The Films of 2020. The 21st annual FiLM BiTCH Awards
PICTURE | ACTING | VISUALS | AURALS | EXTRAS | SPECIAL | SCENES
AND THE NOMINEES ARE...
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Best Actress
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| Maria Bakalova "Tutar" BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM |
Nicole Beharie "Turquoise" MISS JUNETEENTH |
Viola Davis "Ma Rainey" MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM |
Frances McDormand
"Fern" NOMADLAND |
Carey Mulligan
"Cassie" PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN |
| A master class in improv, and above all else lunatic high-wire commitment to unreality -- perfect for our fake news modern world; we believe it because she never doesn't. Inspired from her filthy caged introduction to assured newswoman / new woman liberation. |  For her mesmerizing but never simple naturalism. But above all for that beautifully intricate arc wherein she learns to ease up on controlling her daughter and begins to control her own life instead. More roles for this great, please. Filmmakers, pay attention!!! |
Her broad strokes theatricality sells Ma's legend triumphantly but also reveals her "difficult" nature as self-serving performance, too. Bonus points for that emotional fluidity with Cutler her mood shifting when her guard is down. "... it don't hurt none." |  She's made an fascinating career of being both an avatar of everywoman realness and playing variations of herself the way all of the most glamorous movie stars do, but this is next level. Grounded yet adrift, raw yet guarded; acting as merely existing. |
 For that inspired mix of relatable damage and performative agenda. Watch and listen in particular to the riveting way she flips Cassie's emotional/vocal switches, revealing a woman who is perpetually inside and outside of every moment, never able to just be. |
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Finalist: Semi-Finalists: Kate Winslet stonily independent as"Mary Anning" in Ammonite, Carrie Coon simmering to a boil as "Allison O'Hara" to escape The Nest, and Elisabeth Moss for the Albee-esque volatility and cruelty as Shirley |
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Best Actor
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| Riz Ahmed "Ruben" SOUND OF METAL |
Chadwick Boseman "Levee" MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM |
Anthony Hopkins "Anthony" THE FATHER |
Delroy Lindo "Paul" DA 5 BLOODS |
Mads Mikkelsen "Martin" ANOTHER ROUND |
| Watch and truly marvel at the way he articulates Ruben's emotional state despite Ruben's complete inability to do the same in conversation. Deep thoughtful confidently minimal work throughout. |
What a swansong! A scalpel sharp dissection (with a moving target no less) of what makes this man tick as the restless musician peacocks, rages, and rationalizes through one hot trying day. | Imagine being a prisoner in your own mind. Hopkins has done the creative work and watching him peek out, break free, or retreat back in, continually shading his gradations of lucidity and his family relations is a master class. |
Lindo rises to -- no, soars away with the challenge of his meatiest role. He breathes unruly ornery sympathetic life into what was surely an unlikeable character on page. Bonus points: Pulling off those risky addresses to camera. |
Mads soulful eyes and his physicality (that finale!) detail the precise registers of the pain/joy around his disconnection and what he genuinely loves: his wife, his friends, being a teacher. Revelatory, lived-in, multicolored. |
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Finalist: It was genuinely heartbreaking to leave out Steven Yeun's struggling father farmer "Jacob" in Minari and after Burning two years back and a nominee right here he's at the peak of his gifts right now. Can't wait to see the Minari encore. Finally, Kingsley Ben-Adir as "Malcolm X" and Leslie Odom Jr as "Sam Cooke" are at the involving heart of One Night in Miami's battle over the best way to achieve social progress. Semi Finalists: |
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Best Supporting Actress
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Olivia Colman |
Essie Davis |
Valerie Mahaffey "Mme. Reynard" FRENCH EXIT |
Amanda Seyfried |
Youn Yuh-jung "Soonja" MINARI |
| For an intoxicating mix of soldiering-on stoicism and overwhelming guilt and anguish. And shifting so nimbly to the needs of scene partners |
The great Aussie is chilling here, like a sociopathic virus, with bloody pride in her destructive contagion and reach. (Bonus points: So different and fun in Babyteeth) |
Besotted fan, clingy friend, and good sport at once. So pure and guileless you understand why Frances apologizes. So funny and touched that you believe the freezer joke. | Marvelous at selling the light comic charms of a film star, while suggesting a complex warm friend/lover who (ambivalently) lets men define her. | This acting legend effortlessly enriches every scene and the family dynamic as a light-hearted imp who willfully brings the old country into the new world of her daughter and grandchildren. |
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Finalists: Glenn Close who gives "Mamaw" emotional power and a lived-in undertow, modulating in a way the rest of the overwrought Hillbilly Elegy isn't able to do, and Olivia Williams as "Woman" in The Father who deftly navigates what might be the film's trickiest role. Semi-Finalists: |
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Best Supporting Actor
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| Sacha Baron Cohen "Abbie Hoffman" TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 |
Ben Mendelsohn "Henry" BABYTEETH |
Paul Raci "Joe" SOUND OF METAL |
Dan Stevens "Alexander Lemtov" EUROVISION SONG CONTEST... |
Glynn Turman "Toledo" MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM |
| For finessing impatience, comic impulses, and precise political reads of a sham trial into a star turn that's too good for the movie but still serves it. A fine fusion of star and role, playing to strengths but in a more traditional movie acting way. | Watch all that nimble mediated feeling in every scene and with every acting partner and marvel that you'd intuit his profession even if the film didn't tell you. So great at playing thoughtfulness and quick recalibrations when unmoored. |
The world weary mentor is a character type as old as earth but Raci's authenticity is a marvel; his love and patience play like altruistic lifelines. By contrast his naked disappointment truly stings. |
A deeply pleasureable comic creation. The film isn't worthy but Lemtov himself wouldn't mind -- all the better to offset his won perfection. Great line readings, hilarious self-regard, and exhaustive / endearing carnality. | For handling the heightened language of Wilson's text so beautifully and with so much lived-in texture, especially in his impatience with Levee and that 'time on the road' camaraderie with the others. |
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Finalists: Charles Dance impressively reserved, amused, and watchful and then angry in the same reserved fashion as "William Randolph Hearst" in Mank, Bo Burnham for deft charming handling of the tricky part of "Ryan" in Promising Young Woman, and Michael Stuhlbarg for his curdled rapport with Elisabth Moss as her jealous cruel husband "Stanley Hyman" in Shirley Semi Finalists: |
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PICTURE | ACTING | VISUALS | AURALS | EXTRAS | SPECIAL | SCENES