This is the thread where we discuss matters pertaining to the detrius that accompanies the "End of the Year in Cinema" -- 2018

I've read some good things about Cold War but haven't seen it. I guess Ash Is Purest White isn't getting a release anywhere until 2019

(anywhere outside of China/Hong Kong)

San Diego:

Best Picture: LEAVE NO TRACE (Runner Up: GREEN BOOK)
Best Director: Debra Granik, LEAVE NO TRACE (Runner Up: Peter Farrelly, GREEN BOOK)
Best Actor: Ethan Hawke, FIRST REFORMED (Runner Up: Viggo Mortensen, GREEN BOOK)
Best Actress: Glenn Close, THE WIFE (Runner Up: Melissa McCarthy, CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?)
Best Supporting Actor: TIE – Richard E. Grant, CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? & Timothée Chalamet, BEAUTIFUL BOY
Best Supporting Actress: Nicole Kidman, BOY ERASED (Running Up: Nina Arianda, STAN & OLLIE)
Best Comedic Performance: Hugh Grant, PADDINGTON 2 (Runner Up: Jesse Plemons, GAME NIGHT)
Best Original Screenplay: Bo Burnham, EIGHTH GRADE (Runner Up: Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie, Peter Farrelly, GREEN BOOK)
Best Adapted Screenplay: Armando Iannucci, David Schneider, Ian Martin, Peter Fellows, Fabien Nury, THE DEATH OF STALIN (Runner Up: Joel Edgerton, BOY ERASED)
Best Documentary: THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS (Runner Up: FREE SOLO)
Best Animated Film: ISLE OF DOGS (Runner Up: SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE)
Best Foreign Language Film: SHOPLIFTERS (Runner Up: CAPERNAUM)
Breakthrough Artist: Thomasin McKenzie, LEAVE NO TRACE (Runner Up: Charlie Plummer, LEAN ON PETE)
Best Ensemble: GAME NIGHT (Runner Up: THE FAVOURITE)

I'm imagining the....vertigo from Leave No Trace to Green Book

haven't seen any of these films but it seems like the choices of the San Diego critics are more interesting than those of any of the other critics groups

Sight and Sound

Fun fact: ZAMA got 15 votes in this year's @SightSoundmag poll (placing ninth) and 27 votes in last year's (placing fourth). Combined, that's more votes than either this year's or last year's #1 films received. https://t.co/AmvOK2fNWg

— Guy Lodge (@GuyLodge) December 11, 2018

GAME NIGHT for Best Ensemble is pretty lol, don't really get the appeal of that movie at all tbh

Any movie that gives off the impression that there's any remaining hope for even halfway respectable, non-franchise popular filmmaking is cause for celebration.

(That said, saw First Man last night and *shrug*.)

Think Western also appeared in this year and last year's S&S poll.

Join us tonight at 7pm as we reveal our Best Films of 2018 poll live at @FilmLinc! The event will feature a discussion with @melvillmatic, @haskmoll, @sheilakathleen, @NickPinkerton & @NicolasRapold: https://t.co/nF2LgEXHPd pic.twitter.com/hUYjcspmeO

— Film Comment Magazine (@FilmComment) December 11, 2018

Is Cuaron good now or something?

It took B&W proletariat chic to make him acceptable to critics groups.

i think my favorite film by him is A Little Princess

Well played.

Meanwhile ...

i'm sorry, what pic.twitter.com/KhR7y34qSm

— 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔥𝔞𝔫𝔱𝔞 𝔠𝔩𝔞𝔲𝔰 (@goodjobliz) December 11, 2018

new issue of s&s confirmed as thicc

— 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔥𝔞𝔫𝔱𝔞 𝔠𝔩𝔞𝔲𝔰 (@goodjobliz) December 11, 2018

Hasn't Cuaron been good for a while? I don't care much for him, but Children of Men and Gravity were better than so much else. I mean, at least he's not Inarritu.

Roma sure looks like navel-gazing awardsbait. But Children Of Men is shaping up as the best sci-fi film of the century, and Gravity was fantastic on the largest screen in the US, and then the largest screen on the planet, so I'm expecting Roma to be better than it appears from two stills and a summary.

(Y Tu Mama was a perfectly okay piece of teensploitation, haven't seen his others.)

I'd add his good Harry Potter gun-for-hire too.

