A Good Year for Popcorn: My 2021 Fake Oscars

At this time last year, I wrote extensively about the impact of the pandemic on my own movie watching habits, as well as its impact on the film industry in general. Since then, one thing hasn't changed, but one thing very much has. We're still in the middle of a pandemic, but... the movies are back, baby! Look no further than the nearly $2B box office for Spider-Man: No Way Home, somehow the sixth-highest grossing film of all time even given the pandemic. The rousing reaction it garnered from a packed house on opening night is one of the best moviegoing experiences I can remember in a long time. But still... we're in the middle of a pandemic. So there are mixed feelings for sure. I'm glad movie theaters seem to have survived the worst of the pandemic (for now... streaming platforms are still a major threat), but those packed houses are probably a small part of why it is still ongoing. But that's a bigger conversation than I'm trying to have right now.

Instead, it's time to hand out some fake awards with the real Oscars nearly upon us. I'll be honest: 2021 was one of the weaker years for movies in quite some time. In fact, it might be the weakest year since I started tracking every movie I watch on Letterboxd in 2015. (Last year is probably the runner-up.) And the actual Oscar slate is incredibly blah. (More on that soon.) There is usually a good bit of crossover between the actual field and mine; this year, there is only maybe one or two nominees in common in most categories. So this should be interesting—I really went outside the usual awards-fare-type box this year and embraced popcorn movies even more than I normally do in this space. But enough preamble, let's get into to! We'll start, as always, with the supporting categories. (Be forewarned: Probable spoilers incoming.)

Gold = winner

^ = nominated for a real Oscar

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Anders Danielsen Lie – The Worst Person in the World

Toby Huss – Copshop

Luke Kirby – No Man of God

Troy Kotsur – CODA^

Jeffrey Wright – The French Dispatch

Only one actual Oscar nominee made my field here: presumed frontrunner Kotsur. Other than J.K. Simmons, I don't have any major issues with the other three actual nominees: Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Ciarán Hinds. Plemons and one-time frontrunner Smit-McPhee both delivered strong performances in The Power of the Dog, but I can't say I found myself continuing to think about their performances like the ones who made my field. Hinds was immensely likeable in Belfast and he's long been a favorite character actor of mine, but his role was rather small and his performance was rather one-note. (He played that note very well, though.) As for Simmons... I just don't understand why he was nominated. Just an unforgettable performance by an actor everyone likes (which probably explains the nom). But on to my field. (Going to go through each category alphabetically, which I haven't usually done in the past.)

• After watching the outstanding The Worst Person in the World, I was shocked that Anders Danielsen Lie hadn't got more awards buzz. He did win the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor, but got bupkis from other critical or industry awards bodies. It's a shame, because he's incredible in this—eliciting both loathing and empathy from other characters and the audience alike, often within the same scene. He's apparently in several other films that have been on my list for a while (including the other two in the Oslo trilogy), and I'm excited to see more of his work.
• I mentioned Hinds as a favorite character actor above, and that also applies to Toby Huss, who I've been a fan of since Pete & Pete when I was a kid (even if I obviously didn't know who he was back then). Huss can play any role needed, and makes everything he's in better—from kid's movies/shows to ridiculous comedies to serious dramas. He's also the best part of the underrated Copshop as a loquacious, completely batshit hitman (duh, it's a Joe Carnahan movie). He's just so gleefully committed and I haven't been able to stop thinking about his performance since I first saw it. Not exactly real Oscar fare, but he gets a nom in these fake ones.
• The same goes for Luke Kirby in No Man of God, but for entirely different reasons. Whereas Huss creates a wholly original cinematic character, Kirby plays one of the most famous serial killers of all time, Ted Bundy. Performances based on real-life people usually don't do it for me, but Kirby is operating on another level here, undeniably magnetic and rising above the rest of the talented cast (including Elijah Wood). He captures Bundy's vileness, yes, but also the charisma ever batting heads with his banality, and even his vulnerability. It's a singular performance by an actor I wasn't at all familiar with before I watched the movie. Like Danielson Lie above, I can't wait to see more from him.
• I'll be honest: I almost left Troy Kotsur out of this field. (In favor of Willem Dafoe in No Way Home, if you can believe it. He's excellent, though.) But the more I thought about it, the more I just couldn't ignore the likely Oscar winner's performance. His Frank Rossi is confident, goofy, constantly horny, angry, scared for his family—all communicated in his facial expressions and mannerisms. You don't even need the subtitles for his signing to get this character. His win might get the biggest applause of the night on Oscar Sunday.
• I didn't love The French Dispatch overall—safe to say Wes Anderson's aesthetic has began to wear thin for me. And I still prefer "The Concrete Masterpiece" overall to the Jeffrey Wright-led "The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner," but damn it if Wright isn't sensational in it as famed writer Roebuck Wright. (Say that five times fast.) Wright is another guy who improves everything he's in, from Wes Anderson to Bond to Batman. And that's just in the last year. His wry narration and amused bemusement are the true highlight of the movie. I was a bit hard on his segment on Letterboxd, but Wright's performance stuck with me well after the fact.

