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It’s no secret that 2020 was a very weird year, not just for us, but also for movies. Movie theaters lay dormant due to the pandemic, and for the first time, this year’s Oscar contenders are mostly available to stream at home. Many wonder whether this year’s awards ceremony will see a drop in viewership due to the lack of traditional pomp and circumstance.
The Academy Awards have long been criticized for its lack of acknowledging diversity in the industry, and the Oscars have coincidentally suffered from a slow, steady decline in relevance over the last few years. But even if you didn’t tune into the Oscars last night, allow us to present our 2020 Alternate Oscars, in which we make up the categories, nominees, and winners.
We’re all looking forward to returning to movie theaters sometime in 2021, but pour one out for the loss of Arclight.
Sydney Mineer’s Picks
Most Refreshing Flick
For me, 2020 was about finding peace. What I really wanted from my entertainment this year was a nice, stress-free time, an escape from reality. My nominees for most refreshing flick are:
- The High Note
- Let Them All Talk
- The Dig
In The High Note, Dakota Johnson plays Tracee Ellis Ross’s assistant. Ross is a big-time music Diva and Johnson is an aspiring music producer. This movie exists in the beautiful, glorious “before times,” when you could run into a handsome stranger at a hip bodega and discuss the merits of “California,” the theme song for The O.C. This film is fun to watch and easy to digest. It’s a charming treat and a bit of a feast for the senses—the costumes make you miss wearing outfits, the sets make you miss being out, the performances are comforting, and it all feels like a warm hug. Just as an added bonus, the original songs are actually good!
In Let Them All Talk, Meryl Streep traps her college friends, played by Dianne Weist and Candice Bergen, on a week-long cruise on the QEII. This film oozes luxury and escape, and it’s a master class in passive aggression but also confrontation from some of our finest movie mavens.
The Dig is a lil old movie about… you guessed it! An archeological dig. That is literally all it is about and I DUG it. It’s quiet and gentle. The cinematography of the English countryside is quite stunning and very soothing. It’s set in the late 1930s so the clothes are great and the tensions are high with the threat of looming war. But it’s not looming so hard as to disturb you and your communion with the dig.
And the winner is…
The High Note!
Most Deranged
Some films to come out of 2020 should just remain there in a time loop forever and never bother us again. The nominees are:
- Wild Mountain Thyme
- Desperado
- Love Wedding Repeat
Wild Mountain Thyme is so incomprehensible that I don’t want to break anyone else’s brain with references to anything that happens in the film.
Desperado features a bit with… a dolphin dick.
Love Wedding Repeat has a reference to the Taliban for no discernible reason.
And the winner is….
There are no winners here. Do not watch these films lest ye be cursed to let trash content live rent free in your mind for the rest of your life.
Erin Vail’s Picks
Best Villain Hottie:
A quick refresher on this category: we all know villains are the baddies. But what if… a villain was hot? Here are the nominees!
- Ewan McGregor as Roman Sionis in Birds of Prey
- Chris Messina as Victor Zsaz in Birds of Prey
- Oliver Jackson-Cohen in The Invisible Man
- Gong Li as Xian Lang in Mulan
And the winner is… Ewan McGregor! As film critic Manuela Lazic pointed out on Twitter, Ewan McGregor is bringing his best Sam Rockwell in Charlie’s Angels energy to this role, and I have to agree wholeheartedly. Ewan is having an absolute blast being bad: yelling, dancing, yucking it up, and being as smarmy as possible. And let’s not forget the ‘fits. The colorful suits and prints? The robes? We stan a villain hottie who loves his loungewear!
Best Looking Movie Food and Drink:
Food stylist for TV/movies is a very real and legitimate job. I have no interest in learning what makes movie food look so good, but I can appreciate some good “food porn” when I see it. The nominees are:
- Anything eaten onscreen in Emma.
- The breakfast sandwich, Birds of Prey
- Ben Affleck’s shower beer, The Way Back
And the winner is… anything eaten in Emma. The production design of Emma. is, like its onscreen food: scrumptious. I think everyone who thinks they want to go back in time somewhere other than the 20th Century might forget about the horrible smell and lack of modern sewage. But the food in Emma. makes me forget. Teacakes, pastries, candies, oh my! Give me a beautifully shot Jane Austen dinner scene any day. How I would love to be invited to a picnic where someone is so viciously insulted it makes everyone in the theater gasp in horror! Emma. delivered on escapism and a truly delicious look.
Honorable Mention: The breakfast sandwich in Birds of Prey.
This sandwich has been ogled and celebrated by many, many people – but every time I see this pop up in a GIF or commercial, it makes me hungry. So I have to acknowledge it, and specifically how much bacon is in it. Beautiful.
Josh Bard’s Picks
Best Crazy Musician
While a lot of these candidates will be given the real, more important Oscar statues for best actor and actresses, I think it’s important to decide who was the best at portraying the absolute zaniness of a musician. Without further ado, your nominees:
- Ma Rainey (played by Viola Davis) in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
- Levee (played by Chadwick Boseman) in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
- Ruben (played by Riz Ahmed) in Sound of Metal
- Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx) in Soul
Ma Rainey and Levee are tours de force (or tour de forces?), butting heads and monologues and spotlights in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. While not direct foils, their egos seem to feed off of each other, both elevating the conflict and stakes, as musicians are notorious for doing.
Ruben, in Sound of Metal, is an up and coming metal drummer whose hearing goes and takes with it Ruben’s occupation and way of life, and then his mental health. Riz Ahmed takes the audience to uncomfortable places as he deals with figuring out what happens next.
