Mur13l Awards 2018: 10th Anniversary Award

"WALL-E (Waste Allocation Lift Loader (Earth-class)), is a small robot who has spent the seven centuries since mankind’s departure from earth doing what he was programmed to do; compress the garbage and waste materials left behind into easy to stack cubes. He’s been doing it for so long you can imagine how bored he is. His only company is a cricket, and his only pleasures are finding weird and wonderful things – Rubik's cube, light bulbs, gnomes, a VHS tape of Hello, Dolly! – in among the debris and taking them back to his shack.

"One day, out of the sky, a space ship descends and a smart, white female droid which hovers and doesn’t touch the ground, is left behind. She’s called EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), and she’s here to forage for signs of life to take back to the mother ship where the humans are living awaiting the time to return home. Wall-E has never seen anything so lovely before and, as much out of loneliness as out of love, follows her everywhere. Eventually, she befriends him, but on the point of Wall-E becoming a very happy robot, the mother ship returns and takes her with it, but Wall-E, in desperation, hitches a lift and so begins the adventure of his life.

"Disney had long had a reputation for anthropomorphizing the behavior of animals, but Pixar had been doing so for inanimate objects for years. There had been animated films on the subject of artificial intelligence before, most notably the forgettable Robots, but Wall-E blows that and most other animated films out of the water. It’s a staggering achievement. Many will scoff at the rather straightforward story, and yet one does wonder if they truly realize who the target audience is here.

"This visionary animated film that may well be regarded one day as one of the greatest of all animated features, stretches the boundaries of the form, and of art in general. This science-fiction parable/love story is wrought in the mold of Spielberg’s E.T., but it’s a film that echoes the silent era in its post-apocalyptic extended early sequence. The film’s soaring emotional center is the robot trash compactor “WALL-E’s” infatuation with songs from the film Hello Dolly! and the later relationship with his counterpart, Eve. The music played around the captain – Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss, all very Kubrickian – and the idea of the ship’s computer being Ellen Ripley are splendidly integrated.

"The film has its level of cynicism, and there’s a hopelessness that recalls A.I. Technically and in its painstaking attention to detail it may well be the most accomplished of animated films. It is an exhilarating film of great physical beauty and wonderment, yet like all great art, its heartbreak is palpable. The voice work and Thomas Newman’s score are first-rate, but the lion’s share of the credit must go to director Andrew Stanton, who made a film of extraordinary depth, bringing together an arsenal of cinematic resources, and shooting a laser beam to the very center of the human heart." ~ Sam Juliano

This year's "nominees:"

Happy-Go-Lucky (dir. Mike Leigh)

Rachel Getting Married (dir. Jonathan Demme)

Synecdoche, New York (dir. Charlie Kaufman)

WALL*E (dir. Andrew Stanton)

Wendy and Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt)

Click here for complete results.

And for the morbidly curious, click here for complete results of our Best Picture voting ten years ago. (SPOILER: WALL*E was our winner then as well.)

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Cinematic Breakthrough

"Politics and silliness are supposed to be enemies. In fact, the way the alt-right rose by its hiding its true hatefulness beneath a veneer of irony and politically incorrect humor has soured some people on the whole idea of comedy.

"Boots Riley’s Sorry To Bother You reminds us that satire can bring politics and entertainment together with truly radical results. The debut film by the rapper who masterminded the Coup, who recorded six albums from 1993 to 2012 and released a seventh as this film’s soundtrack, it suggests a shotgun marriage among Mike Judge, Spike Lee, Michel Gondry (who gets an explicit homage onscreen in the form of a video directed by 'Michel Dongry'), and the TV show Atlanta. Riley himself has cited Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man and Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar as influences.

Riley’s lyrics for the Coup took continual aim at corporate power ('5 Million Ways To Kill A CEO'), gentrification ('Fat Cats And Bigga Fish'), faux liberals ('You Are Not A Riot'), and double standards in race and class ('Your Parents’ Cocaine,' which gets played during this film) while having the sarcastic wit to name two of the Coup’s albums 'Genocide & Juice' and 'Steal This Album.' Unfortunately, the group had the bad luck to sign to three record labels that went out of business in a row, and they were long better known in the media for the fact that the original artwork for their 2001 album 'Party Music' predicted the World Trade Center’s destruction and had to be changed quickly than for their music. Riley’s debut as a filmmaker brought him more attention and even commercial success than the Coup.

“Sorry To Bother You plows through a long list of topical subjects: the necessity of unions, the fact that well-paying full-time labor has mostly dried up in the US, racist expectations that require constant code switching from middle-class blacks. But the film ultimately comes off as a trippy lark as well. Instead of preaching, Riley is interested in spinning his ideas into further weirdness.