Huss and Kotsur were the final two names in the field, while Danielsen Lie and Wright were both legitimate contenders who came on late (I only saw their films in the past couple months). But as I suspected when I first saw No Man of God, Luke Kirby was the easy choice for the winner here. I practically bolted upright on my couch when he was first introduced, and he had me rapt every time he was on screen thereafter. Just a scary-good performance.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Nina Arianda – Being the Ricardos

Caitriona Balfe – Belfast

Jessie Buckley – The Lost Daughter^

Rebecca Ferguson – Dune

Gaby Hoffmann – C'mon C'mon

Only one nominee in common with the actual field here as well. The one who came closest to making my field was Kirsten Dunst. I like her a lot as an actress, but I don't think The Power of the Dog was anywhere hear her best work (probably Melancholia, or maybe Marie Antoinette). Aunjanue Ellis was good in King Richard, but biopics just don't do it for me and her and Will Smith were doing two different things with their performances, which just didn't work. I'll admit I just didn't see it with Ariana DeBose in West Side Story—good, yes, but shoo-in Oscar winner? I must have missed something (it probably doesn't help that I didn't care for the movie). And, hoo boy, Judi Dench over the other Belfast actress I nominated is as big of a whiff as you'll ever see from the Academy. Just a head-scratcher. She's basically a non-entity except for a scene or two. Moving on.

