2020-21 On Your Left Film Awards

 

2020-21 On Your Left Film Awards

It's been two years since I last wrote my annual film year-in-review posts.  I am very happy to return to this tradition, and I also look back on the last two crazy, time-warped, tumultuous year and am thankful for the opportunity to do so.  The pandemic changed a lot of things, for the entire world and myself included, but it did not diminish my passion for seeing movies in a theater.  Streaming is good, too - especially when going to the theater is impossible - but it simply cannot replace the cinematic experience.

Here are my Oscar-like awards for both 2020 and 2021 movies.  I'm keeping the same "rules" that I had in 2019 and earlier:

1. Only films released widely in 2020 and 2021 are eligible (this is getting murkier each year, so another way to put it: whichever year it came out in my theater - or streaming only - is the year I'm sticking it, so certain films often have to "wait" a year), and 
2. Only films that I've actually seen are eligible.

I'll note the nominees in the Oscar-equivalent categories, for comparison.  Please check out my other annual movie post, which includes my top 10 of the year and other miscellaneous awards (over/underrated, etc.)!

Winners in bold

Runners-up underlined

Best Actress

Caitriona Balfe (Belfast)

Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter)

Rebecca Ferguson (Dune)

Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Downhill)

Margot Robbie (Birds of Prey)

Oscar nominees not listed: Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye), Penelope Cruz (Parallel Mothers), Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos), Kristen Stewart (Spencer) - didn't see films

Quite an array of movie genres are represented by these actresses, who all did exceptional work, in very different styles.  I'd give an honorable mention, too, to Cristin Milioti, starring in the sci-fi comedy Palm Springs with Andy Samberg.  Margot Robbie has played the role of the psychopath anti-heroine Harley Quinn in two different movies in this span, with Birds of Prey being both the superior film and showcase for Robbie.  She somehow seems to fully inhabit Harley's deranged mind, one of the most entertaining characters in the crowded genre.  Caitriona Balfe is probably the unsung MVP of Belfast, a strong and loving woman holding her family together in the midst of social and personal strife; Balfe plays her both raw and under control, capable and also vulnerable.  Rebecca Ferguson's Lady Jessica is similarly at the center of the story of Dune, and she expresses herself remarkably well, mostly through body language, in a stoic role.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus got a great role in Downhill, one of the most underrated films, let alone comedies, in years.  It feels so real - partly from the writing, but at least as much from her performance - shifting from driest hilarity to squirm-in-your seat tense and awkward.  Colman, who has impressed in period pieces like The Favourite and The Crown, shows that she is just as skilled in a modern, ordinary role in The Lost Daughter.  She gets to do a little of everything, from the silent to the showy, sympathetic but sometimes repugnant.  Both of these actresses bring greatness to their films.

Best Actor

Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog)

Leonardo DiCaprio (Don't Look Up)

Jamie Dornan (Belfast)

Will Ferrell (Downhill)

Dev Patel (The Green Knight)

Oscar nominees not listed: Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos), Andrew Garfield (Tick, Tick... Boom!), Will Smith (King Richard), Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth) - didn't see the films

Honestly, it was a bit of a down year in this category; good performances, but nothing truly great.  I give Tom Holland an honorable nod for his third Spider-Man movie; he seems almost custom-made for the role but he also clearly gives it his best, and his heart, throughout.  As he did previously in Stranger than Fiction, Ferrell proved again that he has true dramatic acting chops in Downhill - though he's still funny, too, of course.  DiCaprio has been great in just about everything I've seen him in in the last ten years; this is a good, fun one (especially the accent), but the movie around him is just not as good.  Dev Patel is in almost all of The Green Knight - but he's not even the title character! - and does a good enough job being realistically bamboozled by the odd events to allow the audience to suspend its disbelief.

Benedict Cumberbatch shows great intensity in The Power of the Dog - but it's much different from the kind of intellectual, anti-social kind from The Imitation Game and Sherlock.  It's too bad the movie itself is a confusing, pointless load of hooey, but his character commands attention from beginning to end.  I'm sorry, Jamie Dornan, your performance isn't the stuff of great winners I've seen in years past.  But it's still very good, a restrained role that still provides much of the tension - in plot and emotion - in Belfast.  Fortunately, he gets to let loose in a final, out-of-nowhere sing-and-dance number that is truly joyful.

