Mur13l Awards 2018: A belated thanks!

Sorry it's taken me so long to put the finishing touches on this year's Muriels. It's hard to find time to post when you're working full-time and you have tech week for a show. But as of tonight, the site has been updated with all of this year’s categories. And of course, I would like to send out special thanks to all of this year’s voters!

Josh Bell
Andrew Bemis
Christianne Benedict
Danny Bowes
Steven Carlson
Kevin Cecil
Paul Clark
Dennis Cozzalio
Andrew Dignan
Kevin Dufresne
Philip Dyess-Nugent
Steven Erickson
Molly Faust
Shayana Filmore
James Frazier
Kenji Fujishima
Caden Mark Gardner
Luke Gorham
Jaime Grijalba
Russell Hainline
Glenn Heath Jr.
Eric Henderson
Odie Henderson
Daniel Cook Johnson
Sam Juliano
Donna Kozloskie
Peter Labuza
Adam Lemke
Craig D. Lindsey
Matt Lynch
Sam C. Mac
Jeff McMahon
Patrick Miller
Matt Noller
Rob Patrick
Mark Pfeiffer
Marcus Pinn
Jason Shawhan
Alice Stoehr
Ryan Swen
Scout Tafoya
Melissa Tamminga
Bridgett Taylor
Ian Scott Todd
Hedwig van Driel
Vern
Clayton Walter
Brian Wilson
Bryce Wilson
George Wu

Thanks to everybody! See you this summer for Muriels Hall of Fame voting!

Mur13l Awards 2018 Addendum: Best Films of the 1980s poll

In conjunction with this year’s intensely serious Muriel Awards voting, we had a purely unofficial and fun-ish poll of our favorite films of the 1980s. We used to do stuff like this in the past, so I decided to bring it back this year. Next year – our best films (and performances) of the 2010s!

Here’s the full list. By now, the winner should surprise no one. I was, however, surprised by the high placement of the film at #15.

1. Blue Velvet (1986, David Lynch, USA) [228 points/20 votes]
2. Do the Right Thing (1989, Spike Lee, USA) [202/18]
3. Raging Bull (1980, Martin Scorsese, USA) [110/9]
4. The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick, UK) [109/11]
5. Videodrome (1983, David Cronenberg, Canada) [93/9]
6. Sans Soleil (1983, Chris Marker, France) [91/8]
7. The King of Comedy (1982, Martin Scorsese, USA) [77/8]
8. Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott, USA) [77/7]
9. Brazil (1985, Terry Gilliam, UK) [73/7]
10. The Thing (1982, John Carpenter, USA) [72/8]

11. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982, Spielberg) [70/6]
12. Fanny and Alexander (1982, Bergman) [65/5]
13. Stop Making Sense (1984, Demme) [61/6]
14. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Spielberg) [60/6]
15. Possession (1981, Zulawski) [52/6]
16. Blow Out (1981, De Palma) [49/6]
17 (tie). L’Argent (1983, Bresson) [47/5]
17 (tie). The Fly (1986, Cronenberg) [47/5]
19. My Neighbor Totoro (1988, Miyazaki) [43/5]
20. Ran (1985, Kurosawa) [43/4]
21. The Empire Strikes Back (1980, Kershner) [42/4]
22. Broadcast News (1987, J.L. Brooks) [40/5]
23. The Princess Bride (1987, R. Reiner) [36/4]
24. Paris, Texas (1984, Wenders) [36/3]
25. Raising Arizona (1987, Coen) [33/4]
26 (tie). Come and See (1985, Klimov) [32/4]
26 (tie). The Killer (1989, Woo) [32/4]
28 (tie). The Green Ray (1986, Rohmer) [31/3]
28 (tie). A Time to Live and a Time to Die (1985, Hou) [31/3]
30 (tie). Blood Simple (1984, Coen) [29/4]
30 (tie). Back to the Future (1985, Zemeckis) [29/4]
32 (tie). Tootsie (1982, Pollack) [27/3]
32 (tie). Hannah and Her Sisters (1986, Allen) [27/3]
34. Love Streams (1984, Cassavetes) [26/3]
35 (tie). Stranger Than Paradise (1984, Jarmusch) [26/2]
35 (tie). City of Sadness (1989, Hou) [26/2]
37. This Is Spinal Tap (1984, R. Reiner) [25/3]
38 (tie). Full Metal Jacket (1987, Kubrick) [24/3]
38 (tie). Dekalog (1989, Kieslowski) [24/3]
40. The Evil Dead (1981, Raimi) [24/2]
41 (tie). Taipei Story (1985, Yang) [23/2]
41 (tie). Where Is the Friend’s Home? (1987, Iran) [23/2]
43 (tie). The Road Warrior (1981, Miller) [22/3]
43 (tie). À Nos Amours (1983, Pialat) [22/3]
45 (tie). Koyaanisqatsi (1982, Reggio) [22/2]
45 (tie). Evil Dead II (1987, Raimi) [22/2]
45 (tie). Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988, Davies) [22/2]
48 (tie). Amadeus (1984, Forman) [21/2]
48 (tie). Hope and Glory (1987, Boorman) [21/2]
48 (tie). Withnail & I (1987, B. Robinson) [21/2]
51. The Terminator (1984, Cameron) [20/3]
52 (tie). El Sur (1983, Erice) [20/2]
52 (tie). A Nightmare on Elm St. (1984, Craven) [20/2]
52 (tie). The Terrorizers (1986, Yang) [20/2]
52 (tie). Die Hard (1988, McTiernan) [20/2]
52 (tie). Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989, Allen) [20/2]
57. sex, lies and videotape (1989, Soderbergh) [19/3]
58 (tie). Tenebrae (1982, Argento) [19/2]
58 (tie). White Dog (1982, Fuller) [19/2]
58 (tie). Aliens (1986, Cameron) [19/2]
58 (tie). Empire of the Sun (1987, Spielberg) [19/2]
58 (tie). Wings of Desire (1987, Wenders [19/2]
63 (tie). The Elephant Man (1980, Lynch) [17/2]
63 (tie). Heaven’s Gate (1980, Cimino) [17/2]
63 (tie). That Day, on the Beach (1983, Hou) [17/2]
63 (tie). Once Upon a Time in America (1984, Leone) [17/2]
67 (tie). Day of the Dead (1985, Romero) [16/2]
67 (tie). Re-Animator (1985, Gordon) [16/2]
67 (tie). Akira (1988, Otomo) [16/2]
67 (tie). Hairspray (1988, Waters) [16/2]
67 (tie). Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988, Almodovar) [16/2]
67 (tie). The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989, Greenaway) [16/2]
73 (tie). Airplane! (1980, Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker) [15/2]
73 (tie). Drugstore Cowboy (1989, van Sant) [15/2]
75 (tie). Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984, Miyazaki) [14/2]
75 (tie). Manhunter (1986, Mann) [14/2]
75 (tie). RoboCop (1987, Verhoeven) [14/2]
78 (tie). Toute Une Nuit (1982, Akerman) [14/1]
78 (tie). The Right Stuff (1983, Kaufman) [14/1]
78 (tie). Heathers (1988, Lehmann) [14/1]
78 (tie). The Little Mermaid (1989, Clements/Musker) [14/1]
78 (tie). The Seventh Continent (1989, Haneke) [14/1]
83 (tie). Ms.45 (1981, Ferrara) [13/2]
83 (tie). Mystery Train (1989, Jarmusch) [13/2]