• It's not nearly as big of a whiff, but I think the Academy definitely overlooked Nina Arianda in Being the Ricardos. Nicole Kidman is.... fine (in the sense that a fine Kidman performance is still very good), but I thought Arianda stole the show every time she was on screen. Kidman's performance was that kind of Streep-ian Acting where you can see the performative gears turning, whereas Arianda's performance felt more spontaneous and natural. Probably something to do with Arianda's theatrical background. Kidman's performances don't often have this quality, but do more often than not in the ones she gets nominated for. I didn't mean to make this more about Kidman, but Arianda really, really good in this just-okay movie.
• Speaking of the wrong actress getting nominated for a movie, I was *shocked* that the Academy went with Judi Dench over Caitriona Balfe. (Well, not too shocked; it is the Academy, after all.) Balfe carries the entire movie on her shoulders as the emotional and narrative center of Branagh's otherwise fairly toothless crowd-pleaser. She completely carries Jamie Dornan in their scenes and outshines Dench in every conceivable facet. Plus the child performances are nothing special, so she elevates basically the entire cast and just nails every scene. Senseless that she wasn't nominated. Senseless.
• I first really noticed Jessie Buckley (no relation) in 2020's I'm Thinking of Ending Things. She was the best part of a film I otherwise hated. I guess she was in Judy, but I have basically no memory of that one, and I recognized her after the fact in Chernobyl. And now here she is as the only actual Oscar nominee in my field for her stormy yet tender performance as the younger version of Olivia Colman's character in The Lost Daughter. In the work of hers I've seen, there is absolutely no shred of pretense or actorly distance, and she almost assuredly has a gold statue coming her way in a few years.
• Rebecca Ferguson was the last name in my field, barely ahead of such names as Milena Smit (Parallel Mothers) and Reika Kirishma (Drive My Car). She was the true standout of Dune, a movie more renowned for its technical merits than its performances. Lady Jessica is a complicated character—concubine but not wife, fiercely protective yet kind of afraid of her son, and, well, a space witch. But Ferguson grounds her, makes her vulnerably human—but also more than that with her ethereal aura and mesmerizing eyes. (VFX helped there, I'm sure.) She commands your presence even when sharing the screen with Oscar Isaac, one of the most charismatic actors around, and also Timothée Chalamet.
• I just started HBO's winning time, and Gaby Hoffman is great in it as an exasperated, chain-smoking accountant. But she's even better in Mike Mills's superb latest, C'mon C'mon. She entrusts the care of her son to her brother, played by Joaquin Phoenix, while she tends to her mentally unwell estranged husband. Other than a few early scenes, most of her scenes consist of phone calls between her and Phoenix—not exactly fertile ground for sensational acting. But this is Mike Mills we are talking about here, and his script gives Hoffman everything she needs to truly shine, portraying a mother's love, exhaustion, anger, fear, and amusement. All in the same scene, and often a single line or two of dialogue. Impressive stuff, and deserving of more recognition.

The only two names in real consideration were Hoffman and Balfe. They were head and shoulders above any other supporting female performances this year. Hoffman matched Joaquin Phoenix (for my money our best working actor right now) beat for beat, which is no mean feat. But Caitriona Balfe, to me, had to basically carry the entire movie, so she gets the nod here for her magnificent work.

BEST ACTOR

Daniel Craig – No Time to Die

Andrew Garfield – tick, tick... BOOM!^

Dev Patel – The Green Knight

Joaquin Phoenix – C'mon C'mon

Simon Rex – Red Rocket

Yep, just one actual nominee made my field here as well. The actual field isn't terrible, per se, but it's also not terribly impressive. I'm definitely a Will Smith fan, but I just don't see it for his King Richard performance. It's shameless awards-bait Acting, but it's looking like it worked. Denzel was much better in Joel Coen's Macbeth adaptation, but he's "just" very good. Cumberbatch was solid in Dog, but I also never forgot I was watching Benedict Cumberbatch at any point. (Bonus points for a glance at his, uh, cumberbatch, though.) Bardem just seems like an "Eh, fuck it, he's a former winner" nomination; he's nothing special. Let's see who made my field.

