The 5th Annual MIB (Matt, Ian, and Blake) Awards

Best Under-The-Radar Film

Blake: I think I first heard about Cam less than two weeks before it was to be released on Netflix in November. It had evidently premiered to glowing reviews at the Fantasia International Film Festival back in July, but the positive word of mouth eluded me. The taboo subject matter will make more than a few people uncomfortable — the protagonist is a webcam girl who performs live non-nude shows online for an audience of fans that range from lonely hearts to obsessive creeps — but this is by design. It’s an unnerving horror film that seeks to humanize a cam girl and convince the audience to empathize with her as a nightmarish turn of events threatens to undo everything she has sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears to achieve.

Ian: Bad Times at the El Royale. Jac (my girlfriend): “I want to see this movie.” Me: “I’ve never heard of it. Why?” Jac: “I like the soundtrack.” We saw it, and we loved it. It’s like someone went to the store and bought the generic off-brand version of Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, and the Coen Brothers, threw all three products into a skillet with some salt, and it came out the most tasty movie I saw all year.

Matt: Tig Notaro: Happy To Be Here. I had not heard of Tig Notaro until one day of flipping through Netflix and seeing yet another comedy special. Turns out, I love her. She’s great! I think we have similar senses of humor and I went down the rabbit hole of watching anything she has ever done. Like her documentary, Tig. A biography of her dealing with breast cancer. I encourage you to go down the same rabbit hole as it is full of heartwarming laughs. That is certainly one of my favorite parts of Netflix, discovering new comedians I had not heard of before and then becoming a fan. Honorable Mention: Hannah Gadsby: Nanette. (I don’t care if you think comedy specials are more ‘TV’ than a ‘movie.’ Blake is threatening my life if I don’t get this blog finished on time.)

Best Original Screenplay

Blake: Bo Burnham, a 28-year-old white male comedian, somehow managed to slip into the perspective of an awkward eighth grade girl to craft a poignant coming-of-age film about the amplified anxieties of a kid growing up in today’s modern age of YouTube and Instagram. That impressive feat alone is worthy of some kind of award. And since I only have the authority to distribute MIB Awards, an MIB Award will have to suffice. Eighth Grade is both Burnham’s directorial debut and his first feature-length film script, which makes it all the more awe-inspiring. Where his writing stands out is in the dialogue, particularly when Kayla Day, the 13-year-old protagonist, is self-recording her YouTube videos. She rambles, stumbles over her words, and derails her own train of thought, yet reveals so much of herself to the audience.

Ian: Bo Burnham has come a long way since his days of vilely making fun of Helen Keller on YouTube. I have revisited his work more than any other stand-up comedian from this past half-decade due to his expectation subversion, atypical social satire, and surprising vulnerability in his anxieties (i.e. his grand finale/exit from stand-up). With that same anxiety, vulnerability, and authenticity, he carefully crafted universally-empathetic Eighth Grade.

Matt: My favorite original movie of 2018 is Eighth Grade. Everything else I probably didn’t see or doesn’t come close to deserving this award. You should probably just read Blake and Ian’s reviews of the film and why Bo Burnham deserves this MIB Award. You can also scroll down and see why it was my favorite film of 2018 in the Best Picture category.

Best Supporting Actress

Blake: When director Debra Granik was last behind the camera for a feature film, she was introducing audiences to the full potential of a 20-year-old actress named Jennifer Lawrence in 2010’s Winter’s Bone. Well lightning appears to have struck twice, because her latest directorial effort, Leave No Trace, showcases what could be another breakthrough performance courtesy of 18-year-old Thomasin McKenzie. As the precocious daughter of a traumatized veteran who is more at home living in a public park than in what the rest of the world would consider civilized society, McKenzie, like her character, is mature beyond her years. Leave No Trace is about a daughter coming to the heartbreaking realization that she and her father are on diverging paths, and there isn’t a false step to be found in McKenzie’s emotional and naturalistic performance.

Ian: Amy Adams, Vice. I was listening to a podcast interview with writer-director Adam McKay, the longtime comedy partner of Will Ferrell turned political dramedy feature filmmaker. In this interview, he says something to the effect of, “Whoever Lynne Cheney picked as her husband would have ended up in the White House.” We see this Lady Macbeth push in her opening scene, as she venomously threatens her alcohol-soaked, college-dropout soon-to-be husband to clean up his act. Thirteen years later he is the White House Chief of Staff. There is no Dick Cheney without Lynne Cheney, and there is no Vice without Amy Adams.

Matt: Elizabeth Debicki in Widows. I mean, I don’t really know why I even need to explain myself for this selection. I went out to see Widows in theaters per Blake’s recommendation and really liked it. It’s a solid thriller. I had to Google ‘Elizabeth Debicki’ because I thought she looked familiar and wanted to see what else she was in. Not much, is the answer. But I was really into her performance in Widows. Check it out.

