10 Years of Muriel: Best of the Best poll

In conjunction with the tenth year of the Muriels, I decided to poll our voters on their picks for the best Muriel Award winners in seven major categories, along with three other categories meant to encompass the period. It was a pretty quick’n’dirty affair – no ranked ballots, no written pieces – but there were some surprises, some blowouts, some competitive races. All in all, good fun. Here were our winners.

Best Film:

1. The Tree of Life (2011) [8 votes]
2 (tie). Inglourious Basterds (2009) [6 votes]
2 (tie). No Country For Old Men (2007) [6 votes]
Other Best Film winners: The Departed (2006), WALL*E (2008), The Social Network (2010), Holy Motors (2012), Before Midnight (2013), Boyhood (2014), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Best Lead Performance (Female):

1. Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy (2011) [15 votes]
2. Tilda Swinton, Julia (2009) [6 votes]
3. Adèle Exarchopoulos, Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) [4 votes]
Other Best Female Lead winners: Helen Mirren, The Queen (2006); Carice van Houten, Black Book (2007); Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married (2008); Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit (2010); Rachel Weisz, The Deep Blue Sea (2013); Scarlett Johansson, Under the Skin (2014); Rooney Mara, Carol (2015)

Best Lead Performance (Male):

1. Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood (2007) [20 votes]
2. Denis Lavant, Holy Motors (2012) [7 votes]
3 (tie). Ralph Fiennes, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) [3 votes]
3 (tie). Michael Shannon, Take Shelter (2011) [3 votes]
Other Best Male Lead winners: Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat (2006); Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler (2008); Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker (2009); Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network (2010); Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave (2013); Michael B. Jordan, Creed (2015)

Best Direction:

1 (tie). Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood (2007) [8 votes]
1 (tie). Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life (2011) [8 votes]
3 (tie). Alfonso Cuaron, Children of Men (2006) [4 votes]
3 (tie). David Fincher, The Social Network (2010) [4 votes]
3 (tie). Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) [4 votes]
Other Best Direction winners: Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married (2008); Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds (2009); Léos Carax, Holy Motors (2012); Jonathan Glazer, Under the Skin (2014); George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Best Supporting Performance (Female):

1. Cate Blanchett, I’m Not There (2007) [9 votes]
2. Patricia Arquette, Boyhood (2014) [8 votes]
3. Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married (2008) [7 votes]
Other Best Female Supporting winners: Adriana Barraza, Babel (2006); Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air (2009); Greta Gerwig, Greenberg (2010); Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids (2011); Amy Adams, The Master (2012); Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave (2013); Kristen Stewart, Clouds of Sils Maria (2015)

Best Supporting Performance (Male):

1 (tie). Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (2008) [9 votes]
1 (tie). Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds (2008) [9 votes]
3 (tie). Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men (2007) [5 votes]
3 (tie). Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master (2012) [5 votes]
Other Best Male Supporting winners: Mark Wahlberg, The Departed (2006); John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone (2010); Albert Brooks, Drive (2011); James Franco, Spring Breakers (2013); J.K. Simmons, Whiplash (2014); Sylvester Stallone, Creed (2015)

Best Cinematic Moment:

1 (tie). Final scene - There Will Be Blood (2007) [6 votes]
1 (tie). Creation (“Vltava”) - The Tree of Life (2011) [6 votes]
1 (tie). Lemmon 714s - The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) [6 votes]
Other Best Cinematic Moment winners: The Battle of Bexhill – Children of Men (2006); Space dancing – WALL*E (2008); Marriage montage – Up (2009); Staring into the furnace – Toy Story 3 (2010); Entr’acte/”Let My Baby Ride” – Holy Motors (2012); Double Vision Take 1 – Goodbye to Language 3D (2014); “Speak Low” – Phoenix (2015)

Best Body of Work (Directors):

1. Joel and Ethan Coen [7 votes] 2 (tie). Paul Thomas Anderson [5 votes]
2 (tie). David Fincher [5 votes]
2 (tie). Quentin Tarantino [5 votes]
Other nominees: Wes Anderson, Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, Steve McQueen, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese

Best Body of Work (Female Performers):

1. Cate Blanchett [12 votes]
2. Jessica Chastain [9 votes]
3. Tilda Swinton [6 votes]
Other nominees: Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Greta Gerwig, Anne Hathaway, Michelle Williams

Best Body of Work (Male Performers):

1. Philip Seymour Hoffman [13 votes]
2. Joaquin Phoenix [8 votes]
3. Michael Shannon [6 votes]
Other nominees: Christian Bale, Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Fassbender, James Franco, John Hawkes, Matthew McConaughey, Brad Pitt

Thanks for participating, everybody! See you this summer for the Muriels Hall of Fame inductions.

