charlie Kaufman - I’m Thinking of Ending Things Jon Raymond & Kelly Reichardt - First Cow Chloé Zhao - Nomadland

And the Layokie goes to… Chloé Zhao - Nomadland

Starting to feel a bit like Nomadland should have been my Best Narratvie Film. Perhaps the proof is in the pudding. My brother-in-law and sometimes co-writer, Cole, described this as his favorite movie genre: “Just a bunch of realies, realin’ around.” And you might surmise that most of Nomadland’s screenplay wasn’t actually written because the presence of non-actors make it feel so improvisational. A quick scroll-through seems to show that it was pretty accurate to what was on the page. I haven’t read the book, but knowing that the character of Fern was an amalgamation, and recognizing the wisdom Zhao had in plotting out the story over the course of a year plus shows that this was a meticulously crafted script where little was left to chance.

Now onto the fun stuff:

The Something Award Uncle Frank

The Nothing Award The King of Staten Island

Best Song(s) Music

It’s really too bad that the movie wasn’t very good, and there were all kinds of problematicisms going on around it’s release, because Music was full of great new Sia songs and music videos. Maybe it should have just been an album.

Worst Animation Class Action Park - This is the worst animation I have ever seen produced on film or television

Saddest Children [Lol I have absolutely no idea what this category was supposed to be. It was blank when I came back to finish writing this, and so it shall remain…]

Best Scenes Ammonite - The sex scene (which was actually a huge emotional payoff) The Assistant - Reporting to HR Dick Johnson is Dead - The ending Gunda - The finale Lovers Rock - Silly Games acapella (which apparently wasn’t scripted??) Malcolm & Marie - Malcolm reads his review The Mole Agent - The departure Pieces of a Woman - The birth Tenet - The first fight scene at the freeport I’m Thinking of Ending Things - The dance Some Kind of Heaven - I’m Elaine Soul - Lost souls on the astral plane The Vast of Night - Mabel tells her story

I really enjoy doing my list every year and then comparing it to A.V. Club’s. There’s always some overlap. I forgot about (but would have to agree with) the intake exam from Never Rarely Sometimes Always, and thought about (but then nixed) the finale from Another Round.

Scariest Walls Relic His House

Best Production Design The Father

Great Movies that Wasted My Boy Jesse’s Talent I’m Thinking of Ending Things Judas and the Black Messiah

BDE The Devil All the Time casting the source novel’s author as its narrator

LDE Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar casting a Morgan Freeman impersonator for their Morgan Freeman cameo gag

Funniest Moment Imaging Jared Leto, method actor supreme, staying in character and doing his stupid-ass duck walk for weeks on end while filming The Little Things

Good in Everything Award Robert Pattinson (you know I had to do it to ‘em) - The Devil All the Time, Waiting for the Barbarians, Tenet June Squibb - Blow the Man Down, Palm Springs, Hubie Halloween

Trend I Could Do Without Filmed Stage Shows. Obviously David Byrne’s American Utopia was amazing, but Hamilton, Beastie Boys Story, In & of Itself, it’s just too much. If you want to make a movie, then make a movie.

The Waves Slapped-to-Death Award Music

Best Movie Where Lucas Hedges Goes on a Transatlantic Cruise with Some Old Ladies Tie: Let Them All Talk French Exit

Oklahoma Connections Boys State - Legislation proposing “the relocation of all Prius drivers to the state of Oklahoma.” The Gentlemen - Matthew McCounaghey plays an Oklahoma weed millionaire or something? I’m Thinking of Ending Things - Very strangely set in Oklahoma, though it looks nothing like it; Tulsey Town (Tulsa); and the prevalence of Oklahoma! the musical Minari - Shot and partly set there The Vast of Night - Though it was shot and set in NM, it was written and directed by Edmond native Andrew Patterson

Destigmatizing Fatness Award Antebellum French Exit The Forty-Year-Old Version Wolfwalkers

Worst Movies (Couldn’t narrow it down to just 10)

Guns Akimbo

The Night Clerk

Monster Hunter

Wonder Woman 1984

Hubie Halloween

The Witches

Hillbilly Elegy

Yes, God, Yes

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Cherry

Land

Wendy

Best Visuals Get Duked! True History of the Kelly Gang Soul

Many LOLs Boys State Emma (First film adaptation I’ve seen that nails how funny Jane Austen is?) I’m Thinking of Ending Things Kajillionaire The Mole Agent Palm Springs

Good Scaries Come to Daddy His House The Invisible Man La Llorona The Lodge The Rental

Absent on Purpose Borat Subsequent Moviefilm On the Rocks Mank News of the World Promising Young Woman

Still Haven’t Seen [and still haven't seen] Martin Eden Notturno She Dies Tomorrow Welcome to Chechnya

Didn’t Watch Da 5 Bloods

I got the Quartzite beggar blues.

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

The 10th Annual L.A.O.K. Awards

Wow. Ten years of the Layokies. What a trip. I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to all five of my faithful fans for your readership over the years. In my first ever Layokies post, I named it the “1st (Possibly) Annual L.A.O.K. Awards.” I had no idea how long I’d be working at the Academy, let alone living in LA, but here we are. I bragged about seeing 180 movies that year. I just checked my Letterboxd stats for this year and it turns out I watched...180 movies. However, this year I hit a new personal best for new releases: 125. While this is about half as many as some people I know, some of the first Layokies were based on a field of 60 or 70 movies, so I’ve doubled up on my old self. Funny thing is, I can still look on other year-end lists and find many films I haven’t seen, and even some I haven’t heard of, so the field of films I’ve added are probably in the middle to bottom range of the pack. But someone out there has to watch Tolkien, Gemini Man, The Goldfinch, and Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, so it might as well be me.

In all honesty, my absolute favorite thing about living in Los Angeles and working at the Academy is access to watching movies and being around the general cinephile community, and even a bad couple of hours in a movie theater beats a lot else. Over Christmas break I saw Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in Shawnee, OK’s own Cinema Center 8. 

It was quite a trip going back to this theater after so many years and to think of the love of film that was fostered there. Alas, the picture was pretty muddy, and I’m almost positive they showed it in 2k. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Now, in penance for naming The King’s Speech Best Picture in my first year (lol), I give you five real good’uns for 2019:

Best Film The Farewell The King Little Women Parasite Uncut Gems

Sometimes I touch on a year being good or bad for film in general. Not sure about the whole, but I’ll call 2019 a real SEC year (aka stacked at the top and mediocre to poor the rest of the way down). While I would probably only give one title on this list must-see status (Parasite), these are all definite should-sees. The Farewell made me laugh and cry and cringe. One might even go so far as to say it “gave me all the feels.” The King gave me actual siege warfare and period-accurate haircuts. Little Women hit me with that structure, and at first I was all “hol up,” but then I was all “OK I see you.” Little Women also made me cry because I cry in movies now. (A quick aside, because while I absolutely loved Little Women, it’s not really going to come up again. If you liked the movie and haven’t read the book, please do yourself a favor and make it the next one on your list. You can’t know how great this movie is unless you know how good Beth is. Beth kind of got lost in this one, and you need to know Beth.) Parasite blew me away through its normality (who, having seen The Host, Snowpiercer, and Okja could have guessed that it wasn’t about some actual alien parasite??). And Uncut Gems was exactly as perfect as I expected it to be. And the Layokie goes to... The King

Faithful readers will know that one of my absolute favorite genres is ��discreet conversation behind castle walls,’ and The King absolutely nailed it. It has everything: leadership position foisted on a worthy but flawed character who doesn’t want it, conversations in tents about battle tactics, love built on almost nothing but mutual respect, and most of all, Robert Pattinson doing a funny accent (it’s just a French accent, but he makes it quite funny). I would have already watched this again five times on Netflix, but I’m hoping and praying for an Oscar nomination that will never ever in a million years come in hopes that I can see it again in the theater during nominations screenings.

The Next Five Six 1917 Honey Boy The Laundromat The Lighthouse Marriage Story Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Best Actor Timothée Chalamet - The King Adam Driver - Marriage Story Paul Walter Hauser - Richard Jewell Joaquin Phoenix - Joker Adam Sandler - Uncut Gems

Another super stacked category this year. You might even say they’re *puts on sunglasses*...Stacked Actors. (<-- This is a really good joke for anyone whose favorite band from 7th-8th grade was The Foo Fighters.) These are all kind of obvious, so I’ll take a second to comment on Paul Walter Hauser and the fact that I gave out a very specific award last year titled “Refuse to Watch - Any More Clint Eastwood Movies” after trying and failing to watch The 15:17 to Paris on a plane (one of the worst pieces of filmmaking I’ve ever witnessed). Then this year Richard Jewell was getting such good buzz, and it seemed like such a good cast, and it was such a low-risk watch (on my second screen at work while doing spreadsheets), that I decided to shamefully renege on my earlier pronouncement and give it a shot. And...it was great pretty good! What is the deeal with Clint Eastwood?? He’s made some of my least favorite movies of the decade (Gran Torino, Invictus, Hereafter was a particularly awful stretch, Sully was pointless, and even parts of American Sniper, which was otherwise tolerable, were absolute cringefests). Anywho, I was very impressed by Paul Walter Hauser’s understated but perfect performance, in which he gets one good chance to blow up and yell at people--which you know I love. I hope he gets nominated, because it would be a great Oscar clip. (My ultimate dream job would be to pick the acting Oscars clips and I would be very very good at it.)

And the Layokie goes to... The Sandman (love that everyone is calling him the Sandman again)

I touched on Adam Sandler “A” in the Best Supporting Actor section of my 2018 Layokies post regarding his performance in The Meyerowitz Stories, lamenting that he hadn’t taken more dramatic roles after Punch-Drunk Love and hoping that good writer/directors would keep casting him. One more wish granted by the Safdie brothers. Adam Sandler’s talent is undeniable. He is truly one of the Great Actors of his generation. I really hope this is a respected-actor-making turn for him, but the upcoming roles on his IMDd--Hubie Halloween and Hotel Transylvania 4--don’t give much hope for the immediate future. 

Honorable Mentions Taron Egerton - Rocketman (but only for the phone booth scene) Shia LaBeouf - The Peanut Butter Falcon Noah Jupe - Honey Boy Robert Pattinson - The Lighthouse Jonathan Pryce - The Two Popes

Best Actress Ana de Armas - Knives Out Scarlett Johansson - Marriage Story Elisabeth Moss - Her Smell Florence Pugh - Midsommar Saoirse Ronan - Little Women

Found out last night from my resident celebrity expert Bridgette Smith that Florence Pugh is dating Zach Braff and it absolutely crushed me. 

And the Layokie goes to... Elisabeth Moss - Her Smell

Her Smell was the last 2019 film I watched before writing this post, and I was really just looking for something to pass the time. I had been wanting to see it for a long time and noticed it was on HBO, so I pressed play and planned to work on this post while I watched. I couldn’t. I was riveted. The writing, score, and sound design are incredible, but it’s all tied together by Elisabeth Moss’s performance. She’s excellent at being revolting but still has all of those qualities that made her Peggy. You can’t not like her, even though you fairly hate her. 