• There are countless examples of people getting Oscar nominations or wins for performances that weren't necessarily for the actual movies they were in. Think Sylvester Stallone in Creed or Denzel for Training Day. Those were kind of "lifetime achievement" situations. I decided to embrace that a little bit and give Daniel Craig a nomination for his Bond finale. I don't know if it was actually one of the five best male acting performances of the year, but it was kind of a weak year and he was absolutely better than he had any need to be in a movie that kind of deconstructed and demystified Bond a little bit. He played Bond as a human—a wounded, flawed, real human. It really worked for a movie I liked a lot more than I was expecting to.
• The one nominee I agreed with the Academy on is Andrew Garfield for his lively, touching performance in tick, tick... BOOM!, a movie I didn't expect to like *at all*. My aversion to musicals is well documented at this point, and my eyes were rolling HARD at the first few scenes. But I was gradually won over by Garfield's obvious dedication to the material and the vigor with which he threw himself into the movie. His excellent singing didn't hurt, either. This movie could have easily gotten preachy or hagiographic, but Garfield (and director Lin-Manuel Miranda) kept it grounded.
• I considered both Oscar Isaac in The Card Counter and Dev Patel for The Green Knight for my last spot. (Craig was always getting in.) Isaac was absolutely worthy for his card shark convict going through a crisis of conscience (fun with alliteration!). But I ultimately went with Patel for his take on Sir Gawain, the mythic figure Patel turns into a figure as complicated as Isaac's ex-soldier haunted by Abu Ghraib. (The Card Counter is seriously wild.) Patel's Gawain is a noble coward, a courageous scion, a weary seeker, and Patel imbues him with endless wonder and pathos. His final scene with the titular Green Knight is one of the finest of the year. Surprised he didn't get any awards buzz at all. But he surely has another nomination or two in his future.
• As I said above, Joaquin Phoenix is my pick for the finest actor working right now in the wake of Daniel Day-Lewis's retirement. Gun to my head, his performance in The Master is the best of this young century. He's not quite on that level (obviously) in C'mon C'mon, but he's still incredible as a childless uncle who takes in his sister's son on a cross-country trip. He's clueless, he's frustrated, he's he's tired (so tired), but he's also joyful and awed and ever empathetic. It's a tender performance, one that's several measures better than the one he won for in Joker. Up next? An Ari Aster horror-comedy and a Napoleon Bonaparte biopic by Ridley Scott. Color me excited.
• I knew as soon as I walked out of Red Rocket that Simon Rex—yes, former MTV VJ Simon Rex—would make this field for his loathsome, loquacious fading pornstar Mikey Saber. His Mikey is a raging narcissist, an unself-aware clown, and a remorseless sexual deviant, yet Rex's undeniable charisma almost has you rooting for him. (Almost.) As almost the only professional actor in the cast (per usual for Sean Baker), Rex has to both be the movie star and play off the largely amateur cast. He excels at both, radiating that star charisma at all times, yet also meshing seamlessly with his castmates. It's a truly unique performance. I'd be surprised if Rex has another one like this in him, but you never know.

Garfield, Phoenix, and Rex were all seriously considered here, and I truly went back and forth on them all even as I wrote this section. It eventually came down to Garfield and Rex (all due respect to Phoenix). Both were surprising in their own way: Garfield for being in a musical, and Rex for being Rex. But Simon Rex's achievement was just a little greater, so he takes the fake trophy.

BEST ACTRESS

Olivia Colman – The Lost Daughter^

Penélope Cruz – Parallel Mothers^

Alana Haim – Licorice Pizza

Renate Reinsve – The Worst Person in the World

Mary Elizabeth Winstead – Kate

The real Best Actress field is... interesting. There's the two nominees also in my field, and then three of the better actresses working today: Jessica Chastain, Nicole Kidman, and Kristen Stewart. I talked about Kidman above, and Stewart made the longlist for my field. (She was great; the movie and its direction, not so much.) Chastain... yeah. I'm a fan. Thought she was robbed in 2013, loved her in stuff like Molly's Game and Ava in recent years. But, man... she was bad in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Just a totally ill-conceived project from top to bottom. An empty pantomime. Will be disappointing if she wins. There's no such possibility here, thankfully.