The following films received one vote apiece:
84 Charlie MoPic
Batman
Beetlejuice
Berlin Alexanderplatz
The Big Red One
Big Trouble in Little China
Body Double
Boris Godunov
Born in Flames
Christine (Carpenter)
A Christmas Story
Cinema Paradiso
The Color Purple
The Company of Wolves
Crime Wave
Daniel
Dead Ringers
Diner
Diva
Down by Law
Dressed to Kill
Eating Raoul
Excalibur
Explorers
The Falls
A Fish Called Wanda
Fitzcarraldo
Flash Gordon
Full Moon in Paris
Gloria
Grave of the Fireflies
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Inferno
Jean de Florette
Kiki’s Delivery Service
The Last Temptation of Christ
Law of Desire
Local Hero
The Long Riders
Loulou
Made in Britain
The Makioka Sisters
Meantime
Midnight Run
Modern Romance
Mommie Dearest
Monty Python’s Meaning of Life
Near Dark
Night of the Comet
The Night of the Shooting Stars
On the Silver Globe
One From the Heart
Passion
Pauline at the Beach
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
Peking Opera Blues
Personal Problems
Platoon
The Purple Rose of Cairo
Repo Man
Return of the Jedi
The Road (Clarke)
S.O.B.
The Sacrifice
Shoah
Shoot the Moon
Sid and Nancy
Smithereens
So Is This
Something Wild
Stand By Me
Starman
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
Tampopo
Terms of Endearment
Three Crowns of the Sailor
To Live and Die in L.A.
Trading Places
La Traviata (Zeffirelli)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Unbelievable Truth
The Untouchables
Victor/Victoria
When Harry Met Sally
Yeelen

And the 2018 Golden Muriel for Best Picture goes to...

“Writer-director Paul Schrader has made a career out of writing (Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ) and directing (Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Patty Hearst, Cat People) challenging, unforgiving movies about desperate souls on the outside, looking in at a world of fulfillment, of connection, of purpose, the attainment of which they always seem to fall short. With First Reformed, he breathes life into what amounts to a career summation, a crystallization of obsessions and themes of redemption and the shortcomings of belief, and among an often brutal oeuvre I think he’s finally made a film which could be accurately described as exquisite, without betraying any of the rage and paranoia and unsettled psychological terrain that has earmarked both his finest and even his most flawed work. That word “exquisite” should in no way imply preciousness, as if anyone describing Schrader’s work could ever make room for that adjective. First Reformed is a tormented consideration of faith (and the lack thereof), the difficult possibility of transcendence, and the seemingly even more difficult act of holding ostensibly opposed impulses of hope and despair in balance without completely losing one's shit.

“Which, of course, makes it a perfect piece with Schrader’s long-expressed vision and a perfect movie for our particular moment. First Reformed speaks to the faithful in terms of what even the faithless see directly in front of them. Ethan Hawke’s tortured pastor counsels the husband of a parishioner who is despondent over the dire implications of climate change, and the transference of that burden of responsibility from counseled to counsellor addresses one of the pastor’s central spiritual crises, a profound insecurity over whether God can ever forgive us for what we’ve done, on both global and intimately personal levels. Schrader has crafted a brilliantly sustained act of tension between the spiritual and the corporeal (and the influence of each on the other), which inexorably builds toward an act of desperate release, of a man trying to make a mark on the world, on his own soul.

