2019 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #8

“There's a line in Pain and Glory where Salvador the director, played by Antonio Banderas, proclaims his love for scenes in which people hold back tears but never fully cry. It's in fact the entire focus of Pedro Almodovar's latest film, a movie that reveals more by how much it holds back than by what we're given on screen. Salvador is stuck in a creative rut, digging himself in further with every attempt he makes at self-medication. His habitual drug helps to ease his chronic pain but forces him to lose hours of his life. He tries to surround himself by adoring fans but finds it does little to soothe his imposter syndrome. At the behest of his actor friend Alberto who wants a meaty role, Salvador eventually works up the semi-courage to put himself out there in the form of an anonymous play. A play that magically attracts the one person in the world who just so happens to hold one of the missing pieces to the puzzle of Salvador's pain. Having tasted the glory of actually confronting the uncomfortable, Salvador develops a new addiction: proactively getting to the root of all of his problems.

“As we watch Salvador wander through his otherwise charmed life in a haze of heroin, pain and self-doubt, it's near impossible to not hypothesize on the state of Almodovar himself. Four decades into his illustrious career, Pain and Glory offers a lot of reminiscing on everything from family, lost loves and muses, along with sexual and mental awakenings. While he claims it's not fully autobiographical, there's so many layers to Pain and Glory that it's hard not to see it as some attempt at therapeutic healing. How else can you justify Almodovar directing Antonio Banderas playing Salvador directing Alberto reenacting Salvador's memories which in turn direct his memories of his mother who directed young Salvador? It's Almodovar at his rawest and yet most guarded– picking apart the misguided ideal of male stoicism while still playfully conforming to it.” ~ Jenna Ipcar

2019 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #9

“Terrence Malick began the decade with the sort of unprecedented work of art people will be talking about their entire lives. The Tree of Life seemed to encompass the sum total of the middleclass American family experience before the turn of the century. So many people saw themselves in its kaleidoscopic view of existence, whether in the momentary thoughts of the beginning of creation building to the first instance of mercy occurring naturally, or in the reveries and small traumas of growing up with a distant and repressed father. The search for the beauties of existence when above you towered a thundering god of rationality and conflict so captivated audiences that anything Malick tried in its wake struck most as a paltry offering. When you had tapped into the mysteries of existence from the eyes of a child through to his adult reflection, it was difficult for most people to settle for less.

“Terrence Malick ended the decade with a film that once again captured the attention of the arthouse public. His goals were similar, to see pure love and show the excitement of being alive while a historical epoch killed millions all around his dreamers. His timeline is directly before his historical triumphs The Tree of Life and The Thin Red Line, suggesting strongly that style is only acceptable to some when safely nestled in antiquity, as if treating life now with the same wistful gravitas is somehow distasteful. Nevertheless, he’s turned his sights on the men and women who rejected the arc of time, the flattening power of a bigoted ideology, knowing in their hearts where it would lead. Years after the bodies had been counted in Germany, the people in Radegund would still find space in their hearts to look down on the family of Franz Jägerstätter, the man who refused to sign a loyalty oath to Hitler.

“Malick gently drifting through time and space throughout his most busy decade has made it easier to draw connections between his thematic bulwarks. A Hidden Life never shows the true violence of the Nazi party because I believe Malick no longer has the heart to film violence on that scale and I believe he respects the enormity of the suffering and death. He would rather show what was lost, what Franz foolishly believed he and his wife could escape high up in the mountains, the great fabled German strongholds. He believed that in the same logic that allowed the Nazi propaganda machine to create monstrous gods from petty men he might find refuge. Of course there is no escaping the times, not really. ‘They’re sending farmers home…for now at least…’ writes Fani, the long suffering companion. The mountains loom large behind her always, a reminder that their shelter was a lie, that the shadow of something mighty and unfeeling would always dwarf them. The mountain, the unchanging historical object, would laugh outlast their protest and their love. So too will the images captured by the Nazis of their historical wrongs. Love joins the unspoken eternal, and violence etches itself into the mountain.

“Malick’s focus in A Hidden Life is uncharacteristic. His perspective in twain, the wife left behind and the soldier who refused to go soldiering, and his photography of the world around them is his most impatient and hungry, to show that no gesture affects just one man. Each vista brings Malick the same joy Ford evidently felt filming the buttes of Monument Valley - this is the closest Malick’s come to making one of Ford’s pictures, somewhere between the bitter grace of the cavalry films and the arch negativity of the curios like The Fugitive, also about a man of god hounded by the state. His depictions of both evil and tenderness have a 40s Catholic chasteness to them that somehow makes their implications all the greater. When lovers are reunited, your heart races for them, bereft the language in their hungry eyes. That is truly what it feels like, to touch someone you fear you might never touch again. So much lost, now found only in recreations of the past just as ugly and just as lovely as our terrible present.” ~ Scout Tafoya

2019 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #10

“Without question, the 2010s decade has been one of tumult and confusion, carried out from numerous different fronts and leaving one adrift in the chaos, struggling to hang on for dear life. I can’t think of a film that embodies that feeling better than Christian Petzold’s masterpiece Transit, whose central conceit deliberately mixes Anna Seghers’s source novel’s narrative of a World War II refugee attempting to leave Nazi-occupied France with what largely appears to be a present-day setting: modern cars, up-to-date military uniforms, flatscreen televisions hanging on a few walls.