• The Academy did get a couple things right, though. One is, as usual, Olivia Colman. She's got a win for The Favourite and a nomination for The Father under her belt already. Now, she gets a more-than-deserving nomination for another "The" movie. She's tremendous in The Lost Daughter—kind of bumbling, kind of sympathetic, but definitely something a little off. She brings her character's history/subtext up to just below the surface—you know there's something more to her character, but not quite what. It's a fine line to walk, and a lesser actress couldn't have pulled it off, but Colman nails it. I think she's still got an outside shot to win the real deal, and she'd certainly be deserving of a second statue in four years.
• Penélope Cruz is another former multiple nominee and winner—although she hasn't been acknowledged by the Academy since 2009. (To be fair, she's mostly been in paycheck projects since then.) But her first lead role in a Pedro Almodóvar film since Volver predictably resulted in another Oscar nomination. A win this time isn't entirely out of the question, either (this category is WIDE open.) She's a delight in Parallel Mothers—a seemingly ecstatic single mother-to-be, a career woman committed to raising her baby alone. Of course, it isn't as simple as all that, and Cruz capably handles each and every twist and turn Almodóvar throws her. I'll be fervently rooting for either her or Colman to win the real thing.
• All right, some new names. In the case of Alana Haim, a really new name—Licorice Pizza is her first movie, much less her first leading role. Of course, she's fantastic in Haim, but it's still a big step up to go from a critically acclaimed pop-rock band to a leading role in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. Okay, it's not PTA's best by a longshot (I'm in the minority for thinking it's just okay), but Haim is stellar, a cynical, sarcastic whirlwind, a quarter-life crisis brought to vibrant life. I don't know if this was just a one-off (her family apparently has a history with PTA; hence the casting), but I'd absolutely be intrigued were she to pursue an acting career.
• Renate Reinsve was a *totally* new name to me. (I'm not too up on Norwegian cinema.) But wow, she just floored me in The Worst Person in the World. I'd heard good things, was expecting to like it, but she's just dynamite, a performance that's so obviously masterful that it's inconceivable that she got basically no recognition after "only" winning Best Actress at Cannes. She takes a rather tired archetype—the wayward 20-something woman—and shades it with rich nuance and refreshing unpredictability. She's a true marvel and I wish she had a more robust filmography to wade into. But hopefully this leads to many more big roles.
• Like the Craig pick above, I kind of wanted to earmark a spot for a surprisingly good performance in a popcorn movie. Just wasn't a super-strong year for leading performances, I suppose. I really though about going with Alexis Louder in Copshop (mentioned above)—was really impressed with what I saw from her in one of her first major roles. But I had to go with Ramona Flowers herself in Kate, perhaps the movie that surprised me the most in 2021. Mary Elizabeth Winstead was really, really good in a role that I've grown quite tired of in recent years: lady hitman (sorry, hitwoman). This movie could have easily gone sideways—the normally bankable Woody Harrelson is *awful*, and the typical child actor supporting character is actually handled really well. But Winstead just completely sells the character—her Kate is just so genuine and believable. This is a Net Flick that deserved more of an audience.

There are two actual Oscar nominees—and former winners!—in this field, but they actually weren't really considered. The Worst Person in the World was the final film I saw of the nominees in this category, but Renate Reinsve was an easy call. Just baffling that she wasn't a contender in the actual Oscars. Curious as to what her career holds from here on out.

BEST SCREENPLAY

Sean Baker – Red Rocket

Anders Thomas Jensen – Riders of Justice

Mike Mills – C'mon C'mon

Guy Ritchie, Marn Davies, and Ivan Atkinson – Wrath of Man

Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt – The Worst Person in the World^

Here we go—only one nominee from the Oscars here despite combining two categories into one. I know adaptation is its own beast (masters in screenwriting here), but I just can't in good conscience nominate an adaptation over an original work. That said, the adapted screenplays this year were better than in the typical year, especially Dune and Drive My Car. I was surprisingly actually much less impressed with the original screenplay nominees this year. It's a stretch to call a script like King Richard (rooted in actual events) truly original, Belfast was kind of a nothingburger, and Don't Look Up and Licorice Pizza were both highly flawed. But this was a *great* year for screenwriting; I just wish the Academy had nominated some of the following films.