“Sorry To Bother You spends its last third twisting itself into one odd metaphor after another about capitalism and the damage America’s classism and racism wreaks. If it starts to lose its footing in the final 20 minutes and goes from being laser-guided and consistently entertaining to gratuitously odd, it still feels far more together than superficially similar cult films like Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales. Alex Cox’s Repo Man became a hit among ‘80s punks for offering the same basic sensibility and politics. Here’s the equivalent for a new generation." ~ Steven Erickson

This year's "nominees:"

Elsie Fisher - Eighth Grade

Helena Howard - Madeline's Madeline

Lady Gaga - A Star Is Born

Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie - Leave No Trace

Boots Riley - Sorry to Bother You

Click here for complete results.

Mur13ls Awards 2018 Twofer: Best Direction and Best Cinematography!

"There’s a scene in the middle of Roma when our heroine, Cleo, tracks down the faithless father of her unborn son to a huge martial arts training session where dozens of young men attempt to keep up with their instructors. One of the instructors strikes a pose that looks deceptively easy, but which none of the students are able to hold. In the back of them, Cleo holds the pose without effort. There’s a magical quality to this, suggesting that Cleo exists in a state of grace, and the film itself is indeed a hymn to her, drawing on director Alfonso Cuarón’s memories of his own childhood and his family’s own nanny/maid/whatever.

"But Cuaron is too savvy a filmmaker to leave this uncomplicated. Cleo is not a superheroine, and the film puts her through a grinding emotional arc. Another sequence, one that begins at a student protest that turns into a massacre and ends in a maternity ward drops the floor out from under her, and out from under us, the viewers. This sequence is recognizable as the work of the director of Gravity and Children of Men and like those films, this favors elaborate long-takes and complicated camera movement (orchestrated by Cuarón himself, who shot the film), and yes, it’s an impressive technical showcase from a director who doesn’t need to prove his technical bona fides anymore, but this is different. The emotional wreckage it leaves in its wake is the product of a filmmaker who has paid attention to the details without pointing signs at them. It’s a control freak’s movie, sure, but it never feels constrained by its director’s type-a cinematic tendencies, perhaps because it’s ultimately a picaresque. It’s generous with the audience, letting them find their own way into the film.

"Roma is a deeply mythological film, too, that connects Cleo with some primal elemental force that bridges Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. The very first shot of the movie shows the sky and an airplane reflected on water, water Cleo is using to scrub the floor of the drive. She tracks down Fermin, her child’s father, to a vast field of dirt. There’s a forest fire at the celebration the family attends with their affluent friends. The film climaxes in the surf, before it bookends everything with Cleo ascending to the rooftop of the house, like she’s the mediator between the sky and the other elements.

"Roma strikes me as a throwback. It’s the kind of film that you might have seen back in the golden age of international films, back when titans walked the earth. The film it reminds me of most is Fellini’s Amarcord (even though it shares a title with a different Fellini film), and like that film, it’s a picaresque conjured up from the director’s memories of his own childhood. Unlike that film, this one is clear-eyed and merciless about the past. This is not a romantic longing for an earlier time, but rather a film that has a keen awareness of class, of the society in which it is set, and of the nature of families. It’s easy to see Cleo as a member of her family, but it’s clear that she is not fully so in scenes like the one where her employer gets on her about cleaning up the dog shit in their drive. If that relationship blurs as the film goes on, and if there’s a merging, that scene still remains as a rebuke. There’s a huge class divide between Cleo and Fermin, too, such that his abandonment of her is a rebuke to her social status. There’s also an awareness that men are often trash. There are no 'good' men in this film, which is surprising enough from a cis het male director, but the men that ARE in the film tend to be utter shits. This is one experience, at least, that Cleo shares with her employer.

"I could have listed several films as my favorite of the year--certainly 2018 was a year absolutely littered with legitimately great films--but the thing that tips my hand to this film in particular is the experience I had watching it. The circumstances of filmgoing are a huge influence on how one views a movie, and so it was with me and Roma. I saw it in a theater, which is probably a drastic difference from how most people will see the film going forward on Netflix. My own movie-going habits place me in the front row at most movies (my brothers hate this when they see movies with me, but I’m a creature of habit). From that vantage, I was completely immersed in the film. It dominated my sphere of perception. The world shrank to just me in my seat and the world of the film, and nothing else existed for the time that it unfolded in front of me. In my experience, that kind of immersion is rare. As much as I loved Burning and Shoplifters and If Beale Street Could Talk and a couple of dozen other films last year that I could have named as my favorite without regret, Roma is the only one that had so deep a transporting effect on me. That means something. To me, at least." ~ Christianne Benedict

This year's Best Direction "nominees:

Alfonso Cuarón, Roma

Debra Granik, Leave No Trace

Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk

Lucrecia Martel, Zama

Paul Schrader, First Reformed

Click here for complete results.

