The 2019 Paultacular Bruene Awards

Hello and welcome to the ninth (!!!) annual Paultacular Bruene awards! This year coming so late even I wasn’t sure if I’d ever actually finish. Due to a number of events both foreseen and unforeseen—well, okay, basically all foreseen and simply ill-planned-for—it took me much longer than usual to reach my arbitrary threshold of fifty 2018 movies seen before I write this, a number I didn’t even hit last year so frankly I don’t know why I insisted on it this year. But nevertheless.

Anyways, here’s the format, almost entirely unchanged from the last few years. I’m going to run through a bunch of categories and give my top five for the year (which I’ve termed “contenders”) and then give a winner. Many of the categories are copied from standard awards categories, plus a few of my own creation and minus a few I don’t like or didn’t see enough to judge—I saw a few foreign language films year, but probably not really enough to have a separate category. This is all strictly subjective, and for the technical categories I rarely know what I’m talking about. What do I know about editing? Do I know anything? Let’s find out!

So without much further ado…the Pauls!

 Best Visual Effects

The Contenders:

Aquaman

Annihilation

Avengers: Infinity War

First Man

Mission Impossible: Fallout

I was tempted to put They Shall Not Grow Old on the list for its incredible modernization of century-old footage from World War I, especially because I eliminated Best Documentary and so it won’t get much love in this piece. For the winner, I was tempted to with Aquaman for the drumming lava octopus if for no other reason. But our winner is Annihilation, the only movie this year where Tessa Thompson turns into a plant, Natalie Portman blows up a space doppleganger, and there’s a bear with a screaming human skull for a face. Case closed.

Best Performance by an Animal, Idea, or Inanimate Object

The goofiest category of this awards show (replacing Best Original Song, the goofiest award at the actual Oscars). This is a recognition of non-humans that leave a particularly strong impression in a movie.

The Contenders:

The Counting Chicken—The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Wakanda—Black Panther

Stalin—The Death of Stalin

The Moon—First Man

Despair—First Reformed

Stalin in The Death of Stalin, despite being played briefly by a living actor, kinda counts as both an inanimate object (his corpse) and an idea hanging over the rest of the movie, and he/it is pretty fantastic. Our winner, though, is the biggest of all of these, both physically and metaphorically. Like Stalin, The Moon from First Man serves as both a thing and an idea, sort of the concept of any difficult goal. Shoot for the moon and all that. Also it’s real pretty at night.

Best Film Editing

The Contenders:

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Cold War

The Favourite

First Man

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse

Cold War manages to pack a story of a fifteen-year long relationship, between two people who really should consider dating other people, into a movie that comes in at only 88 minutes including credits. It’s remarkable efficiency is due in large part to its editing, which tells whole chapters of the story in a cut.

Best Costume Design

The Contenders:

Bad Times at the El Royale

Black Panther

Cold War

The Favourite

Paddington 2

Infinity War was a late cut here, because man the MCU has really knocked the costuming out of the park, and maybe nowhere more so than Black Panther. Beyond just being cool, Wakanda feels cohesive, like a real (albeit futuristic) place, and a huge part of that is the costuming.

Best Cinematography

The Contenders:

Annihilation

Cold War

The Favourite

First Man

Roma

Two different foreign films with black-and-white cinematography, I promise this is as Cahiers du Cinema as this piece is going to get. I wasn’t wild about Roma, but won’t deny that it looked incredible. I WAS kinda wild about Cold War, however, and that’s our winner. Director Paweł Pawlikowski has a real gift for shooting post-War Europe in chilly, beautiful black and white—his previous film, Ida was just as good-looking.

Best Scene

The Contenders:

This is the single hardest category for me to pick, and the one that I refuse to winnow down from ten contenders. As always I try to keep the “title” of the scene as specific but non-spoilery as possible, hopefully if you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about. The no two scenes from the same movie rule is in effect this year—it may or may not have mattered, but once I picked a scene from a movie I didn’t consider another.