“The movie moves toward what seems like the emotional fulfillment of a career’s-worth of concerns given flesh which, in movies like American Gigolo and Hardcore, have often felt chilly and academic rather than truly embodied. Hawke’s pastor, exiled within his own doubt and overseeing a historically significant house of worship made into a sparsely attended tourist trap under the stewardship of a corporate-style megachurch, truly is God's lonely man. “There have been complaints that Schrader borrows too heavily from Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light, another examination of an existential crisis of faith and the hollow church where God seems to no longer dwell, in working his way through First Reformed’s winter-scarred psychological landscape, and to these ears those grumblings sound a lot like the accusations often raised against Brian De Palma as being a facile Hitchcock copycat. Like De Palma, Schrader visits the perspectives of another visionary, but he’s hardly a shallow mimic picking over the corpses of Bergman’s greatest hits. In First Reformed he’s synthesized his own obsessions into a style that seems graced by Bergman, but in the shattering end something uniquely his own emerges, slouching toward upstate New York to be born.

“Of all of Schrader's most personal work, including Taxi Driver (with which it also shares stylistic devices and a suffocating sense of isolation derived from transcendental filmmakers like Robert Bresson) this film seems Schrader’s most piercing, the one that hurts the most, the one that offers the possibility of mortification and the bearable weight of an earthly yoke in equal measure as penance for divine deliverance.” ~ Dennis Cozzalio

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Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Picture Countdown, #2

“I consider myself a lucky person, as I managed to see my favorite film of 2018 not only once, but twice, and both times it was in a theater setting, which is surprising considering the Netflix logo that opens the film. I’m not here to bludgeon you with the same points made over and over again for the past months by Alfonso Cuarón and the critics that loved Roma, but I believe there’s no turning it around; it’s a film with the big screen in mind, made for that canvas and that overwhelming capability that usually films shot in 70mm hold onto the viewer’s mind and eyes. Cuarón managed to made a film about the routine of a Mexican maid in the early 1970s that’s as visually imposing and emotionally involving as 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Master, just to name just two classics shot in 70mm.

“There’s a clear intention behind the use of the space inside the frame in Roma. Most of the time the characters are relegated to the background, so we get the time to fully explore the surroundings, trying to capture any period detail (or fault in it), expanding upon the ambience, helped through the impeccable sound design (which puts the camera as a physical entity where the ears capture sound as much as a person in that position is able to). This isn’t because the period detail or the sets are more important than what’s happening to the characters that inhabit them, but because those objects and sounds inform of the choices they end up making. It speaks of their social, racial and gender positions inside society. But it’s not an explicit dig by Cuarón to make these apparent or obvious, as he just decides to make a portrait of the normalcy of that moment.

“Of course, the camera doesn’t always shy away from doing close-ups, or shots where the characters are near the lens. It doesn’t happen often, which is essentially strange for a film that bases most of its raw force in the emotions it can produce in the viewer, but it happens enough times for it to matter and make an impact. We see Cleo (the maid) and her face, her dark eyes, looking at us or at someone or something that’s right behind the camera in essential plot moments, the times where we most need to know what’s inside of her: her smiles, her eyes brightening, the way she looks down when she can’t say something she wants. All of it speaks volumes of both her position and draws us closer to her life.

“Most of the criticism aimed at Roma is related to its supposed lack of class awareness. If anything, Roma is exactly a film about class privilege and how that is stagnated in a lifestyle that is never willing to change, not even in the face of tragedy. There are many tragedies represented in Cleo’s body, face and movements. She will be the servant: no matter what happens, no matter how many times the kids she takes care of says that they love her, no matter how many times the mother says that things will change around the house. No matter what happens, there’s a chasm between them that can never be salvaged, not even by Cuarón homself. Some people read the ending as wiping the board and showing how Cleo is now part of the family. But if you look closer you’ll see that it’s entirely sad, an admission of guilt on Cuarón’s part.

“To act like a movie where a rich man admits that he’s a piece of shit isn’t the best movie of the year is bewildering to me.” ~ Jaime Grijalba

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Picture Countdown, #3

“Perhaps the biggest injustice of last week’s Oscar telecast wasn’t that Green Book, a movie where a walking Italian stereotype teaches an African-American gent how to eat fried chicken, won Best Picture over BlacKkKlansman and Black Panther, movies directed by African-American filmmakers that handled race and racism in a far more insightful, challenging, entertaining manner. (Don’t get me wrong — seeing Driving Miss Daisy 2.0 win was still fucked up.) It was that If Beale Street Could Talk, the latest from writer/director Barry Jenkins, wasn’t even in the running. (At least the movie received several honors at the Film Independent Spirit Awards the day before, including Best Director and Best Feature.)

“The movie was nominated for three well-deserved awards — Best Adapted Screenplay (the movie is based on James Baldwin’s 1974 novel), Best Original Score and Best Supporting Actress, which Regina King thankfully snagged. I guess Academy voters are still twitchy and shellshocked from the last time a Barry Jenkins movie won Best Picture. It’s a shame; I found Beale to be Jenkins’s finest work so far.

“Apart from being an immaculate portrait of an African-American couple in love (Stephan James and Kiki Layne killed it as the young lovers), it was a multi-layered view of how African-Americans survive in America. Like nearly every movie that was made by a person of color last year (and that includes Sorry to Bother You, Widows and the vastly underrated comedy Blindspotting), Beale astutely addressed how Black men are still seen as unfortunate targets in this systemically oppressive society. Even though James and Layne’s characters are beautifully in love — they got a baby on the way and everything — can it still survive once he gets wrongly charged for rape?