This Year's Best Cinematography "nominees:"

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Bruno Delbonnel)

Cold War (Lukasz Zal)

If Beale Street Could Talk (James Laxton)

Mandy (Benjamin Loeb)

Roma (Alfonso Cuarón)

Click here for complete results.

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Ensemble Performance

"The paradox about the menial service jobs we've all taken during our youth is that they were probably the most sheerly enjoyable, mindless hours many of us have ever spent on the clock, despite also being in the presence of people whose hopes and dreams for a better career stalled out a long time ago. Andrew Bujalski's miraculous Support the Girls pulls off the feat of seeing that distinction from both sides, and Regina Hall's rightly lauded, NYFCC-endorsed turn as a manager on the verge of a characteristically controlled breakdown is only half of the story.

"Surrounding Hall's Lisa, who endures a day that just refuses to stop falling apart trying to hold her team together, is an assemblage of characters who could only have come together through the nexus of indifference and desperation required to seek employment at a restaurant called Double Whammies. It's not that no one else is as serious as Lisa, it's that late stage capitalism requires everyone else to take everything but their jobs seriously -- doing battle with unwarranted advances from oily stereo equipment salesmen, finding babysitters on random weekday afternoons, convincing cousins to crack into the backroom safe on off hours.

"Lisa's struggle throughout the film is not that of a manager trying to ensure solid work from her employees but rather that of a mother trying to achieve social coherence within her work family. She's only kidding herself, and the chaotically amusing performances of the rest of Support the Girls' cast drive home that delusion. Haley Lu Richardson's perky Maci (picture King of the Hill's Luanne at the top of her class) is as winningly naïve as Shayna McHayle's Danyelle is guardedly skeptical. In particular, Danyelle's deadpan observation that she's 'pretty sure' it's illegal for Double Whammies to enforce an off-the-books max cap on how many black waitresses they're allowed to hire is note perfect, as is James LeGros as the restaurant owner who came up with that policy, dead inside and ruling like a despot what miniscule corner of the business world he can claim as his own. Double Whammies may not be the family Lisa seeks, but Support the Girls' cast comes as close as any movie's did this year." ~ Eric Henderson

This year's "nominees:"

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Favourite

If Beale Street Could Talk

Shoplifters

Support the Girls

Widows

Click here for complete results.

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Screenplay

"Obsessed. Religious. Horny. Ladies and gentlemen, Paul Schrader."

"While Schrader is not done working, First Reformed can't help but seem like the culmination of his career as a writer. His protagonists, regardless of the milieu of their given film, are frequently fixated, and struggling with faith and sexuality, though few as purely and explicitly as Reverend Ernst Toller. (It is, with respect, the role of Ethan Hawke's career.) Toller's bewitchment by both environmental catastrophe and a young widow, against the backdrop of his devotion to his church, propels the character out of the bounds of sanity and physical reality and into an avalanche of despairing madness.

"It all has a touch of the personal; Schrader famously escaped into the cinema from a Calvinist upbringing indistinguishable to an outsider (or, indeed, many insiders) from systematic abuse, and while so many of his most famous protagonists spend seasons in various urban hells, First Reformed sees him return to small-town America, and struggle with his demons in the gray, wintry light of day. Home, where you can't blame being lost on being in a foreign land. Daytime, without darkness in which to hide. God shows His face when he feels like it, not when you want Him to. This is the meat of First Reformed, the finest work of cinema's great screenwriters." ~ Danny Bowes

This year's “nominees:”

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel and Ethan Coen)

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, David Schneider, Ian Martin)

The Favourite (Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara)

First Reformed (Paul Schrader)

If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)

Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley)

Click here for complete results.

Mur13l Awards 2018: 25th Anniversary Award

"Three recent middle school graduates - Carl, Tommy and Hirschfelder - are walking in the middle of an otherwise empty suburban street as dusk gives way to night. They are sharing a bottle of beer that was gifted to Hirschfelder by one of his assailants following a ritualistic assault by a group of seniors. After the three finish their beer, Carl throws the bottle. As the bottle spins in the air, Tommy and Hirschfelder curse him and the three quickly run from the scene as the bottle hits the ground and shatters.

