The Year in Film: 2020

For the first time in over 70 years, Dickens is great on film again.

My Top 20

1. The Personal History of David Copperfield
2. The Trial of the Chicago 7
3. Promising Young Woman
4. One Night in Miami…
5. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
6. Judas and the Black Messiah
7. Soul
8. Minari
9. The Father
10. Tenet
11. News of the World
12. Sound of Metal
13. Emma.
14. Dear Comrades!
15. A Whisker Away
16. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
17. The Painted Bird
18. Onward
19. Wolfwalkers
20. The Dig

They are **** films through #13.  After that they are high ***.5.  A reminder that Quo Vadis, Aida? was not Oscar submitted for 2020 and didn’t get released in the States until March so it’s actually a 2021 film for my purposes.  If it was a 2020 film it would be at #10.

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Best Adapted Screenplay: 2001

“There was a hush, and all turned their eyes on Frodo. He was shaken by a sudden shame and fear; and he felt a great reluctance to reveal the Ring, and a loathing of its touch. He wished he was far away. The Ring gleamed and flickered as he held it up before them in his trembling hand.” (p 240-241)

My Top 10

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
2. In the Bedroom
3. Ghost World
4. Vanilla Sky
5. Last Orders
6. Shrek
7. Ocean’s Eleven
8. A.I.
9. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
10. The Pledge

note:  Not a great Top 5 or Top 10.  It’s another of those years which is balanced by a fantastic group of original scripts (Amelie, Memento, Gosford Park, Monster’s Ball, Amores Perros, Royal Tenenbaums, Others, Man Who Wasn’t There).  My #11 (Black Hawk Down), 13 (Iris) and 14 (Bridget Jones) are reviewed down below because of nominations while the rest of my list (which reached 19) is down at the bottom.

 

The Year in Film: 2019

First of all, it’s the best performance of the year and it’s from the best film of the year. Second of all, as a straight male, I provide enough for the straight males on this site and thought a picture for those who aren’t straight males would be a treat.

My Top 20

1. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
2. Little Women
3. 1917
4. Jojo Rabbit
5. Pain and Glory
6. Parasite
7. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
8. Knives Out
9. Rocketman
10. Marriage Story
11. Toy Story 4
12. Us
13. Avengers: Endgame
14. The Farewell
15. The Irishman
16. Ford v Ferrari
17. Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
18. The Man Who Killed don Quixote
19. Dolemite is My Name
20. Spider-Man: Far From Home

These are all **** films and they are all the **** films for the year (though I haven’t seen Les Miserables).

 

The Year in Box Office: 2019 (updated)

 

The Year in Box Office

2019

note:  There were some things I meant to put in the post that I forgot.  They are added at the end.

As may be obvious, I have become greatly interested in box office results lately, noting in the last several Adapted Screenplay posts the highest grossing adapted films I haven’t seen for the year.  I have also put a lot of Box Office Mojo’s information into spreadsheets, which is doubly good, since, first, they became a bunch of dicks and put a lot of stuff behind a paywall (fuck you Bezos) and second, because I make a lot more use of it than they did anyway.

One of the bizarre things they have done now is that all of their yearly results initially list the calendar year.  Who has ever wanted that?  Who wants to look at 2015 and see that Force Awakens grossed just short of what Jurassic World grossed simply because of how late in the year it was released?  It’s a stupid default setting.  I don’t deal with that shit.  These are all based off the release date, not the calendar year of when grosses were accumulated.

It seems safe now to run this list now that COVID-19 has pretty much decimated the movie theater industry and brought box office to a virtual standstill, which means I can be pretty confident that nothing on this list will change much, if at all.

 

The Year in Film: 2018

There isn’t a shot with all three of them in it and it didn’t seem right to leave one of them out. The best, wittiest and most hilarious film of what was actually a great year for films.

My Top 20

1. The Favourite
2. First Man
3. Roma
4. If Beale Street Could Talk
5. A Star is Born
6. BlackKklansman
7. Cold War
8. Black Panther
9. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
10. Mary Poppins Returns
11. Avengers: Infinity War
12. Incredibles 2
13. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
14. Capernaum
15. A Quiet Place
16. Stan & Ollie
17. Shoplifters
18. Paddington 2
19. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
20. The Other Side of the Wind

This is the best Top 5 in five years but it’s the best Top 6 since 2006.  In fact, BlackKklansman is the best #6 film since 2005 and one of the best ever.  It’s the best Top 10 since 2007.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 1983

Since the character of Garrett doesn’t even exist in the novel, this scene clearly isn’t in the novel.