Honorable Mentions Awkwafina - The Farewell Cynthia Erivo - Harriet Lupita Nyong’o - Us (You know I love weird voices, you know I love actors doing weird voices and faces, but this was a bit much even for me. Reflective of Us on the whole, which I thought was interesting but really missed the mark.) Charlize Theron - Bombshell

Best Director Ari Aster - Midsommar Bong Joon Ho - Parasite David Michôd - The King Benny and Josh Safdie - Uncut Gems Céline Sciamma - Portrait of a Lady on Fire

And the Layokie goes to... Benny and Josh Safdie - Uncut Gems

Wired: New directors Tired: Old directors

Boy do I not understand the love for The Irishman and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I’m not totally against boring movies if there’s a good reason for it (Midsommar was actually quite boring), but these were some of the least compelling films I watched all year. On the other hand, you have these young directors coming out of prestige horror, Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, and to a lesser extent David Robert Mitchell and Trey Edwards Shults, making some of the most dynamic films out there. Reminds me of Roger Ebert talking about early Scorsese in Life Itself (which I can’t find a clip of). Then you have Benny and Josh Safdie doing Scorsese better than Scorsese with literally breathtaking shots like the one below. How they construct such amazing edits out of such disparate takes as the one in the still above is a wonder. They’ll go from five extreme close-ups in a row to a jaw-dropping shot of the inside of a jewelry store zoomed in from across the street. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg on what makes them the best filmmakers working right now. 

Honorable Mentions Noah Baumbach - Marriage Story Robert Eggers - The Lighthouse Claire Denis - High Life Greta Gerwig - Little Women Alejandro Landes - Monos Sam Mendes - 1917 Alex Ross Perry - Her Smell Joe Talbot - The Last Black Man in San Francisco Lulu Wang - The Farewell

Best Supporting Actress Laura Dern - Marriage Story Lena Headey - Fighting with My Family Lee Jung Eun - Parasite (The housekeeper) Meryl Streep - The Laundromat Shuzhen Zhao - The Farewell (Nai Nai)

And the Layokie goes to... Laura Dern - Marriage Story

Here’s one for the Laura Dern stan accounts: There’s no question that Noah Baumbach is a talented director of actors, but Laura Dern makes so much out of seemingly not a lot in this role. She truly embodies a wholly unique and three-dimensional character that could have extremely easily been one-note.

Honorable Mentions Lily-Rose Depp - The King Florence Pugh - Little Women Margot Robbie - Bombshell

Best Supporting Actor Timothée Chalamet - Little Women Willem Dafoe - The Lighthouse Shia LaBeouf - Honey Boy Al Pacino - The Irishman Robert Pattinson - The King

And the Layokie goes to... Willem Dafoe - The Lighthouse

For being all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT7uR4wNMJs

Honorable Mentions Bill Hader - It Chapter Two Tim Heidecker - Us Sam Rockwell - Richard Jewell Song Kang Ho - Parasite (the dad) Lakeith Stanfield - Uncut Gems

Best Original Screenplay The Farewell - Lulu Wang Her Smell - Alex Ross Perry Marriage Story - Noah Baumbach Parasite - Bong Joon Ho Uncut Gems - Benny and Josh Safdie

And the Layokie goes to... Parasite - Bong Joon Ho

Another genre we don’t get nearly enough of: comedies of errors. A script like this is as sophisticated as any mystery, political thriller, or...some other sophisticated type of script, like uh, I don’t know, they usually just say Chinatown or Witness. I did think it lagged a bit in the third act, but everything that came before it was so tight. Twist after turn after twist, so funny, so shocking. This is such a rare prestige crowd-pleaser that it really does harken back to Hitchcock; if a wide audience can get over watching subtitles, this has to have one of the lowest barriers for entry of any foreign film in a long time. Here’s hoping for a Best Picture Oscar nomination and a wide release. Uncut Gems played at Shawnee’s other theater (titled simply Movies 6), so it’s not that far out of the realm of possibility. But I know people in LA, even that work at the Academy, who won’t watch subtitled films, so getting people to actually go see it is another question. 

Honorable Mentions Peterloo - Mike Leigh

Best Adapted Screenplay Jojo Rabbit - Taika Waititi Joker - Todd Philips & Scott Silver The King - David Michôd The Laundromat - Scott Z. Burns The Two Popes - Anthony McCarten

And the Layokie goes to... The King - Joel Edgerton and David Michôd

It wouldn’t be the Layokies without me championing one film that no one else cares about. I just really really liked The King. Timothée Chalamet is so hot right now! How did this get so overlooked?? 😭

Best Documentary Apollo 11 Honeyland It’s a Hard Truth Ain’t It Maiden Mike Wallace is Here

And the Layokie goes to... Maiden

As I’m in the process of producing a documentary right now, it pains me a bit that my top two picks in this category are almost entirely archival. I thought Mike Wallace is Here was so well done, and the director did some amazing things playing with aspect ratio. But Maiden came into port first. What is wrong with people who don’t appreciate sports? This xkcd comic (who I usually appreciate) makes me so angry. Tell the women who worked their asses off for years to claw their way into this male-dominated space and literally made the world a better place that their efforts were no more than a weighted random number generator on which to build narratives! Clearly the narratives are there, but it rarely has as much to do with the result of the competition as it does the effort that it took individual human beings to get there. See also: Undefeated (currently streaming on Netflix).

Honorable Mentions Fyre They Shall Not Grow Old Satan & Adam

Best Foreign Language Film Duh Parasite

Biggest Missed Opportunity Pokemon: Detective Pikachu (How the first live action Pokemon movie should have happened)

Not Even Close to Enough Monsters Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Most Unbelievable Cosplay Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers

Absolutely Crushing the Sensitive Dad Roles Billy Crudup in After the Wedding and Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

Good in Everything Too obvious, but Florence Pugh - Fighting with My Family, Midsommar, Little Women Robert Pattinson - High Life, The Lighthouse, The King Adam Driver - The Dead Don’t Die, Marriage Story, The Report, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Destigmatizing Fatness Award Dolemite is My Name The Laundromat Skin Almost Hustlers but then not (Lizzo got what, 30 seconds of screentime??)

#WasteYourAudience’sTime2019 The Souvenir The Proposal

Didn’t Actually Deserve to be Driven into the Ground Dark Phoenix The Kitchen

Just Plain Liked It Triple Frontier

Most Forgettable Tie: Tolkien and High Life (not for me, but it took me a full 10 minutes to convince Becca that she watched this, and I had to describe the masturbation chamber aka fuck box in a lot of detail before she got it, and I’m still not totally convinced she remembers it)

The Something Award Motherless Brooklyn

The Nothing Award Judy

Worst Movies 1. Rambo: Last Blood 2. Between Two Ferns: The Movie 3. Abominable 4. The Lion King 5. Godzilla: King of the Monsters 6. Wine Country 7. Jumanji: The Next Level 8. Frozen II 9. The Goldfinch 10. Pet Semetary

Best Scenes

Avengers: Endgame - The hammer, the portals, all the nerdy/normie BS, what can I say call me a basic bitch but there were some genuine holy schmoly moments in this that made it a really fun movie to experience in the theater

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood - When Mr. Rogers uses the puppets on Lloyd

Captain Marvel - When she went full shit on ‘em

Climax - The opening dance sequence (the only thing that made this movie worth watching)

The Farewell - Too many to choose from, but I think my favorite moment in this movie was when they were taking photos of the fiances and another couple stumbled in on them, claiming they were lost. That couple leaves and we never see them again. These are the kinds of details that make movies come alive. Absolutely brilliant.

Gemini Man - The motorcycle chase (a rare scene actually made better by the high frame rate)

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum - The knife fight in the knife store

The King - The conversation between Hal and Catherine

Knock Down the House - When A.O.C. debated the incompetent proxy

The Last Black Man in San Francisco - Skateboarding into town

Little Women - The “break-up” scene between Jo and Laurie (not a spoiler)

Midsommar - The drug trip scene (not that I’ve ever done drugs but this was the most accurate drug trip scene of all time) and the Ättestupa ceremony. Also found out in the video linked above that Ari Aster pronounces it Mid-SO-mar?? I thought that was the dumb way to pronounce it but apparently I’m the dumb one. Also also, another amazing detail worth mentioning: I absolutely loved that every time they were in their community sleeping barn, there was a baby crying somewhere on the second floor that we never see. Such a perfect way to put the characters and the audience on edge and indicate that there’s something wrong here.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - While I didn’t care for this movie, the scene where Brad Pitt went to the movie ranch and when he fantasized about going to the film set were absolutely dripping with tension, which made them as just as riveting as the rest of the movie wasn’t

Parasite - When the other family comes home early

The Peanut Butter Falcon - The scene after they come out of the corn field and share one of their first genuine moments

Uncut Gems - *Sarah Palin voice* All of ‘em, any of ‘em. But seriously the finale with the Celtics game

Us - The initial home invasion and the visit to the Tylers’ home (Tim Heidecker and Elisabeth Moss)

The A.V. Club also does a best scenes list at the end of the year, and I love writing mine first and then seeing what they came up with. I’m always surprised at how many we match on. Just goes to show that a good scene is universal. I also enjoyed some of theirs that I overlooked here, including from Her Smell, Bombshell, Ad Astra (I almost included the moon chase myself and thought the baboon scene was equally compelling), and Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

Stupidest Scenes Every other John Wick 3 scene

Deserves Discussion The Dead Don’t Die

This movie was a lot of fun. But then it also completely sucked? Not really a Jim Jarmusch fan in the first place, but this had so many awesome elements to it: a great cast, great soundtrack, really fun and unexpected ways of breaking the 4th wall, but then it was also pointless and boring. I would love for someone to tell me why this is a good movie after all, but judging by its complete absence from the end-of-the-year discussion (or any discussion), I’m guessing no one cares enough to mount that challenge.

Best Visuals Alita: Battle Angel Aquarella A Hidden Life Honeyland Midsommar Monos

Many LOLs It Chapter Two Jojo Rabbit Parasite

Best Song Ready or Not - The Hide and Seek Song (why was this not submitted?)

Best Soundtrack Waves - Never have I already known so many songs on a film’s soundtrack; it’s almost as if Trey Edwards Shults is another white guy around my age with the same interests as me...

Worst Accents Midway

Started But Never Finished Cats Cold Case Hammarskjold Genndy Tartakovsky’s ‘Primal’ - Tales of Savagery  The Highway Men High Flying Bird Queen and Slim Spies in Disguise

Didn’t See Ash is Purest White Atlantics The Beach Bum The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (still really want to see this one) Clemency Diane Invisible Life Luce Shadow Synonyms Transit Woman at War

Absent on Purpose Pain & Glory Ford v Ferrari I think these are the only two contenders that I’ve seen and haven’t mentioned. I actually liked both of these movies quite a bit. Just didn’t stand out for me in any one category I suppose. But then also: Booksmart Brittany Runs a Marathon Just Mercy The Mustang

Hah!

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

The 9th Annual L.A.O.K Awards

I’m no artist, but I did love art class growing up, and let’s just say I’ve won a few coloring contests in my day (God did I live for coloring contests). Let’s also say that in high school I did a watercolor of one of my stepmom’s nature photographs, and let’s say that it ended up in the yearbook. That watercolor was the crowning achievement of my many classes with Ms. Warren, our high school art teacher. Let me paint a picture of Ms. Warren for you: short spiky blonde hair, this pattern Gap button down every day, long denim skirt, and the unfaltering attitude of someone who was born to be an artist but instead ended up teaching ungrateful teenagers who called things “gay” around you even though you were clearly a lesbian.

Months after completing that watercolor, I began work on acrylic painting I’ll admit was uninspired, but I still gave it my best. The composition featured a bird on a branch in narrow focus, so that everything in the background was blurry, and I had planned on giving it to my mom as a Mother’s Day present. The problem was that I had no idea how to paint something out of focus, and instead of doing any research or asking my teacher how to do that, I just dove right in and painted from memory and tried to make the lines really soft. Here is that painting, which still hangs in my mother’s bedroom to my everlasting shame.

If you look closely, you might recognize that I cut my losses on this one. That’s because it was at this point in my progress when I fully realized I was in over my head and decided to ask Ms. Warren for some tips. She came over to my desk, looked at the painting for a good 10 seconds, and finally uttered two sentences I’ll never forget: “Garrett, sometimes in art you hit, and sometimes you miss. Your watercolor was a hit.” And she was off to the next student.