“The movie is a wonder. Everything — the cast, the script, the cinematography, the score — is marvelously done. Now that all this Oscars bullshit is done, hopefully people will watch this film and start asking why the hell this didn’t get all the gotdamn Oscars!” ~ Craig D. Lindsey

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Picture Countdown, #4

“In her 2015 Dissolve interview with film critic Tasha Robinson, Debra Granik, commenting on her documentary Stray Dog (2014) about a Vietnam veteran, notes the richness of the things she wished her documentary had time to cover: ‘There could have have been a whole film that could have gone much more in-depth on therapeutic discussion, on what it takes to manage PTSD, or to face ghosts, and figure out how to live the next chapter of your life.’ Leave No Trace, Granik’s third feature-length narrative film, is, perhaps, a beautiful expression of that other film that Stray Dog did not have the space to be. At its heart, Leave No Trace is about a father and a daughter, the father, Will (Ben Foster), a military vet suffering from PTSD, who has fled with his daughter, Tom (Thomasin McKenzie), into the vibrantly green, forested public land near Portland, Oregon, where, when the story begins, they’ve been living for years, off the grid, in quiet, companionable existence. Granik, with deft efficiency and a gentle rhythm, sets up their way of life--the ways they gather or grow food, collect rainwater, build fires for cooking and warmth, practice hiding from intruders who might happen upon their camp, and trek periodically into Portland for supplies.

“Peaceful though this father-daughter existence is, the film establishes the conflict at the heart of the narrative with a couple of key moments early on. The most overt threat is the threat of discovery from the outside world, but the sustained emotional center of the film is in the father and daughter's relationship, and it is there that the main conflict resides. In one early scene, Will awakens in a suppressed panic one night, as a helicopter flies overhead; we realize he is experiencing a flashback, the distress of a war time experience we cannot see. We understand, in this small moment, the immense depth of Will’s trauma: Will cannot easily go back to living among other people. But Tom is not her father. At 13, on the cusp of womanhood, we see hints of her desire for the outside world, for new connections. In another moment early in the film, Tom discovers a necklace alongside the forest trail and delightedly, eagerly, wears it. In their frugal, survivalist existence, it is a luxury, a pretty thing that has no practical value. But she wants it for herself in a way that Will cannot really understand. Even before the inevitable discovery comes and the outside world steps in to tell them their way of life is not allowed, we see the hairline fracture between father and daughter. Tom quietly longs for something outside the isolated forest. Will cannot bear to live elsewhere. But the father and daughter’s lives are inextricably linked, so much so that that they often communicate as sparsely as they live, a click of the tongue to say ‘I love you,’ a look or a gesture to express humor or tenderness. We cannot imagine how these two can live without each other, but we cannot see how they can continue either, each person getting, fully, what he or she needs.

“In the same gentle way that Tom and Will live, Granik develops her story and the conflict gradually, matching their rhythms with her filmmaking. When the rupture in their way of life comes, we watch as Tom and Will react subtly but dissimilarly to what they experience. The pain they feel when they are separated and the closeness they feel is never undermined, but slowly the fracture between them, the things they need and feel as separate human beings, widens. Tom wants to learn new things, form new connections, find a community; Will, try though he might, working at a job, living in a traditional home, cannot bear the constant reminders of a trauma that sometimes forces him down to the ground, where he cradles his head in his hands, in a pain he quietly hides from others. The entire film is a quiet one; Granik gives her actors very little dialogue, but frames them, with beautiful work from DP Michael McDonough, in such a way that their faces and bodies communicate the emotion, the things that cannot be said but only deeply felt. Granik trusts the images to do the talking and allows room for the eloquence of silence. An unassuming but assured answer to the frantic editing and frenetic images that so often fill our cinema screens, Granik offers us space to breathe and feel, to learn to love our characters and feel with them their complicated emotions.

“In the same 2015 interview Granik noted, ‘I am always interested in anybody’s roadmap of how they’re making their life work. For many people, there’s no easy path. . . . When people share insights, or reveal whatever they’re doing to be able to live their life and not be weary of it . . . I’m there. You can sign me up for any of those projects.’ That the Academy has not signed up to recognize the brilliance of her project this year is, perhaps, a sad testament to the way un-showy a film like Granik’s about society’s outliers, might be often overlooked. But I trust that, in posterity, Granik will be recognized for the humanity and the brilliance in filmmaking her work demonstrates. And many in the critical community, not least myself, eagerly await whatever project Granik decides to take on next. We’re there; please sign us up.” ~ Melissa Tamminga

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Picture Countdown, #5

“There’s nothing like waiting on a film for years that actually delivers (in the case of Zama we’ve waited almost a decade for Lucrecia Martel to put out a new feature). This movie delivered tenfold in fact. This isn’t exactly something I’d blindly recommend to anyone (although I wouldn’t be mad at this being someone’s introduction to Lucrecia Martel’s work) but at the same time you don’t have to necessarily belong to the (“arthouse”) audience that this movie is primarily geared towards in order to enjoy it. If you’re a history buff or watch those expedition shows on A&E or the history channel then there’s no reason a Lucrecia Martel novice couldn’t enjoy Zama.

“This is new territory for Martel given that this is a period piece. The basic plot centers around the existential plight & loneliness of our main character Diego De Zama - a court councilor stationed on a remote colonial outpost waiting to be transferred back home. At the start of the film he’s already somewhat miserable & alone and things only go downhill from there (he agrees to take on a vague mission that truly tests his will).

“Race is also a secondary plot. It should be noted that the Black characters in the film (who are all slaves of course) say either nothing or very little but their presence is still profound. The way the camera focuses (and lingers) on the Black characters is very intentional.

“But while this is Lucrecia Martel's first movie set outside of modern times, it still fits with the rest of her filmography. La Cienaga may not to be a traditional “history lesson” but it is a peak in to Latin-American culture much like Zama. Diego De Zama is also going through the same kind of existential crisis as Veronica in The Headless Woman.