Adam Nayman said something about how Roma comes on like it expects judges' scores to be held up at the end of every shot, which made me laugh no matter whether it's true or not.

it is absolutely accurate

hahaha that is awesome

I'm eager to see it this weekend after reading so much *around* it (I still have no idea wtf the movie is about)

Cuaron’s 2000s run is indeed fantastic; Gravity killed my enthusiasm for a bit, though I admit that it might be one film that suffered considerably by my not seeing it theatrically.

yeah I remember liking Gravity fine but I saw it in a theater, front row. probably would've turned it off if I tried at home

I saw it in 3D and thought the spaceships looked like big blobs of plasticine that looked ridiculous but apparently that was my eyes not this film.

Film Comment contributors/editors Poll:

01. Zama
02. Burning
03. First Reformed
04. Roma
05. Western
06. Shoplifters
07. Let the Sunshine In
08. The Other Side of the Wind
09. Happy As Lazzaro
10. Hale County This Morning, This Evening

https://www.filmcomment.com/best-films-of-2018/

SAG nominations are the first (probably only) wrench in the Regina King runaway. (And, as I said before, the Ethan Hawke portion of our tour through detrius looks to be over.)

Supporting Actor
Mahershala Ali, Green Book
Timothee Chalamet, Beautiful Boy
Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman
Sam Elliott, A Star is Born
Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Supporting Actress
Amy Adams, Vice
Emily Blunt, A Quiet Place
Margot Robbie, Mary, Queen of Scots
Emma Stone, The Favourite
Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

Lead Actor
Christian Bale, Vice
Bradley Cooper, A Star is Born
Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody
Viggo Mortensen, Green Book
John David Washington, BlacKkKlansman

Lead Actress
Emily Blunt, Mary Poppins Returns
Glenn Close, The Wife
Olivia Colman, The Favourite
Lady Gaga, A Star is Born
Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Motion Picture Cast
Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
Crazy Rich Asians
A Star is Born

Emily Blunt getting that second nomination for A Quiet Place makes Toni Collette's snub seem even more pointed.

Oh, and for some reason, Film Comment now adds the other half of their top 20 that wasn't there last night:

Film Comment contributors/editors Poll:

01. Zama
02. Burning
03. First Reformed
04. Roma
05. Western
06. Shoplifters
07. Let the Sunshine In
08. The Other Side of the Wind
09. Happy As Lazzaro
10. Hale County This Morning, This Evening
11. Sorry to Bother You
12. If Beale Street Could Talk
13. The Rider
14. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
15. Support the Girls
16. You Were Never Really Here
17. Monrovia, Indiana
18. Personal Problems
19. The Favourite
20. BlacKkKlansman

Supporting actor noms set in stone, I see.

Basically.

armond tweeted at me

What did he tweet?

for good or ill? i bet i can guess

Zama is thoroughly respectable and well made, but i'll have to give it another look (NYFF, Oct '17)

Zama was so fucking good, can't wait to give it a very high placing in my ilx ballot.

How is Burning?

It's OK, with a few transcendent scenes. Overlong and the ending doesn't really work.

burning and zama both trade on elusivity, but the latter does a better job of preserving it past the ending

Saw 'Burning' today at a press screening, and I'm most of all fascinated by how on earth this becomes the best reviewed film ever out of Cannes. It's definitely good, sure, but it does nothing that you haven't seen before.

glad to see more women filmmakers represented in the Sight and Sound and Film Comment lists

Zama worked so well in part for me because Martel's own comments about the movie and what it was up to (especially its looking to depict the ambient banality/quiet absurdity of life under colonial rule, rather than depicting it as some sort of overwhelmingly oppressive terror or a torturefest) were so illuminating

ZAMA brings off its ambiguities better than BURNING did.

i think the llamas should get some awards

between that and the big dog in claire's camera, a good year for scene stealing animals

Add 24 Frames to that list.

many xps - i said armond's work for the NR is more tedious than offensive, and he said "Keep reading. You might learn something..."

Yeah, condescension is his long suit.

Paraphrasing but Lee Chang-Dong talked about how he wanted to sneak all the great questions and mysteries of the world, the issues young people are facing, into Burning, and I felt that, but it's part of what makes it a little difficult to talk about. It suggests truths and lies around us, and it's hard to grasp with words. And so rather than its themes I focus on the unbelievable atmosphere, the humming rhythm of it, the likability of the three main characters and the great lines the actors deliver so well.

Hopefully I can get to watch it sometime.

i was happy to see that in the NYT Mag's big spread on the year's best actors, they chose the OTHER guy in Burning (whose name few can remember, including me). Just as crucial and a more subtle, difficult role.