"I was a high school sophomore when Dazed and Confused was released in the autumn of 1993, and with this scene I realized this would be one of my favorite films. It was then, and remains so now. I had been anticipating Dazed because I was a fan of Richard Linklater’s previous film, Slacker. I don’t even know if I even really liked Slacker at the time, I just know it felt like I would have been a lot cooler if I did. So when Universal dumped Dazed into about 200 theaters for its three week run, my best friend and I convinced a parent to drop us off at the only theater in our area that bothered to screen it. We had to sneak in, which gave us the same sort of suburban adolescent anarchist rush as the sound of breaking glass after smashing a bottle.

"In the bottle moment, Linklater nailed the ephemeral pleasure, perception of great danger, and thrill of escape that my hooligan friends and I lived for at that age. In the scene just prior to this (when Hirshfelder is gifted the beer), one of the senior bullies - Ben Affleck’s deliciously awful O’Bannion - also throws a beer bottle. Only, being four years older, he takes no pleasure in the act. It’s a gesture of frustration, not rebellion. His friends don’t flee the scene, and it would have gone totally unmentioned had it not been seen as a waste of beer. O’Bannion may have gotten that same thrill when he was 14 (is Carl to O’Bannion as Mitch is to 'Pink' Floyd?), but in the intervening years he has grown to seek greater thrills; like those offered by the community sanctioned torture of Jr. High graduates.

"Still, Linklater’s bullies are far from the sadists in Dazed antecedent If…, just as its adults are less tyrannical than the authorities in its other inspirations like the headmaster in Zero for Conduct, or Principal Togar in Rock n’ Roll High School. The adults in Dazed are less threatening, but almost uniformly set arbitrary boundaries and impose prescriptive limitations. The central dilemma in the film - one imposed upon Linklater by the Studio - is that Randall 'Pink' Floyd, a relaxed and confident Jason London, must decide to sign or not to sign a pledge to be a drug-free football player next season.

"His coaches are adamant about him signing, attempting to control his body and mind on and off the field, but additional - and more convincing pressure - comes from the community. In one scene a kindly elderly couple showers Floyd with praise, squeezing his bicep and reigning in his autonomy by anchoring Floyd to their small-town dreams of a State Championship next year. It’s easy to imagine them conspiratorially cackling like the old couple terrorizing Betty in Mulholland Drive once Floyd steps away.

"This societal pressure to conform is underlined by the mise-en-scène reminders of the impending Bicentennial. On the commentary Linklater recalls 'the Bicentennial was everywhere. If you were alive then you were getting it shoved down your throat.' The only time the Bicentennial is explicitly evoked is when a young hippy high school teacher reminds her students what they’ll be celebrating '...is the fact that a bunch of slave owning aristocratic white males didn't want to pay their taxes.' Over at the Jr. High, a Vietnam veteran teacher denies a request from the young boys to leave early and escape the impending abuse, telling them, 'It's like our sergeant told us before one trip into the jungle. Men, fifty of you are leaving on a mission. Twenty-five of you ain't coming back.' This line is the only allusion to Vietnam that made it into the film, despite the war ending only one year earlier.

"Keeping the political landscape of the era in the margins allows Linklater to elevate the emotional landscapes and keep focus on the more quotidien problems his characters are experiencing. Like getting Aerosmith tickets, finding a new location for the party, for the senior to find freshmen to beat, or for the freshman to find ways to fight back. What elevates Dazed beyond the average teen comedy is how deeply invested it is in these mini-dramas without overestimation their importance beyond the moment.

"As Linklater observes in the making of documentary, for teenagers 'the stakes are low, but it’s your life. So the stakes are actually pretty high.' Linklater dips his toes in the tropes of more traditional teen films - the big game, a bust by the cops, a blossoming romance - only to undercut the expected results. Mitch wins the big game, only to get brutally assaulted by the seniors afterwards. The cops bust the seniors for trespassing and property theft, but they’re the town’s football players so they just let them go. The movie builds up Floyd leaving his girlfriend for Jodi (Mitch’s sister), but the last scene of the movie has Floyd and his girlfriend laughing together on a roadtrip with their friends. And when Carl, Tony and Hirshfelder break the bottle, nobody chases them. But that doesn’t make their small acts of rebellion any less meaningful, or any less fun. Since the most crucial thing is just living, man. L-I-V-I-N." ~ Kevin Cecil

This year's “nominees:”

The Age of Innocence (dir. Martin Scorsese)

Dazed and Confused (dir. Richard Linklater)

Groundhog Day (dir. Harold Ramis)

Naked (dir. Mike Leigh)

Schindler’s List (dir. Steven Spielberg)

Click here for complete results.

Mur13l Awards 2018: Outstanding Body of Work

"There is a point, and it’s a rare one, where a person’s resume transcends being work and becomes something both aspirational for the public and a straight-up signifier of a portmanteau I’d like to call ‘funcomplishment.’ It’s a body of work that says no to spare time, but yes to making inroads across the entertainment industry- becoming someone that everyone has encountered in some capacity just be thorough and diverse performances.

