2023 Golden Shrimp Award WINNERS

Posted bymikemargetisPosted inUncategorizedTags:, , , , ,

Nothing fancy this year, just a list of my winners. This is as close to a meritocracy as I could get.

Best Picture

Not even nominated for a single fucking Oscar, my favorite film of the year was also the most emotionally resonant. I think the actual problem is that voters didn’t see this movie. Check out my initial review here – All of Us Strangers review

Best Director 

A movie critic I like and respect, I think Adam Nayman for The Ringer, said The Zone of Interest is my Oppenheimer of ’23, and I’d like to echo that sentiment. More of a MoMA art installation piece than a dramatic narrative, The Zone of Interest is a monument to the dangers of complicity. It’s technically about the Holocaust but it’s really about us, and while that may sound like it’s some moralistic, didactic bullshit, it’s really not. Glazer never tells us how to feel, he just shows us. He never let’s his actors go over-the-top, his camera never moves. It’s tempting to call this pretentious I’m sure, but that’s only true when something is ineffective and The Zone of Interest, especially it’s swing-for-the-fences ending, let’s you leave the theater but keeps a part of you. This is one of the best and most unique artists working today and the only reason he isn’t held in the same regard as Nolan is he doesn’t make movies about explosions. – My initial The Zone of Interest review

Best Actress in a Leading Role

“WHERE THE FUCK IS LILY GLADSTONE?!?!?!?!?!” – people reading this.

Gladstone is phenomenal in Killers of the Flower Moon, I just honestly believe it was more of a supporting performance than a leading one. The six women I’ve chosen are in most every frame of their respective movies, while Gladstone‘s Mollie is missing for a good third of her movie, and the story is never really told from her perspective.

ANYWAY – this was a real race between Huller and Stone for me, two of the absolute best, Top 5 performances of the year, that are radically different. I went back and forth on this but ultimately went with Huller cause it’s just more nuanced. There are moments where I found myself scratching my head, saying to myself, “How the fuck did she do that?” Definitely one of the more conventional, straight forward films in this year’s Oscar race, Anatomy of a Fall manages to pump fresh juice into a tired courtroom drama genre and a big reason for that is the great Sandra Huller. Here’s my initial review of Anatomy of a Fall.

Also let’s comment on my four other nominees, model turned actress Teyona Taylor is stunning in A.V. Rockwell‘s debut A Thousand and One that would have had more traction if it was just a better film, I think.

Previous Oscar winners Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman are also both stunning as two very different but fully realized monsters in Todd Haynes‘ tragic and hilarious May December.

My dark horse pick is one that any fringe horror nerd will appreciate – the always underrated Marin Ireland as an autistic doctor trying to bring a nurse’s dead daughter back to life. One of the more cerebral “horror” films of the past five years or so, and maybe even more of a drama than a horror film. Ireland completely props it up, making a good movie hit like a great one.

Best Actor in a Leading Role

My pick for the absolute, very best #1 performance of the year is the also underrated Andrew Scott in Andrew Haigh‘s touching and deeply personal meditation on death and self acceptance, All of Us Strangers. Sorry Huller, Stone, Gladstone and Murphy, this performance was so emotionally overwhelming for me it practically altered my body chemistry. The fact it feels so effortless at the same time is the real kicker. To be super pretentious and shitty about it, Scott doesn’t act, he simply is.

My runner-up would have to be Oscar frontrunner Cillian Murphy‘s super meticulous work in Oppenheimer.

Jeffrey Wright also delivers the best performance of an already incredible career, but his movie is ultimately not as good as Murphy or Scott‘s.

I just watched Wim Wenders‘ Perfect Days earlier this week and while I’ve seen far better, stranger and more poignant Wenders movies, Japanese veteran Koji Yakusho (Cure, Babel) is fucking magnificent in it as a Tokyo-based toilet cleaner trying to keep a positive spin on things. The movie ends with a close-up of Yakusho driving that runs him through a full gamut of emotions while Nina Simone‘s “Feeling Good” plays. It’s very much in the vein of Timmy Chalamet‘s Sufjan Stevens moment in Call Me By Your Name or Bob Hoskins‘ getting caught by Pierce Brosnan moment in The Long Good Friday. It hits so fucking hard, folks.