Best Supporting Actress

Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter)

Ariana DeBose (West Side Story)

Judi Dench (Belfast)

Maria Bakalova (Borat 2)

Florence Pugh (Black Widow)

Oscar nominees not listed: Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog) - eligible but chose not to nominate; Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard) - didn't see the film

Like their lead counterparts, the supporting female actors this year produced fantastic performances.  I give an honorable mention to Jennifer Lawrence, who I hadn't seen for quite some time, going toe-to-toe with DiCaprio in Don't Look Up.  Borat 2 rises to the level of a good comedy on the strength of Maria Bakalova's performance, a "relative" of Borat's who is just as outrageous but even better at needling our society's shortcomings.  Judi Dench is a great presence in Belfast, even as she also fits into her modest matriarch role.  And Florence Pugh continues on a tear since I first saw her in theaters; now she's also part of Hollywood's biggest family, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  She is great as both a hardened assassin and awkward yet loving sister in Black Widow.

Jessie Buckley more than held up her end of the bargain as the younger version of Colman's Leda in The Lost Daughter.  She has the advantage of many more passionate moments, from parental frustration to hidden lust, but she still connects all the dots to the primary, older version.  Ariana DeBose is the virtuoso performer of the year, serving as the best part of the West Side Story remake.  She has personality and character nuance to spare, with some of the movie's most powerful moments - and to top it off, she is also the most sensational performer, knocking my socks off with "America".

Best Supporting Actor

Dean-Charles Chapman (1917)

Sacha Baron Cohen (The Trial of the Chicago 7)

Mike Faist (West Side Story)

Ciaran Hinds (Belfast)

Tony Leung (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings)

Oscar nominees not listed: Troy Kotsur (CODA), J.K. Simmons (Being the Ricardos) - didn't see the films; Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog), Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog) - eligible but chose not to nominate

There is quite a variety of performances among the best of the supporting actors in 2020 and 2021.  Dean-Charles Chapman brought much-needed humanity, and even humor, to the intimate war epic 1917.  Ciaran Hinds was a perfect partner for Judi Dench in Belfast, as Buddy's wise and gentle grandfather.  Tony Leung was both one of the better parts of Shang-Chi and among Marvel's best villains to date; both charismatic and menacing, he was easily the biggest presence on the screen.

Mike Faist, while not as overtly brilliant as his co-star Ariana DeBose, brought an important emotional intensity to West Side Story.  While the love story failed to produce as many sparks as it should, Faist ensured that the Sharks vs. Jets confrontations were tense and also tragic.  Sacha Baron Cohen, as Abby Elliott, rose above them all in The Trial of the Chicago 7.  Best known as the silly, over-the-top (and vulgar) Borat, Cohen displayed very impressive control and nuance, a strong accent and body language.  And he was, of course, hilarious.  The film boasts easily the most fun ensemble of 2020-21 - from Mark Rylance and Jeremy Piven to Joseph Gordon-Levitt and many others - but Cohen stands out among them.

Best Director

Kenneth Branaugh (Belfast)

Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (Downhill)

Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter)

Denis Villeneuve (Dune)

Jon Watts (Spider-Man: No Way Home)

Oscar nominees not listed: Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car) - didn't see the film; Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog), Steven Spielberg (West Side Story) - eligible but chose not to nominate; Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza) - not eligible, released in 2022 (in my theater)

I don't know the filmmaking process, well, pretty much at all, so I judge the best directing to be a combination of the highest overall quality of the movie with the degree of difficulty - difficulty as it seems to me, at least.  Nat Faxon and Jim Rash would seem to have an easy job, making a comedy with Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.  However, the humor was, for the most part, among the driest I've seen; and though it was indeed funny, it leaned more on its dramatic side, and successfully.  Maggie Gyllenhaal, a first-time director, gave her very plot-light film great tension and anticipation by focusing laserlike on its main character; the realism of all the little details gives the powerful dramatic components that much more weight.  Dune is very un-realistic, in a sense, taking place in a far-in-the-future sci-fi universe.  But Villeneuve succeeds most, in my opinion, in building that world, from the deserts to the cold technology, into a fully immersive experience.

This is not the first time - and hopefully won't be the last time - that I've give praise to a Marvel superhero movie director.  Similar to the Avengers films, in particular, this Spider-Man sequel, directed again by Jon Watts, has the high degree of difficulty challenge of handling a large cast; this one even more so, actually.  Kenneth Branagh did the best work of all this year, in a film that is semi-autobiographical.  He may have indulged in details of his own childhood but if so, they only serve to heighten the connection we feel to the main characters, young Buddy and his family.  There is plenty of turmoil, from both the Troubles and the family's domestic concerns, but it's not a heavy film.  What shines through is the innocence of childhood and the will to keep going even in the most difficult of days.  Everything is well balanced and executed, and I choose to give Branagh the lion's share of credit for that.

Best Screenplay

Jesse Armstrong, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash (Downhill)

Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)

Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter)

Andy Siara (Palm Springs)

Aaron Sorkin (The Trial of the Chicago 7)

Best Visual Effects

Dune

Eternals

Godzilla vs. King Kong

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Spider-Man: No Way Home

* https://www.britannica.com/story/who-votes-for-the-academy-awards