"In 2018, Brian Tyree Henry had eleven credits on the IMDB, spanning film and TV with deliberate reach. If he had just had his turns in Atlanta, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Widows- that would have been enough to shame most careers as far as spanning genres and personae. But to start one day hearing colleagues at work talking about how great he was in Beale Street, and then hear the same thing from a bunch of teens talking about how great he was as Miles’ dad in Into The Spider-Verse later on in the same day; that doesn’t happen often. And it’s a testament to Henry’s tireless work ethic that it is happening.

"Now just because something comes out in 2018 doesn’t mean it was made then; I get that. But the stars align and marketing strategies sync up and things unfold as they do, and because of that, when he eventually levels up to superstardom, expect a lot of articles talking about the phenomenon of the Brian Tyree Henry 2018. Because everyone watched at least one of those eleven mediaworks, many, if not most, clocking more than one. It’s a foundation that will serve one of our greatest and most varied actors very well in the future, and I was ecstatic to experience as much of it as I have." ~ Jason Shawhan

This year's "nominees:"

Ethan Hawke

Brian Tyree Henry

Joaquin Phoenix

Tessa Thompson

Steven Yeun

Click here for complete results.

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Supporting Performance (Female)

“As Sharon Rivers, Regina King lights If Beale Street Could Talk” with a maternal glow that serves as a port in the storm surrounding the lovers Fonny and Tish. Her beacon burns brightly, illuminating a path for not only her daughter but her future son-in-law as well. She is the quintessential mother, comforting and warm yet in command of a fierceness that protects her progeny like the strongest armor. Sharon’s chainmail has been forged in the fires of an unjust, unequal America; when her daughter faces similar injustices, Sharon shrewdly prepares for battle. While watching director Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel, the viewer senses that if one were ever in trouble, one would want Sharon Rivers to fight for them.

“Two scenes highlight this notion, and King treats them in completely different yet no less effective fashion. The first scene is the re-enactment of the novel’s most memorable scene, the announcement of Tish’s pregnancy to Fonny’s parents. Sharon wears a nice outfit but accentuates it with her bedroom slippers—after all, this is her house. Though the two families are friendly (the men more than the women), there’s an uneasy tension based on one side thinking itself better than the other. When Fonny’s mother plays the high moral card by casting Tish in the shadow of sin, Sharon forcefully defends not only her daughter, but Fonny and the baby as well. ‘This is your grandbaby,’ she says. ‘It don’t make a difference how it got here.’ Though the sequence is an ensemble piece, King is the metronome controlling the tempo—it rises and falls on her beats.

“King crafts this hybrid of mother and warrior even more noticeably in her second big scene. Sharon flies to Puerto Rico to convince the woman who mistakenly accused Fonny of rape to recant her story. Just before meeting her, Sharon contemplates her own appearance by silently questioning whether she should wear her wig. Observing King’s inner monologue we realize that, just as in the showdown scene with Fonny’s parents, Sharon’s attire is one of the weapons she chooses for battle. This is when all the character-building work King has been meticulously doing reveals itself, showing the richness and the depth of her performance. She makes the tragedy of Tish and Fonny a little more hopeful, for we know they’ll always have Sharon’s pillar of strength to lean on.” ~ Odie Henderson

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Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Supporting Performance (Male)

“It’s the yawn. The yawn says so much about Ben, the way he doesn’t appear to give much away but has just told you everything. He lets it happen and locks eyes with the camera, no guilt about it but he’s not exactly sneering. It’s just a yawn that says ‘we both know I’m gonna get away with it.’ What is it? Anything he thinks he can get from you.

“Lee Chang-Dong uses Steven Yeun’s movie star magnetism as a smokescreen and a weapon. Somewhere Lee had to know what people expect of a Steven Yeun character. Emotion, bold and bare. Not here. He’s beatific and resigned, calm and sure of himself. He even leaves clues to his crimes lying around to vex his nemesis. He doesn’t care that you know everything about him.

“He yawns, his beautiful eyes twinkle, and the evening continues because no one will stop him because in general nobody stops people like Ben, rich handsome guys who have everything. He seems nice until he’s made you disappear for fun. He may seem like Gatsby, as he’s compared to, but he’s Count Zaroff.

