Star studded awards ceremonies? Glittering cavalcades of celebrities you've never heard of? Steve Martin? Nadgers to that.
Another year, another dollar. And what a year it's been for cinema. What a really, really bad year. So bad in fact that I'm too depressed to ruminate on it any further, so let's just plough on into our awards. As usual, winners of these prestigious awards receive not only the honour (or shame, as the case may be) of recognition from the last bastion of movie related truth on the internet but also the lowest denomination of book token we can find. The rough guidelines for eligibility in the awards is "stuff we've seen in a U.K. cinema this year, barring rereleases and random one off showings".
Worst Horror Film
Seeing as in any given year, the worst film is always liable to be a horror film it seems appropriate to spin this into a separate category. The two obvious nominations, even given the typical lack of quality associated with this year's slasher fodder are the god-awful Creep and the similarly god-awful Cursed. Both have strong claims to this dubious honour, the details of which we'd relate to you, but then we'd get all angry and have to lie down for a while. So, the award goes to...
Worst Horror Film of 2005 is Cursed.
Most Effective Use of the One Statutory Instance of Foul Language in a 12A Rated Motion Picture
As you can't have failed to notice since the introduction of the 12A nee 12 rating by the BBFC or its American equivalent the PG-13, film-makers are allowed one F-Bomb per film and no-one, not even you, will be able to stop them using it. If you only get one shot at it, this must be optimised for maximum impact. This year our panel judged the finest example to be...
Most Effective Use of the One Statutory Instance of Foul Language in a 12A Rated Motion Picture for 2005 is The Aviator.
In this year littered with occasional profanity perhaps the peak of the artform has been realised with the Howard Hughes themed outing of The Aviator, Alec Baldwin throwing out the necessary as he realises he's about to be crushed by Leonardo DiCaprio. Now there's a mental image I didn't need.
Fattest Redneck in a Motion Picture
Following on from last year's Fattest Goth in a motion picture award, the obligatory stereotype rotation gives us this hotly contested category, but one of which there was only ever likely to be one winner...
Fattest Redneck in a Motion Picture in 2005 is... Ethan Suplee
Ah yes, marginal comedy effort Without A Paddle might not have had too many laughs, but it certainly did have a big fat redneck. Fat Redneck, we salute you.
Most Elbows to the Head in a Motion Picture
There is nothing, nothing I tells ya, more satisfying to see on the big screen than people being smacked in the head by well trained chop-sockey elbowing. Not exactly a year in which we've been overrun by martial arts films, the few getting mainstream releases being the very interesting Unleashed, the excellent Kung-Fu Hustle and the brutal Ong Bak. With only the very slightest of further ado, the winner is...
Most Elbows to the Head in a Motion Picture in 2005 goes to Ong Bak
A film based more around hugely impressive stunt work and beating than inconsequential things like 'plots', this welcome and rarely seen Muay Thai kickboxing extravaganza features a great many ne'erdowells being thumped squarely by Tony Jaa's punishing elbows. We can ask for no more.
Most Decapitations in a Motion Picture
If ever there was an award close to our hearts and minds, it's this one. Probably closer to minds. There is nothing, nothing I tells ya, more satisfying to see on the big screen than people having their head by some judicious slicing. Well, apart from elbowing in the head, which we suppose could still happen even after the decapitation. Anyway, it's not really been a banner year for cinematic decapitation, so there's little competition for this award..
Most Decapitations in a Motion Picture in 2005 is Sin City
Ah, Sin City. Can't deny the style of the film. No matter how sick we are of comic book adaptations Robert Rodriguez brought a unique and effective visual style to Frank Miller's work that ended up being a little too scattershot for it's own good, but in terms of bring to life the phrase, "Heads will roll" it's the year's finest.
Most Puzzling Reappearance In Mainstream Movies
There's always some folk that, no matter how sure you were you'd seen the back of, keep floating back to the surface like a stubborn turd in the toilet bowl of modern cinema. Here we celebrate and commiserate such tenacity.