I’m in the camp of people who thought Leonardo DiCaprio was truly fantastic as the dumb ass idiot protagonist of Killers of the Flower Moon, proving that just because someone is a stupid moron dip shit, doesn’t mean they don’t have layers.

Also, while Joaquin Phoenix looked bored and borderline lobotomized in Napoleon, he delivered one of his best and without a doubt his funniest performance in Ari Aster‘s absurdist 3-hour comedy, Beau Is Afraid. The problem is Beau Is Afraid was extremely divisive, though I believe it to Aster‘s overall best effort despite being an absolute overstuffed structural mess.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

This was a pretty slam dunk, no contest decision for me. The more I think about Killers of the Flower Moon the more I think about Lily Gladstone‘s marvelously downplayed performance as Mollie, who manages to upstage her Oscar winning legendary co-stars. It’s a supporting role, but like the best supporting roles you find yourself thinking about her whenever she’s not on screen. Mollie impression reverberates throughout the entire film. My initial review of Killers of the Flower Moon

The real runner-up for me and the only performance that really rivals Gladstone‘s would be Claire Foy as Andrew Scott‘s dead mom in All of Us Strangers, who shares a scene with Scott that may just be the finest acted scene of the year. This is a wonderfully specific but very small performance, a type of performance the Academy never notices cause it isn’t screaming down their throats.

Then there’s Oscar-frontrunner Da’Vine Joy Randolph whose performance I had to see twice to truly appreciate. She takes a very simple character and just runs wild with it, creating the emotional anchor of the entire movie, a movie I really wasn’t crazy about despite some very good performances. Randolph also seems like a real down to earth lady, an anti-celebrity if you will, so I feel good about propping her up.

One of the funniest performances I saw of last year was Teyonah Paris as a sex worker caught in the middle of a global conspiracy against black people in They Cloned Tyrone. Her chemistry with Jamie Foxx as her sharp-tongued pimp is just off the charts, but more on him later.

Also very funny is Rosamund Pike, the only fully developed character of the overrated Emerald Fennell‘s limp noodle, Saltburn.

Rachel MacAdams has been just getting better and better as a film actress and her role as Margaret’s mom in the under-seen and underrated Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. is her best yet. It’s not flashy enough for a nomination though.

Legendary stage actress and theater etiquette advocate Patti LuPone is fantastic as Joaquin Phoenix‘s sadistically controlling mother in Beau Is Afraid…she might also be playing Ari Aster’s mom here…YIKES. She doesn’t show up until about two and a half hours into the movie, but she delivers a real monster of a monologue.

Finally, if there was one movie this year that suffered from extreme erectile dysfunction it was Michael Mann‘s Ferrari, a vehicle that completely failed in accelerating drama…except when Penélope Cruz was spewing verbal acid at Driver‘s adulterous car designer. I never thought I’d say the human elements work better than the action in a Michael Mann film, but here we are with me wishing the whole movie had been a two person relationship on the rocks movie.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Historically and traditionally there’s never a shortage of great male supporting roles in movies, usually inhabited by the best character actors the industry has to offer. That’s why it was especially painful to leave off the titanically good Paul Mescal for All of Us Strangers this year, but what the fuck was I gonna do? Have 9 nominees?

This was a tough one but ultimately I went with the most surprising performance that moved me the most which was Riverdale‘s Charles Melton‘s heartbreaking portrayal of a sexually abused 13-year-old stuck in the body of a 36-year-old man married to his abuser in Todd Haynes‘ satirical but utterly thought-provoking melodrama, May December. Two scenes in particular stick out – 1) his rooftop confession to his 18-year-old son after his first toke on a marijuana cigarette, and 2) a fight with his wife/abuser, Julianne Moore, late in the film where you finally get to see the abusive dynamic of their relationship in full, unshielded view.