That said, sometimes a year in movies is a hit, and sometimes it’s a miss. 2017 was a hit. Now on to the next desk:  

Best Film Eighth Grade The Favourite First Man Mary Queen of Scots Sicario: Day of the Soldado

First off, anyone who didn’t like Mary Queen of Scots can meet me in a laundry cottage halfway between England and Scotland in negative 460 years for another asskicking. What is there not to like about this movie? According to Ben Friday, extreme historical inaccuracy. Okay, if anyone comes up with any non-nerd reasons, please let me know. The second film in my top five that you’re going “Guh, what?” to: Sicario: Day of the Soldado, was actually very good, and it turns out everyone is wrong for thinking it’s not. Wow, definitive proof here (https://letterboxd.com/g_baby9000/film/sicario-day-of-the-soldado/). I also loved First Man’s slow burn. La La Land was a misstep for me from Damien Chazelle, but now I’m right back on the Chazelle train. Bravo for making an unconventional, understated historical biopic, which drives through its seeming monotony with an ever building tension that keeps it compelling from start to finish. Then there’s The Favourite, which continues Yorgos Lanthimos’s reign over this annual list. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the dictum came down to the Fox marketing department that they were going to go wide with this movie. 

And the Layokie goes to… Eighth Grade

In the lead up to Eighth Grade I thought two things: 1) I hope it’s not that good because Bo Burnham’s age and career make me feel inadequate, and 2) It probably isn’t that good because everyone’s talking about how good it is. In LA, if you don’t see a movie until after its release date you are a total loser, and I went even a few weeks after that, so it was already sufficiently hyped. I honestly didn’t expect much from it, and it totally blew me away with it’s humor and heartwarmingness in a way that no other film matched in 2018. I’ll talk more about this great film below.

Next Five The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Cold War First Reformed Roma Shoplifters

Also Great Avengers: Infinity War Beautiful Boy Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. Outlaw King The Rider A Star is Born Vice (Why does everyone hate Vice? My thoughts on Vice.)

Best Original Screenplay The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Joel Coen & Ethan Coen (1/6 adapted) Shoplifters - Hirokazu Koreeda Eighth Grade - Bo Burnham The Favourite - Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara First Reformed - Paul Schrader

And the Layokie goes to… Eighth Grade

Not to retread the obvious, but I think about Eighth Grade and its screenplay in much the same way as Avatar. Predictability and the use of stock plotting does not equate to bad writing, and even if you know exactly what’s going to happen (Kayla must end up with Gabe) it can be done in such a satisfying way that the story still sings (which is the reason why the same story lines continue to be retread). From early on, we can guess pretty much what Kayla’s arc will be, but the fact that it plays out in just the right way, so that you can’t really imagine it had the potential to be anything else, is what makes it such a high mark in screenwriting. Getting to this point in a screenplay is very difficult, because it’s usually only after figuring out the 50 paths not to go down that you realize the obviously correct one. When it finally clicks which Scene B should follow Scene A, the screenwriter too realizes that it couldn’t have been any other way, it just takes a lot of work to get there. I put Eighth Grade on for my second viewing while building an IKEA dresser a week or two ago, and it filled me with such glee. I was doubled over with laughter more than once and had to watch some scenes five times before I could move on.

Best Adapted Screenplay Annihilation - Alex Garland Beautiful Boy - Luke Davies and Felix van Groeningen Leave No Trace - Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini Mary Queen of Scots - Beau Willimon Sicario: Day of the Soldado - Taylor Sheridan

And the Layokie goes to… Mary Queen of Scots

Like I said above, I don’t really know anything about the historicity of this movie. Apparently the rabble-rousing preacher that everyone was supposed to hate actually was cool and founded my own church’s denomination? Anyway, I loved the way this was paced, only parsing out the information you absolutely needed and trusting you to catch up through its many jumps in time, expertly illustrated via cutbacks to Queen Elizabeth. The characters were complex (especially Elizabeth) and the dialogue was snappy. There’s nothing better than seeing someone in an authority position take someone’s shit just long enough before thoroughly dressing them down at the exact appropriate time, and Mary gets many such chances to shine thusly.

Best Director Damien Chazelle - First Man Alfonso Cuarón - Roma Yorgos Lanthimos - The Favourite Pawel Pawlikowski - Cold War Josie Rourke - Mary Queen of Scots

And the Layokie goes to… Alfonso Cuarón

Was tempted after another viewing to switch this to Damien Chazelle, but I had already written the following paragraph, and I’m too lazy to redo it. From the opening shot of Roma, two things are clear: you’re in the hands of a great director, and it’s a damn good thing you’re in a theater because it’s gonna be a long, slow ride. If you watched this on Netflix from start to finish without looking at your phone, I salute you (and I’ll say the same for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs). If you haven’t seen it on the big screen and live in LA, it’s currently playing at the Landmark and Vista, so check it out. Also how insane is it that Cuaron will likely win the Oscar in this category this year, making Mexican directors winners in this category 5 out of the last 6 years? Specifically, Cuaron, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Guillermo del Toro, who were already known as the Three Amigos long before going on this stretch?

Honorable Mention Ari Aster - Hereditary Alex Garland - Annihilation Paul Schrader - First Reformed Stefano Sollima - Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Best Actress Emily Blunt - Mary Poppins Returns Lady Gaga - A Star is Born Joanna Kulig - Cold War Thomasin McKenzie - Leave No Trace Soarise Ronan - Mary Queen of Scots

And the Layokie goes to… Soarise Ronan

I’ve talked about this before, but it seems so many years I struggle to come up with a good list of best actresses (while supporting actress overflows with abundance). I had wondered if I was just a misogynist, but it became clear to me over time that there just weren’t nearly as many films with females in starring roles, let along female protagonists. However, not only did I have trouble paring down my favorites to five this year, there were many more female-driven films I could have drawn from. I really felt like this was a year for women in film, and it was great. The idea that women/minority leads can’t drive box office success seems finally to be a thing of the past, and it’s about damn time. This all probably comes across as liberal posturing, but if you know me well you’ll understand it’s really born from my own selfishness. First, I don’t want special treatment over anyone because I highly value fairness, and the reason highly value fairness is mainly because I don’t want anyone else to get special treatment over me. Second, I don’t care if a story is about women, black people, Asian people, aliens, some fish, or a fuckin’ toaster, a good story is a good story, and I don’t want to miss out one because some marketing executive wants to save his ass. Not once have I ever been not able to get into a film because the protagonist was a different age/race/gender than me. Even though some of them aren’t on this list, Annihilation, Ocean’s 8, Thoroughbreds, Suspiria, Roma, The Favourite, Widows, and Mary Queen of Scots not only had female leads, but fully female-centric casts, and all were either da bomb, fairly da bomb, or da bomb-ish.

Honorable Mention Yalitza Aparicio - Roma Claire Foy - Unsane Claire Foy - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best Supporting Actress Olivia Colman - The Favourite Tyne Daly - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Cynthia Erivo - Bad Times at the El Royale Nicole Kidman - Boy Erased Regina King - If Beale Street Could Talk

And the Layokie goes to… Tyne Daly

Pretty thrilled TBoBS is on Netflix, because I recently went back just to watch my favorite two segments: “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” and “The Mortal Remains.” Still not really sure what “The Mortal Remains” is all about ‘cause I’m not that smart about that kind of stuff, but damn did all five of them chew up the scenery, and none more so than Tyne Daly.

Honorable Mention Zoe Kazan - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Marina de Tavira - Roma Rachel Weisz - The Favourite

Best Actor Ethan Hawke - First Reformed Nicolas Cage - Mandy Ryan Gosling - First Man Viggo Mortenson - Green Book Christian Bale - Vice

And the Layokie goes to… Christian Bale

I didn’t hate Vice, but it seems like everyone else did. I also didn’t love The Big Short, but it also seems like everyone else did, somehow causing the people who loved The Big Short to hate the Vice. But I don’t think you can deny Christian Bale on this one, or at least I don’t think you can triumph Gary Oldman in The Final Hour or whatever it was called, but deny Christian Bale in Vice. (Scroll down to see that I didn’t triumph Gary Oldman last year, even though he might have deserved it.)

Honorable Mention Mahershala Ali - Green Book Bradley Cooper - A Star is Born Joaquin Phoenix - Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot

Best Supporting Actor Robert Pattinson - Damsel Linus Roache - Mandy Timothée Chalamet - Beautiful Boy Harry Melling - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs John Malkovich - Bird Box

And the Layokie goes to… Timothée Chalamet

It’s about this time that I get tired of trying to come up with something to write for everyone of these, so I’ll take my comments of the air. Timothée Chalamet was great!

Honorable Mention Jake Ryan - Eighth Grade

Best Documentary The Dawn Wall Minding the Gap RBG Three Identical Strangers Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Syeeeke. Did I say I was done coming up with things to write? ‘Cause I got lots to say about this. First let’s get it out of the way. Free Solo is a mediocre documentary about some excellent subject matter. Jimmy Chin made another one of my favorite documentaries, Meru, that definitely did not get the acclaim it deserved, so if he finds that acclaim with Free Solo, then super. And if it wins the Oscar, I won’t be sad about it. What I will be sad about, is that another documentary, also about climbing El Capitan, The Dawn Wall, got totally overshadowed be Free Solo. I watched The Dawn Wall first, and I think that may have something to do with shaping how I felt about Free Solo, but The Dawn Wall had a better, more interesting, more likable protagonist, with a more interesting story to tell about himself and his climbing attempt and way better climbing material! Now, there’s no denying that climbing the full height of El Capitan without a rope is riveting, awe-inspiring, and completely insane, and the 5-10 minutes of Free Solo that actually cover that feat are impossible to top, but if for the other 90 minutes (both films are exactly 1:40) you’d like to watch a doc about climbing El Capitan, it has to be The Dawn Wall. If you’d like those 90 minutes to instead be about a whiny guy who lives in van, then by all means, champion Free Solo. I don’t want to say too much more about why I think it’s better, because I want people to see it and experience it. Hopefully it starts streaming soon. (And if you did see and like Free Solo, please check out Meru, which is currently streaming on Netflix.) The other docs were also great, and what a shame that Won’t You Be My Neighbor? didn’t get nominated for an Oscar, which made me cry evertim.

And the Layokie goes to… Duh, The Dawn Wall -- (See how the wall below makes Alex Honnold’s Free Rider route look like the freaking Aggro Crag from Nickelodeon’s GUTS?)

Best Foreign Film I only saw: Border Capernaum Cold War Roma Shoplifters

And the Layokie goes to… Shoplifters

Now, as always, on to the fun stuff:

Refuse to Watch Any more Clint Eastwood Movies

The 15:17 to Paris was truly a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back-breakingly bad movie. Literally worse acting and writing than some student films I’ve seen. And I’m not talking about the Student Academy Awards, I’m talking about the ones I watched from my own peers in my own undergrad film classes. And I’m not talking about some USC or UCLA film classes, I’m talking about University of Oklahoma film classes, where they actively did not give us film equipment to use, because we were a studies program and not a production program, even though no one there wanted to do anything but be writer/directors, and they seemed to resent us all for that fact so we had an edit bay in like an old closet or something and it was on one of the original iMacs with the hockey puck mouse and everything. The last tolerable Clint Eastwood move was Mystic River don’t @ me.

