The 2019 Team Experience Awards

It's that time again: the Team Experience Awards! Before Nathaniel starts dishing out the Film Bitch Awards you've all been waiting for, the rest of us at The Film Experience compile our ballots for our favorites of the year in film. This year, Greta Gerwig's Little Women leads the mentions with 11 nominations - but it's Bong Joon-ho's Parasite that is our ultimate runaway favorite. As usual, our ballot features some major divergences from Oscar and some unheralded favorites. Look out for a majority female Best Director lineup, a different double acting nominee than the one Oscar chose, and a few contemporary surprises in the design categories...

Best Picture

1. Parasite
2. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
3. Marriage Story
4. Little Women
5. Pain and Glory
6. Atlantics
7. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
8. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
9. The Lighthouse
10. Hustlers
    

Best Director

• Pedro Almodóvar - Pain and Glory
• Bong Joon-ho - Parasite (WINNER)
• Mati Diop - Atlantics
• Greta Gerwig - Little Women
• Céline Sciamma - Portrait of a Lady on Fire (RUNNER-UP)

Best Film Not in the English Language

• Atlantics
• Invisible Life
• Pain and Glory
• Parasite (WINNER)
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire (RUNNER-UP)

Best Actress

• Elisabeth Moss - Her Smell (RUNNER-UP)
• Lupita Nyong'o - Us (WINNER)
• Florence Pugh - MidSommar
• Saoirse Ronan - Little Women
• Alfre Woodard - Clemency

Best Actor

• Antonio Banderas - Pain and Glory (WINNER)
• Adam Driver - Marriage Story (RUNNER-UP)
• Eddie Murphy - Dolemite is My Name
• Robert Pattinson - The Lighthouse
• Adam Sandler - Uncut Gems

Best Supporting Actress

• Cho Yeo-jeong - Parasite
• Laura Dern - Marriage Story
• Jennifer Lopez - Hustlers (WINNER)
• Florence Pugh - Little Women (RUNNER-UP)
• Octavia Spencer - Luce

Best Supporting Actor

• Tom Hanks - A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (RUNNER-UP)
• Al Pacino - The Irishman
• Joe Pesci - The Irishman
• Brad Pitt - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
• Song Kang-ho - Parasite (WINNER)

Best Original Screenplay

• The Farewell
• Marriage Story (RUNNER-UP)
• Pain and Glory
• Parasite (WINNER)
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Best Adapted Screenplay

• A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
• Hustlers
• The Irishman (RUNNER-UP)
• Jojo Rabbit
• Little Women (WINNER)

Best Costume Design

• Dolemite is My Name (RUNNER-UP)
• Hustlers
• Knives Out
• Little Women (WINNER)
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Best Documentary Feature

• American Factory
  
• Apollo 11 (RUNNER-UP)
• For Sama
• Honeyland (WINNER)
• One Child Nation

Best Animated Feature

• How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
• I Lost My Body (RUNNER-UP)
• Missing Link
• Toy Story 4 (WINNER)
• Weathering With You

Best Ensemble

• Hustlers
• Knives Out
• Little Women (RUNNER-UP)
• Marriage Story
• Parasite (WINNER)

Best Editing

• Hustlers
• The Irishman
• Little Women
• Parasite (WINNER)
• Uncut Gems (RUNNER-UP)

Best Production Design

• Knives Out
• Little Women
• MidSommar
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (RUNNER-UP)
• Parasite (WINNER)

Best Cinematography

• 1917
• Ad Astra
• The Lighthouse (RUNNER-UP)
• Little Women
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire (WINNER)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

• Bombshell (WINNER)
• Dolemite is My Name
• Judy (RUNNER-UP)
• Little Women
• Rocketman

Best Music (Pre-Existing or Original)

• Hustlers
• Joker
• The Last Black Man in San Francisco (WINNER)
• Little Women (RUNNER-UP)
• Marriage Story

Best Visual Effects

• 1917
• Ad Astra (WINNER)
• Avengers: Endgame (RUNNER-UP)
• The Irishman
• MidSommar

Best Sound

• 1917
• Ad Astra (WINNER)
• Ford v Ferrari
• The Lighthouse (RUNNER-UP)
• Uncut Gems

Best Unreleased Film

• Animals
• Bad Education (RUNNER-UP)
• Beanpole (WINNER)
• The Vast of Night
• The Wild Goose Lake

SOME FUN STATISTICS...