2015 Muriel Awards: Thanks, everybody!

So, that was fun, wasn’t it? Even if some of the winners were a tad predictable, I think most of them were still worthy. And it’s hard to deny that there was a slew of good writing this year from our voters (for example, reading Jim Emerson’s probing analysis of 45 Years, you’d think it placed wayyyyyyyyyy higher than 29th in the Best Film category). There will be one more Muriels-related post next weekend, but until then, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who’s been following us this year, and particularly all of this year’s voters:

Simon Abrams
Jason Alley (ten-year voter)
Danny Baldwin
Kent M. Beeson
Josh Bell
Andrew Bemis (ten-year voter)
Christianne Benedict
Scott W. Black
Danny Bowes
Sean Burns
Donald G. Carder
Steven Carlson
Kevin Cecil
Paul Clark (ten-year voter)
Dennis Cozzalio (ten-year voter)
Ari Dassa
Chris Devlin
Andrew Dignan
Kevin Dufresne
Phillip Dyess-Nugent
Jim Emerson
James Frazier (ten-year voter)
Kenji Fujishima
Daniel Getahun
Luke Gorham
Jaime Grijalba
Russell Hainline
Glenn Heath Jr.
Daniel Cook Johnson
Sam Juliano
Peter Labuza
Adam Lemke
Michael Lieberman
Benjamin Lim
Craig D. Lindsey
Matt Lynch
Sam C. Mac
Willow Maclay
Jeff McMahon
Patrick Miller
Marya Murphy
Matt Noller
Jason Overbeck
Mark Pfeiffer (ten-year voter)
Cole Roulain
Bill Ryan
Jason Shawhan
Justine Smith
Melissa Starker
Alice Stoehr
Hedwig van Driel
Vern
Scott Von Doviak
Clayton Walter
Bryan Whitefield
Bryce Wilson
George Wu

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

2015 Muriel Awards Countdown: Golden Muriel Award Winner for Best Film

And the Golden Shiny and Chrome Muriel Award for Best Film goes to…

Mad Max: Fury Road [491.5 points / 41 votes]

In previous years, I’ve included pieces by multiple writers with the announcement of the Best Film. But instead of asking for two separate pieces, our chosen writers have decided to join forces for a discussion of our winning movie. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Muriel voters Justine Smith and Andrew Bemis!

Justine: Why can’t all films be like Mad Max: Fury Road? Watching the trailers for Mad Max before it premiered, my blood pressure rose and my breath quickened. I didn’t want this to happen - experience had taught me the movie never lived up to the trailer: I was setting myself up for disappointment. But I was wrong. Mad Max delivered, and in doing so revealed that the blockbusters that I had given a pass to were not living up to their expectations, they were not delivering on their promises: we had been fooled for far too long to accept that our popular cinema was going to be mediocre at best. The straightforward way Mad Max tackles narrative and character, stripping it down to bare essentials and offering dynamic symbology was a distant memory in popular cinema. When was the last time a big budget movie wasn’t a bloated mess of fan service and convoluted story? I had forgotten it was possible for Hollywood cinema could be this good, this simple.

Mad Max: Fury Road represents a strong vision of a dark future. Without resorting to cheap cynicism, it offers a troubling vision of a not-so-distant dystopia where environmental abuses have stripped the earth of life. Humanity has hung on by a thread, embracing water and mechanics as their new God. In an epic chase for freedom, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) tries to set free the wives of a terrifying warlord, chasing towards a remembered greenland where women reign. With a constant forward momentum, the movie drifts left to right on screen with the epicness of a classical painting. The richness of detail and strength of desperation adding levels of nuance to the deceptively simple narrative trajectory.