Best Supporting Actor

Blake: Game Night is a rare breed of film believed to be an endangered species today — a studio comedy that is smart, fun, and well-acted — and it owes a rather substantial amount of its unexpected success to the performance of Jesse Plemons. Plemons’ creepy cop, Gary Kingsbury, is the watchful neighbor of our main protagonists, who have quietly excommunicated him from their game night since his divorce from their friend. I don’t want to spoil too much, but Plemons steals the show, as Gary goes to great lengths to first expose his neighbors’ subterfuge before taking matters into his own hands to reclaim his coveted game night invitation. His tense driveway exchange with Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams, during which a purported “3-for-1” Tostitos deal is scrutinized, is the stuff of comedy gold.

Ian: Michael B. Jordan, Black Panther. Admittedly it feels wrong to single out only one performance amidst this outstanding ensemble cast. When asked, “Who had the best performance in Black Panther?”, there are 15 correct answers. Heck, it almost feels wrong to point out just the acting in the movie that was not only the cinematic apex of 2018’s pop culture, but has a case to be the most successful superhero movie of all-time. That said, Jordan’s supervillain Erik Killmonger drove the movie with equal parts intimidation and swagger. It’s hard to make a case in favor of a rage-filled revenge quest for world domination, but Killmonger comes close, making him the most complex villain in the MCU to date. If nothing else, those peck muscles deserve an award.

Matt: Timothee Chalamet in Beautiful Boy. I had high expectations going into Beautiful Boy. The combination of Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet is dynamite and one would expect a brilliant film. Overall, the movie was quite the downer but I was still left impressed with Timothee’s performance. The classic ‘love him one minute, hate him the next’ character. He nailed it, as you will shed a tear for his character’s shortcomings. He is a talented dude and is certainly the next hot thing in Hollywood for a reason.

Best Actress

Blake: I had all but awarded this to Toni Collette for Hereditary before deciding to listen to Film Twitter and check out Support the Girls (which is streaming on Hulu, I might add). And I have to admit, prior to Support the Girls my familiarity with Regina Hall began with Scary Movie and ended with Scary Movie 4. So as you can imagine, I was completely blown away by her performance as Lisa Conroy, the general manager of a sleazy sports bar called Double Whammies that, in her own words, deals in “beer, boobs, and big screens.” Hall inhabits the role completely, as we shadow her through a single work day, navigating personal and professional crises to the point where crying, laughing, and screaming are all in a day’s work. It’s a subtle and remarkable performance that deserves more attention than it will receive.

Ian: Though this could be a three-way tie shared with fellow The Favourite co-stars Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, I have to give the nod to Olivia Colman. In a film arguably about the other two, it was Colman that somehow added both the comedic relief and emotional weight to the film. Alternating between hilarious and heartbreaking, Colman walks the juxtaposition balance beam as the most powerful woman in the world who is impressionable at best and pathetic at worst.

Matt: Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me? Lee Israel just seems like a mean ol’ lady. That’s the impression you leave the theater with after watching Melissa McCarthy crush it (as she usually does) in this biographical film. The film is slow going throughout as you learn to feel the hatred Lee Israel had for everyone and everything around her. She falls into a life of forging letters from famous deceased authors and making bank off them. Each moment when you thought she would warm up and act “normal,” she didn’t. Melissa McCarthy kept the vibe of a grouch through the ups and downs. Interesting true story and a film I would definitely watch again.

Best Actor

Blake: “You are a convicted felon, Mr. Hoskins. You are now that until proven otherwise. Prove otherwise at all times.” These are the marching orders for Daveed Diggs’ Collin Hoskins, delivered by the supervisor of his halfway house. Blindspotting covers the final three days of Hoskins’ year-long probation, a period that takes an unexpected turn when Hoskins is witness to a police shooting that becomes the source of inner turmoil and torment. The role asks a lot of Diggs and he is more than up to the challenge, as Collin begins to understand just how much of his life is dependent on the person that others perceive him to be. It’s a subdued performance that builds to a breathtaking crescendo, as all of the thoughts and emotions that have been simmering under the surface explode in a show-stopping spoken-word performance.

Ian: Christian Bale, Vice. Where was Christian Bale in this movie? Certainly not acting on the screen… that was Dick Cheney. Bale was nowhere to be found. And not just because he gained 40 pounds and was coated in prosthetics. Every growled “umm,” every grimacey-smirk, every mid-sentence donut-laden exhale, every I-won’t-hesitate-to-kill-thousands-of-people-on-command eye twitch, every I’m-probably-counting-my-steps-because-everything-I-do-is-calculated walk down the hallways… Dick Cheney was manifest into Bale’s body and brought to the screen.

Matt: Christian Bale in Vice. I think he is going to win the Oscar for this one. Lock it in. Christian Bale is just one of those actors with so much range, and he fully immerses himself into a character. A level very few can reach. His portrayal of former Vice President Dick Cheney carries the movie in Vice. I really had no clue what Dick Cheney was like, which is really the whole point of the movie. Bale delivers like you expect him too, but he took it to another level with this one.