“The biggest strand of connective DNA is the element of loneliness & isolation. Diego De Zama is very detached. This is also a common theme in the work of fellow Argentinian filmmaker Lisandro Alonso who, like Lucrecia Martel, recently delved in to the acid historical genre with Jauja (2015). From La Libertad to Jauja (which is a first cousin of Zama) the characters in Lisandro Alonso’s universe are often alone and/or isolated just like Diego De Zama.

“Zama is the personification of complex as it is both dreary & beautiful. I’m not usually one for hyperbolic statements, but this is one of the best films I've seen in years.” ~ Marcus Pinn

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Picture Countdown, #6

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad...

During the opening sequence in Hirokazu Kore-eda's extraordinary Shoplifters, young Shibata Shota is about to drop a package of food into his backpack in full view of a clerk when dissolute patriarch Osamu quickly appears from offscreen, successfully blocking the clerk's view of the child's actions. This brief moment of petty-crime synergy feels representative of the film's project, in which that which we should be seeing is hidden from our view. It's fascinating how much happens yet how little of it we see - through the first half of the film, we're coming into things as they've just happened offscreen (e.g. the workplace injury that sidelines Osamu) or as they've happened long before this. The beats that, in another film, could provide tumultuous and full-throated melodrama - kidnapping, abuse, theft, sex work - are instead given the same weight as the mundane, equalized with the day-to-day existence of this family just scraping by.

“The concentration, then, is on how they (Shota, Osamu, mother figure Nobuyo, grandmother Hatsue and teenager Aki) function as a group, as a family, and how they eventually coalesce and absorb a new member - quiet and morose six-year-old Yuri, first found exiled, cold and hungry on a porch while her real parents shriek at each other inside - into their dynamic through patience, generosity and an impressive unflappability. At one point, feeling spurned and at unease with the new living arrangement, Shota runs away, and another film could use that as a fulcrum to spin an entire narrative out of; Osamu, however, affects a knowing attitude of, ‘Well, he'll come back,’ and indeed the thread is resolved not two scenes later. It's astonishingly placid, given the circumstances and social pressures, and Kore-eda wrings maximum charm and emotion from this gentle approach. Yuri responds to this environment positively - the moment around the forty-minute mark where she first smiles is akin to a sunbeam bursting through a blanket of cumulus and shining directly on you - and who wouldn't? If this is indeed his rumination on what makes a family, you couldn't make a much stronger argument for the Shibata family being a loving aspirational goal - a bulwark of security and support guarding against the shit and horror of the real world.

“But everyone has something to hide, and one aspect that ultimately makes Shoplifters feel so emotionally draining is the way Kore-eda, under the surface, was weaponizing that warmth. In retrospect, the avoidance of drama is pointed, less a healthy fallback against a cold world and more a shutting-out, a deliberate ignoring of reality in service to a way of life that was always bound to collapse under lies and economic pressure and loss of employment and the insistent, encroaching summer heat, covering everyone as it does in sweat that stains clothes and hangs like a sin unacknowleged. (Using the lovely scene of the Shibatas at the beach, joyfully splashing in the surf, as the crux of the marketing feels a bit cruel.) As circumstances shift, truths start to spill out and dissolve the bonds we've seen forged, and Shota finds himself questioning whether these people actually have the best in mind for him and Yuri.

“Shoplifters is an ensemble piece, grating equal narrative time to all its family members, and the actors do wonders with Kore-eda's desire to play this as grounded as possible (Sakura Ando gets a beautiful moment where she manages to mine sorrow, grief, apology, self-abasement, relief and release out of a beatific smile, a slight eyebrow twitch and a brightly-delivered ‘Bye’), but the center of the film is where we began, with Shota and Osamu, and it's fitting that the revelation of things deliberately elided about their relationship should lead to other, less savory revelations, combined with Shota's brotherly desire to protect Yuri (‘Don't make your sister do it’), that detonate the placidity. It then follows that we should end there too, and if Kore-eda cut to black on Shota's last line, the idea of ‘family is what you make it’ would be cemented. But the film ends instead one shot later, on a crestfallen Yuri once again exiled outside, playing with aquamarine marbles and staring over the ledge of a balcony into an uncertain, painful future. And suddenly, things aren't so cut and dried. And suddenly, I'm crying.” ~ Steven Carlson

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Picture Countdown, #7

Note: In addition to placing in the top 10 in the Best Picture category, the Muriel Awards have also chosen to give The Other Side of the Wind and its producers, Filip Jan Rymsza and Frank Marshall, an honorary Muriel Award for their work in bringing Orson Welles' legendary project to completion.

"Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind has been seen by cinephiles as a lost or unfinished masterpiece that it has achieved urban legend status. Every so often there would be an abortive effort to bring the project to fruition, only for the effort to fizzle out just as quickly. I remember attending a talk by Welles' cinematography Gary Graver back in 2006 - before I was married, before I was a dad, and when the Muriels were in their infancy. Graver mentioned his recent meetings with Showtime to finish the film, and showed us a few scenes of edited footage from the project. We all sat, transfixed, simultaneously excited for the prospect of the movie finally seeing the light of day, and also resigned to the idea that, if these plans were anything like the others, this might be all of The Other Side of the Wind we'd ever end up seeing.

"As it turns out, we were right to skeptical - Showtime dropped the deal, and Graver died a few years later. But thanks to the deep pockets of Netflix and the tireless efforts of producers Filip Jan Rymsza and Frank Marshall (the latter of whom had assisted on the film's original shoot), The Other Side of the Wind was finally, astonishingly, completed for cinephiles all over the world to see this past year. And, quite frankly, it's awesome. One can argue until they're blue in the mouth as to whether the film could have possibly lived up to the mystique it accrued over the past half-century. But the fact that it's really, truly out there in the world now, in spite of everything that's happened, is something of a miracle.

