The 2020 Danny’s

In Hollywood, they are getting ready for the 92nd annual Academy Awards, but here in Tampa, we’re preparing to hand out the 8th annual Danny’s. Unlike the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, we’re not set in our ways here at the Danny’s. I make up the rules, create the categories, and award the winners as I see fit.

This year, the Danny’s have decided to honor originality. I have railed against Hollywood’s tendency towards sequels, remakes, reboots, and reimaginings so often, I’m beginning to feel like Clint Eastwood staring down a bunch of punk kids and telling them to get off his lawn. The good news is that at least some filmmakers seem to be listening. 2019 was the best year for movies in a long time. At least three films vied for the coveted Best Picture Danny this year. It was not an easy decision. Happily, I won’t make you sit through a three-hour ceremony to find out the victor.

The Best Picture Danny (and winner of the number 12 spot on my Top Films of the 2010s list) goes to Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. The title brings to mind a fairy tale and, at its heart, that’s exactly what Quentin Tarantino’s best film since Pulp Fiction delivers. The movie captures 1969 Los Angeles in loving detail so well that I felt like I had taken a ride in a time machine. Tarantino’s trademarks are still there. The dialogue is unbelievably slick. Things end in extreme violence. But it all serves as a love-letter to a bygone era of filmmaking. It’s also a wistful speculation for what might have been. The ending (which I won’t spoil) is gutsy, but one very fitting for a fairy tale, and something wholly original that I never expected from Quentin Tarantino. 

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood also takes a Danny for Best Scene. About halfway through the film, Margot Robbie, as Sharon Tate, sneaks into a theater to watch herself acting in a comedy called The Wrecking Crew. I love the fact that Tarantino used the actual footage of Tate and not a recreation with Robbie. The delight on Robbie’s face as the audience laughs at “her” performance is infectious. I’ve never seen a scene like it before.

My Best Director Danny goes to Bong Joon-ho for the South Korean film Parasite, my runner up for Best Picture. Without a doubt, this was the movie from last year that most reflects our times. And it is told with a very singular vision. What starts as a comedy about the differences between the haves and have-nots evolves into suspense and then horror before finally becoming something wholly unique. It is all too easy to tell stories about class warfare by makings things starkly black or white. Parasite succeeds because each character lives somewhere inside the same shade of gray where we all find ourselves. It’s also a good reminder that they make great movies in other countries. If Hollywood decides to do an American remake, my guess is that it will be horrible unless they pay Joon-ho a mint to direct it (which I hope he doesn’t).

I’m being counterintuitive by awarding my Best Screenplay Danny to Greta Gerwig for Little Women, my second runner-up for Best Picture. Louisa May Alcott’s story has been put on film more than almost any other. That’s why it’s all the more impressive that Gerwig found a distinctly new way to tell it. Her ingenious script jumps back and forth in time, showing the March sisters’ lives at two very different points. This device gives the film a freshness that seems like the only way another retelling of the story could possibly work. It also lets Gerwig play with the idea of memory by showing how the way we remember the past impacts what we do in the present. The film also creates an enchanting world that you don’t want to leave. As the credits rolled and the lights came up, I found myself wishing that the story would continue. Only a truly great film that can cause that feeling.

My first Best Actor in an Origin Story award goes to Joaquin Phoenix for Joker. I had a few problems with the movie overall. It’s probably my least favorite of the nine films nominated for the “other” Best Picture award. But there’s no denying the fact that Phoenix is fantastic as the title character. It’s a part that has been done to death, but he still found a way to make it seem new. He has a scene in a public bathroom after some very bad shit has gone down that is so extraordinarily strange, I don’t have words to describe it. I remember it vividly, though. A character like the Joker should be seared into your brain for life. Phoenix does just that.

My second Best Actor in an Origin Story award goes to Taron Egerton for the Elton John biopic Rocketman. Much like Rami Malek as Freddy Mercury last year, Egerton simply is Elton John up on the screen. In a way, he’s even more impressive because he does his own singing. The movie itself creatively uses Elton’s music, weaving the songs around the changes in the singer’s life. A lesser actor would have been drowned out by the fantastic music. Instead, Egerton makes it his own.