• Overall, 197 total films appeared across all categories and all ballots, with 74 titles showing up in votes for Best Picture ballots alone. The category with the most individual bids was (as you might expect) Best Supporting Actress, with 45 performances mentioned across all ballots.
• With 8 wins, Parasite becomes our most tropheyed film since 2015's Carol, which won 9 categories.
• The most competive category was Best Supporting Actor, with a narrow margin of only 5 points separating all nominees.
• Some titles that were generally loved but didn't land many (or any) nominations: The Last Black Man in San Francisco, The Farewell, Invisible Life, The Nightingale, and Booksmart.
• The closest vote tally to a nomination shutout: Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood) and Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story) both missed a Best Director nomination by a single point, as did Knives Out for Best Original Screenplay.
• With a Best Actress bid, Her Smell is another previous Best Unreleased Film winner to show up on next year's ballot after release (previous examples including Personal Shopper, The Lobster, and The Look of Silence). Your move, Beanpole.
• With the exception of its Best Supporting Actor win, Parasite led each of its winning categories by a substantial margin. Those categories were a race to second place.

Comments

[NATHANIEL R]

Traitors! Putting Brad in "supporting" where he 1000% doesn't belong. But otherwise great taste ;) I especially loved surprises like Ad Astra taking two prizes... though Parasite's sweep doesn't surprise me anymore than Carol's did. When you're an instant classic, you're an instant classic!

[Roger]

Love the PORTRAIT love but bizarre not to see Adèle Haenel there!

[Nick Davis]

If. the fuck. only. this were the Oscar ballot. Wahoo, Mati Diop!

[Akash]

Poor Nathaniel when he saw Visual Effects for The Irishman, even for his team's own awards 😋

[DAVID]

No Joaquin Phoenix?

*Gasp*

[NATHANIEL R]

Akash -- I KNOW.

[Jonathan]

Maybe because you made the same egregious decision, could you *please* shed some light on the absence of ROCKETMAN from Costume Design? Trying to understand if maybe it's the same reason it missed with the Academy? Really pretty perplexed.

[Peggy Sue]

Rocketman missing Best Costume Design is inexplicable and I'm leaving.

[RayLewis1997]

So happy to see Atlantics make it in Picture and Mati Diop in Director. And for all of the Little Women and Parasite love. Such great picks.

[Nick Davis]

I personally felt Rocketman did a more than ample job reproducing costumes from photo evidence (no mean feat) but was not quite as strong or consistent on costumes it had to imagine for itself. And its hair/makeup game wasn't quite on point enough, especially away from Elton, to crack my top 5 in my ballot...though it was close! Not questioning the overall strength of the work, but I think I prefer these five, even though I didn't vote for all of them.

[Working stiff]

Was Joaquin #6—or even Top 10?

[Peggy Sue]

but it had tons of glitter!

[MJS]

So, did you guys like the movie Parasite?

[Eh]

Joaquin was not that good in Joker so..

[Claran]

Gr8 list!! 👍

So Parasite only loses in one category?? 😂 Lets hope it repeats its many victories on Oscar night!! 😉

On the Best Actress race, who is the 6th place?? Issit Scarjo? or Mary Kay Place??

Ditto Supp Actress, Is Scarjo the 6th place again??

[Glenn Dunks]

Great line-up and happy to put my name to it. There's only category where I haven't even seen the winner (music, LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO screeners never materialised and it won't get a local release any time soon).

Roger, the thing is - Best Actress was stacked! It's only the Academy/other award bodies who didn't notice. I suspect the PORTRAIT ladies simply missed as a result of mathematics.

As for ROCKETMAN... well, I just didn't like the damn movie and preferred other costumes.

[San FranCinema]

I've been crowing about Octavia Spencer in LUCE all season so that one made me happy ;)

[CineMatt]

This entire list is *chef’s kiss* all around and why I continue to return to TFE again and again. Great writers with even better taste! Kudos!!

[Jonathan]

Nick, I speculated about that being the Academy's logic, also, but then thought how "Jackie" was nominated in 2016 for doing plenty of historical recreation itself.

I guess many factors were at play. At least you guys didn't nominated "Joker" or "The Irishman" there...

[Ryan Crowe]

I love the love for PARASITE and particularly Bong Joon-ho.

Song Kang-ho should be sweeping. (Brad Pitt is a lead and a cheater and doesn't belong in the conversation in either category, and I kind of wish Nathaniel exercised veto power over his inclusion here.)

Best Actor is my dream, especially gold for Antonio and silver for Adam Driver and a mention for Adam Sandler.