The Contenders:

The Skull Bear—Annihilation

Cleaning Out the House—Blindspotting

“I Like to Burn Down Greenhouses”—Burning

“What Do We Do With the Body?”—The Death of Stalin

The Sea of Tranquility—First Man

Carty is Out of Prison—If Beale Street Could Talk

Jack Jack vs the Raccoon—Incredibles 2

Rain on the Roof—Paddington 2

Climax at the Reactor—Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse

“Shallow”—A Star is Born

I know, I know. “Where is the drumming lava octopus scene from Aquaman?” you ask. That’s a great question, but I’m confident that this lineup is, somehow, even better. These scenes cover the gamut from hilarious, exciting, creepy, and affecting, and there were some very tough cuts (I can’t believe none of Killmonger’s scenes from Black Panther made it), but there is also a pretty clear winner. For me, the scene of the year was The Sea of Tranquility from First Man. The way Damien Chazelle frames the scene is both a marvelous technical achievement as well as the single most moving scene in a movie that I saw all year.

Best Art Direction

The Contenders:

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Black Panther

Cold War

The Favourite

Paddington 2

As mentioned above, Black Panther’s look is so damn well-done that it almost won this category as well as Art Direction, but in the end I couldn’t avoid going with the easy and obvious choice here, the immaculate costume drama—though while The Favourite has the look of a well-produced but lifeless period melodrama, its script has too much bite for it to fall into that trap. Indeed, the immaculate, almost sterile art direction ultimately makes the film feel more modern, not less, coupled with its wicked sense of humor.

Best Sound Editing

My traditional preface, because the distinction is confusing: Sound Editing is the actual creation of sound effects, while Mixing is the process of placing them (together with score and dialogue n’ stuff) into the actual film. Or whatever.

The Contenders:

Annihilation

Black Panther

First Man

Isle of Dogs

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

It’s tempting to go with Annihilation for that goddamn screaming bear alone, which would easily be the winner if I had a “creepiest sound effect” category. In a pretty close category (and you could throw in some other movies here too) I’m going with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse by a hair. I like going with animated movies in this category because there are so many more creative sound edits you can do, and Spider-Verse is as technically well-made an animated movie as you’re going to get.

Best Sound Mixing

The Contenders:

Cold War

First Man

If Beale Street Could Talk

Spider-Man: Into Spider-verse

A Star is Born

This is a somewhat easier one for me. First Man is such a wonderful hodgepodge of a movie, going from scenes that feel like you’re watching a documentary about the space program to quiet, almost elegiac scenes in the Armstrong home. The film’s sound mixing is a huge part of why it works so well.

Best Use of Music

In large part because I remember movie scores so seldom, at least after my first watch, I created a somewhat broader category that encompasses score, songs, and other use of music in the films.

The Contenders:

Blindspotting

Cold War

First Man

First Reformed

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-verse

There aren’t any straight-up musicals that make the cut this year, and only two sort of musicals that I saw at all (A Star is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody) but all of the Contenders this year except First Man included at least one song, and there were some others that were tough cuts, none more than The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Also, interestingly, three of these movies use music for somewhat grim purposes, including our winner Cold War where it turns out a recording deal in Paris is not necessarily a great thing.

Best Animated Feature

The Contenders:

The Incredibles 2

Isle of Dogs

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

This category comes and goes depending on if I’ve seen enough good animated films to be worth it. This year I saw three, which is kinda the minimum, though there was at least one Mirai, that I had a surprisingly hard time finding and regretfully did not get to. But mostly having the category this is an excuse to give some love to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, one of the best movies of the year.

Most Enjoyable Movie

This is, simply enough, the most fun I had with a movie this year. ‘Nuff said.

The Contenders:

Aquaman

Black Panther

The Death of Stalin

Paddington 2

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

It may not be the best movie on this list (though honestly it’s not that far), but holy shit Paddington 2 is such a delight. If you don’t pay attention to the critics (who love them some Paddington) this might seem a totally bizarre choice, and I get it. At first glance, the Paddington movies look like the Smurfs or Peter Rabbit or one of the other CGI/live action abominations that Hollywood farts out for families to hypnotize their children with for two hours. But trust me, the Paddington movies are nothing like that. Real care goes into these movies, and the sequel especially is one of the most straight-up delightful movie I’ve seen in years.

Line of the Year

I’ve done this category once before, I have a feeling it’ll bounce in and out because it’s hard to remember individual lines from movies, but it’s also fun to put together when I can.

The Contenders:

“Wakanda Forever”—Black Panther

“I have no idea what is going on”—The Death of Stalin

 “One small step…”—First Man

“Well, somebody’s got to do something!”—First Reformed

“A leap of faith…”—Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse

A couple of these are particularly politically relevant, a couple of them great, moving lines in the context of the film, but I’m going to have to go with the latter here.  “A leap of faith…” describes everything that makes Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse the daring and unique film that it is.