Great in Everything Award Joaquin Phoenix - You Were Never Really Here, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, The Sisters Brothers, (and when do we get to see Mary Magdalene??) Cynthia Erivo - Bad Times at the El Royale, Widows

Best Lesbian Rachel Weisz

Deserves Discussion Damsel

Hmm, a New Wave Anit-Western starring Robert Pattinson with folk dancing and real-life weirdo non-actors, an obvious grand slam slam dunk, right? Wrong. Boy do I wish I had known the Zellner Brothers were also the ones behind Kumiko the Treasure Hunter before going into this. I could have at least prepared myself for all the meandering. I don’t really mind meandering if it serves a story/theme, say like in another seminal film in the genre, Meek’s Cutoff, but you can miss me wit dat meandering for meandering’s sake. The script for Damsel is a great example of an antithesis for what made Eighth Grade so great. The meandering here is not only in the physical sense, but also in the story sense, where no scene absolutely had to happen, and nothing in particular means anything. You would think that a character strapping dynamite to themselves and walking a few miles would fill a theater with Hitchcockian dread and similarly provide a Hitchcockian catharsis when that character eventually blows up. Instead, it’s just one more in a long line of things happening that never add up to what we would call a “story.” Like in Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, the interesting parts that never make up a whole are in themselves still interesting, and I’ll forever be grateful for that film’s gift of the discovery of the Yamasuki Singers. In the same way, I’ll forever be grateful to Damsel’s opening credits sequence, the chance for another stellar character performance from R Patt, the incredible mise-en-scène, and for giving Mia Wasikowska another opportunity to put a mediocre film on her back and carry it to the finish line (what if some day she starred in a good movie??). Perhaps my harshest criticism of Damsel is also one of my proudest film-watching moments. The film’s true lead isn’t even featured on the poster; it’s a character named Parson Henry, portrayed by David Zellner. About 3/4 of the way in, I thought to myself, this actor is so absolutely lacking of anything you could call charisma, I bet it’s the director and he cast himself in the lead role, and you know what? It was. *sunglasses emoji*

Best Song All of the Stars

Best Score Tie: First Man and Isle of Dogs

Many LOLs Avengers: Infinity War Eighth Grade The Favourite Mandy

Most Surreal Movie-Watching Moment When me and Becca and Joe and Natalie went to see Rampage kind of as a joke when we had our Moviepasses so it was like whatev, and the theater was PACKED even though it was a week or two after it came out, and at one point The Rock is going in for a pound with the big white gorilla that he trained, and the gorilla fakes the pound, then flips off The Rock and starts gorilla-laughing at its gorilla antics, and the audience went. fucking. NUTS. Like it was the purest moment of comedy that ever existed. It was a Sullivan’s Travels-level eye-opener for me. Give the dumb galoots what they want, and what they want, is to see a gorilla give The Rock the finger.

Most Non-Fun Fun Movie Ready Player One

Please Stop Giving Melissa McCarthy’s husband bit parts in Melissa McCarthy movies (didn’t hate The Happytime Murders btw)

The Something Award Sorry to Bother You

The Nothing Award Crazy Rich Asians

Best Scenes Annihilation - Watching the camcorder footage Aquaman - Escaping the trench creatures Bad Times at the El Royale - Any time Darlene sings The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - All of “The Mortal Remains,” which was basically a single-scene segment Eighth Grade - Chicken nugget dinner The Favourite - The dance (putting my fingertips to my mouth then and then giving it a chef’s kiss: “MWAH”) First Man - the m-er f-ing moon landing (damn that was good, had me on the edge of my seat in both viewings) Free Solo - Despite what I said above, for a stand-alone scene, you cannot beat the final climb Incredibles 2 - Jack Jack/racoon fight The Girl in the Spider’s Web - the motorcycle escape Mandy - So many, but it has to be the Cheddar Goblin Mission Impossible: Fallout - The bathroom fight The Old Man & the Gun - When John and Forrest meet Outlaw King - When they finally(!) had sex A Quiet Place - The very beginning when the whole theater went silent Roma - Fermin’s naked martial arts, Fermin’s denial (so sad!), and the fire A Star is Born - v basic of me, but you cannot deny the first “Shallow” performance The Strangers: Prey at Night - The pool scene Upgrade - The first upgraded fight Won’t You Be My Neighbor? - A lot of them, but it has to be “It’s You I Like” at the end

Best Visuals Annihilation Cold War Mary Poppins Returns The Ritual

Worst Movie of the Year

The 15:17 to Paris (turnoff)

A Wrinkle in Time (walkout)

The Nun

Fireworks

The Meg

Winchester

Rampage

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Hold the Dark

Fahrenheit 451

Sadly Missed/Haven't’ Watched Yet At Eternity’s Gate Blaze Burning Destroyer The Kindergarten Teacher Lean on Pete Madeline’s Madeline Mid90s Never Look Away Private Life Support the Girls We the Animals The Wife

Absent on Purpose BlacKkKlansman Black Panther Blindspotting Bohemian Rhapsody

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

The 8th Annual L.A.O.K. Awards

Wow, what a year. The first two new releases I saw this year were Logan and Get Out, and it was all downhill from there. Though I have doubts about them getting Best Picture nominations from the Academy, it’s about time that genre pictures start getting recognized for the artistic––  ……. LOL. Can you imagine? Look, I respect the hell out of Jordan Peele, especially after listening to him talk about writing and making Get Out and all the thought and intentionality that went into it, and I genuinely liked the movie. I’m also sure whoever made Logan is a very nice person and it was cool that it was rated R. But let’s be real here and take a look at the, about say...50-70 movies that came out this year that were better than Logan? Like these five here: 😁

Best Film Blade Runner 2049 Good Time The Killing of a Sacred Deer The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) The Square

And the Layokie goes to… Good Time

A lot of times people are like, oh Garrett, he hates everything. He criticizes everything. But so what. Criticism gets a bad rap. Criticism, to me, is just the manifestation of wanting things to be better than they are. Every time I sit down to watch a movie, I want it to be the best movie I’ve ever seen. Thankfully, 10-15 times a year I’ll see a movie I really like. And one or two or three times a year I’ll see what I like to call a Great Movie. Catching one of those, to me, is a transcendent experience, like seeing the Home Team win a championship, or standing in front of the Grand Canyon. Good Time was the one of 108 new releases I saw this year that reached that echelon. I was transfixed from the moment it started. One of the best opening scenes since what, Inglourious Basterds? Just utterly compelling. And you know I been on Robert Pattinson for a while, but Benny Safdie stole this one away from him. His presence on screen in Good Time is absolutely riveting. As is the film as a whole.

Honorable Mentions Brigsby Bear Call Me by Your Name Downsizing Dunkirk The Florida Project Hostiles Mother! Phantom Thread

Best Director Scott Cooper - Hostiles Yorgos Lanthimos - The Killing of a Sacred Deer Ruben Östlund - The Square Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie - Good Time Denis Villeneuve - Blade Runner 2049

And the Layokie goes to… Denis Villeneuve - Blade Runner 2049

Oscars lady voice: “This is Denis Villeneuve’s third nomination in a row in the category and first win.” Blade Runner 2049 is absolutely stunning to watch. Like Blade Runner, it’s a film that’s carried by atmosphere and design. That’s the only real reason people still watch the original Blade Runner, and you know this is true because, like me, you’ve probably seen it five or six times and could still not write a coherent summary of the plot. I’ll try: A blade runner interviews a guy to find out if he’s a replicant. Deckard gets called into his boss’s office and assigned to hunt down some more replicants that escaped an outer space mining facility and made it back to earth. (So far so good, right?) Then he uh...goes and eats some noodles, and then Lo Pan is in this cold room and he like, sells eyes or something. And then Darryl Hannah is there and she’s a replicant, but she’s nice and has a teddy bear that shoots rockets. And then Rutger Hauer finds Deckard and hangs him off a roof but doesn’t kill him and then he dies himself of old replicant age. Oh and Rebecca is in there too somewhere and she’s also a replicant. And there’s an owl. Again, I have seen this movie at least five times. So what I’m trying to say is that Denis Villeneuve is great, and do you think I should read Dune the book first or wait and see his version first?

Honorable Mentions Paul Thomas Anderson - Phantom Thread Darren Aronofsky - Mother! Sean Baker - The Florida Project Noah Baumbach - The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) Christopher Nolan - Dunkirk Trey Edward Shults - It Comes at Night (two in a row for this dude, I’d be very happy if I was his agent) Steven Soderbergh - Logan Lucky

Best Actor Daniel Day-Lewis - Phantom Thread James Franco - The Disaster Artist Thomas Jane - 1922 Robert Pattinson - Good Time Brad Pitt - War Machine

And the Layokie goes to… Robert Pattinson

Great performance, but people saying it’s the highlight of his career so far clearly haven’t seen him in THE ROVER aka the best performance of the 2010s. Don’t make me tweet about The Rover again because you know I’ll get like 80 retweets from R-Patt/K-Stew twitter accounts that are still holding strong this many years later because...well I don’t know why they do it, and it makes me kind of sad.

Honorable Mentions Christian Bale - Hostiles Colin Farrell - The Killing of a Sacred Deer Ryan Gosling - Blade Runner 2049 Aaron Taylor Johnson - The Wall Daniel Kaluuya - Get Out

Best Actress Salma Hayek - Beatriz at Dinner Nicole Kidman - The Killing of a Sacred Deer Vicky Krieps - Phantom Thread Frances McDormand - Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri Meryl Streep - The Post

And the Layokie goes to… Vicky Krieps

Wow this category bored me bigtime. Faithful readers know that as far as acting goes, I mostly only appreciate people yelling or crying or doing interesting accents or doing a character with a weird face. (Check out Brad Pitt in War Machine if you want to see this year’s best #weirdface.) If I missed out on a leading lady yelling or crying in a great way or making a weird face or doing a weird accent, please do let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to like and subscribe. Frances McDormand did have some great yells this year and also some great cusses, but what about Vicky Krieps in Phantom Thread? I think my favorite moment in the film is this scene where she’s getting fitted for a dress and has a witty rejoinder for every one of Reynold’s little nitpicks, a scene you can hear, then see a piece of in the trailer. About this time in film, you really have the idea that she’s this shrinking violet. This scene turns that notion on its head, and boy does she go on to not shrink.

Honorable Mentions Gal Gadot - Wonder Woman Jennifer Lawrence - Mother! Danielle Macdonald - Patti Cake$ (Danielle...lol that’s a cat’s name) Saoirse Ronan - Lady Bird Lois Smith - Marjorie Prime Allison Williams - Get Out

Best Documentary Faces Places

I’ve seen more documentaries than usual this year, but only 5/15 of the Academy’s shortlist, and not that many I have been impressed with. I will say that some of my other favorites that were not shortlisted are Let it Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992, AlphaGo, The Farthest, I Am Another You, and Obit. But Faces Places, a doc I had for whatever reason not wanted to care about, was just great. Look past its annoying artifice, and you get an interesting presentation of humanity that like so many pieces of art, reaches inside you and presses against some intangible emotional pressure point that makes you think, Ah, truth!

Best Foreign Film The Square

Again, saw a lot, but not enough to list nominees. Caught 4/9 shortlisted at the Academy and confident nothing will topple The Square for me. And if this doesn’t get nominated, prepare for me to do, what you all think I am going to do, which is just flip out!

