Best Director: Shane Carruth, Upstream Color
"There's no question when you watch Upstream Color that you're watching a Shane Carruth film. It's kind of staggering how one guy can craft a recognizable aesthetic in the space of two features; part of that is the willingness to cross-pollinate genre stories with deeply-felt human emotions and imperatives, but there's more than the willingness to take big narrative chances. The problem with giving Carruth the proper amount of respect as director is that how exactly does one define where his work as cinematographer, writer, or editor ends in the assembling of his films. But there's never a sense of imbalance - when you watch Upstream Color, there are points where it stops being a film you're watching and becomes a relationship that you're having.
The predominant beauty (and there are several) of the film is the way in which its stories unfold across multiple means of experience. One could watch it with no sound, or listen to it with no image, and still you would understand what is occurring, but those two perceptions wouldn't be the same. They would both be correct, though. Carruth has assembled a film of many pathways and means of access (survivor trauma, religious allegory, the beginning of a cult, the end of a cult, conspiracy theory) that still manages to instill hope for humanity and the capacity for love, as all of its paths lead to a place of hope.
If it had done nothing else, Upstream Color would be laudable for bypassing the foolish battle/spectacle-fixated remake hell that Dune is trapped in up Hollywood way and finding its own way to be a Dune film - a multifaceted analysis of the introduction of a vermiform that produces a psychoactive compound into an ecosystem and how that substance alters the social and economic structures of the humans around it, ultimately transforming entire subsets of humanity. Primer let the world know that there was a new voice in Science Fiction worthy of being heard, and now it seems there's no genre Carruth can't find his way into, and through. Hopefully, it won't be as long before the next one." -- Jason Shawhan
Best Cinematography: Only God Forgives
"Filmed on location, in and around the red-light district of Bangkok, Only God Forgives is, appropriately enough, bathed in both the color red and sin. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and shot by his frequent cinematographer Larry Smith (Bronson, Fear X), the film is a graphically violent, conversationally minimalist story of reluctant vengeance and desires both repressed and surrendered to. The film practically bleeds as brain matter and squalor become indistinguishable from aggressively art-directed brothels, motels and underground boxing clubs - the kind of places with hallways that seem to stretch on into infinity and where even the wallpaper seems menacing. Smith famously got his big break serving as Kubrick’s “Lighting Cameraman” on Eyes Wide Shut and, as in that film, Only God Forgives encourages you to view it as a malevolent waking dream where logic quickly gives way to a pervading sense of dread.
But rather than merely being stylistically distinct (and as divisive as the film is, it’s almost impossible not to have strong feelings about it, one way or the other), the cinematography of Only God Forgives establishes a visual language which acts as a guide to how to appreciate the film. The film’s confrontational compositions serve to manage expectations, establishing from the outset that the film has little interest in giving in to the wishes of the viewer.
For all the talk of the color red, the film actually employs an alternating hot and cold visual scheme, often competing for space within the same frame. A viscera-stirring tableau of mutilated bodies, shot through a searing, scarlet-colored filter, isolated from dispassionate police officer and angel of death Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm) who silently looks on from the doorway, his body backlit by a neon blue light. Emasculated would-be protagonist Julian (Ryan Gosling), enveloped in crimson, remains unable to touch the woman he longs for, his fingers halted by a shimmering sapphire curtain. Time and again, hellfire and neutrality collide as wants and needs slam into a misplaced sense of duty.