“Yeun’s Mona Lisa smile reads like smugness sometimes and care others. We know he may be evil but we can’t help but want to know more and we’re even a little sorry to think his sociopathic career may come to an end. When he smiles, when he laughs just a little, and when he yawns, his strange charm is incapable of being suppressed. Without him the movie’s engine would never start. The man is a star and finally had a showcase to prove it.” ~ Scout Tafoya

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Supporting Performance Countdown - #3

“As of this writing, the Academy Awards is just a couple of days away and, in all likelihood, Mahershala Ali will win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of piano prodigy Dr. Don Shirley in Green Book (a.k.a. The Cute Racism Movie). Even though he did a decent job with that performance, it’s very telling how the Academy nominated Ali for playing a reserved, dignified, African-American man who always keeps a cool head even as he’s being driven through the most hella racist parts of the South, and didn’t bother to nominate Michael B. Jordan for his awesomely angry turn in Black Panther.

“As the central antagonist Erik ‘Killmonger’ Stevens, Jordan is Black rage personified. He doesn’t just want to take down the white people who have enslaved and oppressed his brothas and sistas. He also wants to put a hurtin’ on the Black people who killed his old man and left him an orphan so long ago, turning him into a merciless mercenary who comes to Wakanda to wipe out Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa and usurp the throne. What makes Killmonger a captivating, unsettling and --dare I say it -- sympathetic villain is not just how director Ryan Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole fleshed out the character, but also how Jordan embodies him.

“In virtually every shot, you can see the pain and anguish on his face. (To quote my friend and fellow film critic Sean Burns, Jordan hurts in this movie.) He doesn’t make Killmonger out to be just another, run-of-the-mill Marvel villain selfishly out to rule/destroy the gotdamn world. He’s a man who’s fed up with white supremacy (and the Black people who won’t do anything about it) and wants to launch a full-scale revolution so Black folk all over the world can finally have the upper hand. It’s not every day that the MCU gives us a heavy who inspired thinkpieces debating whether or not dude’s Evil Plan was actually all that evil. (Just Google ‘Killmonger Was Right’ and you’ll see all the pieces -- and T-shirt merchandise.)

“Unfortunately, Jordan won’t get the Oscar he so rightly deserves for this performance. I guess the Academy likes to give awards only to Negroes who don’t act like they wanna burn this whole muthafucka down.” ~ Craig D. Lindsey

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Supporting Performance Countdown - #4

“The three women at the center of this year’s Oscar favorite, The Favourite, perfectly embody the war between id, ego and superego, fighting with internal struggles of power and sex, and external ones of societal expectations and war. Enter Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) poised atop supreme control of all conflict. Until she isn’t. Her vacillation between power and powerlessness- being in favor and out of favor-- is what makes Weisz’ performance so sickeningly irresistible.

“Weisz materializes fully formed into Lady Sarah dripping with desires encased within a tight corset, her fortress of want masked under billows of dress. She expresses a harsh, matter of factness: her words clipped and direct, her mannerisms precise and exacting. Until they are not. Unforgettably, the dance scene in The Favourite exhibits a masterful grasp of silent, physical comedy that should feel incongruent to character but instead subsumes into her rich existence. Much like Weisz’ appearance in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster, she is able to hold the states of ridiculous and serious at once, a tightrope of facial expressions, tone and restraint mixed with a precise understanding of the material and her body and camera in space: a pure artful display of cinematic acting.

“Though the complex psychological sparring between the leads is what many have focused on, the entire film (and, perhaps, real life itself) acts as a battle royale of id, ego and superego: countries fighting for their version of power and ideals, decadence and style guised as need, sexual desires and expectations hiding in candlelit boudoirs and cold marriage beds. Amidst this overarching, engulfing fight of personal and universal, Lady Sarah remains grounded in her presence, expressing-- through a mere glance-- all of the vast continuum of right and wrong, love and hate, rich and poor. Weisz’s role as the anthropomorphization of the human psyche feels far more accomplished than any award category could ever express.” ~ Donna Kozloskie

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Supporting Performance Countdown - #5

“Quick confession: a big part of why I want Richard E. Grant to win the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award is as a long-delayed lifetime achievement award for his exuberantly wasted performance in the classic Withnail and I. But the fact that Grant's debut performance and his first Oscar nomination both involve similar boozehounds doesn't reduce his achievement in Can You Ever Forgive Me? There, he plays Jack Hock, a rando in a Manhattan gay bar who quickly becomes Lee Israel's best, and only, friend. It's a juicy, hammy role, perfectly suited to about half of all British actors of a certain age, but Grant knows exactly when to go over the top and when to play it close to the vest, which points to allow Jack's neuroses and insecurities to poke through the carefully crafted demeanor of a man who is already playing an outsize version of himself.

