by Nathaniel R
CHALLENGERS took the Best Kiss gold medal for its threesome turned twosome. Who will win for 2025 cinema?
As we gear up for both the 98th Oscars and the 26th (!) annual Film Bitch Awards, it surprised me (though it shouldn't have given my track record) that I had never posted the final page of 2024 (the "Scene" categories) which I had definitely completed a year ago. Since those awards are about to be supplanted by a current "Best of the Year" party (beginning tonight with a bit of silliness!), I invite you, if you're so inclined, to think back on last year's cinema for however many minutes you so desire to check out the gold, silver, and bronze medal honors in several categories as well as the heretofore unseen choices for the final scene categories like "best opening scene", "best musical sequence" and many more... Among the 42 categories in our annual awards jamboree, 64 films were honored with at least one citation. As I've said many times, it's pretty rare that even the best films of the year are THE BEST AT LITERALLY EVERYTHING the way the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would have you believe.
A few notes about the awards follow...
• The process of drawing up the top 12s in all 40ish categories (5 nominees and 7 more w/ finalists and semi-finalist citations) is painstaking each year -- I argue with myself so much (the fate of being a Gemini?) -- but in fact I deeply love it and contrary to a common critique of awards and lists of any kind, this habitual "best of" choosing does not flatten my appreciation of cinema but deepens it. It gets me to thinking about all the tiny intricate details that go into any movie and the hundreds of choices that are made by artists in every single scene from actors to costume designers and editors and the like, whether a movie is unthinkably great or incredibly disappointing. When I finish a category I'm mostly just left with gratitude that these people chose this career and gave me (and presumably other movie-lovers out there in the dark) some joy or catharsis or escape or ideas to mull over.
WICKED
• Despite having almost twice as many categories here, only three films scored double digit nominations within my own prizes: The Brutalist (13), Wicked (12), and Anora (10). By contrast in most recent Oscar seasons we get three to four double-digit nominees despite films only being eligible in 14-16 categories. Oscar voters really do think that if you're great in one category, you're great in all. Either that or voters only see or remember seeing about 20 movies in any given year. (For what it's worth, I believe both are true.)
• Wicked won 4 gold medals (Costume Design, Hero of the Year, Diva of the Year, Musical Sequence), 3 silver medals (Production Design, Adapted Score, Musical Sequence) and 2 bronze medals (Makeup and Hair and Sexpot of the Year) here which is quite a haul for half a film -- alas, I cannot report that Wicked: For Good will do well in this year's awards. That's both because it isn't as good and because it's difficult for me to think like Emmy voters and usually I consider one prize is enough for the same achievement!
That said sometimes you have to shower someone / something with awards like this next bullet point...
BABYGIRL
• Nicole Kidman received her 8th nomination and 3rd gold medal in the traditional acting categories at the latest Film Bitch Awards. Her history to date: Moulin Rouge! (Actress Silver Medal 2001), The Hours (Actress Nominee 2002), Birth (Actress Nominee 2004), Margot at the Wedding (Actress Nominee 2007), Rabbit Hole (Actress Gold Medal 2010), Paperboy (Supporting Actress Gold Medal 2012), Lion (Supporting Actress Silver Medal 2016), and Babygirl (Actress Gold Medal 2024).
• Flow became the first animated feature to win the Best Picture Gold Medal at the Film Bitch Awards. The closest previously was WALL•E which took the silver medal for 2008 (Rachel Getting Married won the Gold that year).
• Oscar Alignment. We rarely agree fully but if you take our Gold Medal as equivalent to Oscar win there were actually five twin prizes this year: Flow as Best Animated Feature, Wicked for Best Costume Design, Dune Part Two for Best Visual Effects, and The Substance for Best Make-Up & Hairstyling, The Brutalist for Best Original Score
EMILIA PEREZ
• Oscar Disagreements. For the record I try not to think about the Oscar races while I'm working out my own nominations and medals but I do have fun comparing the prizes afterwards. My greatest divide with Oscar last season was the Academy's Best Picture nominees Nickel Boys and Emilia Perez which didn't place in any of the parallel categories here (Nickel Boys came close in Supporting Actress) but received 1 (best scene) and 2 nominations (best musical scene, best scene), respectively, within the "extra" categories. On the flip side among my top ten list, 40% of them were completely ignored by the Academy: the erotic drama Babygirl (4 noms here in Oscar parallel categories), the action comedy The Fall Guy (2 noms in Oscar parallel categories), the singular satire Problemista (3), and the Italian Oscar submission Vermiglio (2).
ALIGNMENT OR NOT? A QUICK OVERVIEW OF MY OWN AWARDS VS OSCAR IN 2024/2025
For Best Animated Feature and Best Picture (I only have 3 and 5 nominees respectively, we've counted the runners up to make the case for what percentage are aligned...) I haven't done the math on this for other years but apart from Supporting Actor (where our tastes usually vary wildly) all of this looks kind of "usual" from a vibe perspective in how my own tastes aligns and doesn't with the shiny gold man. Note for example how little the music categories align and my broken-record complaints about the Academy's music branch.
100% ALIGNMENT (5 OF 5) NONE
80% (4 OF 5) Animated Feature, Makeup and Hairstyling, Supporting Actor
60% (3 OF 5) Actress, Director, Sound, Visual Effects
40% (2 OF 5) Actor, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Production Design, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay
30% (3 OF 10) Picture
20% (1 of 5) Original Score
0% NO ALIGNMENT (0 of 5) Supporting Actress, and Original Song
ROBOT DREAMS won two golds and two bronze medals for 2023 (Best Animated Feature, Best Ending, Best Musical Sequence, Animal of the Year). Who will win those categories for 2025?
P.S. While I was at it I dug through my messy desktop with its infinite lists and folders and found the parallel best scene pages for 2023 which also hadn't been posted (my procrastination knows no bounds!) but at least this exercize in excavation was fun trip down memory lane and got me psyched to post this year's awards party in a more timely fashion. Wish me luck.
P.P.S. If you're still reading thank you for your incredible attention span. How have the movies of 2023 and 2024 aged for you? Any films that have faded or grown in your estimation more than you expected they would?