The 2019 Danny’s

Welcome to the 7th annual Danny’s! For the uninitiated, these are my movie awards that I hand out the same day as the Academy Awards. I make up the categories and decide on the winners as I see fit. And to prove how ahead of the curve I am, the Academy tried to imitate me this year when they announced a Best Popular Film category. While justifiable outrage from their members and the media killed that bad idea quickly, I applaud the spirit of coming up with innovative new awards. To help them out, I will once again show the Academy how it is done.

Their first mistake is that when it comes to the idea of Best Film, there can be only one, and this is something I really struggled with this year. (Yes, it’s true that early on in the Danny’s I once awarded three films Best Picture. I was dumb and foolish back then; kind of like the Golden Globes every year.) Two movies really stood out to me. One is flashy and nominated by the Academy. The other is a small indie released with little fanfare. As much as I want to award the latter, I have to go with the film I genuinely liked the best.

Drumroll, please…My award for Best Picture goes to The Favourite. Anyone who has followed the Danny’s over the years knows my fondness for dark comedy. The Favourite made me laugh with jaundiced glee many times, which is one of my favo(u)rite things that a movie can do. Loosely based on the later years of England’s Queen Anne in the early 18th Century, it’s a biting look at how people will strive and connive to make a comfortable life for themselves in difficult times. As the lengths that Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone’s characters go to to please Olivia Colman’s Queen become more desperate and outrageous, the more I felt this had to be my Best Picture choice. All the actresses deliver exceptional performances in what could have been just a straightforward costume drama but instead goes in wholly unexpected directions. I will never look at rabbits the same way again.

While I have only one Best Picture, since I can create any award I want, I am instituting a Best Picture Runner Up Award this year. Feel free to steal the idea Academy. The Cannes Film Festival already does it. This still prestigious award goes to Leave No Trace, which tells the story of a veteran living off the grid in the Pacific Northwest with his thirteen-year-old daughter. The struggles of vets coming back from the seemingly endless wars in the middle east are sadly under reported. Suicide rates for veterans aged 18-34 are the highest of any demographic in the country. The father in this film is not quite to that point but is still lost to such a degree that he can’t function in normal society. Being responsible for a young girl who needs to learn how to live in the world is an impossible situation that this movie captures with a beautiful sadness. Ben Foster as the vet and relative newcomer Thomasin McKenzie as his daughter are both resilient and heartbreaking.  My guess is most people reading this haven’t seen it. Please seek it out.

I’m going off the reservation with my Best Director award even though it is being given to a familiar name. The movie is They Shall Not Grow Old, and the director is none other than Mr. Lord of the Rings himself, Peter Jackson. He was commissioned by the British Imperial War Museum to make a documentary commemorating the 100-year anniversary of the end of World War I. Jackson and his team took hundreds of hours of footage shot during the war, hundreds more hours of archival interviews with surviving veterans and put together a searing portrait of what it was like to fight in the War to End All Wars. I generally am not in favor of colorizing old footage, but in this case, Jackson did so to create a more realistic look that modern moviegoers can better relate too. The soundtrack work is incredible as each sound effect had to be recorded from scratch. The soldier’s stories range from informative to humorous to tragic, and the film intertwines their audio with the old footage seamlessly. I wish more top talents like Peter Jackson would take on projects like this one.

For my first acting award, I am giving what I call the Chameleon Prize to Rami Malek for his work in Bohemian Rhapsody. I thought the film was an entertaining though by the book biopic, but Malek is electric as Freddy Mercury. He would be worthy of this award for his recreation of Mercury’s onstage musical performances alone. The Live Aid sequence is a fantastic accomplishment and a high point of the film. Malek’s work when Mercury isn’t onstage is just as impressive as he plumbs the depths of a complicated life. Never for a second did I have the impression I was watching something artificial.

The Dan Getting Over His Biases Award Number One goes to Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga for A Star is Born. I wasn’t all that excited to see yet another version of this story but was pleasantly surprised by Cooper’s ability to turn himself into a singer and the depth of emotion that Gaga brought to her role. While I am at it, I will give my Best Music award to this film for both Shallow (written by Gaga, Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando, and Andrew Wyatt) and Maybe It’s Time (written by the great Jason Isbell).

