Sunday Best: Catholic Skywalker Awards 2020 - BEST IN MOVIES

 With 2020 coming to a close, it is time for us to choose what the best entertainment of the year was.  And just as the Academy Awards have their "Oscars", so too the Catholic Skywalker Awards have their "Kal-El's"

 I have gone through as many movies as possible this year. There were several that I missed and so was unable to place.  But with the pandemic shutting down most of the theaters, pickings were slim.  This year I am doing two things I normally would not do:

1. Include movies that premiered on streaming platforms

2. Include 1917.  This movie technically came out in 2019, but it was not out for general release until January.  This may be a cheat, but I don't care.


So of the movies  I've seen this year, here are the winners:

(My appreciation and judgment of a film should not be taken as a recommendation. Choosing to watch any of these films is the reader's responsibility)

BEST PICTURE

Hamilton

Before anyone complains that this is a stage production and not a film, allow be to be clear: this is a film that was slated for theatrical release.  It is filmed all on stage, but it uses several camera techniques that make this a distinctly film version of the stage musical.  As I wrote from my review:  From my review: 

"Disney was very smart to make this movie a "concert" version of the full stage musical instead a full cinematic film like 2012's Les Miserables.  I get the distinct impression that Hamilton would not translate to this style nearly as well.  The show has a deceptively simple set that actually contains hidden complexities to allow rapid scene changes.  The production design is a strange combinations of anachronistic and time-appropriate styles.  The costumes and props are all of the period, but the behavior, hairstyles, language all belong to the modern era.  There is a special kind of artificiality to live-theater that allows us to accept more readily a story's lack of reality.  Making this a cinematic endeavor would draw too much attention to the anachronisms...."

Also from my review:

I don't think there is a Broadway musical that has been more hyped than Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton.  When the touring production came to my city, the tickets were so ridiculously expensive that I missed out on seeing it.  So it was with great curiosity that I watched the movie on Disney+ a few days ago to see if it lived up to the the bar that it set.

And boy did it ever!

Hamilton is one of the greatest musicals of all time.  I would put it up there with Les Miserables, The Sound of Music, and The Phantom of the Opera.  It deserves all of its accolades....

The key to understanding this is that the primary purpose of any dramatic art, but most particularly in a musical, is that it must make you feel something deeply.  All other considerations must be secondary to the emotional impact of the musical.  And this is why Hamilton is a work of genius... 

...

Hamilton left me emotionally drained in a good way.  When it was over, I felt like I didn't just watch a musical, but that I had an experience.

And that is the highest compliment I can give a musical.

RUNNERS UP

The Way Back

1917

Greyhound

Tenet

BEST DIRECTOR

Sam Mendes - 1917

(from my review of 1917)

The film is completely locked into the perspective of our heroes.  Director Sam Mendes has done something truly incredible.  The movie is filmed to look like one singe continuous shot from start to finish.  There are no cut aways to the where the enemy is, there is no comforting cutting back and forth to different parts of the front.  The camera stays on our heroes and we almost never see more than what they can see.  I read one review that said the effect is that you feel like the third man on the mission.  That is absolutely the feeling you get.  You feel the claustrophobia of the trenches followed by the terror of No Man's Land.  Every inch of ground is an obstacle.  Behind every door could be lurking death.  The danger is all around, in front, behind, to the side, above, and below.

Normally, I would find the single-camera angle to be too gimmicky.  It would say to me that this was simply an exercise in showing off by a director who wants to dazzle us by his skills in using the camera.  I've talked to others who found this style distracting.  To be honest, the single-take structure often took me out of the movie.  But even though this usually is a detriment, it wasn't the case here.  When I did notice the camera work, it filled me with a sense of awe at the vision it took to put this movie together.  Sometimes this style prevents any real intimacy with the actors.  But Mendes is able to seamlessly move the camera into a quiet close up so that we can see the scared or haunted eyes of our heroes.  The camera passes by so much wreckage and destruction that you want to linger because you know that there are compelling stories behind the carnage.  But just like our heroes, we have to keep pressing forward or the mission will fail.

RUNNERS UP

Christopher Nolan - Tenet

Ron Howard - Hillbilly Elegy

Aaron Schneider. -Greyhound

Gavin O'Connor - The Way Back

BEST ACTOR

Chadwick Boseman - Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

 

There is much I don't care for about Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.  But I can see why actors would love to be in this movie.  it gives them a great deal of dramatic meat to bite into and chew the scenery in ways that would normally not work.  Boseman's performance as Leevee is utterly fantastic.  His character has a heart that is a black hole of self-centeredness that he covers with swagger.  But when the damn breaks, Boseman pushes Leevee to emotional depths that are so incredibly difficult to perform well without going over the edge.  Leevee is charming, funny, scary, detestable, and sympathetic, sometimes all at the same time.  And Boseman plays those contradictions wonderfully.

Normally I don't like to pull real life into the dramatic experience, but while I was watching, I could not help think about how Boseman was dying while he was making this film and he knew it.  The dramatic weight loss alone in him is shocking.  I could not help but think about how this actor's own mortality was weighing on him and yet he either puts that away or uses that experience to fuel his best performance in a career and life ended too soon.

RUNNERS UP

Ben Affleck - The Way Back

George MacKay- 1917

John David Washington - Tenet

George Clooney - The Midnight Sky

BEST ACTRESS

Glen Close - Hillbilly Elegy

From my review of Hillbilly Elegy

Close is amazing in what I think is her best performance that I have seen.  Mawmaw is resolute but unsure and desperate.  She is overwhelmed but determined.  Close never turns her into an angelic or hickish caricature, even when having to deliver terrible lines about good Terminators and bad terminators.  She absolutely disappears into this performance.  

...

