Continuing from yesterday, here are more of my picks for the best in 2025 cinema:
Best Score
5. The Ugly Stepsister
John Erik Kaada / Vilde Tuv
4. Highest 2 Lowest
Howard Drossin
3. Sinners
Ludwig Göransson
2. Frankenstein
Alexandre Desplat
1. The Testament of Ann Lee
Daniel Blumberg
Best Production Design
Frankenstein
Tamara Deverell, production designer
Brandt Gordon, supervising art director
Shane Vieau, set decorator
2. The Fantastic 4: First Steps; 3. Bugonia; 4. Resurrection; 5. The Testament of Ann Lee
The historicity of The Testament of Ann Lee, the uncanny dreamscapes of Resurrection, the worrisome preparedness of the house in Bugonia, the retro future of The Fantastic 4: First Steps (the only other one, I must note, that threatened to take the top spot), but I love the perverse grandness of Frankenstein best of all. The waterworks castle with its candelabras and sewers, the expansive emptiness of Frankenstein Manor, the collected clutter of Victor's rooms, and then some wild-ass designs throughout...if you're gonna remake an oft-told Gothic horror, might as well go nuts, be sumptuous, luscious!
Best Ensemble
The Secret Agent
casting by Gabriel Domingues
2. Eephus; 3. Marty Supreme; 4. Blue Moon; 5. Sinners
The diminuitive yet commanding Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria, genius); the warm, worried, quietly courageous Mr. Alexandre (Carlos Francisco, my #6 Best Supporting Actor); the surprisingly comic but nevertheless fearsome police chief (Robério Diógenes); the tongue-biting Jewish refugee forced to play the jester (the late, great Udo Kier); the present-day tenacious archivist (Laura Lufési, probably my #3 favorite performance in the movie); the stepfather-and-son assassins with their beautiful faces and layered energy (Roney Villela and Gabriel Leone, the hottest men to grace the screen in 2025); their hired assassin, who has the most interesting face of the cast (Kaiony Venâncio, I hope they keep you in mind for the next Bond film); the fellow political exile waiting patiently, cautiously, bitterly (Isabél Zuaa, who I recognized from Good Manners, almost applauded when she appeared on-screen): these are just a handful of the sprawling characters that make up The Secret Agent, all of whom are memorable, all played perfectly. You believe in every single one of them. Indeed, you believe in every single member of all the nominated ensembles: the community baseball players in Eephus (love you, Theodore Bouloukos!), the hodgepodge of New York and pingpong personalities in Marty Supreme (love you, Luke Manley!), the artists and alkies of Blue Moon (love you, Simon Delaney!), the layered-with-history community in Sinners (love you, Li Jun Li!).
Best Original Screenplay
The Testament of Ann Lee
Brady Corbet & Mona Fastvold
2. The Secret Agent; 3. Blue Moon; 4. Eddington; 5. Twinless
I told friends before that I love how it's written with the sensibility of a church pageant - like just mentioning Ann Lee's growing stature among the Shakers and taking it for granted that you'll go with it; or straightforwardly depicting miracles and visions while still making sure to couch it as legend; or, of course, its integration of music and dance to propel the narrative forward. But I also love the way it subverts straightforward spiritual interpretation through how it reveals certain elements, like the unreliable narrator with her own axe to grind. Before we even get to the visuals, before the music and dance and performances have their due, this script has done the work of crafting a tale for the believers, the skeptics, and the curious. (But I admit, it was neck-and-neck between this one and The Secret Agent's multi-layered, incredibly readable screenplay; to say nothing of the masterful characterizations and dialogue in Blue Moon, the typically sharp satire of Eddington, and the tricky dark comedy of Twinless)
Best Adapted Screenplay
Hedda
Nia DaCosta
2. Song Sung Blue; 3. One Battle After Another; 4. Highest 2 Lowest; 5. The History of Sound
To be honest, there was no competition in this category: I suspected the winner the moment I saw this movie, confirmed by actually reading the screenplay (sorry to the also-rans, I only got to read Song Sung Blue's absorbing script and had to base the rest off of vibes from the completed films). How delighted I was to find that that same sense of good-time chaos barely hiding a more melancholic unmooring, a thrilling and tricky tone that the movie handles expertly, comes through even on the page. DaCosta does not just transfer the stageplay to the screen, but reinterprets, recontextualizes it, reenergizes it for the cinema, and does so without feeling heavy-handed or self-conscious. She understands these characters, their patterns of speech, the excitement they feel (and when), the anger within all of them, the exhaustion they feel. She's adapted so beautifully, so perfectly, so seamlessly, you're not sure where Ibsen ends and DaCosta begins.
Best Supporting Actress
With apologies to the almost-made-its, Ella Anderson (Song Sung Blue) and Gwyneth Paltrow (Marty Supreme). Honestly, those last two slots were constantly shifting, but I wound up with an undeniable duo: Teyana Taylor casts such a shadow over the rest of One Battle After Another, she was thisclose to making my Lead Actress longlist, and Carolyn Michelle Smith in Familiar Touch gave the kind of performance that made you sit up and wonder who was writing a star vehicle for her. Jamie Lee Curtis wasn't just the best friend Ella McCay needed, she was the aunt I already knew and loved, and so she was always at my #3. That just left two performances that became so iconic in my household, my roommate and I referenced them almost daily, sometimes in quotes, sometimes just saying, "Remember when she...?" and gasping, "Oh, YES!" in reply. How does one choose between Wunmi Mosaku's grounding presence in Sinners, she who gets the spiritual wisdom, is tasked with the necessary exposition (oh, and she pulls it off with years of hurt behind it), and gets the sexiest line in the film ("Your body remembers me"); and Nina Hoss's cocktail of intellectualism, eroticism, exhaustion, ego, and appetite, a woman who could own the world were it not for the fact that she is a woman, and a lesbian, of a certain age...and a terrible drunk, guileless when you least expect it, ferocious when it's earned but ill-calculated? One of the great moments of Hedda is when Nia DaCosta stops the movie dead to give Hoss as Eileen her Entrance, a sequence subsequently earned byt he strength of the performance. Yeah, I get it, Hedda, I'd burn it all down for her, too! I guess it's not as close as I thought. My winner:
Nina Hoss as Eileen Loveborg
Hedda
2. Wunmi Mosaku in Sinners; 3. Jamie Lee Curtis in Ella McCay; 4. Carolyn Michelle Smith in Familiar Touch; 5. Teyana Taylor in One Battle After Another
Tomorrow, my picks for, among others, Best Actress, Best Costume Design, and Best Motion Picture of the Year!
No comments:
Post a Comment