Most Surprisingly Awesome Performance
We’ll confess to having dismissed Luke Evans in the past as a sort of bland, if handsome, figure who’s never quite seemed charismatic enough to carry a film like “Dracula Untold” or even be a “Fast & Furious” villain. Well, we were very wrong, because Evans was the best thing about Ben Wheatley’s “High-Rise,” channeling the spirit of Oliver Reed as a Welsh-accented, rugby-shirt-wearing proletariat agitator in the dystopian society housed in a brutalist concrete block. It’s an utterly mind-changing performance, and one that oddly made us really excited to see his Gaston in next year’s “Beauty And The Beast.”
Phoning It In The Hardest
George Clooney is the best. Just awesome. But compared to his prolific work-rate across the ’00s, he seems to have slowed a bit in recent years — he’s only properly starred in five movies across the last six years, along with a few supporting turns like in this year’s “Hail, Caesar!” And part of it is that he seems a little disengaged, both in last year’s “Tomorrowland” and in particular this year’s “Money Monster,” which sees Clooney on autopilot the most we can remember him being since probably “The Peacemaker.” He’s still engaging to watch, but he needs another “Michael Clayton” or “Up In The Air” sooner rather than later.
Best Ambiguous Rorschach Test Ending
It’s hard to pull off an ambiguous ending in a really satisfying way, but Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Lobster” does it in a way that proves genuinely revelatory, about the viewer rather than about the movie. Does Colin Farrell blind himself in order to live equally with Rachel Weisz? Does he do a cowardly runner? Does he (having already proven himself willing to mislead in a relationship) go back and tell her that he’s blinded himself without doing it? All answers are valid, and that’s just a small part of the film’s genius.
Most Deserved Crossover Success
He’s long been beloved by cinephiles, but Whit Stillman’s usually remained a cult success at best: Even well-reviewed movies like “The Last Days Of Disco” and “Damsels In Distress” made the tiniest of impacts at the box office. Which is why it was so gratifying this year to see his excellent Jane Austen adaptation “Love And Friendship” do so well — it’s still one of the year’s top-grossing indies, and made double Stillman’s previous biggest hit, “Barcelona.” Hopefully it means he’ll be easier to finance from now on.
The Film Twitter Heresy Award For Boringest Movie
It’ll probably get us blacklisted by some prominent Film Twitter folk, but as beloved as it is in some circles, we found Terence Davies’ latest, “Sunset Song,” kind of a struggle. It’s very beautiful, very admirable, and an absolute chore to sit through in a way that Davies’ films haven’t been before. Though it’s positively “The Lego Movie” when compared to his yet-to-be-released follow-up, “A Quiet Passion.”
Most Successful Movie You Didn’t Realize Was Successful
As “The Mermaid” proved, it’s now not difficult for a movie to do absolutely huge business without registering on wider radars, and that’s even true of major studio films. There were two major examples this year. The first was “Me Before You,” a disability-themed weepie starring Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin that, despite some rough reviews, took $200 million worldwide, nearly ten times its budget (that’s more than the last “Divergent,” “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” or “The BFG”). And, while it came with almost zero hype at the end of a quiet September, and toplined Eva Green and a bunch of kids, Tim Burton’s latest, “Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children,” quietly stacked up $280 million, only just behind “Alice Through The Looking Glass” and ahead of “Ghostbusters.”
Not As Bad As Its Reputation But Still Pretty Bad
Expensive, gaudy and tanking hard in the U.S., Duncan Jones’ “Warcraft” seemed like it might be a cinematic folly for the ages. But then we saw the thing, and while you wouldn’t exactly call it good, it was somewhat idiosyncratic, sometimes engaging, and certainly ambitious. It’s pretty rotten in places, but we hope it won’t hurt Jones’ career too much, particularly given how compromised it often feels.
The I’ve Been Acting For Thirty Years Now And I Want To Try Out Some New Accents Award
Forest Whitaker undoubtedly had a good year: the Oscar-winning star first had a supporting turn in sleeper hit “Arrival,” and then did the same in megasmash “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” And to give Whitaker credit, he’s not using the big-budget nature of those movies to rest on his laurels, really swinging for the fences with his choices in both, and specifically with his choice of accents. We just wish that the accents were more… recognizable. “Arrival” sees him do something that you could perhaps generously put somewhere within 200 miles of Boston (an approach also taken by Michael Stuhlbarg in “Miss Sloane”), but Lord knows what he’s doing in “Rogue One,” other than BEING VERY LOUD.
Best Framing Of Interviews In A Documentary
Here’s how you know Ava DuVernay is a truly great director: Even the way she shoots the talking heads in her excellent documentary “13th” is interesting.