Best Screenplay

After years of largely failing to coherently grapple with the distinction between adapted and original screenplay (the breaking point for me was Whiplash, which was adapted because Chazelle did a shorter version of it as a sort of proof of concept to get financing), I just said screw it and threw out the distinction. I’m also keeping it to five movies again this year.

The Contenders:

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Burning

The Death of Stalin

The Favourite

First Man

This one came down to two wickedly funny period pieces. As good as The Favourite’s script is, I’m going with the absolutely nihilistically dark, and uproariously funny, The Death of Stalin. That Armando Ianucci fella sure can write, can’t he.

Best Vocal Performance

The Contenders:

Josh Brolin—Avengers: Infinity War

Holly Hunter—The Incredibles 2

Bryan Crantston—Isle of Dogs

Ben Whishaw—Paddington 2

John C. Reilley—Wreck-It Ralph 2

On the page and visually, Thanos is pretty silly. It’s Brolin’s sensitive and nuanced performance that makes the character as memorable as he is, and that’s why he’s our winner here from Avengers: Infinity War.

Scene Stealer of the Year

Similar in a way to the Most Enjoyable category, sometimes there’s a performance in a movie that might be brief or relatively insubstantial, but are the most memorable part of a movie. A couple of these are pushing the boundary between scene stealers and genuine full supporting performances, but oh well whatever I make the rules in these parts.

The Contenders:

Tom Holland—Avengers: Infinity War

Jason Isaacs—The Death of Stalin

Bryan Tyree Henry—If Beale Street Could Talk

Vanessa Kirby—Mission Impossible: Fallout

Haley Lu Richardson—Support The Girls

A strong crop here, and bonus points to Henry for being maybe the most memorable character in Beale Street even though he genuinely only appears in one scene. Our winner, however, is Jason Isaacs from The Death of Stalin, whose interpretation of Georgy Zhukov as a cocky Manchester football hooligan is, as far as I’m concerned, pretty much definitive.

Best Ensemble

I should perhaps retitled this one to something like “Best Overall Acting” or something because some of these are not truly ensemble pieces in the technical sense of the word, but it’s been this way for years now and I ain’t changing it yet anyways

The Contenders:

Bad Times at the El Royale

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Death of Stalin

First Man

Widows

It’s not a movie I loved as much as I hoped I would, but it’s tough to argue with the results of the ensemble that Drew Goddard put together in Bad Times at the El Royale. What I’m looking for in this category is a movie that has a bunch of great performances without having any poor ones, and Bad Times pretty much nails that.

Best Supporting Actress

The Contenders:

Olivia Colman—The Favourite

Regina King—If Beale Street Could Talk

Anne Hathaway—Ocean’s 8

Florence Pugh—Outlaw King

Marina De Tavira—Roma

This wasn’t a great field this year and there weren’t a lot of tough cuts, but I’m happy with these five. You might have noticed Colman’s presence here, even though she was nominated for (and won) the Oscar for Best Actress, not Supporting. I review acting categories de novo, and sometimes I just disagree with the official film awards seasons categorizations. There have been some ludicrous category fraud instances in the past; my go-to is Hailee Steinfeld from True Grit, who was nominated for Supporting despite being the clear main character of that movie, presumably in an attempt to maximize her/the movie’s chances of getting a nomination or win. Colman isn’t the last one here that I’m changing, but I’ll admit Colman was a very close call.

My rubric for making the determination is basically, to what extent is the film that character’s story? If it’s more than 50%, it’s a pretty obvious call (like with Steinfeld above), but a lead can be lower than that, and a lot of movies about one main character can have a second lead who has, say, 35%-40% of the plot as their story. A good rule of thumb is if a character has multiple scenes where the other presumptive lead is not present, there’s a pretty good chance that they’re a lead.

By this metric The Favourite is tricky because it’s really about three women, Sarah, Abigail and Anne. You can make a pretty good argument that any of the three is a lead. But ultimately I think the story is really about Sarah and Abigail, who have a lot of screentime on their own, which Anne really doesn’t. It is, however, undoubtedly a tough call, and if someone comes out the other way I understand.

Why did I just spend three paragraphs writing about that? Well, it’s because Olivia Colman from The Favourite is our winner, and I had to justify it. She’s so damn good in the movie that it’s tough not to give her lead just for sheer presence on film. But I think the film isn’t Anne’s story, and so Supporting it is for Colman.

