The 2018 Animation Contenders: MFKZ

Every Saturday this month, Tim will be taking a look at one of the films submitted for the Best Animated Feature Oscar.

For lack of a better place to start, it must surely be the case that MFKZ is the most globally-minded animated film released in the United States in 2018. The screenplay was adapted by French writer Guillaume "Run" Renaud, from his own 2015 comic book. The animation was done by Japanese company Studio 4°C, under the co-direction of Renaud and Shojiro Nishimi. The setting is saturated in a pop culture vision of Los Angeles that feels influenced more by the Grand Theft Auto video game series, the Fast & Furious movie series, and rap videos than the actual life of the city's black and Latino communities, and the story is a criticism of systemic racism in the U.S. and the worldwide corporate greed that has led to the impending climate crisis. Plus it's a crypto-remake of John Carpenter's They Live.

All of which is to say that the movie sure is… something. Something that is, frankly, quite a bit messy and confusing, possibly racist, and also exciting and startling in its originality.

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Tweetweek: "Poor Unfortunate Souls" and Seasonal Hijinx

Relatable content!

Nicholas Britell: 🎺

Me: 😭

— kathryn hahn & paul giamatti @ applebee’s (@bkkirby) December 19, 2018

 AFTER THE JUMP, awards season nuttiness, Mary Poppins Returns, Aquaman, and Harvey Fierstein doing Ursula the Sea Witch which was always clearly meant to be...

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Florida Film Critics Circle (and more)

Given our most recent podcast conversation in which Florida film critic Alfred Soto was a guest star, we wanted to inform you of the end results of The Florida Film Critics Circle's year end "best" discussions. The Favourite took their top prize but the big story is how fully they embraced Asian cinema with two acting prizes for Asian actors and additional prizes for Shoplifters (foreign film), Shirkers (documentary), and Mirai (animated film).

The 26 member wide organization is spread out all around Florida and has been in existence since 1996, just before the boom (2002-2012) when every city and/or state decided they needed an organization, sometimes two of them!) Their full list of winners (along with a handful of other groups that announced earlier that we neglected to mention) are after the jump...

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Eight Links Out

• Deadline 10 upcoming films that were given by funding from the British Film Institute... including a new meaty role for Sally Hawkins
• Filmmaker picks the 10 best films directed by women this year from Kenya's Rafiki through the US indie Madeline's Madeline. The biggest grosswer on the list is You Were Never Really Here by Lynne Ramsay...
• TFE <-- which, in case you missed  our year in review of box office hits, is only the 8th biggest grosser among female helmed films this year just behind Leave No Trace and Can You Ever Forgive Me?
• The Muse "Penny Marshall and the Movies That Shaped Me" 
• Gold Derby if Lady Gaga wins two Oscars this February she'll be the fifth woman to accomplish that trick in one night (but first actress).
• Pajiba picks some favourite movie costumes of the year and thankfully doesn't ignore contemporary films
• Electric Literature why recent movies about queer friendships are so revolutionary
• Awards Daily talks to Black Panther's editor Michael Shawver about some of the movie's best scenes and a compliment from Francis Coppola
• /Film you have just one week to watch Pixar's animated short finalist Bao online. It's soooo adorable

18 Beautiful Examples of Co-Star Chemistry in 2018

Year in review list mania each day. Here's Nathaniel...

This is our fourth year of highlighting that unpredictable spark between actors that can elevate a movie whether the movie is able to catch up or not (see previously installments for '15, '16 and '17, if you're so inclined).  If only we could bottle these formulas but the thing about great chemistry is that it can't ever be fully recreated even if old movies during the studio system teach us that the same pairing can at least generate similar energy again. Why Hollywood doesn't still try to repackage successful combos of actors (rather than just all the brand do-overs) remains an unsolved mystery 

Herewith the most beautifully realized relationship energy of the year...

18 [TIE] Ben Foster & Thomasin McKenzie, Leave No Trace 
AND Josh Hamilton & Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade (Single Father/Teenage Daughter)
There's a lot to recommend in both films, two sleeper arthouse successes this year, but neither film would have the same emotional resonance without that authenticity of feeling in the central duet. Marvel at the way Hamilton looks at or speaks to Fisher, for example, perpetually impatient to be let in on her interior life, but also nervous about intruding on her journey and walling her off yet further. Equally impressive is the difficult balancing act McKenzie plays as both dutiful daughter and emotional caretaker for her troubled father, as she grows ever more restless to escape him without losing him. What a quartet of performances...

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