"I could talk all day about what makes The Other Side of the Wind such a major and vital piece of work, and one that proves that, even thirty-plus years after his death, Orson Welles still has plenty to teach all filmmakers who care to pay attention. But there's nothing I could say that the film itself couldn't say twice as well as I ever could. I'll just say that, with all the garbage that the world had to offer in the year 2018, it also gave us a brand-spanking-new Orson Welles movie. And that, like the fella said, ain't nothin'." ~ Paul Clark

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Picture Countdown, #8

“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs compels viewers to examine the oeuvre of Joel and Ethan Coen from a new angle. Cinema’s pair of existentialist tricksters have always brought a certain sadness to their work: the bittersweet melancholy of The Big Lebowski’s final moments; Marge Gunderson’s bafflement at Fargo’s bloodshed; the injured existentialism of Sheriff Bell in No Country for Old Men. But through these six stories set in the American West, their filmography gets its saddest, most tragic entry yet, an elegiac contemplation of death in a world that may or may not be indifferent to our suffering.

“Consisting of six short stories set in the American West, each with a beautifully distinct aesthetic and tone, the anthology format allows the Coens to thread together a dazzling range of their stylistic and thematic elements; profound ironies, absurdist wit, unanswered philosophical inquiries, sudden and catastrophic violence, a sense of humor and style that blurs the line between earnest and cynical.

“In The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, death doesn’t just hang in the air, it’s something so close it takes on a tactile quality. It’s so inevitable that even the one victory the film allows isn’t so much because the character won his prize, but because he skirted death (for now). We’re all sharing a stagecoach ride to the end, and we all have a story about how we got there. Exploring this truth through the eyes of Buster Scruggs’ eclectic characters, the Coen Brothers present something that’s as thrilling, resonant, and meaningful as anything they’ve ever done.” ~ James Frazier

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Picture Countdown, #9

“It’s been quite a while since Spike Lee has made a truly relevant movie, but BlacKkKlansman, his true story adaptation of former police detective Ron Stallworth’s 2014 book about infiltrating the Klu Klux Klan in the ‘70s may be his most relevant movie ever.

“Stallworth, sharply portrayed by John David Washington (son of Denzel), was the first black police officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department, and we follow his rise in the ranks to the Intelligence Unit. Shortly afterward, Stallworth comes upon an ad for the KKK in the newspaper, and calls the number to find himself talking to a recruiter saying that he hates blacks, Jews, Mexicans, Irish, Italians, and Chinese, ‘but my mouth to God’s ears, I really hate those black rats, and anyone else really that doesn’t have pure white Aryan blood running through their veins.’

“This hate speech gets him invited to meet with members of the local charter, but, of course, he can’t go himself so he gets a fellow cop, Detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to go in his place and use his name (Stallworth used his real name when calling them because he didn’t know at the time that there would be an investigation). There are a number of likewise close scrapes where the detectives’ covers almost get blown with some scary redneck types including one riveting segment in which Washington’s Stallworth is assigned to be security for KKK Grand Wizard David Duke played with polished smarm by Topher Grace. While the love interest was fabricated – the character Laura Harrier plays is fictitious – what went down is reportedly accurate in this excellent film that’s part tense thriller, part powerful drama, and part history lesson.

“Lee arranged for this film to be released on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the tragic Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which a counter protester, Heather Heyer, was killed. The movie ends as a tribute to Heyer, and we’re left with the horrifying thought that this shit is still happening with the flames being fanned by the asshole in the highest office in the land.

BlacKkKlansman is a vital, piercing piece of work that is one of the best films of the year, and thankfully managed some awards season action, culminating in a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Lee and his co-writers. But more importantly, the movie deserves to be in the national conversation. I know he doesn’t want to call it a comeback, but, dammit, I’m really glad that Lee has returned with the goods.” ~ Daniel Cook Johnson

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Picture Countdown, #10

“Andrew Bujalski's Computer Chess took place at a programming convention; Results was a romcom about personal trainers; and here's another oddball comedy, this one set at a Hooters-inspired sports bar. As in those earlier films, Bujalski's jokes play with the codes and quirks of his chosen milieu. The waitresses have to tease their clientele, but can't get too overt. ‘There is an art to this,’ says Lisa, the harried manager, to a new hire. She's having a bad day at work, juggling duty and compassion; most of the film spans from her morning commute to the end of her shift. (Not all of it, though, as the jam-packed screenplay has some structural surprises in store.)

“Regina Hall, who plays Lisa, leads a crack ensemble. Haley Lu Richardson's there as the bar's resident ray of sunshine, and rapper Junglepussy makes her screen debut as a deadpan coworker with arms often akimbo. Both women deliver fine-tuned comic performances while clad in salmon pink crop tops. Along with the other girls of the double entendre title, they grin and bear the manifold indignities of working life. The rudeness of men is a major motif. They might not experience any epiphanies or liberation over the film's hour and a half run time, but they do have each other. In any stretch of strip mall, that counts for a lot.” ~ Alice Stoehr

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Lead Performance (Male)

“Paul Schrader once had Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver narrate, ‘I’m God’s lonely man.’ Throughout his career as screenwriter and director, that description could apply to so many Schrader protagonists. Schrader then took this characterization a step further by making his lonely man a man of God going through a crisis in faith. Ethan Hawke as First Reformed’s Reverend Ernst Toller falls into a long line of Schrader male archetypes but Hawke’s performance brings something different. Toller is lost but his path towards righteousness is welcomed in ways that other Schrader characters never felt watching before.

