If it hasn’t been clear yet, I am an award person. I like to see if I can guess what the “experts” select as winners. However, the thing is, those people voting are just like you and me. They just are in different circles in society. So, after a suggestion by a couple friends, I made up my own award series. I named it the Aluminum Mitten Awards, after another pointless award show with a mysterious voting group that make questionable choices, the Golden Globes. So here are the winners for the first year of the Mittens.
Best Trailer
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
I will preface this first category that I am stretching the word “best”. Most trailers a a waste of time now. So I go into which one I enjoy the most. This wasn’t the best movie, but Ritchie really has a distinct style in his directing that I really dig. There is a dry sense of humor that really plays well for me. So to give us the basic plot in his witty way while showing us cuts of action scenes left me looking forward to watching what wasn’t shown in the trailer. Happily, there was quite a bit there, so yay. Also, I love Queen, so using Another One Bites the Dust to score the trailer is win. Trailers don’t have to be these long, serious things. If we are going to have to sit through a trailer after trailer before movies, might as well make them fun to watch.
Worst Trailer
Arthur the King
Way back in March, I had a post called The Problem with Trailers. In that post, I broke down all my thoughts about this stupid trailer. It isn’t just that it was played nearly before every movie I saw for months. That is a common issue for me since I make so many trips to the theater. It isn’t even that it changes songs halfway through. That is annoying, but it happens in a lot of trailers recently too, like in the trailer for A Complete Unknown. The reason this trailer is the worst is because it gives away almost the entire movie in the trailer. Studios putting in spoilers in the trailers are a problem, but after watching this movie, then the trailer, the trailer seemed like the Spark Notes of the film. Studios should be better than that. If they are so insecure in their product that they need to give away the game, maybe that is a problem with the movie. It shouldn’t have been here. The movie was good. The trailer just stunk.
Best Actor
Timothee Chalamet
For the majority of the year, I had Colman Domingo here. What he did in Sing Sing was just fantastic. However, i finally saw A Complete Unknown, and wow. Chalamet is so great in this. He doens’t really fully transform into Dylan, but he is awful close. His dedication to the role is something that really pays off when you watch the film. There are behind the scenes videos of him practicing the Dylan songs on the set of Dune, and that is a fun visual to see. While Brody, Domingo, and Fiennes are great in their films, they have a more of a supporting character in their films to take the focus off of them. Norton and Barabaro are here too, but Seeger and Baez never take the focus of the film off Dylan, and that consistent presence is what gives Chalamet the edge for me.
Best Actress
Ariana Grande
The options for me here were down to Grande, Felicity Jones for The Brutalist, Mikey Madison for Anora, or Danielle Deadwyler for The Piano Lesson. For the purposes of this award, I’m combining lead and supporting. Madison was great in Anora, but my issue with her, and the movie as a whole, was as the movie went on, I grew more and more apart from all the characters. It just became a collection of annoying or awful people. In sharp contrast was Grande and Wicked. I know I am holding Wicked to a different standard than other movies, but that is what happens when I finally get a Broadway adaptation that isn’t awful. That isn’t to downplay Grade though. She is fantastic as Glinda, and really is given a character arc that she plays so well. The real separating mark I fell with all the options here, while they are all very good, is Grande’s character is the only one I would like to see more of.
Biggest Surprise
It’s What’s Inside
Body swapping movies can be kind of a mess, but when this came out of Sundance in January, I had some hopes for it. When I finally got to see it months later, I had so much fun with it. What makes this better for me is it comes from a director who doesn’t have a filmography yet. We are seeing something he thought was special enough to do the hard work to make the film real. His hard work is our reward. This film was awesome.
Biggest Letdown
Argylle
Flip side of the previous award. Matthew Vaughn has had a sting of films I really have liked. Between X-Men: First Class and The Kingsmen, I have been looking forward to his next movie each time. Argylle had all the signs it could have been great. The cast is dynamite, the look of the film looked fun, and it was a story by Vaughn, so it wasn’t IP. However, this thing never came together. There are some cool sequences, but there are some purely baffling sequences too. Why did we need the ice skating on oil scene right after the long, colorful smoke in the hallway fight scene? This was a good lesson in too much is bad. Even on rewatches, it gets worse, and that hasn’t been an issue with Vaughn’s other films.
Best Kids Movie
Sonic the Hedgehog 3
For this category, I left it my niece and nephews to pick the winner. This year they watched Garfield, Despicable Me 4, The Wild Robot, Moana 2, Inside Out 2, and Sonic 3 (yesterday). Since there are three of them (my youngest niece is too young still), I had a good feeling things wouldn’t end in a tie. Luckily, it was sweep among the 3. In what might be recency bias on their part, Sonic 3 takes the win.
Best Comic Book Movie
Deadpool & Wolverine
The options this year for this category were sparse. We had Madame Web, Deadpool & Wolverine, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, Venom: The Last Dance, and Kraven the Hunter. Only one of those got higher than a 3/5 for me, and that was the Merc with a Mouth’s third movie. I have really liked the Deadpool movies, and Jackman will always be the one true Wolverine. The thing that really made this something I have watched so many times since it showed up on Disney+ last month are the cameos. They are fun, and I’ll keep them secret in case the seven people who haven’t watched the movie yet don’t know what they are. Hopefully next year this category will be more competitive.
Best Director
Edward Berger
Conclave was a really good film, and obviously, most of that can be attributed to Berger’s direction. By setting the film almost completely inside of the Vatican, it sets a feeling of tension as the votes continue to result in no winner. Others that could have won this for me were Villeneuve, Corbet, or Eggers. I just appreciated Berger’s work on the smaller, tighter film than I did the other three.
Best New Theater I Visited
Music Box Theater
For this category, I decided to point out my favorite theater I visited for the first time this year. I hit 10 new theaters this year, with 3 of them being part of my first visit to the Chicago International Film Festival. That is where my winner is for this year. The Music Box Theater is a fantastic theater located in Wrigleyville, and much like neighboring Wrigley Field, it is located in the middle of the neighborhood. This theater is now 95 years old, and had just finished a major renovation, so what I saw is just the most recent version. The architecture of the theater is spectacular, and really makes screening seem a little more special. Adding to that is the organist that played right next to the stage/screen before 3 of my 4 films I saw here. This really made seeing films feel in a way I don’t usually get, and it was nice. I look forward to visiting this place again many times in the future.
Worst Picture
Night Swim
Rule for this award: has to be 1/5 or worse. There were some really bad films this year, but Night Swim is the worst. This was just dumb and after trying to watch it again to see if I was just in a bad mood the first time, I had to turn it off halfway through. It is a dumb plot with dumb characters, a dumb “villain/monster”, and a dumb conclusion. At least with Madame Web or Imaginary there are a couple of changes one could make to make them a little better. I don’t think there is anything that can save this dud from drowning.
Best Picture
Dune: Part Two
Rule to win this award: have to be a 5/5 film. As the only film I have seen in the theater three times other than Jurassic Park, this easily takes the crown of best of the year for me. I only gave two 5 stars this year, and there is still a big gap between this and Sing Sing. I just love the story Villeneuve is telling with these Dune films, and they are a great example of why seeing films in the theater on the biggest screen possible is the way to go. I would really love it if I had more than two 5 stars to choose from next year, but we have no idea what next year holds yet.
So those are my winners for this year. Perhaps next year, I grow the voting block for the Mittens. If the Globes can do that I can do that too I guess.
Mitten Film Nerd 
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