• I don't know what Sean Baker has to do to earn Academy recognition, but evidently it's more than make painstakingly idiosyncratic, deeply humane films. His The Florida Project is one of my favorite films of the past decade. (That list might need a slight update, but I mostly stand by it.) It got a well deserved nomination for Willem Dafoe, but nothing else. Red Rocket isn't quite the same caliber, but it's another coyly profound exploration of a community on the edges of American life—this time, it's South Texas pornstars. But really, it's about the sub-working-class dreamers in any forgotten corner of America. Maybe Baker will get recognized for the next such marginal community he turns his attention toward. Although I doubt he cares.
• Maybe this is my inner screenwriting student, but Anders Thomas Jensen's script for Riders of Justice was just a clinic on theme. The Danish film opens with a tragic train accident that takes the life of Mads Mikkelsen's wife. He reacts with blind rage; his daughter who survives the accident tries to trace the random events that led to the accident before contemplating religion. A mathematician, Otto, who also survives, looks through an algorithmical lens. The script balances them all while balancing humor and real, raw emotion. It does drift into crowd-pleasing territory at the end, but that's okay—I wasn't not pleased.
• I've been a Mike Mills devotee for over a decade... during which time he's made exactly three films. But they're all marvelous, and all in my top-10 for their respective years. Beginners knocked me on my ass, 20th Century Women was even better, and, now C'mon C'mon is another absolute knockout. I may be squarely in the intended audience—like Joaquin Phoenix's character, I'm a childless uncle who unreservedly loves his nephew(s)—but, c'mon, you'd have to be heartless to not adore this story. The ending sequence—"I want to remember", "I'll remind you"—is just devastating. A major-scale moment in a movie that's mostly satisfied to remain in minor. And yet Mills couldn't even get a nomination this year. He has to have a win in his future, right? Giddy at the possibility.
• This category marks the first appearance of Wrath of Man, one of my very favorite movies of the year. (This won't be the last time this movie appears.) I almost nominated Jason Statham for Best Actor—he's great as a man with a checkered past on a mission. (Okay, the role is a bit clichéd.) He's very Statham-y in the best possible way, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. Holt McCallany and Josh Hartnett were also considered for Supporting. Instead, the movie's first nomination here belongs to the script from Guy Ritchie, Marn Davies, and Ivan Atkinson. It takes a familiar storyline—a father seeks vengeance for his son—and absolutely ratchets up the tone and scale. The brawny dialogue, the clever structure, cryptic chapter titles—I loved it all. Definitely not the typical Guy Ritchie joint I was expecting, but something much more remarkable.
• Worst Person was the final of these nominees I saw, and it took the spot that Dune had been holding here for most of the year. It's an impressive adaptation (I know what I said above) of a rather turgid yet complex novel. Good stuff, but it's not in the same league as what Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt accomplished in Worst Person. Like Wrath of Man above, Worst Person has a very familiar premise: the trials and tribulations of a twentysomething woman in the city. But Trier and Vogt also take a more elevated approach to the rom-com genre, breaking the film up into chapters, which are also titled creatively. And the city in question is Oslo, so the film easily avoids the Sex in the City–type clichés that plague American films, instead exploring heartbreak, incompatibility, mortality, and even free speech with poignancy and verve. One of the best films of the year.

This came down to Baker, who just missed out on a win in 2017, and Mills, who won in an absolutely stacked field in 2016. It was agonizingly close, but in the end I thought Mike Mills stuck the landing just a bit better—"I want to remember", "I'll remind you" just floored me, an absolute roundhouse of an emotional payoff. Like I said above, a statue just has to be forthcoming. (Not sure about Baker, who the Academy doesn't seem to have much affinity for.)

BEST DIRECTOR

Sean Baker – Red Rocket

Ryusuke Hamaguchi – Drive My Car^

Guy Ritchie – Wrath of Man

Denis Villeneuve – Dune

James Wan – Malignant

You guessed it: only one real nominee here as well. None of the Academy's selections are egregious, and I'm in the minority for not thinking it's a particularly strong field. Likely winner Jane Campion came closest to a nomination here; Dog is absolutely an artistic achievement, even if it's a bit too languid for my tastes. None of the other actual nominees were considered—Belfast is basically a puff piece, Licorice Pizza just doesn't work as a cohesive film for me, and West Side Story is about as far outside my aesthetic wheelhouse as you can get (although Spielberg's mastery is evident). My nominees are... different. Let's see who I went with.