“Toller starts from the bottom. Hawke’s boyish features and physical characteristics as a young Reverend marked with personal tragedy add to the sense of impotence and demureness of his character. His alienation when occupying the spaces of faith, be it the corporate mausoleum megachurch or the living, or rather embalmed, museum of the First Reformed Church, is palpably expressed by Hawke in his body language by feeling enclosed and dwarfed by the structures around him. Toller is a deeply wounded man who feels imposed by the troubled world and failed institutions, having to answer for a God when he too increasingly feels less in touch with. But there is a switch.

“Hawke’s Toller does become galvanized when injustice when a troubled man leads him to discover his church’s major donor is an area industrialist who happens to be one of the world’s biggest polluters. There is a spark in Toller’s steps and while he is still this frail man weakened by poor health, there is a different energy to him that Hawke presents in the way he journals and uses First Reformed Church for visitors. One such scene is is him being open with a smile and glee, immersed in showing young school children on a field trip that First Reformed Church was once a place of justice, presenting a hidden door in the church that helped escaped slaves hide during the Underground Railroad. Toller feels less alone in that moment and in turn, so alive. Hawke shows Toller as empowered by the past and traditions of his church and faith. Reverend Toller and First Reformed Church are both imperfect, weakened vessels through Schrader’s film, but Hawke enlivens both in his performance, by becoming a man with purpose. Ethan Hawke makes faith in First Reformed be more than words and action, but a force that reshapes all the senses and spaces that surround Reverend Ernst Toller.” ~ Caden Mark Gardner

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Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Lead Performance (Female)

“Everybody knows a Lisa. You may have never worked in a ‘breasturant’ like Double Whammies but you probably worked with a Lisa. Familiarity helps with such a character but what makes Regina Hall as Lisa the glue in Support The Girls, and how her acting differentiates from her previous role in Girls Trip where she was also the lead and the glue of that ensemble, is that she is being crushed under the weight of modern capitalism and caught in her middle management position. It’s a far cry from being a modern mogul at the Essence Music Festival in Girls Trip.

“Hall is a mother hen to her employees. She looks out for them even if some do the opposite of returning the favor to her or listen to her comments to them on the clock. Hall’s Lisa doesn’t necessarily expect gratitude in return. The big gestures from Haley Lu Richardson’s Maci literally catch Lisa by surprise. Hall keeps Lisa big hearted but humble. This is a woman has faced many disappointments at Double Whammies and elsewhere, Hall revealing that to the audiences in various moments through her dynamics with characters and being alone in the Double Whammies’ alley.

“Lisa’s upbeat optimism is sincerely there until the bitter end and then, finally, together with her now former employees Maci and Danyelle let out a release of catharsis. We all know a Lisa. Regina Hall’s Lisa made me wish I worked with one and share a scream with too.” ~ Caden Mark Gardner

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Lead Performance Countdown, #3

"It would be a lot easier to tell if The Favourite is a comedy if Olivia Colman had made less interesting choices. She could have made her Queen Anne a buffoon, a figure of mockery, petty and ugly and stupid, allowing us to laugh at how easily she's manipulated by the two beautiful women vying for her favor. Or she could have portrayed Queen Anne as sad and pitiable, a victim taken advantage of by courtly vipers.

“Colman, however, makes sure we can't categorize her character, or the movie surrounding her, quite so easily. Her Queen Anne is easily manipulated, but not entirely unaware - and not above some manipulation herself. She's deeply, deeply sad, but can also be mean and vindictive, even sadistic at times. Towards the end of the film, she gorges herself on blue cake, takes a short break to puke, and then continues stuffing the cake in her mouth, sitting wide legged on the floor. It's a repulsive, darkly funny tableau. Yet even in that moment, Colman doesn't allow viewers to forget that it's a real, complex person sitting there. And that not knowing whether or not to laugh is kind of the point." ~ Hedwig van Driel

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Lead Performance Countdown, #4

“There’s a scene early in Hereditary where Annie (Toni Collette), an artist and mother, attends a support group and, after some gentle prodding, reluctantly opens up her fraught relationship with her own recently deceased mother. It was during this scene that I realized, before anything overtly horrific had happened, I was fully absorbed, largely thanks to the choices Collette makes. The obvious and easy thing would’ve been to push Annie’s brittleness, to intimate darkness and fragility as Annie shares her various traumas. Collette is smarter than that, playing the moment as pragmatic and, though she’s reluctant to open up, clear-eyed about her own baggage. There are many horror stories about broken people who are preyed upon by monsters; what sets Collette’s Annie apart is that she’s a flawed but self-aware person who tries, even before all hell breaks loose, to take care of herself. And she’s no less doomed because of it.

“Collette’s approach to the character is also key to making Hereditary’s tricky narrative work. The movie’s last third reveals a greater context for the movie’s horrors that we, and the movie’s characters, have only glimpsed in fragments. Among the details that are brought into focus in retrospect are some of the details Annie shares in the support group and, later, when she has tea with Joan (Ann Dowd), a woman she met at the group. In the latter scene, Annie offhandedly mentions a sleepwalking incident that elicits a “Wait...what?” response from us; while we only fully understand its implications at the movie’s end, Collette pulls off a tricky balancing act, embedding the story’s sinister purposes in a matter-of-fact self-justification that is, in retrospect, deadpan hilarious. Of course she’d never do anything to hurt her children, and how ridiculous it is that her family would doubt her!

