Welcome

The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team.

This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms. 

Powered by Squarespace
DON'T MISS THIS

Follow TFE on Substackd 

COMMENTS

Oscar Takeaways
12 thoughts from the big night

 

Keep TFE Strong

We're looking for 500... no 390 SubscribersIf you read us daily, please be one.  

I ♥ The Film Experience

THANKS IN ADVANCE

What'cha Looking For?
Subscribe

The Films of 2018. The 19th annual FiLM BiTCH Awards

PICTURE | ACTING | VISUALS | AURALS | EXTRAS | SPECIAL | SCENES 

 

AND THE NOMINEES ARE


Best Costume Design
Ruth Carter
BLACK PANTHER
Sandy Powell
THE FAVOURITE
Sandy Powell
MARY POPPINS RETURNS
Lindy Hemming
PADDINGTON 2
Renee Ehrlich Kalfus
A SIMPLE FAVOR
 Carter dresses a whole new old world of African heritage, prints, cool textures, and techno-heavy garments. And there's so very much glorious color. Begone superhero blandness. You have been vanquished.  A bracingly 21st take on the 17th century as  Powell mixes contemporary fabric and construction with old school aesthetics. Bonus points for Queen Anne's anti-glamour dressing gowns and Lady Sarah's dramatic black veil. Powell always pushes herself. Here she rethinks an iconic character with aplomb, uses every color of the rainbow and really goes for it with those painted costumes in the animated sequence. Hemming has practically as much fun with Paddington 2 as Hugh Grant is having as a scenery chewing thespians who comes with his own costume lair. A warm and fuzzy spectacle with the best prison uniforms ever.

 That strikingly styled antagonist is hard to miss. Blake Lively sure sells a suit. But rich character work and subtle details abound if you look. A totally inspired example of the craft of contemporary costuming.

 

Finalists: Dierdra Elizabeth Govan for Sorry to Bother You, Mary Zophres for First Man AND The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Semi-Finalists: Caroline Eselin for If Beale Street Could Talk, Sarah Edwards for Oceans 8, Ola Staszko in Cold War, Alexandra Byrne for Mary Queen of Scots, and Leesa Evans and Debra McGuire for I Feel Pretty

 

 

Best Cinematography
BURNING
Hong Kyung-pyo
COLD WAR
Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski
FIRST MAN
Linus Sandgren
IF BEALE STREET COULD TAlK
James Laxton
ROMA
Alfonso Cuarón

 

 


  

 

 

 

Finalists: Matthew Libatique for A Star is Born, Robbie Ryan for Widows AND The Favourite

Semi-Finalists: Zak Mulligan for We the Animals, Joshua James Richards for The Rider, Rob Hardy for Annihilation, Charlotte Bruss Christensen for  A Quiet Place and Pawel Pogorzelski in Hereditary

 

Best Production Design
ANNIHILATION
Mark Digby
THE FAVOURITE
Fiona Crombe
ISLE OF DOGS
Adam Stockhausen & Paul Harrod
PADDINGTON 2
Gary Williamson
ROMA
Eugenio Caballero

The human topiaries. That organic hole in the wall. The Shimmer. It's all spare but detailed enough to project on to and stir your own fantasies and fears.

 Those bookshelves, and rabbit cages. The long hallways of intrigue and violent grounds. You're always aware of how hermetically sealed this world is, no matter how vast the rooms.  Impeccably designed from its Japanese art influences to its unmistakably comic Wes Anderson storybook qualities. Pictures inside pictures. A trash island, both funny and sad.

A stern prison transformed into both a musical revuew theater and joyful mess hall. The cluttered homey decor of toy shops and loving homes. The color palette. So much heart and whimsy.

 Totally immersive. That impractical driveway. Those 1970 slums. The epic old school movie theater. So many sites that feel both mythically conjured but grounded in realism.

 

Finalists: Hannah Beachler's multiple worlds of Wakanda in Black PantherGrace Yun's haunted house, treehouse, and their miniatures in Hereditary, and  Inbal Weinberg for that memorable dance school, its tiled floors and endless hidden chambers in Suspiria 

Semi-Finalists: Mark Friedberg for If Beale Street Could Talk, Nathan Crowley for First Man, Jason Kisvarday for Sorry to Bother You

 

 

Best Film Editing
BLACKkKLANSMAN
Barry Alexander Brown
COLD WAR
Jaroslaw Kaminski
THE FAVOURITE
Yorgos Mavropsaridis
A STAR IS BORN
Jay Cassidy
WE THE ANIMALS
Keiko Deguchi and Brian A Kates

 Provocative, even confrontational montage paired with Spike Lee's crazy facility with tonal swerves. Excellent work.

  Zero fat on this picture. A dry-eyed crystalline survey of multiple countries, years, and heartbreaks. An even cuts with deadpan humor.  Chunky or swift chapters, with the editing always attuned to both brilliant character work and absurdist humor.  

Exciting concert sequences, visually rich montage, and intimate partnering with those enormous star turns.

Impressionistic vignettes, sublime facility with mood and memory, ritual and repetitions.

 

Finalists: Tom Cross for First Man, Lucian Johnston & Jennifer Lane for Hereditary, Eddie Hamilton for Mission Impossible: Fallout

Semi-Finalists: Jennifer Lily for Eighth Grade, Stefan Grube for Tully, Joe Walker for Widows, and Bettina Bohler for Western 

...

Best Visual Effects
ANT MAN & THE WASP AVENGERS INFINITY WAR FIRST MAN MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT PADDINGTON 2
 Effects as comic MVP. Plus the thrilling instability of the villain Ghost.  What a colossal movie. That's not the same thing as great but the effects sure are. Thanos!  Bless practical effects, especially when they give you awestruck grandeur via human drama  More practical effects, plus death-defying stuntwork that was surely goosed by the fx team   The whimsy, charm, and invention of that storybook effect. Plus a CGI protagonist. 
 

Finalists: Boy does that 2D animated sequence play in Mary Poppins Returns. Plus old school hokey effects of a nanny flying and people floating. And who can forget the visual horrors and enigmas of Annihilation?

emi Finalists: Solo: A Star Wars Story, Black Panther, Incredibles 2, and Ralph Breaks the Internet

NOTE: Did not screen Christopher Robin or Marwen (you can't see everything) which I've heard good things about pertaining to the visual effects.

 

Best MakeUp and Hair

BLACK PANTHER
BORDER
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
SUSPIRIA VICE
That royal family. Those tribal scars on Killmonger. And impressive wigs (not thes ones you throw though we loved that!)   Tina always knew she was different. She didn't know how different. Stunningly believable prosthetic effects that don't hinder the acting.  Poor Queen Elizabeth and those chicken pox! And who doesn't love a queen and her ladies in waiting all with the same impossible impractical 'dos for travel MOST Makeup. Tilda as an old man and ancient demonic woman might beuneccessary showing off, but the washed out faces, long braids, and theater makeup all haunt.  Yes, Bale did his own physical transforming as he is prone to do but there's a lot of work to get these stars over the line familiar as famous officials.
 

Finalists: The Favourite doesn't look like a badger with its period makeup and dandy wigs. Impressive fatsuit work on John C Reilly in Stan & Ollie as well as period glamour, and age effects that aren't overdone.

Semi Finalists: Crazy Rich Asians, BlacKkKlansman, I Feel Pretty, A Star is Born, and How to Talk to Girls at Parties