Of course, the runner-up here is the other side of Claire Foy‘s coin in All of Us Strangers – Jamie Bell as Andrew Scott‘s dead dad. Much like Foy, Bell shares a scene with Scott that is maybe the second best acted movie scene of the year. All I’ll say is, “I’m sorry I never went into your room when you were crying.” God, that scene made me totally lose it in the theater.

Two of the funniest performances I saw all year were the Oscar-nominated Mark Ruffalo in Poor Things and the not Oscar-nominated Jamie Foxx in They Cloned Tyrone. Ruffalo is hilarious as the total amalgamation of everything that’s wrong with men when it comes to their relationships with women. This is a real go-for-broke, out-on-a-limb performance where we see the actor really taking risks as if feeling obligated to keep up with his even more brilliant co-star, Emma Stone. It’s his best work, and while a sharp-tongued pimp who accidentally encounters a global conspiracy to keep black folks down isn’t Jamie Foxx‘s best work, it’s his funniest performance in perhaps a decade.

Maybe not the funniest performance of the year, Glenn Howerton‘s portrayal as Jim Bastille is stunning because much like Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love, it shows the realistic and grounded version of a character the actor frequently plays in comedies, or in this case one he’s played for sixteen years in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. This is what Dennis Reynolds would be like in reality. In general, Blackberry was the best “product” movie of the year, completely blowing the schmaltzy Air out of the water, and Howerton was its crown jewel.

He may be in his 80s, but Robert DeNiro is still capable of delivering incredible work and his performance as William King Hale, who single-handedly orchestrated the Osage murders, is one of his most chilling villains in his nearly 60 year career.

Robert Downey, Jr. may not be as old as DeNiro, but he’s definitely a veteran within the industry. A great actor and performer, he’s best known for his big, showy, flamboyant performances but in Oppenheimer he really brings it down to a simmer. He’s so effective he almost saves the film’s lackluster final third.

Finally, we got Ryan Gosling as Ken who ironically ends up being Barbie‘s most complex and three-dimensional character. This is one of the actor’s best performances, a role he almost seems born to play. It’s a real testament to how fantastic film performances were this year that his Ken finishes in 8th place for me.

Best Adapted Screenplay

For the first time in a while the Adapted Screenplay category has been stronger than the Original Screenplay category. All are great here, but if I had to pick two bottom picks it would be Cord Jefferson‘s American Fiction whose third act straight up doesn’t work but the strength of the first two manage to carry it over the finish line and Matt Johnson & Matthew Miller‘s Blackberry which is great but at the end of the day, you know, a ‘product’ movie.

The other four – PT, AOUS, KOTM, and AYTGIMM, are all pretty great and wildly different stories – well both PT and AYTGIMM are both coming-of-age sexual discovery stories albeit one is much more graphic and the other is much more adorable. KOTM completely changes the POV of the novel, and was rumored to be quietly rewritten by Paul Thomas Anderson, but Andrew Haigh‘s adaptation of the Japanese novel, Strangers, manages to completely change the angle of the novel itself, more of a thriller from what I understand, and have it really work as a life-affirming, tender drama.

Best Original Screenplay

For me, this category is Anatomy of a Fall, Past Lives, and my personal pick, May December, duking it out for best original screenplay of the year. Celine Song‘s Past Lives beautifully renders nuanced characters we easily can see ourselves and our own past decisions/mistakes in, while Justine Triet and Arthur Harari‘s Anatomy of a Fall makes for the deepest and most emotionally rich Law & Order episode of all time. However, I have to give it up for former casting agent Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik‘s beautifully complex, multi-toned melodrama that refuses to tell you what to think of the Julianne Monster at its core. It works both as a dark satirical comedy and a moving character study, simultaneously.

Dungeons & Dragons was the single most enjoyable action movie adventure I experienced all year so it deserves props for that, and Bottoms was one of the sharpest written pure comedies I’ve seen this year. While it was mildly confusing at times, Hayao Miyazaki‘s The Boy and the Heron really made me think very deeply about my childhood and the parental relationships in my life, so that’s worth something!