My heart breaks for Mary Kay Place; I thought TFE team would do right by her. She was by far the best of anyone this year, and as lead actresses go, only Alfre Woodard and the ineligible Melanie Lynskey (I'M NOT AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE) came anywhere close to her brilliance for me.

Supporting Actress actually offends me. I continue to be mystified by the Jennifer Lopez praise, and I thought Octavia Spencer was aggressively bad in LUCE, just like the male lead and the film itself. I so wish there had been room for PARASITE's Lee Jung-eun, whom I believe is even better in the movie than the also great Cho Yeo-jeong. I think Laura Dern was genius and that she deserves every accolade she receives for her work in MARRIAGE STORY.

Even in a year as weak as this, I cannot believe HUSTLERS is listed as a Top 10 movie. Aside from finding it morally and intellectually deficient, I thought it fell fall far short of the magic of FLASHDANCE. The actresses (who are supposed to be playing actual strippers) showed no more flesh than the cast of the 1983 film of clothed and artful exotic dancers. Lizzo was the only poster-billed player to even have the nerve to go topless. After Lopez wins her Independent Spirit Award (tragically at the expense of Zhao Shuzhen), I look forward to no longer being bombarded with the extremely misguided wokeness surrounding that shallow mess.

[Luke]

The absence of love for the Portrait of a Lady on Fire ladies is perplexing considering Florence Pugh has two nominations. Joaquin ought to have been a nominee over Pattinson and Willem ought to have been a nominee over Pitt but other than that great sense of nominees.

[Eric]

@ Nick Davis

I'm hoping those ATLANTICS mentions outside Foreign Film were partly your doing. Wish it had popped up in Original Score (it was such an incredible year for that category). Is your full personal ballot on your Twitter? Would love to see it.

[TK]

Great choices all around. Especially that lead actress list.

But, uh, where are the "High Life" mentions? No Juliette Binoche?!? No Music or Cinematography mentions?!? It's just so confusing.

[Nick Davis]

@Eric: I'm positive Murtada (especially) and Chris and a few others were as ardent as I was about Atlantics, which was also my top choice for Cinematography, Editing, Sound, and Original Screenplay, as well as placing on my ballot for Score. I'll release a Best of 2019 ballot once I've wrapped up my Best of the Decade series (writing up #8 right now!) and once I've caught a few more documentaries I missed. Thanks for asking!

[Henry]

No fun novelty categories but these awards have surpassed The Film Bitch ones in my anticipation. Such fun to see what breaks through the voting with a varied and interesting group of folks like yourselves.

Things like Mary Kay Place not making the five here of all places actually lessens the pain because if you guys couldn’t squeeze her in I wouldn’t expect the more follow the leader groups to. Same thing for The Farewell, Booksmart, etc.

Weird too that performances touted by some as borderline lead (Lopez, Pitt) are happily put in supporting when Nathaniel is out of the picture. The one thing Nathaniel does better is his erring on the side of overcorrection.

[Ryan T.]

These nominations and winners are so lovely. AND YET just one nomination for THE FAREWELL? I'm so perplexed.

Also... must be nice to have seen PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE. Way to botch the release of that movie for us normal folks.

[kin]

Did Song Kang Ho get any lead votes or is that really just a me only thing?

[Glenn Dunks]

Eric, I played my part in the ATLANTICS love in, too.

TK, I wasn't a fan of HIGH LIFE, but I listed it in production design.

Ryan, I was surprised to not see it pop up in the top category, but there's not many places to put THE FAREWELL beyond screenplay and acting (and as I've already said, those categories are actually stacked despite what awards bodies kept trying to tell us). Diana Lim actually got my #3 supporting actress slot - I prefer her to Zhao.

[Mirko]

Except Brad’s placement these are better than Oscars2020

[Deborah Lipp]

Nat, I gave a lot of thought to the Brad Pitt issue.

I chewed on that movie a lot. Why did I not love it, what was it that I did and didn't like about it? Professor Spouse, of course, was unquestioning in her love for it, and the other person we saw it with HATED it, so I spent a lot of time considering my "between the two" position.

Ultimately, I decided it would have been a much better movie had Brad Pitt been the main character, and Leo the supporting role. Given that position, I had to allow that Pitt's role was supporting.

[Jess]

I continue to be perplexed by the Laura Dern love. That performance is an utter mess.

[Brad]

@Ryan Crowe

You're a pest.

[jules]

All this Little Women love! Elisabeth Moss! Adam Sandler! Song Kang-ho! *hugs self* The world would be so much better off if these were the Oscar nominations.