My Top 10

1. Terms of Endearment
2. Betrayal
3. Educating Rita
4. The Right Stuff
5. The Year of Living Dangerously
6. The Dresser
7. Reuben Reuben
8. Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

note:  That’s it.  Just eight films.  And there’s really a big drop-off after the Top 5.  Actually, there’s really kind of a drop-off after the Top 3.

 

The Year in Film: 2017

The best ending of the year in the best film of the year.

My Top 20:

1. Lady Bird
2. Dunkirk
3. The Shape of Water
4. The Post
5. Coco
6. Darkest Hour
7. Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
8. Phantom Thread
9. I, Tonya
10. It: Chapter One
11. Get Out
12. Call Me By Your Name
13. T2 Trainspotting
14. Beauty and the Beast
15. Wonder Woman
16. The Greatest Showman
17. Spider-Man: Homecoming
18. Blade Runner 2049
19. The Big Sick
20. Okja

note:  The first 15 films are ****.  There are a few awards films I haven’t seen yet that are all mentioned below.

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 2010

If we kept watching, would it keep spinning? And would it matter?

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films (or directors) in olive are links to earlier posts that I don’t want to have show up in blue and be mistaken for a nominee.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 20 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. Inception  *
2. The Social Network  **
3. True Grit  *
4. The King’s Speech  *
5. The Ghost Writer
6. Winter’s Bone  *
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I
8. Black Swan  *
9. Toy Story 3  *
10. The Town
11. Biutiful
12. Another Year
13. The Kids are All Right  *
14. Tangled
15. Shutter Island
16. Never Let Me Go
17. Rabbit Hole
18. Blue Valentine
19. Green Zone
20. Somewhere

Analysis:  This is one of those rare years where I have changed my original Best Picture winner.  It’s not that Social Network went down at all, but that Inception went up.  And, really, it’s a pretty close finish between the two.
The Social Network ties LA Confidential for the most Consensus noms ever (11) and no film since (through 2016) has had more wins (8) or points (845) though both are fewer than The Hurt Locker in the year before.
With seven nominees in my Top 10, the Oscar Score is 87.7, by far the highest in any year with more than five nominees (and the third highest ever irregardless of the number of nominees).

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 2009

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films (or directors) in olive are links to earlier posts that I don’t want to have show up in blue and be mistaken for a nominee.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 15 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.  I’m only going with the Top 15 because there are 15 **** films and several categories don’t even get that far.  It’s a weak year all around.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. Inglourious Basterds  *
2. The Hurt Locker  **
3. A Serious Man  *
4. Up  *
5. Broken Embraces
6. An Education  *
7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
8. Up in the Air  *
9. A Single Man
10. District 9  *
11. The White Ribbon
12. The Informant
13. Sin Nombre
14. Coraline
15. Revanche

Analysis:  As mentioned above, I went with 15 films because that’s how many **** films there are in this year.  That the Oscars nominated seven of them (as well as my #16 film, Precious) speaks well of their first year with 10 nominees in 66 years.

 

The Year in Film: 2016

Best traffic jam ever.

My Top 20:

1. La La Land
2. Arrival
3. The Handmaiden
4. Manchester by the Sea
5. Moonlight
6. Silence
7. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
8. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
9. Zootopia
10. Moana
11. Finding Dory
12. The Salesman
13. Nocturnal Animals
14. Fences
15. Hell or High Water
16. Julieta
17. Kubo and the Two Strings
18. A Monster Calls
19. 20th Century Women
20. Sing Street

note:  All 20 films are ****.  There were several high ***.5 films that I wish could have made the list – Captain America: Civil War, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Hail Caesar! and Passengers were among my considered choices.  There are only a handful of films that earned any award nominations that I haven’t seen yet (I Daniel Blake, Certain Woman, Allied, Your Name, King’s Choice) so I don’t think this list will be changing (depending on Your Name, perhaps), unlike the last several years, when this list was written more closely after the Oscars.