Best Supporting Actor

The Contenders:

Michael B. Jordan—Black Panther

Lewis Pullman—Bad Times at the El Royale

Steven Yeun—Burning

Simon Russell Beale—The Death of Stalin

Hugh Grant—Paddington 2

Similar to Actress, this was not a particularly deep pool of supporting actor performances, and there weren’t any painful cuts here either. But also similarly, there was a reasonably clear winner here to—though he’s no Olivia Colman, and the performance is not as instantly iconic, Steven Yeun’s intensely creepy (or is it?) performance from Burning is the winner here. Although I was sorely, sorely tempted to go with Hugh Grant’s just…unbelievably over-the-top villain Phoenix Buchanan from Paddington 2.

Best Actress

The Contenders:

Cynthia Erivo—Bad Times at the El Royale

Joanna Kulig—Cold War

Emma Stone—The Favourite

Regina Hall—Support the Girls

Viola Davis—Widows

My choice to include Erivo as a lead actress for Bad Times at the El Royale was a tough one, especially because it only becomes apparent that she’s a lead (ish) well over an hour into the movie. But I think that movie is, in large part, her story, so lead she is. She isn’t our winner though, that would be Regina Hall, who is so good and subtle in the appealingly low-key Support the Girls

Best Actor

The Contenders:

Jeff Bridges—Bad Times at the El Royale

Daveed Diggs—Blindspotting

Ryan Gosling—First Man

Ethan Hawke—First Reformed

Ben Foster—Leave No Trace

Oof that is a rough linup, maybe the worst set of leads since I’ve been doing this, either actor or actress. I’m not wild about any of them. So, somewhat reluctantly, I’m going to give it to someone who you could make a pretty good argument isn’t even a lead, Jeff Bridges from Bad Times at the El Royale. There are probably years he wouldn’t have been a contender at all, but Bridges was very, very good and in a weak year that’s good enough.

Best Director

The Contenders:

Alex Garland—Annihilation

Lee Chang-Dong—Burning

Paweł Pawlikowski —Cold War

Damien Chazelle—First Man

Yorgos Lanthimos—The Favourite

After splitting the Best Director and Best Picture winner the last couple of years, I can’t bring myself to do it again this year. The Best Director is…

Best Picture

The Contenders:

Burning

Cold War

The Death of Stalin

First Man

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse

It wasn’t a strong year, and for the first time I can remember not a single movie (including the winner) cracked my personal top 100 list.  But all five of these are really good movies, and that’s about all the preamble I have the energy for. The winners are Damien Chazelle and First Man, an incredibly well-made and moving film about Neil Armstrong and the 1960s space race, its ups and downs, virtues and vices. This, weirdly, makes three years in a row now that my number one movie has Ryan Gosling as the lead after rewatches of both films nudged Blade Runner 2049 over Baby Driver for 2017’s movie of the year. It doesn’t look like he has a movie coming out in 2019 so the streak will be over, but while it lasted it was, well, weird.

That’s all folks, kept it brief this year, mostly. See you next year!

The Final Tally:

Aquaman: Two Contender and Zero Pauls

Annihilation: Five Contenders and One Paul (Best Visual Effects)

Avengers: Infinity War: Three Contenders and One Paul (Best Vocal Performance for Josh Brolin)

Bad Times at the El Royale: Five Contenders and Two Pauls (Best Ensemble and Best Actor for Jeff Bridges)

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: Five Contenders and Zero Pauls

Black Panther: Seven Contenders and One Paul (Best Costume Design)

Blindspotting: Three Contenders and Zero Pauls

Burning: Five Contenders and One Paul (Best Supporting Actor for Steven Yeun)

Cold War: Nine Contenders and Two Pauls (Best Film Editing, Best Use of Music)

The Death of Stalin: Nine Contenders and Two Pauls (Best Screenplay, Scene Stealer of the Year for Jason Isaacs)

The Favourite: Seven Contenders and Two Pauls (Best Art Direction, Best Supporting Actress for Olivia Colman)

First Man: Fourteen Contenders and Five Pauls (Best Performance by an Animal, Idea, or Inanimate Object for The Moon, Best Scene for The Sea of Tranquility, Best Sound Mixing, Best Director for Damien Chazelle, Best Picture)