Only God Forgives is nothing but provocations (a murdered child prostitute, a vicious cycle of revenge and counter-retaliation, Kristin Scott Thomas making disparaging comments about the size of her grown son’s genitals, etc.) that the film actively deflates at every turn. Vengeance is treated as an obligation, something you’re goaded into by a cumbersome code of honor or the shrill harpy you call a mother. And the aesthetics of the film follow suit. No matter how many limbs are sliced off or punches are thrown, the film saps all the vicarious thrills from its genre trappings, leaving only the emptiness and ugliness of the acts themselves. Full of languid zooms and an overwhelming stillness, Only God Forgives offers no visual escape from the heinous behavior of its characters, allowing every pungent line of dialogue or penetrated body to linger onscreen seemingly without end. Love it or hate it (with the vocal majority clearly falling into the camp of the latter), the cinematography is inseparable from the appeal of the film itself." -- Andrew Dignan
Best Screenplay: Dan Sallitt, The Unspeakable Act
""Yolanda's really nice." It's an immeasurably painful statement spoken by 17-year-old Jackie Kimball (Tallie Medel) in the early moments of Dan Sallit's The Unspeakable Act. The teenager has just spent a lovely evening with her older brother Matthew's (Sky Hirschkron) new bubbly blonde girlfriend and can't hide her disdain any longer. Why is she so upset at what should be a happy moment? Because of her own complicated and unsettling emotional feelings that are better left unspoken. The subtext-heavy sequence that follows represents the beauty of a subtle screenplay that often uses blips of silence in between dialogue to explore the many hidden desires of these characters. Despite the potential for salaciousness in a narrative about feelings of incest, Sallit never veers toward a melodramatic endgame, instead staying true to the quiet rhythms of a singular coming-of-age tale both lived-in and vibrant with possibility." -- Glenn Heath
Best Cinematic Breakthrough: Lake Bell
"The Breakthrough category can tend to get a bit simplistic. You've generally got two types of candidates. On one hand, there's the person who came out of nowhere (or nearly nowhere) and is suddenly prominent. These are usually actors who get a breakthrough in the traditional sense. Lupita Nyong'o comes to mind this year. On the other hand, you've got people who added a role to their resume. The actor who becomes a director. The writer who becomes a director. The cinematographer who becomes a director. Mostly, people who become directors.
But it's been a long time since someone has as convincingly done both as well as Lake Bell did this year with her debut feature In a World…, a film she wrote, directed, produced, and starred in. I'm assuming she also cooked lunch for the crew and picked people up at the airport. The film itself is a solid 3 star movie. It's not going to win the Golden Muriel. But it announces Bell as a very interesting director, someone who could easily grow into a damned good one. The lazy comparison is Sarah Polley.
But perhaps what most impressed me about In a World… is the calculation on Bell's part to essentially write herself a role that showed off her unique vocal talents in a way that felt essential to the story. In a sense, this is one of the best acting reels ever made. Like all great independent films, Bell started with an inventory of what she had freely available to her and made a film that maximized it. And in doing so, she not only announced herself as a writer/director to watch, but also an actor with range far beyond…well…several Ashton Kutcher movies I've never seen. If she never acts again, she's got a career as a director. If she never directs again, she just got herself a lot more acting gigs." -- Lucas McNelly
Best Ensemble Performance: Inside Llewyn Davis
"Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis is remarkable for the way it brings the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early ‘60s to life — or, rather, a dream of that life. It’s synthesized from old album covers and photos in old issues of Time and Life and the dreams and fantasies they’ve inspired even in people like me, who don’t usually think of Kennedy-era coffee-house folk as one of the cultural milieus that are most central to our lives. It would make a great double bill with Paul Mazursky’s Next Stop. Greenwich Village (1975), which was set in much the same place and era, but a couple of streets over, where the aspiring actors hung out.
And, as with Mazursky’s movie, what pumps the blood into the Coens' perfect, snow-capped recreations of an earlier bohemia are the actors, who manage to suggest many different variations on the possible types trying to achieve creative fulfillment in, or make a buck off, this scene. Carey Mulligan as the waifish pressure cooker Jean, Justin Timberlake as the pure, sensitive artistic soul about to blunder into novelty commercial success, Adam Driver as the self-styled urban cowboy Al Cody, Max Casella as the good-natured exploiter of the folk balladeers Pappi, Ethan Phillips and Robin Bartlett as the academic couple sweetly inviting their folkie friends to let a little of their cool authenticity to rub off on their dinner parties, John Goodman as a dazzlingly hostile blowhard jazzman and Garrett Hedlund as his rough trade chauffeur all seem to deserve a movie of their own, and as the polished apple of an agent who patiently listens to Llewyn’s heartfelt audition and tells him, “I don’t see a lot of money in it,” F. Murray Abraham practically deserves his own miniseries.
Probably they all get exactly as much screen time as they have coming to them; when the Coens’ instincts are working perfectly, they know how to give you just enough of every character to leave you wanting more. And Oscar Isaac does as well as anybody ever has at making you feel grudging respect for an artist while helping you to understand why he will never, ever, get what he wants. All these people coming together is what really makes for life lived on the screen." -- Phil Dyess-Nugent
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