And then there’s Joe, the protagonist of Pixar’s Soul, a megalomaniac jazz musician who is willing to risk everything for one last gig. While Foxx certainly has an easier job than Davis, Boseman, and Ahmed, his questionable decision making is on par with our idea of struggling musicians.
AND THE WINNER IS:
A one, a two, a you-know-what to do. Viola Davis!
Best Film Not From 2020
Quarantine sucked for every reason, except it was a great time to catch up on movies you hadn’t seen but had to pretend because everyone talks about them and loves them. We had a full year to clear up our blind spots, and those films deserve our deferred praise. Certainly these will vary in every house, but for me, the nominees are:
- Clue
- The Goonies
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- Raging Bull
AND THE WINNER IS:
Clue! See it if you haven’t!
(Also, I thought The Goonies stunk, Raging Bull was an impossible watch in 2020, and The Nightmare Before Christmas was very pleasant.)
Meg Kearns’s Picks
Best Movie Theater Moment
In a year when movie lovers were deprived of the transportive, communal experience of watching new releases on a massive screen, in the dark with the palpable energy of a live crowd, it feels important to shout out a few great moments 2020 did grant us in theaters. And the nominees are: The Invisible Man and Bad Boys for Life.
SPOILERS for the two honorees below, be warned….
Due to its end of February 2020 release date, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man was the last movie a lot of people were able to see in theaters—talk about going out with a bang! The movie is full of inventive, spooky visual effects from start to finish, but talk to anyone who has seen the movie, and they’ll most likely mention one scene in particular: the knife at the restaurant.
The moment comes just when we think Cecilia Kass (the great Elisabeth Moss) might finally be getting through to her sister Emily, successfully convincing her that her ex, who is a world leader in the field of optics, has been stalking her. Cecilia leans in close across the table in a busy restaurant, and Emily does, too, listening. We, in the audience, may even find ourselves sitting up in our seats a bit. If you’re watching closely, you notice Emily’s eyes shift focus, and her head tilts slightly—the camera cuts back to Cecilia, who pauses to ask why her sister is suddenly distracted. The camera lingers just long enough for you to notice the knife hovering in the air between Ceclia and Emily, but by the time you do—by the time either of them do—it’s too late. We hear a whoosh as the knife whips across the table, cutting the sister’s throat, before flying back into Cecilia’s hand. Only we know that it’s her ex in his invisible suit setting her up.
It’s as devastating as it is viscerally shocking, and I’ll never forget the way I jumped in my seat and gasped aloud when it happened, along with everyone else in that crowded Tuesday night Arclight screening. The rush of shock at the violence, followed by the meta delight of realizing what the movie just pulled off, and experiencing it all on the same wavelength as the rest of the crowd is a movie high that sustained me for the rest of 2020, and that I hope we can all safely experience again soon.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have Bad Boys for Life, the funny, action-packed follow-up to Michael Bay’s 2003 masterpiece, Bad Boys II. Of Bad Boys II’s many gifts, chief among them is The Reggie Scene, in which Marcus (Martin Lawrence) and Mike (Will Smith) take a break from hunting down drug dealers to terrorize Marcus’s daughter’s prom date, Reggie. The scene is just over two minutes long, but it’s one that has since become a fan favorite.
Imagine the collective delight in the theater when, 17 years after first being introduced to Reggie, Bad Boys for Life reveals he is in fact still in Marcus’s daughter’s life—as the father of her new baby, who Marcus and Mike rush to meet in the hospital in typically dramatic Bad Boys fashion. This was a top-tier callback, designed just for the longtime fans, and the moment was as surprising and funny as The Invisible Man’s moment was shocking and devastating.
And the winner is… The Invisible Man!
Best Cow
One of the early indie breakouts of last year (and my personal favorite movie of the year), was Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, a story about two outsiders trying to survive in Oregon Country in the early 1800s. Cookie (John Magaro) is a kind-hearted cook who is not at all suited to working for the rough and tumble fur trappers who’ve hired him to cook for them on their journeys. He meets King-Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese immigrant on the run, who has a bit more edge than Cookie does. The two bond over their dreams to open a bakery (Cookie) and own a farm (Lu), and realize they have skills that can help one another: Cookie’s baking talent, and Lu’s business savvy. But Cookie’s baking suffers from dairy being so scarce in the territory.
Enter: the titular First Cow.
A wealthy landowner has ordered the cow for himself in his family, and we see her arriving via a river raft (note: this is a great time to lean over to your friend and whisper, “that’s the first cow”). Her mate and her calf died on the journey, so she’s not just the first, but the only cow in the territory. She’s all alone, trying to survive, just like the two human leads, who decide to sneak onto the landowner’s property and “borrow” some of the cow’s milk. The gentle Cookie bonds with the cow, and uses her milk to make biscuits that he and Lu then sell in the territory.
Of course, the scheme is too good to last forever. But each scene with Cookie and the cow (named Evie in real life, apparently a great actor herself) is tender and moving, and subtly telegraphs the morals of the story: the beauty of nature, the power of friendship and the collective, and the joy of taking pride in one’s work.
Evie says it all without saying a word, and that’s why she’s not just the First or the Only, but the winner of Best Cow of 2020.
Here’s hoping 2021 for movies is a lot less weird and a lot more enjoyable across the board. What were your favorite cinematic moments of 2020? What Oscar categories would you choose? And what’s your take on the Oscar winners? Let us know on Twitter!
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