Best Supporting Actor Barry Keoghan - The Killing of a Sacred Deer Terry Notary - The Square Sam Rockwell - Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri Benny Safdie - Good Time Adam Sandler - The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

And the Layokie goes to… Benny Safdie - Good Time

What unfortunate event in our timeline occurred that made Adam Sandler “A” (we called it first) give two great dramatic performances in Punch-Drunk Love and Spanglish (and some would say Reign Over Me, though I haven’t seen it because it’s about a guy who loses his family in 9/11 and then drives around on a segway listening to headphones all the time or something?), and then instead of going on to become one of his generation’s most respected actors, star in a string of complete garbage movies (again, this is from what I understand, as I haven’t seen the garbage movies)? He’s so good in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected). I hope good writers and directors keep casting him. As an additional aside, the Billy Madison/Happy Gilmore question is one of the great mysteries of my life. They are masterpieces, aren’t they? It’s hard for me to want to live in a world where I only love Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore and The Waterboy because I grew up with them, and they’re not objectively better than Grown Ups, Bedtime Stories, Jack and Jill, Grown Ups 2, Pixels, The Ridiculous 6, and Sandy Wexler. “No, of course they are,” you might say. But wait a minute, you mean to tell me all these movies were written by some combination of Adam Sandler and Tim Herlihy, the same two people that wrote Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, and The Waterboy? Yep, that’s what I’m telling you. For a more scientific investigation or just for a good laugh, visit Adam Sandler’s Rotten Tomatoes page and compare scores.

Also Benny Safdie was incredible in Good Time. Just watch it.

Honorable Mentions Sterling K. Brown - Marshall Gary Cole - Small Crimes Willem Dafoe - The Florida Project Idris Elba - Molly’s Game (some really top-tier yelling here) Jack Dylan Grazer - It Jake Gyllenhaal - Okja Dustin Hoffman - The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) Bill Skarsgård - It

Best Supporting Actress Hong Chau - Downsizing Jennifer Connelly - Only the Brave Bridget Everett - Patti Cake$ Holly Hunter - The Big Sick Laurie Metcalf - Lady Bird

And the Layokie goes to… Hong Chau - Downsizing

Okay first of all, hats off to my girl Elastigirl. And even bigger hats off to my girl Jackie from Roseanne. Faithful readers (of my tweets, hi Emily) will know that I am big into Roseanne. The show is great all around, but I have long thought that Laurie Metcalf is one of the all-time underrateds. There are some scenes in Roseanne where Laurie Metcalf absolutely slayed me. So happy she’s getting recognition for Lady Bird, and so excited to watch the reboot of Roseanne. I really really hope it doesn’t blow.

Honorable Mentions Lucy Davis - Wonder Woman Kirsten Dunst - The Beguiled Allison Janney - I, Tonya (but just for the scene when she yelled) Catherine Keener - Get Out Lesley Manville - Phantom Thread

Original Screenplay Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie - Good Time Noah Baumbach - The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) Kyle Mooney and Kevin Costello - Brigsby Bear Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou - The Killing of a Sacred Deer Paul Thomas Anderson - Phantom Thread

And the Layokie goes to… Kyle Mooney and Kevin Costello - Brigsby Bear

I’ve been pretty obsessed with Kyle Mooney since his first appearance as Bruce Chandling on SNL (which I can’t find to link to on YouTube which makes me very upset). And if you haven’t seen his other pre-SNL characters, you must watch these videos. Brigsby Bear is similarly “laugh-out-loud funny.” -Garrett Baker, The Domestication of the Dog. And while James does feel a bit like an amalgamation of all the classic sad sack Kyle characters, I love the way the story plays with and subverts expectations. You think James is going to reject his birth family and try to get back to/defend his adoptive (abductive?) family, but he doesn’t. Then you think it’s going to be all about him having to adjust to the real world, but then that rides as a subplot. Then you think he’s going to get bullied and rejected by his sister’s friends, but instead they celebrate him. I had to search my feelings on giving Brigsby Bear the top honor, because for the first time in the history of the Layokies, I know one of my own nominees, but I do feel confident saying that this was the best screenplay this year. Or maybe it was actually The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), and I just went for the opportunity to include my first ever Layokies acceptance speech from Brigsby Bear co-writer, fellow Sooner, and genuine celebrity Kevin Costello! Kevin says: "Our only goal was to make something that didn't suck. And while I don't actually believe our script is even in the same league as the other nominees, I humbly accept this award on behalf of the both of us." Okay...that’s a little mild for my taste. This is the first Layokies acceptance speech. You know, why don’t I include the sentence before that which was not agreed to be quoted: “Ah man -- thank you dude!! Definitely have seen past awards, and truly honored dude. That's awesome. Let me think of a quote…” Yes, I nod smugly to myself, yes that is more acceptable.

Honorable Mentions Liz Hannah and Josh Singer - The Post Greta Gerwig - Lady Bird Ruben Östlund - The Square Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor - Downsizing Taylor Sheridan - Wind River

Adapted Screenplay Hampton Fancher and Michael Green - Blade Runner 2049 James Ivory - Call Me by Your Name Scott Cooper - Hostiles Virgil Williams and Dee Rees - Mudbound Literally Six Different People - Spider-Man: Homecoming

And the Layokie goes to… Hampton Fancher and Michael Green - Blade Runner 2049

I truly think Blade Runner 2049 surpasses the original because it has a story good enough to match the visuals. Despite the runtime, the plot is actually pretty tight. 

...Oh. You think I’m not writing as much about this category cause I don’t have any nominee-friends to impress? Well I’ve got something to ask you: “You're in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. It's crawling toward you. You reach down and flip the tortoise over on its back. It doesn’t matter why. It’s purely hypothetical. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over. But it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?” *Continues the line of questioning until your replicant head explodes.*

All right, on to the fun stuff.

Age-Appropriate Wife Award Meg Tilly (to Brad Pitt) - War Machine

Biggest Disappointments Alien: Covenant Detroit It Comes at Night Justice League War for the Planet of the Apes

Best Visuals Loving Vincent

Best Casting The Post The Disaster Artist Hostiles

Many LOLs Brigsby Bear The Disaster Artist The Killing of a Sacred Deer My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea Phantom Thread Spider-Man: Homecoming People saying that James McAvoy should win an Oscar for Split

Netflix Crime Trilogy to Watch (Thematically Speaking) Small Crimes Shimmer Lake I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore

The Something Award Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

The Nothing Award The Shape of Water

Worst Movies

The Dark Tower

Colossal (Boy did I hate this movie. Saw it at the beginning of the year so I don’t remember too much about it, but let it be known that if it had been more recent, you would be reading a very long rant right now.)

The Sense of an Ending

The Snowman

The Mummy

Cars 3

Split

Detroit

Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2

Justice League

Very Bad Accent Award TIE Tom Cruise - American Made Seth MacFarlane - Logan Lucky

Most in Need of a Young Denzel Washington Marshall

How to Tell if Margot Robbie’s Face is Being Replaced in I, Tonya Her ass grows three sizes

Movie the Megachurches Should be Buying Out Instead of The Shack Downsizing

Now I don’t know much about The Shack, and what I do know I learned from this article from the largest newspaper in Oklahoma about some Boy Scouts that built a The Shack The Book replica on my home church’s front lawn in ol’ Shawnee, OK. The article cites a different pastor’s criticism that The Shack “erroneously promotes universalism...and religious pluralism” and “claims that Jesus uses all religions to reach people and that He has been reconciled to the whole world (meaning that all are saved).” Sure, some would call that heresy, but by all means let’s spend our shut-ins’ tithe money on “$7,700 in prepaid movie tickets to be distributed throughout the community.” (That was also a different church, but still.) On the other hand you have Downsizing, about a man who seeks happiness in the lap of luxury, only to lose most everything he has and finally discover that his life truly gains purpose in service to others, a course which is set in motion by a self-proclaimed Christian who goes to church and weeps during praise and worship! Ah, if only it weren’t for that love-fuck, it could have run on CBN.

The Legend of Tarzan Longest Vine Unbelievability Award In Spider-Man: Homecoming when a ferry boat gets cut completely in half and sinks halfway but then Iron Man puts it back together all while it’s still in the water and then everything’s fine. That m-er f-er is at the bottom of the m-er f-ing Upper Bay. And yes, I looked up what the body of water between Manhattan and Staten Island is called, and that’s why this post takes so damn long.

Best Song Un Poco Loco - Coco (though once again Disney did not submit it in favor of a worse song in the same movie because they are just real dumdums)

Spanish Version of That Song Which is Even Better

Other Best Song Canto Blight

That tribute to Brazil at 0:59!!

Good in Everything Award Caleb Landry Jones - Get Out, American Made, The Florida Project, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri Lakeith Stanfield - Get Out, War Machine, Death Note,

Best Scenes Baby Driver - Opening getaway scene Blade Runner 2049 - Hologram Elvis Coco - When it jerked those tears Dunkirk - Sitting in the shell of the boat Good Time - The opening interview Hostiles - Conversation between Jesse Plemons and someone else that wasn’t Jesse Plemons on the ridge It - The boat and the sewer...you know what I really mean The Killing of a Sacred Deer - So many, but I’m gonna go with the “date” with Alicia Silverstone The Killing of a Sacred Deer - Okay and also when the girl sings Burn by Ellie Goulding and also when Martin eats the spaghetti Molly’s Game - Both times Idris Elba goes H.A.M. The Square - Chimp performance piece Star Wars: The Last Jedi - This very bad movie had some very cool scenes, but the best was obviously when the guy came back and did the thing with the lightning. Okay, look, it was Yoda. Are there people who care about this that haven’t seen it yet? Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets - The chase through the market Wind River - Face-off between squads Wonder Woman - Storming no man’s land

Absent on Purpose Battle of the Sexes

Missed Out On A Ghost Story Columbus Ingrid Goes West The Little Hours Loveless Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Had No Desire to Watch Beauty and the Beast Darkest Hour Victoria & Abdul

And lastly, a brand-new segment I’m going to call Becca’s Corner. I toted my girlfriend along to most everything this year, so I thought it only fitting that she share a bit of what she thought of the year in movies. I asked her to give me a top ten and a paragraph about the experience:

Becca’s Top 10

Brigsby Bear

Get Out (Garrett sez: lol, what a normie!)

Wind River

Molly’s Game

Baby Driver

Call Me by Your Name

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

Coco

The Florida Project

Now, the real good thing about dating an employee of the Academy is the movies. They put you in this little room with just about anything you'd want to watch. And, since number one: I wanted to watch a lot of new releases, and number two: they was free (mostly); I musta’ watched me about 68 movies this year. 

This was by far the most movies I’ve ever seen over the course of 365ish days and I feel like I’m reliving my college days. Only this time, it’s not $0.50 Tuesday at the dollar theater.

Runners-Up: The Post, Phantom Thread

Widely-Acclaimed but I Didn’t Like It at All Really: Lady Bird

Movie Soundtrack I’ve listened to on the DL: The Greatest Showman

Movie Soundtrack Garrett has listened to on the DL: Coco––

EH-PEEH! Okay, let’s not go nuts here. I asked her to give me a short paragraph, not go making up her own categories. This is the Garrett show, let us not forget.

I love you. Forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. Goodbye.

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

The 7th Annual L.A.O.K. Awards

Had a goal to break 100 new releases this year. Happy to report that I reached my goal--watching The Angry Birds Movie on Netflix in the process--before remembering three separate movies I had forgotten to mark down in the process of writing this post. So since I don’t want my viewing to have been in vain, stay tuned for my intensive shot-by-shot longform essay on The Angry Birds Movie. “Part 1 (of 8): Mise-en-Scène” coming January 9. Now on to the show:

Best Movie American Honey The Fits Indignation Moonlight Silence

Welp, sorry everyone. I’m going to assume that some of you that live in LA have seen some of these, but to everyone else, SNOREFEST! To help jazz these up a bit, I’m going to have this year’s Layokie’s hosted by the promoters of the Kickspit Underground Rock Festival, Under-Underground Records’ own DJ Supersoak and Lil Blaster.