Best Female Director

Blake: In the hands of another director, You Were Never Really Here would probably be a very different — and, in my opinion, less interesting — film. It has all the ingredients of a Liam Neeson action thriller: Joaquin Phoenix is an ex-military hired gun who rescues girls who have been sold into child prostitution, until he walks into a government conspiracy. But with Lynne Ramsay at the helm, You Were Never Really Here isn’t really interested in watching Phoenix brutalize human traffickers. Make no mistake, it is a violent film, but the violence frequently takes place off screen or is filmed in a matter-of-fact way that opts against glorifying it. Instead, Ramsay explores the effects of violence, as both Phoenix’s character and the latest girl he is charged with protecting are baptized by trauma during their ages of innocence.

Ian: Leave No Trace is an appropriately simple film about a father and daughter that live a simple life in the woods. Debra Granik forgoes a plot-laden adventure in favor of an intimate father-daughter relationship, bolstered by outstanding performances from Ben Foster and future star Thomasin McKenzie. And although the destination feels familiar, the audience is taken on the path less traveled to get there.

Matt: Marielle Heller for Can You Ever Forgive Me? It is easy to understand why most films “fluff” up reality to make it more interesting for the movie. That’s not the case in this one. It is always dark and dreary for you to feel the angst the main character has for the world. Opportunities pop up for things to take a turn for the better but this film never takes the bait. I enjoyed following along the director’s vision while shaking my head and laughing along the way.

Best Male Director

Blake: A Quiet Place was not John Krasinski’s directorial debut, but it might as well have been, because it is a wholly different animal from his first film, The Hollars. Krasinski has admitted to being a novice in the horror genre, in part because of a traumatic screening of A Nightmare on Elm Street as a child. So when it came to rewriting the script for and directing A Quiet Place, he honed in on crafting a compelling family drama, confident that everything else would fall into place around that. While he was right to be confident, because the Abbott family and the tragedy that tests their bonds are the heart of the film, Krasinski may have underestimated his abilities as a director. He has a masterful grasp of how to build tension, and manages to weaponize silence in a genre that has long used sound to terrorize audiences.

Ian: The creative team behind Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse — including directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman — managed to do what scientists once deemed impossible: they breathed new life into a character that has already been portrayed in film seven other times by three actors in the past 17 years. But they didn’t just stop there; they created one of the most unique films I have ever seen. The film is an animated marvel… pun very intended. The directors bring the laugh-out-loud clever script to life and take the audience on a visual roller coaster. Add in a bit of heart and an endlessly likeable protagonist in Miles Morales, and you have the best rendition of Spider-Man in this dimension.

Matt: Spike Lee for BlacKkKlansman. There really isn’t much to say but to encourage you to see this film. It’s Spike Lee and an extremely timely story about an African-American detective setting out to expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. This film was released on the one-year anniversary of the white supremacist Unite the Right rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia. Spike Lee is a legend for educating and producing great films like this one.

Best Picture

Blake: I was familiar with director Yorgos Lanthimos from The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, yet The Favourite somehow managed to sneak up on me. I have nothing against costume dramas, but they’re not a genre that I normally find interesting, personally. But The Favourite is not your mother’s costume drama, bringing a contemporary sensibility — and a wicked sense of humor — to a period piece about a duchess and a servant in 18th Century Britain jockeying for the coveted favor of Queen Anne. The strength of the script — first written more than 20 years ago by Deborah Davis after researching the events of the period, before Lanthimos worked with Tony McNamara on a rewrite — is in how it sketches the three central figures as women doomed by their individual flaws, each capable of “much unpleasantness” but never at the cost of their humanity. It also helps having Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone to breathe life into those characters with brilliant and captivating performances.

Ian: For the first time since starting these prestigious awards, I did not have a clear-cut favorite for picture of the year. This lead me to give my very patient girlfriend a 40-minute rundown of every movie I was considering for Best Picture, based on a different criteria. So what is the best picture of any given year?

Is it the film I think was the most fun? (Sorry To Bother You)
The most unique? (Into The Spider-Verse)
The most entertainingly relevant? (BlacKkKlansman)
The one that made me unexpectedly cry the most? (A Star is Born)
The one that made me unexpectedly laugh the most? (Vice)
The one I most think we will be still watching and talking about in 10 years? (Black Panther)
The one that is the most “me”? (Eighth Grade)

I think all of these criteria are valid, and make all of these movies worthy of the top honor.
That said, as of this writing, I have decided to give it to the movie I thought was the most human: Roma. Alfonso Cuarón’s semi-autobiographical period drama was almost distractingly beautiful. I say this in the most literal way possible: he made dog crap look stunning and artistic. But look past the auteur flaunting his craftsmanship with black-and-white filters and perfectly framed compositions, and we see a story that is complex, simple, tragic, and uplifting. In other words: human.

Matt: Everyone should see Eighth Grade. The relatable situations of going through the “awkward” stages in middle school is brilliantly displayed in this film. I have mad respect for Bo Burnham and his vision for his directorial debut. He found the perfect eighth grader in Elsie Fisher, who crushed each scene. This is my Best Picture of 2018 because it would be the first film to come to mind if asked for a recommendation. I saw it twice in theaters and loved every second of it. It’s originality and brilliant performances from young actors make it one to remember.

Don’t you dare forget to use promo code MIB Awards at your local theater.