“However, Transit can’t just be reduced to a well-executed conceit, no matter how daring and reorienting it becomes over the course of the film. For one, it is one of the most beguiling and mysterious cinematic romances in recent memory, all the more so because of how briefly it is consummated, how it appears at glancing moments throughout. Though Georg and Marie are very obviously intensely attracted to each other, the relationship is haunted by the bonds of history: her abiding pursuit of her (unbeknownst to her) deceased husband, his flight from the persecution he has suffered.

“Moreover, Transit interacts with its own shifting, spectral histories: World War II and the present, both separately and simultaneously; Seghers’s novel, which Petzold daringly and brilliantly distills on a narrative detail-by-detail basis; and perhaps most of all an entire cinematic and genre lineage. For Petzold, among his many staggering qualities, is the greatest practitioner of Classical Hollywood filmmaking today, in ethos if not in strict technical terms. His clean and gorgeous compositions and incredibly well-judged editing contribute to this, but even more important is his narrative sense, his genuine investment into the doomed desire for connection that acts as the driving engine.

“And at the head of this is Franz Rogowski’s performance, which fully inhabits all of the quiet strength, the fearful resistance that makes Transit so vital. The softness of his voice and the purely cinematic quality of his face — communicating an astonishing range of emotion with just the shifting of his mouth or eyes — pierce what could be an overly arch conceit, illuminating the political and interpersonal urgency with which Petzold operates. Both a state-of-the-world missive and a twist on classical filmic narratives, Transit defies all attempts to categorize it, continually evolving and complexifying the longer one looks at it.” ~ Ryan Swen

2019 Muriel Awards: Best Cinematic Moment

But before we get to the winner, here are some of our other favorite cinematic moments of 2019. SPOILERS ahoy!

“Heaven” - Her Smell


Henry Ford II takes a ride - Ford v Ferrari [#14]


“Being Alive” - Marriage Story [#11]


“Criminal” - Hustlers [#9]


Frank calls Jo Hoffa - The Irishman [#8]


Heloise hears Vivaldi (final shot) - Portrait of a Lady on Fire [#6]


Sharon sees The Wrecking Crew - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood [#5]


Opening dance number - Climax [#2]


And the winner is…

The Flood - Parasite

Note: This is only part of the scene in question, but I think it conveys the idea for those of you who haven’t seen the movie. In which case… what are you waiting for?

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2019 Muriel Awards: Best Music

1. Uncut Gems - music by Daniel Lopatin

2. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - music supervisor Mary Ramos

3. Us - music by Michael Abels

4. Marriage Story - music by Randy Newman

5. Midsommar - music by Bobby Krlic

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2019 Muriel Awards: Best Cinematography

1. The Lighthouse - director of photography Jarin Blaschke

2. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - director of photography Robert Richardson

3. 1917 - director of photography Roger Deakins

4. Parasite - director of photography Hong Kyung-po

5. Portrait of a Lady on Fire - director of photography Claire Mathon

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2019 Muriel Awards: Best Lead Performance - #1

“In Jordan Peele’s Us, Lupita Nyong’o gave a performance that deserved the Oscar. A first viewing of Peele’s follow up to Get Out revealed the technical mastery Nyong’o employed in her dual roles of Adelaide and her terrifying tether, Red. But it takes a second viewing to bear the full brunt of her genius; unencumbered by the mysteries of the plot, its twists and turns and their resulting, sudden shocks, one can fully focus on how deftly the actress blurs the lines between her hero and her doppelganger. She lays that groundwork from scene to scene, dropping subtle but unmistakable clues to Adelaide’s truth that might go unnoticed while one is focusing on the puzzle pieces Peele flings at the audience.

“For example, Adelaide is noticeably off the beat when snapping her fingers to Luniz’ “I Got Five On It”—her rhythm seems almost alien. It’s a small gesture that arouses a modicum of suspicion, especially once one knows of Adelaide’s tether-based past. Later, Nyong’o beautifully tips her hand toward almost revealing her secret in the scene where she confronts her son’s tether in the street. Peele cleverly has him walk away from her before Adelaide’s response becomes too explicit, but Nyong’o’s face shows a sense of familiarity that goes beyond mere empathy. She knows what it’s like to be that kid, and the viewer feels her heart breaking underneath her terrified gaze.

“Nyong’o is playing predator and prey here, and as such creates two distinct models of character development: Adelaide is driven by emotion and a fear-filled survival instinct while Red is all physicality and terror. Red’s strict movements and her scary, gravelly voice are exceptional, effective acting decisions that divulge themselves fully when Red tells her horrific backstory. In that moment, Us complicates and flips the standard issue hero-villain dichotomy, challenging the viewer’s sympathies and their suspensions of disbelief with a climactic ballet-inspired battle to the death. It’s Nyong’o who keeps the film from spiraling into incredulity in that moment; the ties that bind Adelaide and Red have been so richly drawn and performed that one is fully committed to the outcome. Nyong’o cements her great work by nailing the film’s last shot, an ambiguous look that implies that good and evil have now merged together. The outcome shall remain unknown.” ~ Odie Henderson

Best Lead Performances – The Finalists:

1. Lupita Nyong’o - Us [319/28]

2. Antonio Banderas - Pain and Glory [260/25]

3. Adam Sandler - Uncut Gems [247/24]

4. Eddie Murphy - Dolemite Is My Name [201/21]

5. Adam Driver - Marriage Story [196/22]

6. Elisabeth Moss - Her Smell [183.5/17]

7. Leonardo DiCaprio - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood [180/20]

8. Saoirse Ronan - Little Woman [145/16]

9. Zhao Tao - Ash Is Purest White [140.5/13]

10. Robert De Niro - The Irishman [140/14]

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