[Robert G]

The love for Atlantics makes me happy. I wish I had gotten to see Portrait of a Lady on Fire during its limited release. It really looks like it could have shook up my own list.

[Luca]

There's absolutely no way Pattison's work in The Lighthouse is better than Phoenix in Joker.
I suspect polítical bias played a huge role in this voting.

Just like in the Oscars.

[Filmarbeiter]

Me, personally, I'd go with much more OUATIH.
1. It's a picture and especially a sound-poem the whole way through, and that's not concerning the musical cues.
2. It has a wonderful construction, dancing around a character in its utmost crisis framed by his shadow and his opposite & an astonishig ensemble all around.
3. QT's direction way up there once again.
...and with more of its more conventional double, the bio-pic by the numbers DIMN:
1. I'd leave of the director but opting for picture, actor, supact male & female and the tech categories as well.
Two times this year that I enjoyed a movie despite its obvious flaws from a to z.

Otherwise, I adore the list. Thank you!

[Bette Streep]

Little Women got 12 nominations not 11. And where the hell is Renee? She is brilliant in Judy!

[Me]

Having just walked out of 1917 and, right before, Clemency, there is simply no way that a list without Aldis Hodge is legit.

Should win the damn thing.

[Michael R]

Jess: agree with you somewhat on Dern. It is a fun and flashy performance but her character has no interiority at all. I cannot believe this performance is sweeping.

[Erick Loggia]

Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler better than Joaquin Phoenix and Leonardo DiCaprio?
Really?
I hated Uncut Gems, and Sandler was so boring and irritaring! Argh!

[NATHANIEL R]

Erick -- hard agree on Sandler but i wasn't allowed to veto ;)

Luca -- more likely just different tastes. But then a lot of people define "bias" as "doesn't agree with me" now. I think Phoenix is much better than the movie that surrounds him, for example, but I'm not sure it's a great performance exactly because how does the character ever make any sense? Individual scenes are strong but it doesn't feel like a coherent characterization. at least to me. And he's definitely NOT playing someone who could become a criminal mastermind which is sort of instrinsic to the character if not this particular movie.

but then i dont get to vote on these so i'm just mouthing off on why i am one of those people that resists this performance (not everyone thinks it should win the Oscar)

[Ginny]

I’m so happy to know that the team had a lot of love for The Nightingale, even though it didn’t land any TFE noms. It was such a brutal but beautiful film and it deserved more attention this year.

[whunk]

@NATHANIEL: I agree there's something lacking in Phoenix's performance. As talented as he is, he never managed to make his character wholly realized somehow. It was more cartoonish, which I think may be at odds with what Phillips was trying to achieve with Joker as a character study. Not upset when he wins though, but I'd put both Banderas and Driver ahead of him this year.

[Evan]

Jojo Rabbit getting voted as a Best Adapted Screenplay nominee by the Film Experience team is a real indication of how weak that category is this year!

That Lupita/Elisabeth pair at the top of Best Actress is beautiful!

[mykeskye76]

Where can I find the 1st Team Experience Awards winners?

[Patrick]

Yes, we Need all Years of These Awards! ;-)

[Evan]

Best Unreleased Film: And Then We Danced was ROBBED! (I assume it qualifies if Beanpole did.) Hope to see it nominated in next year’s awards!

[Michael Cusumano]

I declined to vote because I haven't been able to keep up with enough films in 2019 and it didn't seem right to vote haven't missed stuff like Pain and Glory or Ad Astra. (I've seen a lot of films for, ya know, a human being, just not enough for this crowd)

Nice to see I can count on the impeccable taste of this group to cover for me.

(Although maybe my fervent support for Wesley Snipes might have nudged him into the five?)

[NATHANIEL R]

For those who want to see past lists here they are for copy pasting pleasure. i'll add to the post when i get a chance...

2018
http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2019/1/28/team-experience-awards-2018-our-favourites.html
2017
http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2018/1/20/the-6th-annual-team-experience-awards.html
2016
http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2017/1/16/the-5th-annual-team-experience-awards.html
2015
http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2016/1/19/team-experience-awards-with-love-to-carol-ex-machina-girlhoo.html
2014
http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2015/1/21/and-the-3rd-annual-team-experience-award-goes-to.html
2013
http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2014/1/14/the-2nd-annual-team-experience-award-goes-to.html
2012
http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2013/1/8/holy-motors-tops-the-inaugural-team-experience-awards.html