The Films of 2019. The 20th annual FiLM BiTCH Awards
PICTURE | ACTING | VISUALS | AURALS | EXTRAS - YOU ARE HERE | SPECIAL | SCENES
AND THE NOMINEES ARE...
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Best Actress in a Limited Performance, Cameo,
or Voice Only Role discuss |
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| Barbara Auer an architect TRANSIT |
Danielle Brooks "Yvette" CLEMENCY |
Julieta Serrano "Jacinta" PAIN & GLORY |
Marie Seux
a doctor SAUVAGE/WILD |
Alanna Ulbach
"Judge Jeanine Pirro" BOMBSHELL |
| We're still haunted by this lost cynical soul -- she doesn't want conversation, just company. She doesn't even want your sympathy since she hates dogs. No wonder she met such a horrific fate. |  Brooks appears in just one scene in this death-sentence drama but it's a tour de force. Not only is she a powerhouse but she threads a tricky needle of grief and forgiveness without regret. |
 We instantly forgave the strange casting (Cruz and Serrano look absolutely nothing alike) but as the older version of Salvador's mother, she does Almodóvar proud yet again. Her best since Women on the Verge... |
 Seux knocks you out with little warning as a compassionate doctor sizing up an absolute mess of a patient. Can you blame her patient for his instinctual if inappropriate reaction to her kindness. |
Though most of her role is glares and crowd scenes, she cuts a fearsome memorable figure as one of Team Roger's loyalists. That candy machine exchange with Charlize Theron is passive agressive-agressive fire. |
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Finalists: Julia Butters as "Trudi Fraser" in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Martha Kelly as "The Evaluator" in Marriage Story, Emma Thompson as "The Elder" in Missing Link, Bobbi Salvor Menuez as "Shooting Star #1" in Under the Silver Lake Semi-Finalists: Ruth Negga as "Helen Lantos" in Ad Astra; Dakota Fanning as "Squeaky Fromme" in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; and Fernanda Montenegro as "Euridice Gusmao" in Invisible Life |
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| Richard Madden "Lt Joseph Blake" 1917 |
Mike Moh "Bruce Lee" ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD |
Rob Morgan "James Sr" LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO |
Leonardo Sbaraglia "Federico" PAIN & GLORY |
Andrew Scott "Lt. Leslie" 1917 |
| Madden gets just one scene in 1917 but it's a whammy, tasking him with bringing this tense epic home with a traumatic punch in the midst of what is essentially a triumphant finale -- reminding us that war doesn't come with happy endings. | Lost in the online outrage about the Bruce Lee scene in Tarantino's flick is that Moh was superb as QT's vision of the martial arts icon -- at least he got a well deserved shout-out in Brad Pitt's Oscar speech. 'My man Mike Moh' | Unforgettable in his first irritable scene and yet more complex again in his second, with something like a hesistant olive branch. He's giving such insight into the lost years between this father and son. |
He exudes a lifetime of remembered, even proud, romantic / sexual history. Those eyes! That voice. You just want to sink back into him as if you were once his lover, too. |
1917 is a cavalcade of guest stars but none are more effective than Scott's jaded lieutenant, come face-to-face with younger soldiers on a dangerous mission; to him they're already corpses.
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Finalists: Martin Lawrence is memorably unhinged and manic as "Captain Wack" in The Beach Bum; Why couldn't Harvey Keitel be in more of The Irishman as "Angelo Bruno"; Alex Breaux is pitch-perfect embodiment of a horny manipulative 'Stockbroker' in Hustlers - just stroke it a little; and Zac Jaffee is a wonderfully sympathetic fool "Gary" --- "We love you Gary!" -- in Hustlers Semi Finalists: Why couldn't Harvey Keitel be in more of The Irishman as "Angelo Bruno"; Louis Hoffman is winning as "Teja Kremke" in The White Crow; Bruce Dern is memorable as "George Spahn" in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood |
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Best Juvenile Performance (Under 18)
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| Julia Butters "Trudi Fraser" ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD |
Roman Griffin Davis "Jojo" JOJO RABBIT |
Joseph Engel "Joseph" A FAITHFUL MAN |
Shahadi Wright Joseph "Zora / Umbrae" US |
Noah Jupe "Otis" HONEY BOY |
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Tiny THESPIAN. She successfully recreates the trope of the adult-like child prodigy but even better is her disarming chemistry with DiCaprio and her delineation of whn Trudi is performing versus just being. |
As the center of the broadly comic storm, Davis's open-faced guilelessness makes you feel as protective as his mother about the hate he's parroting and the innate sensitivity they hope to bully out of him. |
Totally effective as a grieving mystery buff kid who is convinced that his mother has murdered his father in this very French romantic comedy. |
Each actor is challenged to create two characters. Lupita aside, Shahadi creates the most unsettling least human doppelganger a neat trick given how everygirl relatable her moody teen track star is otherwise. |
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Finalists: Evan Alex is doing smart double duty as ever-curious young "Jason" and his silent pyromaniac double "Pluto" in Us, Archie Yates is funny and completely endearing as Jojo Rabbit's awkward best friend. Semi Finalists: Jung Hyun-jun and Jung Jizo in Parasite, Lilien Batman in Transit, Noah Jupe in Ford V Ferrari, and Nico Parker in Dumbo |
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Breakthrough Performer
The basic criteria is being a) early in movie career and b) making us immediately want to see them in something else soon! (Note: Actors are not eligible for this category if they are nominated in one of the four traditional acting categories) discuss |
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| Jessie Buckley for WILD ROSE |
Kelvin Harrison Jr for LUCE / WAVES |
Tom Mercier for SYNONYMS |
Margaret Qualley for ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD |
Taylor Russell for WAVES |