Most Puzzling Reappearance In Mainstream Movies for 2005 goes to Mickey Rourke
Now we're back to Sin City again. Saying that this was his 'career best performance' is really more indicative of the quality of the rest of his career than the quality of his performance in Sin City. Please, stop this madness. In related news, could someone put Uwe Boll out of our misery as well? Ta.
Most Mainstream Appearance of Rutger Hauer
Ah, Rutger, you crazy old coot. While the legend that is the Hauermeister tends to show up more commonly in films you've never heard of lately, every now and then he pops up in something mainstream to remind the world that, "Yes, I am Rutger Hauer. I am still alive, and I am still Awesome."
Most Mainstream Appearance of Rutger Hauer in 2005 is Batman Begins
We would also have accepted Sin City, but I'm tired of typing Sin City. Of course, by justifying that I've typed Sin City two more times, making me even more sick of it. And one more in that sentence as well! Let's stop this right here. Keep on trucking, Rutger.
Sound Design Most Reminiscent of Foghorns goes to War of the Worlds
Paaaaaaarp! Top marks to the sound design chaps responsible for the excellent, ominous alien foghorn noises emanating from the big stompy machines in War of the Worlds. No marks whatsoever for the rest of the film, mind.
Horror Film Least Likely To Induce Homicidal Rage
You could, I suppose, call this award the 'Best Horror Film of the Year', but the word 'best' sort of implies that it's also good. This is not necessarily the case. So, what the least worst this year? The two obvious frontrunners are Saw 2, which caused something of a split opinion round these parts, and the mediocre The Descent which as far as I know didn't. Conclusion: Foregone.
Horror Film Least Likely To Induce Homicidal Rage in 2005 is The Descent
The Descent - marginally more tolerable than any other horror flick last year. Kudos, kind of.
Most Hopelessly Fumbled Scene
Imagine for a moment you've designed a money grabbing trilogy of prequels to some of the most beloved films of all time. These new films are designed to do one thing, and one thing alone. In the pivotal moment, the crux of the movies, would you expect this to be the best, most thought out moment thus far?
Most Hopelessly Fumbled Scene in 2005 goes to Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Not if you're George Lucas, you wouldn't. The one thing, and one thing alone, that Eppy 3 was designed for was to get Lucas richer, of course. Narratively, however, the trilogy is all about the subversion of Anakin to the Dark Side of the Force and the revelation of Emperor Palpatine as the Grand High Evil Pubah. Quite why Anakin is so keen to kill Sam Jackson over the inexplicably melty faced Palpy to save his unborn child from an ill-defined future event that might or might not happen and then immediately slaughter a temple full of children (Not 'younglings', Lucas, you jackass. CHILDREN.) does not provide quite the clear dramatic imperative that ought to come from a series that, if the bebearded one is to be believed, was planned out back in the mid-seventies. Narrowly edges out the later scene where Hayden finds out he's apparently killed his wife and shouts "Noooooo!" in a manner seemingly design to elicit laughter from the audience. I'm really angry now.
Unspeakable Award involving Giraffe Ejaculate goes to The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse
I don't really want to think about it any more. It makes me feel uneasy. Watch The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse if you want an explanation.
Most Medically Ill-Advised Performance
There's lots of ill-advised performances in any given year, of course. There's far fewer where you look at someone's turn and think, "That can't be healthy."
Most Medically Ill-Advised Performance for 2005 goes to Christian Bale for The Machinist
The largely overlooked The Machinist actually turned out to be one of the year's best films, and certainly one of the more interesting. You'd never equate the dangerously emaciated Bale on display here to the butched up Batman Begins form, and indeed sensible doctors heartily advised against Bale's mass yo-yo shenanigans. Being the committed actor that he is, or perhaps the actor that ought to be committed, he waves a disdaining middle finger at the medical establishment with fantastic results for us, if not his liver.