In case you didn’t notice, it’s that crazy-ass time of year again, the Lay-O-KEEZ! Woot-Woot! This year we got all the best movies: a meandering 3-hour mumblecore saga about a bunch of white trash teens riding around in a van selling magazine subscriptions, and it stars--SHIA LABEOUF WITH A RAT TAIL; an ultra low-budget indie about a quiet girl who wants to be in a dance group--BUT EVERYONE GETS SEIZURES; a Philip Roth adaptation with a 17-minute long scene that’s--JUST DIALOGUE; another low-budget indie about a quiet boy who has trouble breaking out of a very sad home and school environment and has trouble--DEALING WITH HIS SEXUALITY; a slogging, 3-hour religious epic about the struggle to hear God’s voice after sacrificing everything to travel to a foreign land and find a long-lost priest against impossible odds--AND ALSO THERE’S TORTURE.

In all seriousness, I thought this year was filled with small, challenging movies that deserved a wide audience, and if this list serves to even get a couple more views for them, I’d be satisfied. HAHA, HELL YEEAH.

And the Layokie goes to… Silence

Five minutes into this movie, I was in love. Scorsese is easily my favorite director, but that doesn’t mean he gets a pass. I thought Hugo was fairly awful. (Faithful readers will remember that Hugo previously won an “Absent on Purpose” Layokie, and was further remarked upon thusly: “Hugo should have been called, George Melies and the Kid Who Had a Problem but then Solved It After 45 Minutes.”) Silence, on the other hand, was pure, epic filmmaking of a type you hardly see in The Walt Disney Company’s America. Silence was thoughtful, compelling, beautiful, and as religiously moving as The Passion of the Christ (which I mean as a compliment to both films). Of course it’s only in four theaters in the country right now, but I sincerely wish that Bible Belt churches would buy up theaters for this as they have for faith-based schlock like Fireproof and God’s Not Dead. I recognize that non-believers won’t have the same emotional connection watching that I had, and though there’s no way for me to separate those elements out of my appreciation, I’d like to think it holds up otherwise. Silence also has layers of suspense, heartache, and tragedy, an outstanding cast (though one sadly lacking in women), gorgeous direction and cinematography, and minimal noticeably cartoonish effects shots (a growing blight on Scorsese’s oeuvre).

A very close second is The Fits, a movie I’ve been trumpeting the better part of the year, and was fully expecting to remain my favorite. You can watch it now on Amazon Prime, and it’s only 70 minutes long. So just do it! The only problem is that there’s no way it could stand up to the hype I’ve been giving. I just didn’t know any other way to get people to watch it. It actually sucks. It’s awful. Don’t even watch it. Actually, do go ahead and watch it, but just know that it sucks terribly and you’ll probably hate it. But also put it on the biggest screen you have, turn off the lights, and put your phones and computers in the other room. You can survive for 70 minutes.

Honorable Mentions The Lobster Jackie Manchester by the Sea Nocturnal Animals The Witch

Best Director Anna Rose Holmer - The Fits Yorgos Lanthimos - The Lobster Pablo Larraín - Jackie Martin Scorsese - Silence Denis Villeneuve - Arrival

And the Layokie goes to… Martin Scorsese

From a Scorsese fanboy’s perspective, the really interesting thing about his direction in Silence is what he doesn’t do. Not a ton of moving camera, not a ton of cuts, no fancy transitions (although I do seem to remember a couple of jump dissolves). Shutter Island was similarly straightforward in style, but Silence really brings to mind--not surprisingly--The Last Temptation of Christ in invoking an invisible Hollywood style. (In fact, the shot above was pretty much the only one in the whole film to really draw attention to itself.) Without the traditional Scorsese wow moments, it’s easy to see the skill he has in generating tone, creating suspense, and evoking the POV of his characters. One of the things I like doing (I think I got this from someone else) is watching the shot-reverse shots of great directors. Pay attention to one of Silence’s opening scenes, in which three priests have a conversation across a table. The composition and pacing make it easy to see why Scorsese (with Thelma Schoonmaker at his side) is one of the best.

Honorable Mentions Andrea Arnold - American Honey Robert Eggers - The Witch Barry Jenkins - Moonlight James Schamus - Indignation Makoto Shinkai - Your Name. Trey Edward Shults - Krisha Oliver Stone - Snowden

Original Screenplay Andres Duprat - The Distinguished Citizen Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymus Filippou - The Lobster Taylor Sheridan - Hell or High Water Paul Laverty - I, Daniel Blake Kenneth Lonergan - Manchester by the Sea

Damn is Taylor Sheridan the screenwriter of the hour or what? Last year with Sicario, now Hell or High Water (originally titled Comancheria because obviously no self-respecting screenwriter would name their script after a chunk of an idiom [plenty of screenwriters do do this, they just don’t have any self respect...or they do respect themselves, but they’re shit and they shouldn’t]).

And the Layokie goes to… Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou - The Lobster

The charm of this script is inherently tied to the direction of the film and the deadpan delivery of its actors, but The Lobster is fun, original, and funny, while also tragic and gut wrenching, using the silliest and scariest of premises (not unlike Nathan for You) to point a frighteningly accurate finger at human nature.

Honorable Mentions Andrea Arnold - American Honey Jeremy Saulnier - Green Room Noah Oppenheim - Jackie Jonathan Perera - Miss Sloane Robert Eggers - The Witch

Adapted Screenplay Eric Heisserer - Arrival James Schamus - Indignation Luke Davies - Lion Barry Jenkins - Moonlight Tom Ford - Nocturnal Animals Jay Cocks and Martin Scorsese - Silence

And the Layokie goes to… Jay Cocks and Martin Scorsese - Silence

Come on now, you didn’t see that coming?

Best Actor Casey Affleck - Manchester by the Sea Colin Farrell - The Lobster Andrew Garfield - Silence Jake Gyllenhaal - Nocturnal Animals Logan Lerman - Indignation

I know Colin Farrell's job is to say everything completely deadpan, but he just does it so damn well.

And the Layokie goes to… Andrew Garfield

Alright I know this is now the Silence parade. But he really was the best. Go see it. Also his accent sucks in Hacksaw Ridge.

Honorable Mentions Dave Johns - I, Daniel Blake Joseph Gordon Levitt - Snowden

Best Actress Amy Adams - Arrival Natalie Portman - Jackie Taraji P. Henson - Hidden Figures Molly Shannon - Other People Meryl Streep - Florence Foster Jenkins

And the Layokie goes to… Molly Shannon

Really a shame that Molly Shannon hasn’t t been getting any props for this performance. This one’s on Netflix, and worth watching just for her.

Best Documentary 13th I Am not Your Negro O.J.: Made in America The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years Weiner

And the Layokie goes to… O.J.: Made in America

There’s not even a question. The only reason this didn’t make it to my list of top films is because it was so obviously made for television. (It’s an 8.5-hour film set up in five parts, aka, five weeknights.) However, it did qualify for consideration, and it is incredible. If you have access to WatchESPN, make time for it. It’s about much more than O.J., but even if it wasn’t, his story alone is fascinating. Whatever you call it, it’s one of the best things you can watch on a screen right now.

Honorable Mentions City of Gold Life, Animated Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World Tickled Under the Gun

Best Supporting Actor John Goodman - 10 Cloverfield Lane Yôsuke Kubozuka (as Kichijiro) - Silence Tracy Letts - Indignation Issei Ogata (as the Inquisitor) - Silence Michael Shannon - Nocturnal Animals

And the Layokie goes to… Issei Ogata

Again, with the Silence! Again, just go see it. Unlike Andrew Garfield you won’t think I’m an idiot for picking this guy.

Honorable Mentions Mahershala Ali - Moonlight (thought this before everyone else started saying it!) Adam Driver - Silence Peter Sarsgaard - Jackie Aaron Taylor-Johnson - Nocturnal Animals

Best Supporting Actress Nicole Kidman - Lion Hayley Squires - I, Daniel Blake Tilda Swinton - Hail, Caesar! Rachel Weisz - The Lobster Rima Te Wiata - Hunt for the Wilderpeople Michelle Williams - Manchester by the Sea

And the Layokie goes to… Nicole Kidman

She’s the bomb. Also go see Lion. It will make you cry. It made me cry, and I don’t cry at anything (except The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which makes me bawl like a baby.)

And now, Ass Dan to present all the good stuff. (RIP Ass Dan 1977-2017)

Don’t Sleep On The Accountant Goat The Legend of Tarzan Miss Sloane Snowden

Movie that Deserves Discussion Lion

Already talked about Lion some. Weeks after seeing it, this one is still an enigma for me. It was incredibly well written, directed, and acted, and it is an amazing story I think everyone should see. It’s truly worth watching. But though it was both visually stunning and emotionally engaging (brought real tears to my eyes--the kind that drip down your face) it’s also branded by a sentimentality that keeps me from wanting to place it into the annals of great cinema. Is this a problem with me, that movies with gushy happy endings can’t be considered great art by their very nature because I’m a cynic? Or does this say something about the inherent struggle we all face as humans and the dishonesty of schmaltz? My gut says the later, but my tear ducts say otherwise! Confused!

The Something Award Paterson

The Nothing Award Sing Street

Worst Movies 1. Nina 2. Independence Day: Resurgence 3. Sausage Party 4. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk 5. Tale of Tales (the half I could sit through anyway) 6. The Brothers Grimsby 7. The BFG 8. The Little Prince 9. Live by Night 10. The Angry Birds Movie

Worst Actress Zoe Saldana - Nina

God, was this movie hard to watch. I would never have sat through it except that it was my job. First, she was wearing black face. You can try to explain to me how it wasn’t offensive because she is also black, but I was personally offended. Her accent was awful. She couldn’t sing anything like Nina Simone (no dig here, who could?). Lastly, the movie was pointless and boring as shit. Okay, I just decided to check to the movie on Rotten Tomatoes and I’ll save you the suspense. 3% fresh. AKA the opposite of fresh. 1 positive review of 39. Let’s guess, Armond White? Just went back and checked again. Nope, it’s someone named Kam Williams from something called Baret News Wire. This “positive” review notes that Saldana herself later admitted “I didn’t think I was right for the part.” Williams goes on to say: “However, I suspect anyone who actually sees the film would find Zoe’s Africanized features to be less of a distraction than her singing. For, while she certainly manages to hold her own, Nina’s fans will undoubtedly be more disappointed by the absence of the haunting strains of The High Priestess of Soul’s distinctive voice than by her impersonator’s performing in blackface.” That’s from the only positive review! Williams then finishes with “Ignore all the blackface haters, singing aside, Zoe Saldana delivers a decent enough Nina Simone impersonation here to make you wonder what all the brouhaha was ever about. Very Good (3 stars).” You know a biopic performance is good when the only person advocating for it labels it an “impersonation.”

Good in Everything Award Adam Driver - Midnight Special, Paterson, Silence

Best Cameo Tie: Nick Kroll and Nick Offerman - Knight of Cups (If I remember correctly, you can see a chunk of Nick Kroll’s nose and the back of Nick Offerman’s head.)

Best Song Humble by Connor4Real aka The Lonely Island  - Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Actual Best Song The Veil by Peter Gabriel - Snowden

Other Best Song Shiny by Jemaine Clement - Moana (though Disney didn’t submit it ‘cause they’re dumb)

Best Animated Feature Your Name.

Fastest Learner Doctor Strange, who goes from woefully inept, to able to defeat any henchman, to able to defeat the antagonist, to able to defeat the over-villain, which is some universal galactic superpower, all in the course of about 12 real-time hours.

Most Guts Going All “Splat!” Hacksaw Ridge

The Tallest Tree and Longest Vine in the Known Universe Award The Legend of Tarzan In the words of Jeb Bush, “Please click.”

The Worst Scene to Watch While Sitting Between Your Mom and Your Aunt and Your Girlfriend The one in Bad Moms when they’re prepping her for her date and talking about cocks and jacking off uncircumcised dicks and licking foreskins and cum and all that stuff.

I did get up and change seats at this point.