“Grant is also savvy enough to know his function, not just within a scene, but within the film itself, highlighting the dissolute life that Lee Israel finds herself in, seemingly washed up and middle-aged, with few options in life beyond liquor and crime. Grant and Melissa McCarthy have the terrific chemistry that often comes from actors who are usually comedians given the freedom to stretch their legs; Grant has the scummier role, but finds the right balance between sympathetic and obnoxious, funny and sad, even in scenes that lean toward the mawkish (looking at you, last-minute-reminder-of-''90s-AIDS-horrors segment). Grant is a lovely actor and I couldn't be happier that he's finally seeing some of the recognition that he's long deserved.” ~ Jeff McMahon

Mur13l Awards 2018: 50th Anniversary Award

“Half a century later, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey hasn't lost its power to inspire awe. It's still a divisive movie, but it can't reasonably be dismissed. Special effects have evolved - particularly in the depiction of space vehicles - without making 2001's look silly. The pacing of entertainment has sped up, only making its long, meditative scenes feel even more hypnotic.

“It has a reputation as a cold and distanced movie. Its human characters aren't much more emotive than its A.I. antagonist, and Kubrick seems to put us in a God's-eye perspective, stepping far back enough to see a continuum from primitive apes to mankind's discovery of a space vortex. Yet it's joyful in its use of image and sound, turning a space walk or the movements of celestial bodies into ballet.

“Everything about it feels enormous, demanding the biggest screen available. A single edit spans millions of years, suggesting a story about the entire history of the human race, or at least a topic as broad as ‘man's use of tools.’ Yet it ends intimately, with one man alone inside the vastness of space, of time, of his mind. Maybe. I'm not sure. Luckily you don't have to be able to follow 2001 to feel it deeply. There doesn't seem to be a shelf date on the potency of pure cinema.” ~ Vern

This year’s “nominees:”

2001: A Space Odyssey

Faces

Night of the Living Dead

Once Upon a Time in the West

Rosemary’s Baby

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Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Youth Performance

“When we first meet Kayla Day, the introverted protagonist of Eighth Grade, she directly faces the camera, serving up advice to middle school peers she hopes are viewing her self-improvement vlog. Kayla stumbles and rambles nervously, filling her sentences with ‘uhms’ and jumping gracelessly from point to point. Director/writer Bo Burnham instantly shows us that his middle graders will not speak the way kids often do in other coming of age movies or TV shows. He resists making his youthful characters sound like witty pop culture-spewing mini-screenwriters. Kayla must sound like a real honest to goodness eighth grader who has a lot on her mind, but lacks the confidence to say things with commanding authority. And this approach works thanks in great part to the casting of the captivating and very real Elsie Fisher as Kayla.

“Just look at how Fisher plays the vlog scenes. Nothing she does feels forced. She somehow makes the stilted monologues sound improvised and fresh.

“After Kayla signs off with her signature, awkward ‘Gucci,’ we see her In Real Life, living with her lonely single parent dad (the terrific, underrated Josh Hamilton) and trying to connect with the other students in school. Fisher makes every glance and attempt to fit in with her schoolmates painfully raw and yet relatable. Fisher's Kayla reminds all of us about our needy Eighth Grade selves. Watch her attempts to join in conversations with the more popular kids. Fisher's timing is absolutely expert in those moments. She also gives a great physical performance: slouched shoulders, that defeated walk, those averted eyes. Fisher helps the viewer experience everything Kayla feels--mostly frustration, social anxiety, fear, getting lost while surfing the web while hoping for likes, clicks, and shares (the way most people do on social media--eighth grade or not).

“Yet Fisher also proves she has great comic timing throughout. Her stink-eyed annoyance when her dad keeps interrupting her endless screen-time with his dad jokes. The way she flips with delight when a high school girl calls her and asks if she wants to hang out. Her nervous enjoyment of a dorky date with the equally awkward Gabe (Jake Ryan from Moonrise Kingdom), laughing over Rick and Morty while munching on fries--one of my favorite scenes from any 2018 film, There's a scene towards the end that truly shows how special Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher's work in it are. It's eighth grade graduation and Kayla decides to tell someone off. At first we think it will be the boy she had a crush on but turned out to be creepy (hopefully guys will watch this movie and learn lessons about how not to behave). No, she storms up to the mean spoiled popular girl who treated her badly and tells her off. Burnham does not give her a brilliantly penned speech filled with verbal wit. No, Kayla still rambles, avoiding eye contact...but with a greater sense of confidence nonetheless. After Kayla finishes, she walks back to her spot in line, a smile on her face. Nailed it!