Most Morose Expression in a Motion Picture
Sadness. It's all around us. Mostly caused by the dearth of decent films in 2005. Who can typify this soul-darkening upset for us?
Most Morose Expression in a Motion Picture in 2005 goes to Bill Murray for Broken Flowers
Of course. This award could be equally justified for The Life Aquatic, but there's more of it on display in Broken Flowers. We heart Bill Murray.
The Full Frontal Memorial Award for Outstanding Awfulness
As anyone who's been paying attention over the past year will attest, this year has seen the biggest selection of mediocre, disposable movies in living and huge quantities of unmitigated crap, with a far fewer than average number of glittering diamonds mixed in with them. It's the worst year for cinema since we started paying serious attention to films, so for us at least we can say it's been the worst year for films in living memory. Still, it's heartening to know that even amongst this disheartening stream of effluent there have been films produce that are so much worse than the rest that we can only assume they were made for comparative purposes.
The Full Frontal Memorial Award for Outstanding Awfulness in 2005 goes to 9 Songs
Michael Winterbottom's turgid bowelfruit 9 Songs manages to do something truly spectacular and actually be less interesting, less narratively satisfying and more mind-rendingly boring than Full Frontal, which is astonishing, and astonishingly unpleasant. A new nadir, one made all the more enraging by some folks treating this as something worthy of anything other than derision. Truly rage inducing nonsense that's really best described as crap porn. Grrr. HULK SMASH PUNY FILM.
Craig Eastman's Film of the Year goes to 2046
2046 is easily the best thing I've clapped brain cells on in the last 365 days. Whether or not the version we have access to now can be deemed definitive is not for mere mortals to say, with the director famously delaying, chopping and reconstituting his work for general consumption about fifteen trillion times. Many critics have pointed out that 2046 is a film that is in danger of collapsing under it's own weight, to which my response would be "yes, but IT DOESN'T", a fact that highlights how well balanced a movie this is and a fact that seems to have escaped the vast majority of journos whose primitive brains would appear to have been swamped by the sheer atmospheric pressure of it all. Steeped in the lushest visuals and production design to die for, 2046 is a guilty pleasure from the first frame that arrests visually and then assaults emotionally. At it's heart this is a relatively simple study of that annoying little virus called Love and the Human Condition. Kar Wai, however, chooses to explore it in the kind of complicated fashion that this incurable disease has a nasty way of adopting itself. Half noir love story, half existential exploration of depression, 2046 is one of those films you'll either be lucky enough to "get" or unfortunate enough to have pass you by in bewildering silence.
Scott Morris' Film of the Year goes to Downfall
You might not really have needed to watch Downfall to realise that War is A Bad Thing, and World War Two was a Really Bad Thing, but if there's such a thing as a definitive war film it's Downfall. With the march of time reducing Hitler to a mild insult slung across internet message boards with wild abandon, Downfall provides the important service of taking the OTT demonisation of Adolf Hitler as some freakish, never to be repeated aberration and throwing it out of the window, Bruno Ganz portraying him as human, albeit a horrible, insane, evil human. The scale and cost of the war is shown more effectively here than in any other film so far, which sounds like a setup for dismissing Downfall into the 'dull, but worthy' category but actually, it's just absolutely gripping. It's a powerful film that haunts you for days afterwards, and if you absolutely must make time for it if you missed it during it's cinema run.
Drew Tavendale's Film of the Year goes to Sideways
Fresh from success and acclaim with About Schmidt, Alexander Payne moves onto Sideways with a beautiful film that empathises top drawer ensemble acting and believable, human characters. That this in itself marks it out as something special is something of a sad indictment of the current state of cinema, but it's not going to stop us applauding it when a movie that credits an audience with some maturity and intelligence comes along.
Well, here's hoping that the coming year is better than the last for you, and hopefully for cinema in general as well. We'll be keeping tabs on the best and worst of 2006, so join us round about this time next year and we'll tell it to you straight. You can trust us.