the 2019 jdb awards

Here are my personal film awards for 2019!

A look back at 2018 when the awards were spread out among a variety of films! Eighth Grade took Best Picture and Sandi Tan won for Director and Documentary for Shirkers.



picture

PARASITE

nominees

FOR SAMA
THE IRISHMAN
THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO
LITTLE WOMEN
MARRIAGE STORY
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
PAIN AND GLORY
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE
3 FACES



director

Bong Joon-ho, PARASITE

nominees

Pedro Almodóvar, PAIN AND GLORY
Noah Baumbach, MARRIAGE STORY
Céline Sciamma, PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE
Martin Scorcese, THE IRISHMAN



actor

Adam Driver, MARRIAGE STORY

nominees

Antonio Banderas, PAIN AND GLORY
Woo-sik Choi, PARASITE
Leonardo DiCaprio, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
Jimmie Fails, THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO



actress

Alfre Woodard, CLEMENCY

nominees

Marianne Jean-Baptiste, IN FABRIC
Lupita Nyong’o, US
Mary Kay Place, DIANE
Octavia Spencer, MA




supporting actor

Jonathan Majors, THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO

nominees

Tom Hanks, A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Aldis Hodge, CLEMENCY
Song Kang-ho, PARASITE
Joe Pesci, THE IRISHMAN



supporting actress

Zhao Shuzhen, THE FAREWELL

nominees

Laura Dern, MARRIAGE STORY
Jennifer Lopez, HUSTLERS
Carmiña Martínez, BIRDS OF PASSAGE
Tilda Swinton, THE SOUVENIR




ensemble

PARASITE

nominees

BIRDS OF PASSAGE
DIANE
THE FAREWELL
MARRIAGE STORY



original screenplay

Bong Joon-ho & Jin Won Han, PARASITE

nominees

Pedro Almodóvar, PAIN AND GLORY
Noah Baumbach, MARRIAGE STORY
Joe Talbot & Robbie Richert, THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO
Quentin Tarantino, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD



adapted screenplay

Greta Gerwig, LITTLE WOMEN

nominees

Hu Bo, AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL
Micah Fitzerman-Blue & Noah Harpster, A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Christian Petzold, TRANSIT
Steven Zaillian, THE IRISHMAN



foreign film


PARASITE

nominees

BIRDS OF PASSAGE
PAIN AND GLORY
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE
3 FACES



documentary

FOR SAMA

nominees

AMERICAN FACTORY
APOLLO 11
HONEYLAND
WRESTLE



cinematography

Yao Hung-i, Dong Jinsong, & David Chizallet, LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

nominees

Fejmi Daut, HONEYLAND
David Gallego, BIRDS OF PASSAGE
Claire Mathon, PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE
Jörg Widmer, A HIDDEN LIFE



film editing

Jean-Luc Godard, THE IMAGE BOOK

nominees

Davíð Alexander Corno, A WOMAN AT WAR
Atanas Georgiev, HONEYLAND
Todd Douglas Miller, APOLLO 11
Thelma Schoonmaker, THE IRISHMAN



original score

Cavern of Anti-Matter, IN FABRIC

nominees

Disasterpiece, UNDER THE SILVER LAKE
Matthew Herbert, GLORIA BELL
M83, KNIFE+HEART
Emile Mosseri, THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO




original song

“Guarding the Gates,” QUEEN & SLIM

nominees

“Collide,” QUEEN & SLIM
"Control," HER SMELL
"A Glass of Soju," PARASITE
“La Jeune Fille en feu,” PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE



art direction / production design

PARASITE

nominees

A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
PAIN AND GLORY



costume design

Arianne Phillips, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

nominees

Julian Day, ROCKETMAN
Jacqueline Durran, LITTLE WOMEN
Andrea Flesch, MIDSOMMAR
Mitchell Travers, HUSTLERS



make-up & hair

BOMBSHELL

nominees

JUDY
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
ROCKETMAN
US



sound design

CLIMAX

nominees

A HIDDEN LIFE
1917
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
ROCKETMAN



visual effects

1917

nominees

AD ASTRA
CRAWL
DIAMANTINO
STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER


-Jeffery Berg

bombshell

Bombshell is Jay Roach's saucy expose on Fox News in midst of the scandal and downfall of its creator Roger Ailes. The picture definitively paints Ailes as the one clear villain at its core, and that could be the film's main problem. The compelling characterizations by the supporting players and its trio of main actresses--Charlize Theron uncanny as reporter Megyn Kelly, Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson, and Margot Robbie as a starry-eyed Kayla with her Fox News media dreams--make for an undeniably entertaining, watchable movie, but everyone is ultimately undermined by Roach's sloppy direction (touches include cutesy, distracting cable news-like title cards helping to announce to us who people are) and seasick-inducing photography by Barry Ackroyd. Why do we need so many frenetic zoom-ins? The frantic tension of the story is inherent within. Scenes aren't allowed to breathe, busily stacked and collapsing like dominoes; in one particular moment, where a photog is stalking outside Kelly's vacation home, what should have been frightening, feels poorly-staged and amateurish. It's when the film slows down, it's at its most effective--like a tense elevator scene and Kayla's first closed-door harassment by one of the most powerful entities in media (played with icky, theatrical creeper eccentricities by John Lithgow).

Ultimately Carlson helped spearhead the take-down Ailes, which is the main narrative of the picture, with the interweaving of Kelly coming to terms with speaking out on her past and Kayla's fresh traumas. But the parallel story line of the rise of the insidious Donald Trump to presidency (and Fox’s part in that, which is curiously too muted here) during the same time as Ailes’s downfall, doesn’t coalesce as well as it could have. Perhaps to help immediately paint Kelly with sympathy, the movie begins with Trump’s rampant Twitter attacks against her after her “tough” questioning of him in an early Republican debate. "Am I the story?" She incredulously asks. And too, we wonder, the same. The movie then moves to focus narrowly upon the hideous, cultish environment of a hideous network while stretching thin to tackle Kayla's plight (who, despite Robbie's valiant efforts, ultimately emerges as an uneven, simplistic character, perhaps because she’s a cardboard fictional composite of some of Ailes’s victims), Carlson’s bland legal counseling sessions, and Kelly’s reluctance to come forward. As this tornado swirls around, the movie loses sight of the monster the network helped create.

Bombshell is difficult to stomach because it feels so cowardly and trite in its portrayal of its subject matter. There’s something alluring about Theron’s commitment to impersonating Kelly, but simultaneously repulsive as well. Do we really feel for Kelly when the film strives to sympathetically paint her as  coming forward because of her family (the clan surprises her in a completely bizarre “jump scare” moment) while also going on to gleefully emcee he Republican convention?—one of the most repugnant ones in recent American history. Many of our American films are obsessed with either high fantasy or waxing poetic over past centuries, so it’s admirable and important for filmmakers to take a stab at our contemporary times. Perhaps we are meant to feel as queasy about the state of the nation as Kelly after drinking her maybe-poisoned coffee. In that respect, the film succeeds, but as Roach’s glossy but terrifying Game Change did, it doesn’t offer a cathartic moment of take-down that the film seems to be aiming for, because there's too much rotten about so many of the characters here at their core. **1/2


-Jeffery Berg

bombshell trailer

Trailer for Bombshell. Excited for this one. Charlize looks great.