“In Eighth Grade, Elsie Fisher brings many dimensions and nuance to the role of Kayla Day. At the end when she faces the camera and gives her future self advice for a school project, we see her radiating pride, and know that the lessons she has learned are ones of self-worth and self-preservation (and rediscovered love for her father, who is just as emotionally needy and lost as Kayla). Fisher glows at the end. And we need to see her like this after such a roller coaster ride of emotion and discomfort. Elsie Fisher gives an outstanding performance with seemingly effortless ease; her performance easily joining the list of great performances given by a young film talent.” ~ Brian Wilson

This year’s “nominees:”

Elsie Fisher - Eighth Grade

Kairi Jô - Shoplifters

Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie - Leave No Trace

Miyu Sasaki - Shoplifters

Milly Shapiro - Hereditary

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Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Music

“Though If Beale Street Could Talk tackles painful, not to mention painfully topical, subjects, what stays in the memory about Barry Jenkins's adaptation of James Baldwin's 1974 novel is its overwhelming romanticism. This is a movie that burns with righteous anger at the way historical, societal, and institutional racism has perverted the African-American experience in the United States, and yet Jenkins refuses to let indignation drown out the love story at its center between Fonny (Stephan James) and Tish (KiKi Layne). At many points, Jenkins's film plays as an ecstatic paean to their undimmed love, one that undergoes a major test when Fonny is sent to prison for a sexual assault he didn't commit.

“Nicholas Britell's score is crucial to the film's emotionally wide-ranging affect, with swooning cellos and jazzy trumpets alternating with subtly foreboding electronic drones and quietly doom-laden percussion. As entrancing as it is to hear Britell's music in context, however, it's even more illuminating to hear it in isolation, where one can appreciate the depth of the composer's imagination. Under Britell's pen, chord progressions express tender tentativeness, and the spareness of many of his themes stand in contrast to the cello-led explosion of romantic fervor when Fonny and Trish finally consummate their love for each other. It's all tremblingly gorgeous themes and ceaselessly inventive variations, which is appropriate for Jenkins's vision of the world as expressed in If Beale Street Could Talk: one in which some things heartbreakingly stay the same, but also one in which people find ways, however small, to keep a semblance of hope alive amidst the darkness.” ~ Kenji Fujishima
 

This year’s “nominees:”

First Man (Justin Hurwitz)

If Beale Street Could Talk (Nicholas Britell)

Mandy (Jóhann Jóhansson et al)

Suspiria (Thom Yorke)

You Were Never Really Here (Jonny Greenwood)

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Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Documentary (preceded by a short intro)

Greetings, everyone! Welcome to 13th edition of the Muriel Awards, or as I’ve taken to calling them this year, the Mur13ls! Hope that doesn’t get old.

I won’t bore you with too much of an introduction this year. If you’ve followed us in the past, you know what you’re dealing with already. If you’re new to the gig, we hope you enjoy our fun, handcrafted, and slightly eccentric take on the movie poll thingamajig.

This year’s announcements will be pretty similar to last year’s, except that with all of the winners’ announcements, I will also be posting a list of “nominees” in most of the categories, consisting of the top 5 finishers. Of course, I’ll also be linking to the full results for those who want to take a deep dive into Muriel/Mur13l knowledge.

Anyway, winners will be announced over the next ten days, so watch this space. And now, let’s kick this year’s announcements off with one of our newest awards…

“Even if Bing Liu’s debut feature Minding the Gap had just been a lyrical, plotless film about skateboarding, it still would have been one of the standout documentaries of 2018. It started out that way, with Liu filming his friends (including close friends Zack Mulligan and Kiere Johnson) skating around their depressed home town of Rockford, Illinois, in long, languid shots that capture the camaraderie and physicality of skateboarding. The movie itself mirrors Liu’s journey from skate-video hobbyist to serious filmmaker, as he allows himself to delve more deeply into the issues that he, Zack and Kiere face in their troubled adolescence and early adulthood. It’s only because he builds up such trust, goodwill and understanding with his subjects first, though, that the movie has such an impact when it tackles the more serious material.

“Even as Liu confronts the abuse that all three subjects (himself included) suffered growing up, and the ways that that abuse has carried on into the next generation, he never loses sight of the excitement and beauty of skateboarding as an outlet for the three men (and others) to escape their problems and recapture some youthful innocence and enthusiasm. That through line, along with the genuine personal relationships among the three men, allows Liu to touch on issues of race, class and gender without ever coming across as heavy-handed or preachy. The movie is a detailed portrait of three specific people that confidently speaks to wider concerns without ever sidelining its subjects. By the end, the audience is as emotionally invested in the subjects as Liu is, tracking their heartbreak, joy and anger along with their graceful, elegantly shot skateboarding.” ~ Josh Bell

This year’s “nominees:”

Bisbee ‘17

Hale County This Morning, This Evening

Minding the Gap

Shirkers

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

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