Movie the Critics Hated but I Thought Was Great Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Movies Everyone Loved but I Thought Were Cinematically Incohesive, Lacking Character and Plot, Were Almost Saved by Brilliant Endings, but then Weren’t La La Land Swiss Army Man

Biggest Disappointment Jason Bourne

Scariest Moment In The Red Turtle when the guy decides to escape that well by swimming out through that tight channel. Like dude, you’re going to get stuck and drown in there you psycho. I would die trying to climb out for five days straight before I’d try to swim out through a tunnel.

Number of Movies I Had to Watch Isabelle Huppert Get Raped In 2

Biggest Gaffe Phantom Boy is a wonderful animated feature from France, but which is set in New York. At one point they get on an elevator and go from floor 0 to -3. Uh, do research much? In America, that would be floor 1 to P3. Eye roll emoji!

Least Believable On-screen Couple Jesse Eisenberg and Blake Lively in Cafe Society

Can people stop casting Jesse Eisenberg as debonair playboys? It’s not working.

Edge of My Seat Award Green Room Don’t Breathe Nocturnal Animals Silence

You Can and Should Watch on Netflix 13th Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World Other People

You Can and Should Watch on Amazon Prime Cafe Society Green Room Embrace of the Serpent Eye in the Sky THE FITS! Krisha The Lobster Louder than Bombs The Witch

Best Scenes Captain America: Civil War - The escape from Bucky’s Berlin hotel and the big ol’ fight with all the people (even though Vision just disappeared for huge chunks of the fight because he could obviously just disarm all of his opponents at once without even hurting them). Doctor Strange - You know the one where are the crazy stuff happens The Fits - The climax Hell or High Water - Any time Katy Mixon was on screen Lion - The meeting of the mothers Midnight Special - Escape from the facility Moana - The song Shiny Nocturnal Animals - The entire highway confrontation Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - Darth Vader tearing shit up

Absent on Purpose Elle The Founder The Neon Demon War Dogs

Haven’t Seen 20th Century Women Captain Fantastic The Edge of Seventeen Everybody Wants Some!! Fences The Handmaiden Love & Friendship Loving Toni Erdmann

Rest in Peace Anton Yelchin

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

So I’ve recently blazed through all 52 episodes of girls, and there was a lot to love about it, but one thing I would guess is often overlooked (I have no idea because I haven’t read a single review, recap, or think-piece) is its amazing production design.

Here are two moments that were so amazing I had to pause the show and take screencaps.

1. After Ray moves into Adam’s old apartment, there’s a cage on top of his wardrobe--not a cardboard box, not a Rubbermaid bin, but a cage--labeled “ADAM’S CREEPY SHIT.”

2. Ray’s coffee truck logo is just a line drawing of him being bored. Or maybe he’s forlorn. I really hope the coffee truck comes back into play in season 6.

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

The 6th Annual L.A.O.K. Awards

I don’t typically believe in “good” or “bad” years for movies. It seems like every year I hear it described both ways. Earlier this year, I saw a stupid person say online that this year’s Oscar predictions were too tough to call because there was “so much competition.” I, on the other hand, thought this year was garbage. So the analysis is: saying a year is good or bad for movies is dumb, unless it actually is bad, in which it’s okay to say it’s bad, but only if I think so too. There’s nothing I really care to champion this year, so if you didn’t see anything, no big. If you want to know what’s going to be nominated, just don’t worry about it. OU basketball is 12-0. Listen to some Courtney Barnett and Sheer Mag.

Best Movie Mistress America The Revenant Sicario Steve Jobs Tangerine

Eh….maybe not. These are some good flicks! I think the biggest surprise for me this year was Steve Jobs, which I expected nothing of, but found to be extremely captivating and clever. Mistress America was a delight (as expected), but I didn’t expect its third act, which mirrored a classic comedy of errors to great success. Sicario was riveting, The Revenant was an A+, and Tangerine was one of the most visually dynamic and engrossing movies I’ve ever seen.

And the Layokie goes to… Sicario

My opinion on these films is so tepid, I feel like this could easily change, but for now I’ll say that Sicario is a film that “grabbed hold and never let go.” -Garrett Baker, The Domestication of the Dog

It was a film with energy, suspense, and tension from beginning to end. Some movies I see and think, damn, I wish I’d thought of that. Others, like Sicario, make me think I could work all my life and not gain the kind of insight it would take to delve as perfectly into a subject as it did into America’s drug war. More on that down the line.

Honorable Mentions ’71 The Diary of a Teenage Girl Inside Out Irrational Man Spotlight

Best Director Sean Baker - Tangerine Alex Garland - Ex Machina Alejandro González Iñárritu - The Revenant László Nemes - Son of Saul Denis Villenueve - Sicario

And the Layokie goes to… Alejandro González Iñárritu

All these films have a lot to like, but The Revenant puts everything together in the most complete and impressive way. The Revenant doesn’t employ the same single take aesthetic that Birdman did, but that influence (and also that of Alfonso Cuaron in Gravity and Children of Men) is highly evident. The camera moves such that it almost feels like we’re approaching a new way of capturing images, of deciding what is and isn’t on screen at any given moment. In a way it feels like a 3rd party virtual reality experience, in which the film was shot in 360 degrees, and the director/cinematographer is making the decision of where we should look as the experience plays out. This method is combined with more traditional shots and some Malick-ian flashbacks to create a fairly stunning palette with which is painted a brutal tableau (pronounced pretentiously) of survival and revenge. Altogether it’s a film as visually dynamic as either Tangerine or Son of Saul, and more beautiful than anything else this year.

Honorable Mentions J.J. Abrams - Star Wars: The Force Awakens Danny Boyle - Steve Jobs Grímur Hákonarson - Rams John Maclean - Slow West George Miller - Mad Max: Fury Road David Robert Mitchell - It Follows Ridley Scott - The Martian

Best Actor Joaquin Phoenix - Irrational Man Chewetel Ejiofer - Z for Zachariah Johnny Depp - Black Mass Jacob Tremblay - Room Michael Fassbender - Steve Jobs

And the Layokie goes to… Johnny Depp

Black Mass isn’t a great movie, but Johnny Depp’s performance is as impressive as any he’s given. His Whitey Bulger is a menacing figure, in spite of the plot not giving him a leg up. We’ve seen too many menacing figures by this point: as far as story, even Walter White is a more gruesome protagonist. It’s a shame, because Bulger was a true dickbag (see the doc, Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger on Netflix). So when Depp’s Whitey doesn’t do much but kill a one or two people, it’s up to his performance to show him for the true villain he was, and he does.

Honorable Mentions Sharlto Copley - Chappie Leonardo DiCaprio - The Revenant Michael Fassbender - MacBeth Jack O’Connell - ‘71

Best Actress Brie Larson - Room Bel Powley - The Diary of a Teenage Girl Margot Robbie - Z for Zachariah Amy Schumer - Trainwreck Kristen Wiig - Welcome to Me

And the Layokie goes to… Bel Powley

This is a tough one, and I don’t have too much of an opinion. Brie Larson and Bel Powley are both frontrunners as far as I can tell, and both deserve to be.

Honorable Mentions Carey Mulligan - Suffragette Teyonah Parris - Chi-Raq (this is the same woman that was sweet Dawn??) Soarise Ronan - Brooklyn Alicia Vikander - The Danish Girl

Best Documentary Amy Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief He Named Me Malala The Look of Silence Meru

And the Layokie goes to… Meru

I only saw eight documentaries this year, but felt it was enough to include this category for the first time, as they were almost all great. My favorite docs (and features) take me into a world I never knew existed, and Meru, a film about summiting one of the worlds toughest peaks for the very first time (and which was filmed by one of the three climber-subjects) was fascinating and well written.

Best Supporting Actor Benicio Del Toro - Sicario Walton Goggins - The Hateful Eight Chris Pine - Z for Zachariah Mark Ruffalo - Spotlight Sylvester Stallone - Creed

And the Layokie goes to… Mark Ruffalo

Basically for talking out of the side of his mouth a lot, but come on, Ruffalo is so hard not to love.

Honorable Mentions Steve Carrel - The Big Short Emory Cohen - Brooklyn John Cusack - Chi-Raq Adam Driver - While We’re Young John Goodman - Trumbo Tom Hardy - The Revenant Jesse Plimpton - Black Mass Wesley Snipes - Chi-Raq

Best Supporting Actress Kate Winslet - Steve Jobs (despite a drastically uneven accent) Jennifer Jason Leigh - The Hateful Eight Mélanie Laurent - By the Sea Isabella Rosselini - Joy ¥o-Landi Vi$$er - Chappie

And the Layokie goes to… Jennifer Jason Leigh - The Hateful Eight

I had her repeat it. I was sure she meant Jason Lee.

Honorable Mentions Jennifer Hudson - Chi-Raq Virginia Madsen - Joy Rachel McAdams - Southpaw Mya Taylor - Tangerine

Original Screenplay Taylor Sheridan - Sicario Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy - Spotlight Pete Docter & Meg LeFauve & Josh Cooley - Inside Out Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig - Mistress America Woody Allen - Irrational Man

And the Layokie goes to… Taylor Sheridan - Sicario

Taylor Sheridan is just some guy. He’s an actor, actually, which means he isn’t an ex-CIA operative who performed operations in New Mexico. It’s astounding the amount of research you would have to do, that in fact he did do, in order to write this film and have it come across as authentic. Whether it is authentic or not is another matter, but to audience members with no prior knowledge, it is. Of course you could chuck this in with so many other government thrillers with so much of the same jargon, but those impress me too. Additionally, Sicario was an excellent story with excellent characters, albeit with a huge slip in the final moments (a signed piece of paper is worth nothing if signed under coercion).

Honorable Mentions Amy Schumer - Trainwreck David Robert Mitchell - It Follows Alex Garland - Ex Machina

Adapted Screenplay Aaron Sorkin - Steve Jobs Ryan Coogler & Aaron Covington - Creed Marielle Heller - The Diary of a Teenage Girl Emma Donaghue - Room Charles Randolph and Adam McKay - The Big Short

And the Layokie goes to… Tie: Ryan Coogler & Aaron Covington - Creed; Charles Randolph and Adam McKay - The Big Short

I really appreciate Creed for basically being an original screenplay that’s based in the world of an existing franchise. Creed could have gone a lot of different ways that were all bad, but instead it went in one that was very good. The best boxing movie I saw this year, and I saw two of them.

The Big Short gets recognition for being a true adaptation of very dense material. I listened to The Big Short on audiobook only a few weeks before I saw the movie, which I think had to have contributed to my not liking it as much as many others, but you must gives snaps for the writers’ excellent job of matching Michael Lewis’s original complexity, relatability, and entertainment value.

On a side note, I laugh in the face of anyone who would give Adam McKay best director consideration. There’s a trend in directing that if you don’t have an actual style you just shoot it like faux documentary and pepper in lots of mid-shot quick half zooms. If I wasn’t as lazy, I would make a supercut of this very shitty technique.

Alright, as always, on to the good stuff, and thanks for reading.

Best Musical Discovery The Yamasuki Singers via Kumiko the Treasure Hunter

Best Use of a Rebigulator Ant-Man

Worst Dialogue “Would it help?” - Bridge of Spies

OMG this dialogue trope where someone repeats the same cutesy thing three times over the course of the movie. Murder this trope. (Also seen in The Imitation Game - “Sometimes it’s the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.” Die, die, die, barf everywhere, die.)