Without question, Mad Max is a rare blockbuster that will pass the test of time removed from nostalgia. It is a great film that inspires tremendous emotion and doesn’t undervalue the power of great ideas.

Andrew: "The straightforward way Mad Max tackles narrative and character, stripping it down to bare essentials and offering dynamic symbology was a distant memory in popular cinema." I want to pass this on to everyone who dismisses Fury Road as a fun action movie with no real substance, when it's actually as much a triumph of sophisticated, economical storytelling as it is on a technical level. But George Miller's approach to advancing the narrative, the characters' arcs and the story's subtext (well, text, really) is so purely visual that it doesn't always register to viewers who are used to being told, rather than shown, what a movie is about. Not that there aren't plenty of wonderful dialogue-driven movies, but Miller's approach has more in common with silent cinema than other contemporary blockbusters. A simple image like a character who realizes that she's about to die protectively clutching a bag of seeds is more powerful than a lengthy monologue about the plight of our environment could have been. The movie works as brilliantly as it does because of Miller's extraordinary trust in images and gestures (big and small) to tell a story (it helps, of course, that he has impeccable taste).

Fury Road also makes most other blockbusters look puny on a purely aesthetic level. In a movie filled with exhilarating images, one of my favorites is towards the beginning, when Max is trying to escape his captors. It's a dark, chaotic sequence that suddenly gives way to blinding light and silence as we get our first look at Immortal Joe's Citadel. It's a moment that has the same kind of power as Dorothy opening her front door and stepping into Oz. Mad Max has many moments like this, reminding that, though blockbusters offer plenty of loud spectacle, few even bother with trying to manipulate scale, perspective, light, sound or any of the other basic tools at their disposal to create a genuine sense of awe. For a movie that uses every state-of-the-art filmmaking tool at its disposal, Fury Road is surprisingly classical in its approach to visual storytelling.

Justine: One of the blessings of people appreciating Fury Road is that it has really cast George Miller’s entire filmography into light, and the fact is, he has always been an economic and dynamic filmmaker. From Mad Max to Happy Feet, dialogue is sparse and used with a lot of intention. I agree, there is a lot of trust in how he treats the image. This shows not only a confidence in his own abilities, but a confidence in the audience’s abilities to understand what he’s trying to do. One of the problems with modern blockbusters is that they aim for such wide universality that they lose their personality and nuance. Films like The Avengers need to be understood in equal measure by a New Yorker and someone over in China. As a result the importance of following story and focusing on subtext gets left aside, it’s too much of a risk that the audience doesn’t understand.

I like your comparison to The Wizard of Oz, a personal favourite of mine. As a child I’d watch it almost daily, getting lost in that world. While Mad Max may not be a “children’s film”, the way it uses images and sounds to guide forward the story has a purity that could be easily understood by a child. This is why the oversimplification of Blockbusters is so frustrating, there is an easier route that doesn’t compromise story or character - Miller has proved that. Popular cinema has a way of bringing the audience on a journey. Movies like Star Wars, Jurassic Park and Mad Max have a way of inspiring the imagination and transporting us to a new and fantastic world. Mad Max has a darker bent, hidden beneath the thunderous music and fantastic universe is a dark story about oppression and personal responsibility. Mad Max was always a film about humanity’s ability to cast aside responsibility and watch the world fade to desert rather than try to fix it.

Andrew: I’m glad you brought up Happy Feet – those movies were in constant rotation on our TV when my kids were younger, and I thought I’d never want to see or think about them again. But about halfway through seeing Mad Max, I realized that it’d actually make a perfect double feature with Happy Feet Two. I don’t expect many of our readers to remember Happy Feet Two or have a strong opinion about it, but they’re basically the same movie. Also, I’m hoping Miller’s renewed popularity might inspire people to give The Witches of Eastwick, one of the first “grown up” movies I loved as a kid, another look. It’s not as personal as the rest of Miller’s movies, but its ridicule of toxic masculinity points the way towards Mad Max’s full-blown assault on the patriarchy.