First Reformed: Four Contenders and Zero Pauls

If Beale Street Could Talk: Four Contenders and Zero Pauls

The Incredibles 2: Three Contenders and Zero Pauls

Isle of Dogs: Three Contenders and Zero Pauls

Leave No Trace: One Contender and Zero Pauls

Mission Impossibe: Fallout: Two Contenders and Zero Pauls

Ocean’s 8: One Contender and Zero Pauls

Outlaw King: One Contender and Zero Pauls

Paddington 2: Six Contenders and One Paul (Most Enjoyable Movie)

Ralph Breaks The Internet: One Contender and Zero Pauls

Roma: Two Contenders and Zero Pauls

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse: Nine Contenders and Three Pauls (Best Sound Editing, Best Animated Feature, Line of the Year for “A leap of faith…”)

A Star is Born: Two Contenders and Zero Pauls

Support the Girls: Two Contenders and One Paul (Best Actress for Regina Hall)

Widows: Two Contenders and Zero Pauls

That’s twenty-seven movies with contenders and twelve with at least one win out of the fifty I’ve seen as of this writing, which is down two and exactly identical respectively compared to last year. For a complete list of what I’ve seen from 2018, in totally fluid and arbitrary order of overall preference, click here: https://letterboxd.com/teddroe/list/2018/. Note: that list will be updated as I see more movies, so if there’s more than fifty there, I’ve seen stuff since writing this.

Now, just for fun:

Most Overnominated: Probably Bad Times, the acting of which I liked a lot more than the other parts and that’s reflected in its haul of acting contenders for a pretty average movie overall.

Most Undernominated: There weren’t really a lot of anomalies this year, so there isn’t a good winner for this one. If I had to pick—and, given that I’m writing this of my own free will as far as you know, I do not—I’d go with Burning, a top-5 movie of the year that “only” got five contenders.

Winner of the Inside Llewyn Davis Award for most contenders without a win: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs with five. Hey another Coen movie like this category’s namesake.

Best Movie You’d Never Know I’d Seen By Reading This: Aside from the aforementioned superlative documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, this one goes to Ant-Man and the Wasp, a movie that I enjoyed quite a lot but really wasn’t even close to cracking any of the categories

Movie I Promise I Saw But Just Couldn’t Find Anywhere On Here For: Two female coming-of-age movies I liked but didn’t love, Eighth Grade and Bumblebee, and yes they do belong together. Also I promise I saw BlackKklansman, it was fine.

Worst Movie Represented: Either Outlaw King or Ralph Breaks the Internet, both of which were…fine. Christian Bale as Cheney from Vice, a genuinely bad movie, was on this until pretty late in the process. As I said, it was a very very bad year for lead actors

Worst Piece of Crap I Saw from 2018: I uh…did not care for Ready Player One

Movie I Should Be Most Ashamed of Not Seeing Before Writing This: I really tried to get to Mirai and Happy as Lazzaro, but the answer is probably Can You Ever Forgive Me? Can you ever forgive me, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

The “I’m Not Sure Why I Didn’t Like It More” Award: I’m a little surprised I didn’t like Isle of Dogs more

The “They’re Wrong” Award: Probably First Man, which got lukewarm rather than bad reviews, but really should’ve gotten a lot better than that.

The “I’m Wrong Award”: Roma, for sure. I…liked Roma, I guess?

Most Pleasantly Surprising: I saw the first Paddington and liked it fine, but I wasn’t prepared for how goddamn delightful the sequel is.

Most Disappointing: I really feel like The Incredibles 2 should’ve been a little more memorable.

The Irritating Backlash Award: I wasn’t even that big of a fan, but the A Star is Born backlash was weird.

The The Artist Award for Main Promotional Image That Comes from Latest in the Film: The poster for Roma is from the very last scene. It’s a good scene, but still.

Hardest Cut: Claire Foy from First Man was a pretty tough cut for Best Actress, but honestly it was Paul King from Paddington 2 for Best Director. I really liked that movie guys

The “Wait, Why is Darth Maul in This?” Award: Solo: A Star Wars Story

The “Yikes They Went There But In a Good Way” Award: The Death of Stalin which REALLY goes there

The “Spring Breakers” Award for This Is Actually A Real and Good Movie I Promise: Support the Girls

Special Achievement in Drumming Octopi: Aquaman

Special Achievement in Holy Shit Julie Andrews is Voicing a Kaiju What is Happening: Also Aquaman

Alright everyone, that’ll do it. Happy 2019!