One of the other things that Close does that I respect is that she never judges Mawmaw.  In Avengers: Endgame you could feel how Mark Ruffalo had a bit of contempt for the classic Hulk character and part of his performance was a critique of that character's simplicity.  Close never does that to Mawmaw.  She never condescends while playing this very unrefined woman.  She is not a collection of outward stereotypical behaviors that you often see when people from this region are portrayed.  And because Close does this, her Mawmaw is so real that she feels like people I have in my own family.  Close completely commits to Mawmaw as a real person and in the magic of acting, she becomes real.

RUNNERS UP

Charlize Theron - The Old Guard

Viola Davis - Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Rachel McAdams - Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

Gal Godot - Wonder Woman 1984

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Glynn Turman - Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

One of the things I respect from an actor is when they are able to "Do nothing effectively."  I teach my students that "acting is reacting."  To be a truly effective actor, you have to exist as a real person in the moment.  Turman actually hooked me with a single reaction shot.  Throughout the movie, Turman is the voice of reason and conscience.  He dispenses common sense wisdom and he does so with the weariness of a man who has earned this wisdom through a life of bad choices.  You can see his frustration as he tries to impart this wisdom to Leevee.  Then after some gentle ribbing, Leevee bursts into a devastating monologue about the family tragedy that defined him.  During that monologue it cut to Turman's character as he listened.  His eyes were red and pained, his face a mask of horror and sympathy.  In those brief seconds, Thurman not only conveyed everything his character was feeling and the depths of sympathy he had, but he gave Boseman's character an added emotional boost that pushed the emotional thermometer even higher.  And that is what a great supporting actor does.

RUNNERS UP
Robert Pattinson - Tenet

Dean-Charles Chapman - 1917

JK Simmons - Palm Springs

Leslie Odom Jr. - Hamilton

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Amy Adams - Hillbilly Elegy

From my review of Hillbilly Elegy:

Adams continues to shine her talent.  Her Bev is infuriating and familiar in the way we've seen adults act like spoiled children because life did not turn out the way they wanted.  Her pain is selfish and self-centered, but it is still very real.  

...

There is a hollowness to her eyes during this performance that really shook me.  When she looks at the characters who love her, it's like she sees right past them to the thing that she wants from them.  It is always a little wild and it is scary in its violence.  It provides the perfect foil to Close's Mawmaw who looks deep into you with laser focus, cutting away the fluff of self-importance.  Adams gives us the face someone who has turned every person in her life into an object of gain and it is terrifying and heartbreaking to see.

RUNNERS UP

Haley Bennet - Hillbilly Elegy

Phillipa Soo - Hamilton

Renee Elise Goldsberry - Hamilton

Lara McDonald - Artemis Fowl

BEST SCREENPLAY

Brad Ingelsby – The Way Back

Ingelsby could have written a simple sports movie that tied on-the-court victory to moral redemption.  But thankfully he chose to go a little deeper.  He still uses basketball as the a medium in which redemption occurs, but he was smart enough to not make it the means.  Affleck's Jack begins to learn responsibility and compassion because of basketball, but his problems cannot be fixed by simply winning a game.  Despite anything he accomplishes there, he still has to deal with the demons inside of his personal life.  But the movie never loses its connection to the sport and and what it represents.  Even in the final shots, basketball is the focus as the symbol of how this broken man has passed on both his virtues and his vices but is still striving to put his life back together.

RUNNERS UP

Sam Mendes, Krysty Wilson-Cairns - 1917

Dan Scanlong, Jason Headley, and Keith Bunin - Onward

Christopher Nolan - Tenet

Tom Hanks - Greyhound

BEST MAKEUP

Wonder Woman: 1984

One of the fun aspects of the movie is how they use the makeup in both bold and subtle ways.  I particularly like the way it shows the slow fatigue in both Diana and Max as they are worn down.  I also love the way they use the makeup to help create the changing character of Barbara throughout the film.

RUNNERS-UP

The Old Guard

Artemis Fowl

Bill and Ted Face the Music

BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS

Tenet

Even those who did not like this movie tend to be very impressed with how it was put together.  I have to say that I love how Nolan uses practical effects whenever he can.  In this movie, the simple effect of using a reverse mag can create wondrous shots that you would swear were conjured in a computer.

RUNNERS-UP

Godmothered

Artemis Fowl

Wonder Woman: 1984

BEST SCORE

Patrick Doyle - Artemis Fowl

This movie was not very good, but score elevated it higher than it would have been otherwise.  As always, Doyle gives us a moving and heroic score that gives us a glimpse into what this film could have been.

RUNNERS-UP

Wonder Woman:1984

Soul

Greyhound

BEST COSTUMES

Wonder Woman: 1984

I love the updated costume of the main hero that reflects the shininess of the era.  The costuming of all the characters does an excellent job of conveying not only the period in which it takes place but the personalities of the people inhabiting them.

RUNNERS-UP

Hamilton

Bill and Ted Face the Music

Greyhound

BEST SONG

"It's Quiet Uptown" - Hamilton

This song is absolutely devastating emotionally and moved my wife to tears the first time she heard it.  In one song, it not only covers a great deal of emotional character work, but it uplifts in a way that shows the absolute power of mercy.

Below are the list of all the films of 2020 that I have seen, ranked in order of excellence:

Hamilton 1917 1917 The Way Back Wonder Woman 1984 Greyhound Soul Tenet Bill and Ted Face the Music Godmothered Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga Spencer Confidential The Old Guard Extraction The Wrong Missy Hillbilly Elegy Onward The Midnight Sky An American Pickle The Lovebirds Artemis Fowl Enola Holmes Dads Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Palm Springs Mank Birds of Prey

So that is my list and the conclusion of this year's Catholic Skywalker Awards.  

Thoughts?