“It’s Collette’s performance that holds a Bergmanesque psychological horror punctuated by splatter movie shocks together, largely because she’s restrained when it would’ve been easy to go big. And she does go big, too, but the power of moments like her dinner table explosion of grief and rage, or everything she does in the movie’s last fifteen minutes, is in the juxtaposition with the Annie we see in those quieter moments, who is sincerely trying to be strong for herself and her family. The horror of Hereditary lies in the notion that we’re imprisoned by the choices our parents made for us before we even got here. For all the effective shocks in the film, it’s the psychic violence of its premise that lingers after, and while writer/director Ari Aster deserves the credit for making a truly disturbing movie, it’s Collette’s performance that gives it a tragic dimension.” ~ Andrew Bemis

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Lead Performance Countdown, #5

“As Tom, the daughter of a PTSD-afflicted war veteran (Ben Foster) who has taken himself and the young girl off the grid, making for them a quiet, if illegal, existence living off the land in a forested park within Portland, Oregon city limits, 18-year-old New Zealand native Thomasin Harcourt Mackenzie is a relatively new presence to moviegoers. And in Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace there’s an openness and vulnerability to her performance, to her very appearance, that suggests someone an audience can chance upon from the ground up, a personality, a human being in the process of being shaped, defined, of learning the real value of curiosity, of expression. (Mackenzie’s highest profile appearance prior to this film was in a small role in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies in 2014.) But there’s also a bristling, pointedly interior intelligence at work in Mackenzie which serves the struggle of her character to bring that curiosity and expression to the surface.

“Once they’ve been temporarily reined in by social service agents and given a taste of being reintegrated back into society, the father bristles, but Tom realizes that, though she wants nothing more than to be with her dad, a modest life among modest people carries its own allures. It’s this personal journey that is illuminated so eloquently by Mackenzie’s modest, naturalistic approach to the role. She marks the territory of her character’s development in hushed strokes, her wide eyes processing not only the details of the wooded environment which gives her and her father cover from the whole of the world, but also every element of the world she’s been largely separated from as she begins the incremental process of being integrated into it. What’s genuinely marvelous about Mackenzie’s work, in close collaboration with a director who most definitely shares her sensibility, is the way she makes clear the dawning difference between parent and child without signaling or overemphasizing the metaphoric significance. Mackenzie’s Tom eases into a world of new experiences with a child’s natural curiosity—sea horses she reads about in books, flag dancers at a local church, 4-H kids raising rabbits, learning about the temperament and tendencies of hive bees—while her dad remains at a measured distance, his mind never far away from the clarion call of an isolated existence to which he longs to return.

“Mackenzie’s considerable achievement here is to navigate viewers, with invisible technique and a depth of empathy that would be the hallmark of any far more seasoned actress, into an understanding of experience as this emerging young woman understands it, an understanding whose source can be traced directly to Mackenzie’s countenance and the way she occupies space, both in the frame and in her ever-new environment. By the time Tom declares to her father that ‘the same thing that’s wrong with you isn’t wrong with me,’ the movie has fulfilled its unhurried journey toward sublimity, with myriad opportunities for its audience to appreciate the nuanced, rarified air of a soul discovering itself, asserting independence, breathing in the world. The beauty of Mackenzie’s performance is how it matches that sublimity in unostentatious, yet vivid detail, there to be observed, certainly, but also camouflaged by a fresh, unassuming presence that serves both Tom and Thomasin supremely well.” ~ Dennis Cozzalio

Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Cinematic Moment(s)

OK folks. In past years I've enlisted some unlucky voter to write something about our favorite scene of the past year. But this year, I've decided to let the scene speak (or in this case, sing) for itself. Enjoy!

A Star Is Born - "Shallow" duet onstage


Just for fun, here are some more Muriel-anointed moments of 2018. Expect SPOILERS, naturally...

Roma - beach rescue (long take)


Annihilation - humanoid mimicking Lena


Burning - sunset dance


Mission: Impossible - Fallout - men's room fight


Sorry to Bother You - Cash raps at the party


Game Night - extracting a bullet


The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - "Çurly Joe"


Suspiria - Olga's last dance


Oh, what the hell - one more!

Paddington 2 - "Rain on the Roof"

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Mur13l Awards 2018: Best Editing

“For many years, one of the most legendary of all uncompleted films was Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind, which was shot in Los Angeles from 1972 to 1976 and subsequently languished in legal entanglements and editing difficulties for the next forty years. Welles edited about forty minutes before he died in 1985, and it was this nucleus around which the rest of the film was formed. As edited by Bob Murawski — though with extensive input from both Welles’s notes from beyond the grave and the committee that approximated his unspoken wishes — the film is quite simply one of the most stunningly edited films of the century, a furious torrent that smashes together numerous perspectives and figures while remaining almost fully coherent.

“Such an approach is essential to The Other Side of the Wind’s raison d’etre: a kaleidoscopic view of aging Hollywood maverick Jake Hannaford on the last day (and 70th birthday) of his life, interwoven with segments from his final, to-be-uncompleted film, also called The Other Side of the Wind. Welles and Murawski mix together 35mm, 16mm, and 8mm segments, variously shot in black-and-white and color, freely and seamlessly, in addition to switching aspect ratios between the 1.37:1 of the faux “documentary” footage of the party and the 1.85:1 of the film-within-the-film. It is an enormous credit to the skill of both editors (and the numerous other people involved) that this all registers not as simply as a cute formal device, but as a conscious configuration of the play between cinema and reality. And of course, it is a vital element in establishing the complex, almost free-jazz rhythm that the film takes on from almost its opening frames and carries through to the final shot — which, itself, is a post-production “fabrication” that, as paired with the closing lines, stands as one of the most enigmatic yet potent images in recent memory.” ~ Ryan Swen

This year’s “nominees:”

BlacKkKlansman (Barry Alexander Brown)

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Eddie Hamilton)

The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles and Bob Murawski)

Roma (Alfonso Cuarón and Adam Gough)

You Were Never Really Here (Joe Bini)

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