As I write that, I can anticipate some readers rolling their eyes – after all, Mad Max is a car picture, not a nuanced dissection of gender roles. Its message is an all-caps cry that is literally written on a wall in the movie: “WHO KILLED THE WORLD?” Men have poisoned the earth and doomed humanity, and the promise of women taking over is our only hope. It’s definitely not subtle, but it shouldn’t be. As a person who, in his most anxious moments, Googles phrases like “global warming worst case scenario” late at night, Mad Max speaks to me and, oddly enough, it’s ultimately reassuring. As dark as it gets, it’s the rare post-apocalyptic movie that isn’t nihilistic. Though Miller’s vision of the future is one where much of what has been broken can’t be fixed, as long as there are people willing to work together, there’s still hope.

Click here for full results.

2015 Muriel Awards Best Film Countdown: #2. Carol

“Their eyes meet across a crowded floor, and in an instant everything changes. That's about as cliché as cliché can get, but In Todd Haynes’ mid-century love story, Carol, the story is less about any ‘will they, or won’t they’ dramatic tension, and more a quiet, and persistent damnation of a world which two women are forced to sublimate their true selves beneath the overpowering weight of social expectations.

“The world in which Carol resides could have come straight from a fashion magazine. Interiors are, initially, *perfect* - the woods are warm, the surfaces shiny and unblemished, with a flattering light caressing clothing that always manages to hang just so. It is a vision of America all too familiar to those of a conservative mindset; an 8 x 10 glossy homage to a capitalist perfection that sure looks pretty from a few decades down the road, but only if you willfully choose to ignore the very uncomfortable realities that lay beneath.

“It is within this reality that we find our two heroines. Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara), is a young woman on the cusp of self-discovery, a budding photographer with a disaffected love life. She is working at a department store when she first catches a glimpse of Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett), a vision in furs that moves through the store with an impeccable grace – ‘as swans in the evening move o’er the lake’ – slapping her empty gloves against her hands as if mildly irritated to be gracing the room with her very presence. Therese is instantly smitten, and a delicate dance of seduction begins.

“In these scenes of courtship, Haynes uses the art of cinema to fantastic effect. His camera catches the furtive glances, fleeting touches, and unspoken communication of lovers learning the boundaries of each other. Simultaneously, his camera guides us to the realization that much of these women’s lives are lived under the auspices of a subtle schizophrenia; that their everyday actions are performances for critics who may not have always been in the room, but whose merciless opinions were always deeply feared, and carried the power to destroy. Therese, by virtue of her youth and inexperience, may appear to be less bound by the societal pressures both women are acutely aware of, but nonetheless knows that certain observances must be made. Carol, on the other hand, has been playing her part for so long, that her immersion has become all but absolute. She has nearly lost herself in the role she’s been forced to play, and it is only when circumstances finally hit critical mass that the socially acceptable facade she’s so carefully constructed crumbles into dust.

“It is here that the real Carol, the heart and soul of Carol, emerges. The moment is devastating to behold (and a testament to the Blanchett’s emotional control), a cri de coeur of epic proportions almost impossible to bear in its emotional nakedness. It is a moment that will have a profound effect on the lives of our heroines, the beginning of an end for a way of life that never actually existed, and the dawn of an era in which the truth walks hand-in-hand with the present.” ~ Donald G. Carder

2015 Muriel Awards Best Film Countdown: #3. Sicario

“It’s an unfortunate development that saw Sicario released into American theaters amidst a surfeit of nonsensical campaign rhetoric from Donald Trump that sought to demonize our neighbor to the south. And while the real tragedy of this narrative is that a legitimate presidential candidate soft-balling cartoonish hate speech can find a sizable demographic clambering for it, the lower stakes misfortune is that a subset of moviegoers may misappropriate Sicario's narrative and miss out on the considerable technical craft and the slow-burn brilliance it has to offer.

“With Emily Blunt acting as cipher, the audience follows her down an increasingly-unsettling rabbit hole into a slantways world of corruption and moral inexactitude. Whereas a lesser film may have contented itself to wallow in the murkiness of ambiguous ethics, Sicario instead seems to suggest even that perspective is a an illusory luxury of the ignorant and that the only real code is one of subjective fluidity - the ends justify the means, uncompromisingly, ad infinitum. And while the film's opening salvo introduces the narrative trajectory of a well-meaning officer joining forces with government higher-ups in a desire to do real good, the filmmakers quickly eighty-six any possibility on an honorable reckoning and instead make each passing minute feel grimier and more debased, casting us as unwitting accomplices to the film's burgeoning malignancy.