• Sean Baker appears both here and in Screenplay, where the winner of that category, Mike Mills, was left out of this field. He was a tough omission, especially for his handling of child actor Woody Norman, but his creative hand was more felt in the script than in the direction of C'mon C'mon (and I'm not sure what choice to shoot in black and white really added). But as great as Baker's script was, he also had to direct a largely nonprofessional cast and build an entire movie around an immensely dislikable main character played by a former MTV personality. So, yeah, it's a pretty impressive directorial achievement. I think I might need to line up a Florida Project/Red Rocket double feature at some point soon (I've still only ever seen the former the once).
• The lone actual nominee in my field is Ryusuke Hamaguchi for Drive My Car. He was actually the last nominee to make the cut in a really tough call over Mills, David Lowery for The Green Knight, and Lin-Manuel Miranda for tick, tick... BOOM! But I went with Hamaguchi for a couple reasons. One is to also acknowledge his writing—the script he co-wrote was one of my final few cuts in that category. But I also wanted a chance to write a little bit about Drive My Car, his adaptation of the Haruki Murakami short story. Murakami is my favorite writer of all time, and Car is about as pure a distillation of his style and philosophy as you're likely to see on screen. It's a bit overlong and does meander a bit, but it all builds to a stunningly profound climax that borrows from "Kino," another story in the same collection as "Drive My Car," and maybe my favorite Murakami short story. Powerful work that I'm glad the Academy recognized.
• Two of the other names on this list had no shot at Academy recognition. One is Guy Ritchie for the tense, brooding Wrath of Man. I hadn't so much as seen a trailer (I try to avoid trailers these days, actually) when I walked into the theater, and I was expecting another fun gangster picture like The Gentlemen. Boy oh boy was I wrong—and glad to be. This is like nothing else in Ritchie's oeuvre, a menacing, unflinching dirge of a movie, an epic-scale story of brutal men with conflicting purposes. And every element in the movie works harmoniously to create this dark, brutal world—the writing, the score, the cinematography, the performances. The "Scorched Earth" chapter, especially, is about as good as filmmaking gets. I truly hope Ritchie has more in this vein in him.
• Denis Villeneuve was pretty righteously snubbed for an Oscar nomination (Hamaguchi or maybe even PTA likely took his spot). He'll likely have to wait for Part Two for his second Best Director nomination. Instead, he gets his third nomination from me (after Sicario in 2015 and Arrival in 2016) for the jaw-dropping Dune. The story and performances are very good for the most part, but the visuals and world-building are up there with the likes of Jurassic Park and Avatar—a paradigm-shifting leap forward in what cinematic technology is capable of. I was totally enthralled watching this new world unfold on the big screen, so much so that Dune sat in the #1 spot on my list for much of the year. It does lose a bit on the small screen, and the final act does somewhat drag, but it's still a towering achievement no matter the size of the screen. Stoked for Part Two.
• The last name here is a true wild card: James Wan, the horror auteur behind the Saw and Conjuring franchises who also moonlights as a blockbuster helmsman (Furious 7, Aquaman and the forthcoming sequel). He's an incredibly versatile director who is no stranger to "Holy shit!" moments (think the ending of Saw), cinematic mayhem (the Abu Dhabi sequence in Furious 7), and absolute absurdity (when Ocean Master says his own name in Aquaman). Well, Malignant, his latest horror movie and possible social experiment, has all three in spades. It's a completely batshit mashup of Conjuring-esque haunted house shenanigans; gloriously corny melodrama; nasty, visceral gore; and ludicrous plot twists. It shouldn't work, but Wan's singular vision simply wills it to, forcing all these disparate elements to come together in riotous, can't-look-away ways. The last half-hour alone is a marvel to behold. Watch it with a few beers if you're not squeamish. (Or several more beers if you are.) You won't—well, you might actually regret it. But I didn't.