Best Ensemble Cast

One of the best aspects of American Fiction was it’s incredible cast, all delivering fantastic performances no matter how big or important their role was. Led by Jeffrey Wright as a frustrated, underperforming writer, with an Oscar-nominated Sterling K. Brown as his coke-addled brother, Tracee Ellis Ross as his responsible sister, Leslie Uggams as his sick mother, Erika Alexander as his neighbor/love interest, theater actor John Ortiz as his agent, Adam Brody as a tone-deaf studio executive, Issa Rae as his literary rival, Myra Lucretia Taylor as his mom’s caretaker and old family friend, Raymond Anthony Thomas as his mom’s caretaker’s security guard boyfriend, and Keith David as one of his literary creations.

Best Film Editing

All my criticisms about Oppenheimer aside, the way it’s paced and moves from one scene to the next is maybe the best thing about it. It fucking moves, and scenes beautifully blend together.

Best Cinematography

Really stacked category here, some beautiful work this year, but Hoyte‘s imagery is pretty undeniable here. Whether in black and white, color, or the insides of a hydrogen bomb exploding with fire.

Best Original Score

I love the blues.

Best Soundtrack

Tough one, but this really comes down to personal choice which is an old Japanese man driving a toilet cleaning truck around Tokyo to the sounds of Nina Simone, The Animals, Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground, Otis Redding, The Kinks, and Van Morrison.

Best Sound Design

Movies are not only looking good in 2023, but sounding good as well! Okay. This is a real two horse race of Oppenheimer and The Zone of Interest, but the sound design is arguably a bigger character than any human being in ZOI. For those who don’t know it’s about a family living next door to the Auschwitz death camp and basically ignoring the sounds of trains, gunshots, babies crying, more gunshots, and then no more babies crying. Cause the babies got shot. It’s a horrific film where we never see anything, we just hear it and sometimes see the smoke of incinerated human remains creeping up the side of the frame.

Best Costume Design

No offense to Barbie, but these dresses were just infinitely more imaginative and dare I say, cool?

Best Set Design

No offense to Barbie, but these sets were just infinitely more imaginative and dare I say, cool?

Best Hair/Makeup Design

Willem Dafoe was way scarier than Kate McKinnon. And Kate McKinnon didn’t burb up magic bubbles, did she?

Best Stunts

JW4 was just on another level, these folks deserve Nobel prizes.

Best Performance in a Movie I Didn’t Like

Wow, what a way to waste the best acting discovery of the past five or so years, Netflix. Seriously. Holy shit.

Saltburn was also full of really solid performances, some great comedic performances Emerald Fennell ultimately couldn’t do anything with.

I thoroughly disliked Passages and thought it was completely up its own ass, but I loved Ben Whishaw‘s wounded boyfriend performance.

Vanessa Kirby acted circles around a visibly bored Joaquin Phoenix in Napoleon, and Alyssa Sutherland delivered one of the best physical performances of the year in an underwhelming and surprisingly tame Evil Dead revival.

Best 3-7 Minute Performance

Guess what? This isn’t the last time you’re gonna hear the name “Marin Ireland” in this article, cause until she starts getting the types of roles her equally gifted but infinitely more celebrated contemporaries are getting, I’m not shutting my fat fucking mouth.

In maybe six or seven minutes of screen time, she manages to steal the entire movie away from Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie, delivering a monologue, hog tied in a basement that served as the single most compelling moment of the entire film.

In terms of the other nominees, Carey Mulligan scored the biggest laughs of Saltburn with her mere seven minutes of screen time. Tilda Swinton had one short but killer scene in David Fincher‘s The Killer, Gary Oldman was sinister and gross as that piece of dog shit Harry Truman in Oppenheimer, and Christopher Abbott was straight up terrifying but then hilarious as the single most despicable character in all of Poor Things.

People complained about how over-the-top Brendan ” The Whale” Fraser in Marty Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon, but I thought he played a show boating lawyer exactly how that son of a bitch would be.

Best Child Performance

This one wasn’t even close, Milo Machado-Graner gives the best child performance I’ve seen in a very long time in Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall. He plays Sandra Huller‘s blind son who is a key witness to the maybe murder of his dad/her husband. This is the type of nuanced and carefully executed performances you’d expect from a veteran adult.