Best Performance Our Editors Pretended They Hadn’t Heard Us Suggest When We Tried To Get It On The Best Performances List
We tried, honestly we did. But every time we brought up The Rock’s turn in “Central Intelligence,” it failed to gain anything near traction when it came to getting it on our Best Performances list. It’s probably because the film is ok at best, but Dwayne Johnson is absolutely tremendous in it, something like if a giant Golden Retriever was accidentally transformed into James Bond, but also was someone who was secretly masking a childhood full of bullying, self-loathing and unhappiness, and also might be possibly crazy. Honestly, one day that man might win an Oscar.
Most Characters In A Blockbuster, None Of Which You Care About
With Will Smith turning it down in favor of “Suicide Squad,” “Independence Day: Resurgence” couldn’t get by on the returning star power of Judd Hirsch and Brent Spiner alone. Instead, it went for sheer volume in the hope of adding up to one Will Smith, with a vast ensemble of roughly eight bajillion major characters, ranging from Charlotte Gainsbourg slumming it and a somewhat offensive African warlord character to a group of interchangeable pretty young people including Liam Hemsworth as A Pilot, Maika Monroe as The President’s Daughter and *checks Wikipedia* Jessie Usher as A Role Politely But Firmly Turned Down By Michael B. Jordan. And yet every one of them is somehow still deeply, deeply boring.
Most Annoying Comedy Performer
Comedy is deeply subjective. One man’s Louis CK is another’s Larry The Cable Guy, and vice versa. But the appeal of “Workaholics” and “Pitch Perfect” actor Adam Devine, whose comic persona appears to be best defined as “someone you want to smack really hard” is sort of baffling to us, especially when he’s on such unrestrained, borderline undirected form as in “Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates.”
Most Brazen Theft Of The Plot Of “Toy Story”
To believe some, there are only really seven plots, with most things proving to be a variation on one of those. Unfortunately for the makers of the otherwise fine “Secret Life Of Pets,” one of those plots is “Toy Story,” and so their brazen lifting of the exact same fucking story is harder to excuse. In fairness, “Toy Story” is a solid-gold classic, but as the movie goes through the same beats in the Buzz & Woody-ish central relationship, you glaze over pretty quickly.
Greatest Commitment To Being Utterly, Utterly Humiliated
No one comes out particularly well from “The Brothers Grimsby,” but you do at least walk away with an increased respect for Mark Strong. He’s the kind of actor who always strikes you as a total pro, but as a superspy forced to team up with his long-lost hooligan brother (Sacha Baron Cohen), Strong is utterly committed and somehow even vaguely dignified, even after being teabagged by his brother, injected full of heroin, and hiding inside in an elephant vagina WHILE THE ELEPHANT IS BEING PENETRATED TO COMPLETION BY ANOTHER ELEPHANT. He handles it with the same class that he does everything else he does, and deserves some better offers as a result.
Worst Commitment To Being Utterly, Utterly Humiliated
Robert De Niro, barely conscious during “Dirty Grandpa,” and who would blame him?
The ‘Wait, They Made Four Of These And Didn’t Put Tommy Lee Jones Or Vincent Cassel In One Already?’ Award
Goes to, obviously, “Jason Bourne.” Because when Tommy Lee Jones pops up, you’re immediately convinced that he popped up in an earlier film in one of those control rooms, but then you check IMDB, and it turns out it was Chris Cooper. No, maybe it was the third one! No, that was David Strathairn. But Vincent Cassel, he was definitely in one of the earlier ones? Like one of the Clive Owen crew in “The Bourne Identity”? And then you rewatch it, and no. But he had that magazine fight in the second one… no, that’s Marton Csokas. Jeez, I guess they really hadn’t done one yet.
The We’ll Only Do Another One If We Find The Right Story Award For Most Boring Blockbuster Plot
Congratulations to Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon for spending nine years responding to enquiries about the Bourne franchise by saying, essentially, that they’d only do it if they could find a compelling reason to bring the character back. But also fuck Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon for finally coming back with a dull, lazy story that introduced some random daddy issues as a half-baked excuse to bring the spy back into action, a story that actually makes “The Bourne Legacy” look compelling in retrospect. But also congratulations to Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon for their new dumptrucks of money.
Worst Use Of Rebecca Ferguson
A year ago, not many people knew who Rebecca Ferguson was, and then she ended up stealing “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation” away almost entirely with a performance that suggested a movie star in the making. Which is why it’s so bizarre to see her pop up in “Florence Foster Jenkins” as Hugh Grant’s mistress to do absolutely nothing and then disappear.
Most Surprising Use Of Syphilis As A Plot Device
“Florence Foster Jenkins.” No, seriously. She has syphilis. It’s pretty sad. Her nose doesn’t fall off, though.