Unlike several of the other categories, there wasn't much of a competition here—Guy Ritchie easily takes the fake statue here for directing my favorite film of the year, as you'll see below (and, well, in the image at the top of the post as well). That's now two years in a row that a popcorn film took my last spot, after Tenet last year. Ritchie's filmography is maybe even stranger than Wan's, and I'm genuinely curious to see what he does next.

BEST PICTURE

Below are my top 10 movies of 2021, counting down from 10 to 1. I've already said my piece about most of these movies (and I'll include links to my reviews on Letterboxd, where I write a short review for every movie I watch), but I'll add some brief thoughts afterward.

tick, tick... BOOM! | Letterboxd Review

Malignant | Letterboxd Review

Drive My Car^ | Letterboxd Review

The Worst Person in the World | Letterboxd Review

No Time to Die | Letterboxd Review

Red Rocket | Letterboxd Review

C'mon C'mon | Letterboxd Review

Spider-Man: No Way Home | Letterboxd Review

Dune^ | Letterboxd Reviews

Wrath of Man | Letterboxd Reviews

• The top nine were all pretty easy calls, but picking the tenth nominee here was really, really tough. It was between BOOM!, The Green Knight, and actual Best Picture nominee Nightmare Alley. I went back and forth (and forth and back), but finally settled on BOOM! just because of how much it surprised me. I knew I would like Knight and Alley, but BOOM! seemed to come out of nowhere to me. I might look back in a month or a year and want to change the order, but this is where I landed here on Oscars eve.
• Pretty good balance of popcorn movies and critical/arthouse fare—five of each by my count. As it should be. The Oscars might have a relatively weak slate, but it's been a good year for popcorn movies as we make our way out of the pandemic.
• I knew that Wrath of Man had overtaken Dune for the top spot when I was talking movies with a friend and said, unprompted, "Wrath of Man, my favorite movie of the year..." Sometimes, it's that simple.
• The one movie here that wasn't nominated anywhere above is Spider-Man: No Way Home. As I mentioned, I almost went with Willem Dafoe in Best Supporting Actor, and the screenplay very nearly made my field. Yet here it is at #3 in my top-10. Why? Well, I'm an avowed Marvel fan, and it's one of the top two or three MCU movies. (Maybe even #2; I have to let it marinate.) Plus, like I said at the beginning, seeing it in theaters on opening night was one of the movie highlights of the year for me. It's chic right now to hate on the MCU—and, look, I get it, I'm no chin-bearded fanboy; I'm even Team Scorsese on this. But these movies are the closest thing we have to a monoculture, a shared experience that you can talk about with your friend across the country on a Zoom chat, with your uncle at the next family barbecue, with your niece or your nephew or your son or your daughter. Yes, they are these monolithic, overly manufactured pieces of pop culture, multiplex seat-fillers, but—and hear me out on this—it's okay to enjoy them! They can even be good! And if you're too cynical or highfalutin that you can't get at least a superficial kick out of a movie that successfully weaves together three different iterations of a franchise, boy, I don't know what to tell you. (I actually do kind of get it; franchise fatigue is real. But still.) I actually do think it was deserving of a Best Picture nomination, certainly more than film festival pap like Belfast and CODA. If you're going to nominate crowd pleasers, shouldn't you at least acknowledge the movie that pleased the most crowds? (Don't get me started on the "Oscar Fan Favorite" crap, though. Just a dumb idea.) Oh well, no one is losing sleep (or dollars) over an MCU movie not getting nominated for an Oscar. Certainly not me. Just interesting to consider when a charming nothing of a movie like CODA that most people watched from their couch might be on the doorstep of a Best Picture win. And the Academy wonders why Oscars ratings are falling.

Anyway, rant over. Time to bang out my Oscar predictions before the ceremony. As always, thanks for reading (even though I mostly write these for myself). Even though I don't actually like popcorn, I'm looking forward to another year of watching movies in theaters, surrounded by the smell and crunch of popcorn.