Abby Ryder Forston is also great in the title role of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Hint – she plays Margaret, not God.

Joe Bird delivers the best performance of the horror hit of 2023, Talk to Me, as the younger brother and as much as I hated the movie itself, the two possessed kids in Exorcist: Believer are played exceptionally well by Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neil.

Ethan Josh Lee is also a delight as Ricky in Asteroid City.

Best Animal Performance

Have you ever met a dog that was a better actor than most Hollywood professionals? Well, Messi, a fabulous border collie, has a scene where he almost SPOILER and he really looks like he is SPOILER. What a good boy.

Best First Film

Every movie in this category is good but only one is truly excellent – Celine Song‘s Past Lives. It’s a shame that every other category I nominated in, it just got slightly edged out. This is my initial review of Past Lives.

The Golden Shoe Award for Best Hustle Out There

Look, Wes Anderson is certainly not my favorite filmmaker and on a bad day I might go as far to call the majority of films overly fussed over and borderline obnoxious, but he really busted his ass this past year delivering not only one feature length movie but four shorts as well.

Most Ominous Use of Food (TV or Film)

Chicken plays a real terrifying role in Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie‘s suburban nightmare cringe drama starring Safdie, Fielder and Emma Stone. First, the omission of it in a chicken pasta door dash order and the fact a little Somali girl knows about it is weird, but when Fielder‘s Asher finds some of it on a bathroom sink, it gets real weird. It’s used as an object to torture his character in a very weird, abstract way. Very unappetizing.

Bacon and pork products in general is also used a bunch in Laura Moss‘ dramatic horror film Birth/Rebirth to signal bad shit to come.

Julianne Moore‘s character uses the act of baking of cakes as way to distract her from dealing with what she’s done in May December.

Michael Fassbender‘s assassin character goes on a tirade about how Egg McMuffins are the perfect protein-forward stakeout food if you ever need to hide out before assassinating someone. Something to keep in mind, I guess.

Finally, old burgers trigger the horribly violent inciting incident in Carter Smith‘s low budget indie horror road picture, The Passenger.

HORROR AWARDS

Best Horror Movie

A much weaker year for horror than 2022, the best and most imaginative thing I saw was this Argentinian possession film that functions like no other possession film I’ve ever seen. It’s truly terrifying, outrageously violent, and not for the squeamish. It also takes its characters and its world very seriously, making it all the more frightening.

Best Director

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Siu Wu/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (14143473e) Argentinian film director Demian Rugna poses for the photographers during the presentation of his film ‘When Evil Lurks’ in the framework of Sitges Film Festival, in Sitges, Barcelona, Spain, 10 October 2023. The film competes in the official section of the festival running until 15 October. The film festival runs from 05 to 15 October 2023. 56th Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival, Barcelona, Spain – 10 Oct 2023

A lot of good work this year in the directing department, even if the film itself didn’t turn out great overall. Still, I have to give it to When Evil Lurks‘ Demián Rugna for delivering something I really had never seen before.

Best Lead Performance in a Horror Movie

Told you I wasn’t done raving about Marin Ireland, whose phenomenal performance as an autistic doctor really drives this whole movie. Her co-star, Judy Reyes of Scrubs fame, is also very good, but its Ireland who has the juicier role as a modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

Best Supporting Performance in a Horror Movie

A wonderfully physical performance that even Doug Jones would admire, Alyssa Sutherland is far and away the best thing about this fairly lame franchise reboot. The movie rarely scared me, but when it did, you better believe it was cause of Alyssa Sutherland being damn creepy.

Best Screenplay

The best horror movie premise of the year, honestly might have made a clean sweep of these horror awards if the second half was as flawless as the first half. The kids all seem real and the situations are plausible, and that’s unfortunately rare for horror movies.

Best Cinematography

No horror movie looked this cool in 2023, from the opening tracking shot to the group possession scenes to its vision of what hell is like. Damn this movie looks cool.

Leave a comment