The Something Award A Pigeon Sat on a Park Bench Reflecting on Existence

The Nothing Award Jurassic World

Worst Movies 1. Tomorrowland 2. Furious 7 3. Avengers: Age of Ultron 4. Dark Places 5. Legend (the half I could sit through anyway)

Good in Everything Award Alicia Vikander - Ex Machina, Testament of Youth, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Danish Girl Domhnall Gleeson - Ex Machina, Brooklyn, The Revenant, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

You Can and Should Watch on Netflix Phoenix Tangerine The Wolfpack

You Can and Should Watch on Amazon Prime Ex Machina Slow West While We’re Young

Stupid Documentary that Didn’t Add Anything to the Numerous TV Documentaries that Already Exist on the Same Subject Live from New York!

Let Greatness Slip through its Fingers Award Straight Outta Compton

Movie I Absolutely Loved Watching But Then Forgot About Immediately The Martian

Amazing Visuals in Not Very Good Movies Crimson Peak MacBeth

Movie that Deserves Discussion Chi-Raq

Chi-Raq had some of the most inspired writing/filmmaking I’ve seen in a long time, but then in the next scene it would feel like watching the worst part of Soul Plane. It’s a shame because I feel like it could have been something really special, if only it wasn’t 17 different movies mushed into one. Imagine watching New York, I Love You, except all the different vignettes are supposed to be part of one complete storyline.

Best Scenes Kingsman: The Secret Service - The church fight Ex Machina - The choreographed dance Mad Max: Fury Road - Max and Furiosa’s fight Slow West - The African drummers Inside Out - Abstract thought Magic Mike XXL - The whole time they’re at Rome’s place Sicario - The drive to Juarez A Pigeon Sat on a Park Bench Reflecting on Existence - Death in the cafeteria The Good Dinosaur - The drug trip Tangerine - Angela’s performance Creed - Running through town with motor bikes

Extremely Solid Mountain Climbing Triple Feature Meru Everest Sherpa

Absent on Purpose Anomalisa The Assassin Bridge of Spies Carol

Haven’t Seen 45 Years Beasts of No Nation Clouds of Sils Maria Far from the Madding Crowd James White The Lobster Love & Mercy Mustang Youth

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

5th (Semi) Annual LAOK Awards

Do u like movies? I do. And while I realize it’s inherently self-aggrandizing to post a list of what you would call the “best,” after a one-year hiatus it is nevertheless time for the LAOK Awards, a fake award I made up to talk about my real favorite movies of each year.

Best Movie Birdman The Drop Nymphomaniac Vol. I & II The Rover Whiplash

Birdman/Rover/Whiplash made an easy top shelf for me this year. Each was a plot-moving, high-stakes drama, G-Baby’s favorite genre probably. Nymphomaniac was in turns heartstring-pulling, beautiful, and disgusting, but I’m consistently (twice) impressed by Lars von Trier’s ability to tell such compelling stories so far outside traditional structure. The Drop was simply a compelling script with excellent dialogue and performances, which I really enjoyed watching.

The Rover received mixed reviews, as well as digs on its sparse storytelling, but I thought it was perfect, giving the viewer just enough information to keep you wanting more. Watching it was as visceral an experience as The Raid 2, and Robert Pattinson’s performance was probably the most heartbreaking I’ve seen since John Hurt as the Elephant Man.

Runners Up Foxcatcher Fury Mr. Turner

Honorable Mentions Blue Ruin Boyhood CitizenFour Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Gone Girl Nightcrawler Wild

Best Actress Charlotte Gainsbourg - Nymphomaniac Vol. I & II Scarlett Johansson - Lucy Hilary Swank - The Homesman Kristen Wiig - The Skeleton Twins Reese Witherspoon - Wild

Every year I feel bad because I can’t think of enough strong female performances, and then I remember that it’s not my fault, it’s Hollywood’s. Need more female protagonists please. Funny thing is, I think Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig had equally great performances, but there was just way more competition in the Actor category.

And the Layokie goes to… Hilary Swank

Best Actor Bradley Cooper -  American Sniper Tom Hardy - The Drop David Oyelowo - Selma Eddie Redmayne - The Theory of Everything Timothy Spall - Mr. Turner

And the Layokie goes to… Was gonna say Eddie Redmayne, but syke it’s Bradley Cooper.

Honorable Mentions Jake Gyllenhaal - Nightcrawler Bill Hader - The Skeleton Twins Miles Teller - Whiplash

Best Supporting Actress Marion Bailey - Mr. Turner Noomi Rapace - The Drop Tilda Swinton - Snowpiercer Tessa Thompson - Dear White People Naomi Watts - Birdman

And the Layokie goes to… Marion Bailey

(But probably just because her character is so damn likable.) Tilda Swinton and Naomi Watts were also tops. Naomi Watts slightly penalized for a really bad Russian accent in St. Vincent. 

Honorable Mention Meryl Streep - Into the Woods

Best Supporting Actor Shia LaBeouf - Fury Edward Norton - Birdman Robert Pattinson - The Rover Tim Roth - Selma J.K. Simmons - Whiplash

And the Layokie goes to… Robert Pattinson

I’d say the strongest category overall this year. But it’s gotta be R-Patt. Not only was he my favorite supporting male performance of the year, I’d honestly say it was the best performance I’ve seen in the last five years. So so good.

Pro Tip: If you ever want to get a ton of retweets and favorites, just say something good about Robert Pattinson on twitter.

Best Director David Ayers - Fury Damien Chazelle - Whiplash Gareth Evans - The Raid 2 Jonathan Glazer - Under the Skin Alejandro González Iñárritu - Birdman Bennett Miller - Foxcatcher David Michôd - The Rover Lars von Trier - Nymphomaniac Vol. I & II Adam Wingard - The Guest

And the Layokie goes to… Lars von Trier - Nymphomaniac Vol. I & II

I absolutely loved what the directors of my top three movies did, but von Trier goes so far out there in every direction, including visually. Onscreen graphics, seemingly insignificant cutaways, clitoral closeups, it can sometimes feel like an amalgam of styles, but after sitting through four hours of it, it’s easy to appreciate what he’s done as a whole.

Best Adapted Screenplay Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - Mark Bomback and Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver The Drop - Dennis Lehane Edge of Tomorrow - Christopher McQuarrie and Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth The Homesman - Tommy Lee Jones & Kieran Fitzgerald & Wesley A. Oliver We Are the Best - Lukas Moodysson

And the Layokie goes to… The Drop - Dennis Lehane

A quality crime story with the requisite twists and turns and amped-up drama, but what really amazed me in The Drop was its incredibly rich dialogue. It probably helps when you have someone like Tom Hardy delivering the lines.

Best Original Screenplay Birdman - Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, and Armando Bo Nightcrawler - Dan Gilroy Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 & 2 - Lars von Trier The Rover - David Michôd Whiplash - Damien Chazelle

And the Layokie goes to… Birdman - Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, and Armando Bo

Here’s what I love about Birdman as a screenplay: The movie cleverly feels like a play, happening in only a few locations and based in long conversations, but every scene not only develops or reveals character, it’s also moving the plot forward. A movie that could very easily feel too talky is instead extremely gripping, where each and every scene raises the stakes through dialogue.

Movie I expected to hate but loved X-Men: Days of Future Past

Movie I expected to love but was “eh” on Boyhood

Movie that could have been cool if it wasn’t twee as shit Frank

So bored that I can’t possibly slouch any lower in this chair award Locke

Movie that deserves discussion Wild

Wild is actually garnering a lot of discussion, but mostly about whether Reese Witherspoon is a great or terrible actress, or how the movie compares to the book, or how outraged it made some feminist feel, but as a piece of filmmaking I thought Wild was really incredible. It did some amazing things with story structure and editing that weren’t just good for a mopey self-help movie, but actually pushed the envelope. If you’ve already decided it’s a movie you never want to see (as I had before getting paid to watch it), I recommend giving it a shot.

The Something Award Exodus: Gods and Kings

The Nothing Award The Two Faces of January

Worst Movies 1. Locke 2. Jimi: All is by My Side 3. Venus in Fur 4. Tammy 5. The Lego Movie (the half I could sit through anyway)

Best Scenes That shot from the turret in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Making out/destroying the house in They Came Together All of the speech scenes in Selma The creation scene in Noah Car chase fight in The Raid 2 Lucy explaining her powers to her mom in Lucy Every black water scene in Under the Skin The first studio session and the climax in Whiplash The giant waves scene in Interstellar The Hanging Tree/the dam mission in Mockingjay

Absent on Purpose Big Eyes The Grand Budapest Hotel The Imitation Game The Immigrant Inherent Vice A Most Violent Year Only Lovers Left Alive

Have Not Seen All the foreign movies Cake Still Alice

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

Bookshelf Project #2

[Do not read if you care about Game of Thrones spoilers]

Visiting my grandparents with my dad and stepmom last week a few months ago and my stepmom was reading The Lost Key, or some pageturner that sounds exactly like that. I was finishing up A Clash of Kings, the second Game of Thrones book.

We had talked a bit about the books, and at one point I suggested she pick up the series if she was ever looking for something new (she's a fairly voracious reader but sticks mostly to bestsellers and history). It went something like this:

Kim: Do you really think I'd like them?

Me: Well, they have a historical element to them even though they are technically fantasy.

Kim: Oh yeah?

Me: I mean it's just about these different families, and their battle for power in this small kingdom. It might as well be medieval England.

Kim: Really?

Me: Yeah, if you look at a map of the kingdom, it basically looks like the UK.

Kim: Yeah, I saw on TV where the midget kills his father.

Me: Oh yeah, I didn't know that.

She felt really bad at least.

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

a rich ASSHOLE with a Porsche screaming at me 

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

Finally getting my Ello invite two months after requesting it.

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

So there's some eerie background vocals in the new Avengers trailer. It's literally a slowed-down version of this song from Pinocchio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAykOz1gWi4

Wut?

The first trailer for Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron has made its way online.

See it while you can.

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

If you don't think this is one of the funniest things you've ever seen then just get out of town.

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

Agghh. KILLER JOE!!!

The Films of Matthew McConaughey

[the-domestication-of-the-dog]

If you’re a fan of Louie, you’ll remember that many episodes in the latest season were populated with an absurdist newscast announcing the imminence of “Hurricane Jasmine Forsythe."

The following clip was a tag on the episode “Elevator Part 5.”

This was, in my opinion, the second best joke of the season. And it’s my favorite kind of joke: what I call a “joke-out-of-nothing.” 

Whereas observational comedy calls attention to a shared experience, and one-liners subvert your expectations of the speaker’s intent, the humor in a joke-out-of-nothing lies only in its own absurdity. But I just made that term up. Maybe it's already called something else. What am I, a comedy historian?

The reason jokes-out-of-nothing impress me so much is that a writer has literally thought of something funny to say without any real basis. The writers of The Simpsons used to do this very well, for example in the season 6 episode  “And Maggie Makes Three.” Homer begins a flashback with the line: “It was a tumultuous time for our nation. The clear beverage craze gave us all a reason to live. The information superhighway showed the average person what some nerd thinks about Star Trek. And the domestication of the dog continued unabated.”

Not only is this a great example of a joke-out-of-nothing, I think this it’s the smartest, best line in the entire Simpsons canon. It boggles my mind how someone could come up with this. Unlike the other two indications, which were funny but fairly easy references to the early '90s, that last line comes absolutely out of nowhere. But even then, I can only see two reasons why it's funny: 

1) To our knowledge, there is nothing currently threatening, or that has ever threatened, the domestication of the dog.

2) This is not an indication of any time period in the last several thousand years. 

But Louie’s dead bird joke is actually funny for at least four reasons!

1) A newscast would never report on the death of a common bird.

2) We don’t perceive birds as experiencing sadness (in a general sense).

3) You can't die from sadness.

4) It would be impossible to determine that the bird was sad, let alone that it had died from it.

Now that’s fucking funny.

If, like me, you think it actually makes jokes better to talk about why they’re funny. This article on another Simpsons joke is a great read.