| She got a thankless role in Judy but when asked to take center stage as her own troubled (albeit less glamourous) goldened voice songbird, she delivered big time. Those pipes are sensational - and she has the acting gift to match them. Put her in a real musical immediately. |
When in interviews he named actresses as inspirations, we weren't shocked given that emotional depth and range are more commonly found in female stars. He plays star students with dangerous sides in both films but in completely opposite ways: Luce with surgical control, Waves like an exposed nerve. |
What an astonishingly unself-conscious debut. This former judo competitor found in a regular old casting call was hyper specifically right for his first acting gig as a troubled immigrant who wants to leave Israel behind and become simply French. | So charismatic and wily from the margins. Then, when she becomes the co-star of a long singular passage (Spahn ranch) she really wows, easily handling Tarantino's tricky writing while staying alarmingly physically at ease on camera, dirty feet, hormones, and all. | For the first half of Waves, she very nearly recedes into the walls, as the quietest member of a family with rather explosive problems. But in the second half, what blossoming! Russell gives a rich moving portrait of a girl finding her own gentle loving path out of family trauma. |
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Finalists: Jonathan Majors is stunningly expressive despite the character's spectrum-like off in his world disconnect in Last Black Man in San Francisco, Park So Dam is the coolest of Parasite's incredible cast as the most proficiently criminal family member Semi Finalists: Cesar Vicente in Pain & Glory, Cardi B in Hustlers, Da'vine Joy Randolph in Dolemite Is Me Name, Lily Rose-Depp for A Faithful Man, and Hannah Murray for Charlie Says NOTE: Florence Pugh was nominated in this category two years ago for Lady Macbeth so was ineligible this year despite more "breaking out" in the Hollywood sense;) |
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Best Ensemble Performance
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| THE IRISHMAN | MARRIAGE STORY | PARASITE | US | WAVES |
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DeNiro
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Driver
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Song Choi Park Lee etc... Much has been made about Parasite's precision in filmmaking. Just as razor sharp is the (collective) acting, each character fully dimensional and equal degrees endearing and off-putting, no weak links to break the acting chain! A miracle. |
Nyong'o Get Out was no fluke. Jordan Peele proves that he's extraordinarily gifted at pulling really engaging and interesting performances out of a wide range of actors in perfect synch... and out of synch as their physical doubles need. |
Brown Is the acting occassionally as florid as the filmmaking? Yes, but what a powder keg of a movie. Everyone is clearly in on contributing to this directorial vision. And the central family unit really sparks. |
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Finalists: Potentially unpopular opinion. One of the reasons Marvel has been so successful with their "Cinematic Universe" culminating in Avengers: Endgame is that the cast has never been "above" the material and has often gone beyond it, creating rich characterizations in a genre that doesn't always reward that... or even want it. People wouldn't care this much (see other superhero films not in the MCU) if the actors hadn't made all this fantasy so real for years. Everyone in this cast is on their A game, feeling the weight of closing a 22 film story in tip-top form. | Greta Gerwig has such fun reteaming with Saoirse and Timothée and Tracy for Little Women. The rest of her star-studded cast also delivers even if Saoirse/Florence are the ones running away with it... Semi-Finalists: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Knives Out, Diane, The Farewell, and American Woman. |
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Best Casting
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Jodi Angstreich |
Douglas Aibel & Francine Maisler MARRIAGE STORY |
Unknown PARASITE |
Francine Maisler & Jennifer Venditti UNCUT GEMS |
Terri Taylor US |
| An admission: we were bound to love the cast here given that it's a rare film that preferences an ensemble of older women. But true to its challenging indie spirit, these aren't lazy "which name can we get" choices but a group of tremendous actors wonderfully matched with strong roles: Place, Parsons, Martin, O'Connell, etc | It's not every film that so perfectly matches two leads in their primes and then fills out their supporting cast with a rich array of character actors, some of whom feel so regionally specific/perfect and others who we're just so thrilled to see again (Julie Hagerty and Alan Alda!) in roles this good. |
Song Kang Ho and Lee Jeong-Eun were probably givens considering their Bong Joon Ho history but the entire cast is sublime and justright for their roles... and as individual family units within. And bonus points for the discovery of first-timer Jung Hyun-jun as little tent-loving Park Da-Song. |
Yes, it's true. I rather hate this movie. But throughout it felt superbly and imaginatively cast. Rich ways of using underused actors (Menzel, Bogosian), fresh discoveries (Fox), new challenges (Sandler), people as "themselves" (Garnett), and actors who we're always eager to spend time with (Stanfield) and so on... | Yes, Elisabeth Moss probably works too much but she's excellent (x2) in this film. Otherwise Taylor collects an assortment of underused actors with the physical creative precision to deliver both character and less-than-human doppelgange and finds young actors to play the (believable) kids of both central families. |
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Finalists: Anne Kang & Leslie Woo for The Farewell, Allison Jones in Booksmart Semi Finalists: Avy Kaufman for Waves, Gayle Keller for Hustlers, Victoria Thomas Once Upon a Time ...in Hollywood, Carmen Cuba for American Woman, Julia Kim and Nina Henninger for The Last Black Man in San Francisco |
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