More acting awards are coming up, but, like the Academy Awards, I’ll make you wait through some other categories first.

A new category this year is Film That Should Never Have Worked in a Hundred Thousand Years but Did. There’s only one possible winner, and that’s Jojo Rabbit. Writer/Director Taika Waititi has more guts than just about any filmmaker on the planet for his coming of age story about a young Nazi whose imaginary friend is a version of Adolph Hitler like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. Waititi doubles down by playing this broadly comic version of the worst person of the 20th Century himself. Some have complained the movie is nothing but a “Nazis are bad story.” It’s so much more than that, though. The film shows how a poisoned mind can be changed given the right environment. That’s an idea which should really speak to our age.

The Danny for Mistitled Movie goes to Marriage Story, which should have been called Divorce Story instead. Noah Baumbach deserves all the recognition he’s getting for a brutally honest look at how divorce impacts all sides of a family. There aren’t any winners or losers. Only people trying to get by.

The next acting award is for Best Double Performances, and it goes to Scarlett Johannsen for Jojo Rabbit & Marriage Story. She plays two very different types of mothers in the two films. But both roles are connected by how much she loves her son and the steps she’s willing to take to do what she thinks is right for him. Even though the two movies have drastically different tones, both performances are at once fierce and heartbreaking.

My final acting award is for Best Child Performance and goes to ten-year-old Julia Butters for her supporting work in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. There’s about a fifteen-minute stretch in the movie where it’s mainly just her and Leonardo DiCaprio. Leo is great, but the young Ms. Butters makes a strong impression playing a child actress who is talented beyond her years. When DiCaprio’s character earns a compliment from her, there’s no doubt that his tears are extremely well earned.

The first Technical Award of Merit Danny goes to 1917, which is an amazing piece of filmmaking. The story that follows two soldiers on the frontlines of World War I is a somewhat familiar one, but presenting the entire film as if done in one take raises the material to new levels. I also give the Best Cinematography Danny to the great Roger Deakins as well for what I can only imagine was the most challenging shoot of his career.

The second Technical Award of Merit goes to Ford v. Ferrari. I liked this movie quite a bit, though I couldn’t find room in my top awards for it. The racing sequences are astonishingly well done, with exquisite sound design and editing work.

The Danny for being Unjustly Snubbed by the Academy goes to Uncut Gems. Somehow, this movie about a valuable opal and wagering on the NBA playoffs had me on the edge of my seat more than anything else that came out last year. If Adam Sandler weren’t a goofball who puts out crap on Netflix as often as LeBron makes a bucket, he would have received the Best Actor nomination he no doubt deserved.

The Agatha Christie Award goes to Knives Out, written and directed by Rian Johnson. Playing along the same lines as Parasite, he creates a mystery that I think would have made great author proud. Daniel Craig is also fantastic as the southern-fried yet still debonair private eye who solves the case. I will even admit to looking forward to the inevitable follow-up.

Even though it’s an unnecessary sequel, Toy Story 4 still wins the Best Animated Film Danny. As I wrote in my piece on the Toy Story franchise, I’m grateful that Disney and Pixar took the time to find something new to say about Woody & Buzz’s world. And Forky made for a great new character.

A few quick thoughts on films not mentioned above. I really liked The Two Popes, a fascinating look inside the relationship between the very different Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. While I enjoyed Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, it could have been at least a half-hour shorter. Tom Hanks was terrific in It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, as was Renee Zellweger in Judy, but I wanted to award performances that went against the expected this year. I apologize to Bombshell, Harriet, and Pain & Glory since I haven’t seen them yet.

Thanks for making it to the end of another Danny’s. Grammarly tells me the average reading time of my article is six and a half minutes. That’s much more economical than the three-hour broadcast from the Academy. Fewer commercials too! If any of my winners would rather come to collect their Danny awards tonight at my house, my door is open, and I’ve got some Guinness to help you celebrate.