“By the final third, it is clear that Sicario is functionally a horror film where every musical cue and otherwise unassuming establishing shot takes on increasing significance as the ratcheted tension impossibly continues to build. Sicario brazenly offers us the most abstract of boogeymen: the loss of ignorance - and so the film’s nominal though impotent heroine (Emily Blunt) comes to find out, sometimes the act of pulling back a curtain represents the only real villain, something Denis Villeneuve and company depict with terribly bleak beauty.” ~ Luke Gorham

2015 Muriel Awards Best Film Countdown: #4. Creed

“In this age of reboots, remakes and rebrands it's kind of amazing to have one that is not a cynical repackaging but in fact a personal passion project. No one was looking for a continuation of the Rocky series (which, against all odds, had a perfect ending ten years ago with Rocky Balboa) except for Fruitvale Station director Ryan Coogler. His idea and passion were strong enough to win over Sylvester Stallone to not only reprise his signature character in a supporting role, but to for the first time give control over to a different writer (all six previous Rocky movies were written by Stallone, four of them with him as director).


“I don't know what's more impressive: that Stallone was willing to take this chance on a relatively unproven director, or that it paid off so definitively. Coogler organically hits on all the important Rocky elements (triumphant music, Philly scenery, bonding between opponents, training montages, grey sweatshirts) and cleverly mines an event from the most ridiculous entry in the series for serious drama. The death of Apollo Creed in Rocky IV gives us Adonis's rough childhood and struggle for identity, Mary-Anne Creed's fear of her adopted son boxing, Rocky's debt to Apollo and Mary-Anne and his guilt for not throwing in the towel. Maybe most impressively, Coogler and cinematographer Maryse Alberti found thrilling ways to put us into the fights (and even the ring entrances) in ways we've never seen before, not even in the six previous Rocky movies.

“I'm not ashamed to say that Rocky always makes me cry at the end, and Creed comes close several times. For me it's not just the triumphant sports moments, the profound gift Adonis receives from Mary-Anne, or even Stallone's heartbreaking portrayal of our icon facing his mortality. Most of all it's the sincerity of Adonis, after growing up in group homes with no parents at all, calling Rocky and Bianca ‘my family.’ “ ~ Vern

2015 Muriel Awards Best Film Countdown: #5. The Hateful Eight

“There's a conversation about a dead horse early on in The Hateful Eight, and it's a doozy. I won't give you a blow-by-blow of that conversation since its mainly pleasurable thanks to the scene's blocking, pacing, and acting. The short-short version: a man's horse dies, and he consequently kills its murderer. The horse wasn't his favorite, but it's the principle of the thing, as Samuel L. Jackson's inconstant moral compass puts it: you don't mess with man's ‘beast friend’ and get away with it. This conversation is patently absurd, but it seems to hold water in the moment. This is, after all, the first half of the film, where Tarantino only gently probes his characters' elaborate cover stories. Those stories start to fall apart in the second half, but not all of them do. He wants you to savor the discomfort of not knowing what these amoral survivors will do next. All of them have committed crimes, but some of them are halfway humanized by circumstantial peril.”


“The Hateful Eight is, in that sense, about the absurdity--or perhaps just the impossibility--of believing that violence can solve problems, that prejudice can be overcome, and that the future is brighter than it really is. It's a fitting capper to his last two mytho-historical dramas, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Like those earlier films, The Hateful Eight is firmly grounded in the language and sensibility of exploitation cinema, particularly spaghetti westerns, and blaxploitation cinema. So, yes, Jennifer Jason Leigh's character is victimized, but she's also worshipped in equal measure since her empowerment is of the punk/riot grrl variety. And yes, racial prejudice is dealt with with a cavalier attitude that speaks to Tarantino's potent cynicism regarding post-Obama America. But the film's aggressive nastiness works, and it works you over thoroughly. This may not be the movie Tarantino's fans may have wanted him to make, but it is one of his very best.” ~ Simon Abrams