The Dan Getting Over His Biases Award Number Two goes to Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant for Can You Ever Forgive Me?. My bias revolved around McCarthy, who I have generally found annoying over the years and which made me not want to see this one. I’m glad I got over it since this was one of the better movies I have seen about writing, a topic not easily dramatized. McCarthy does excellent work as a self-loathing author who takes on the writing styles of dead greats to make a buck selling phony letters. I’ve always been a fan of Grant and his work as her flamboyant friend and accomplice is a welcome return from wherever he has been hiding.

Like the Academy should, I award a Lifetime Achievement in Acting to Glenn Close for The Wife. She was very good in the movie though maybe not the best actress this year. When you can create categories on the fly, situations like this are easy. This award will more than make up for the six times she was nominated and didn’t win.

The Cornering the Market on the Best Supporting Actor Award goes to Mahershala Ali for Green Book. After a deserving win in this category for Moonlight a couple years ago, this performance solidifies Ali as one of the best talents working in Hollywood today.

The Pit of Despair Award for Acting goes to Ethan Hawke for First Reformed. His work as a troubled, alcoholic priest was the most difficult performance to watch this year, which is precisely what the movie called for. I also give writer/director Paul Schrader the Best Ambiguous Ending Award for keeping me wondering exactly what the hell was going on at the end of this disturbing film.

My Best Original Screenplay Award goes to Bo Burnham for Eighth Grade. I don’t know how it feels to be an awkward 8th-grade girl and certainly have no clue what it’s like to go to middle school in this decade, but Burnham’s movie helped me understand both situations much more than I would have ever thought possible.

My Best Adapted Screenplay goes to Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole for Black Panther. Superhero movies have been done to death. Finding a way to make a superhero movie both entertaining and relevant to our times is almost a miracle.

The Do the Right Thing Award goes to the Academy for finally nominating Spike Lee for Directing. Lee knows film history better than any director this side of Martin Scorsese and uses that knowledge to integrate the shameful legacy of films like Birth of a Nation into his very entertaining BlacKkKlansman. The story about a black police officer (wonderfully played by Denzel Washington’s son, John David Washington) who infiltrates the KKK becomes something more potent in Lee’s sure hands.

Is it weird to give the Best Art Direction award to an animated film? I hope not because The Incredibles 2 created the most stunning world I saw in any movie this year. The universe the Incredibles films inhabit is a weirdly charming mishmash of the 1950s and today. I wish I could visit it.

A different film gets Best Animated Feature though, and that’s Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. This was like watching a comic book come to life and the delightful way the movie brings together Spider-Men, Spider-Women, and a Spider-Pig from alternate realities is wholly original.

Best Costume Design goes to Vice. I thought the movie was interesting, but at least one step over the top. I seriously laughed out loud though when I noticed that a character the movie set-up as the biggest yahoo in a focus group being held during the early George W. Bush years was wearing a Keyshawn Johnson Buccaneers jersey. Well done!

The Lingering With Me Award goes to Roma. My first impression of the film was that it was about a half hour too long and maybe a shade too inconsequential, but I have to admit the story of a pregnant young maid in 1970s Mexico has stuck with me in a way few films do. I may have to revisit it. The black and white cinematography was gorgeous and gets my award for that discipline.

My Best Villian Award goes to Thanos for wiping out half of the population of the entire universe.

Three quick nods to movies I liked but didn’t have room to cover more in-depth: First Man, a low key but heartfelt biopic of Neil Armstrong; Mission Impossible: Fallout, my favorite action movie of the year; and Searching, an innovative mystery about a missing girl told using only what is seen on computer and phone screens. I should also apologize to If Beale Street Could Talk, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and Cold War since I have not seen them.

Thanks for reading through another year of the Danny’s. And if you happen to be in the Academy, since you can’t seem to find a host for your awards show, please keep me in mind for next year. I’m available and will come cheap!