BEST FILM
The gap between the critically acclaimed fringe and the blockbuster core has never been more conspicuous. We could have filled this year's worst-film list with blockbusters alone. Warcraft, Suicide Squad, Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice and Independence Day: Resurgence tested gag reflexes throughout the year. Yet it would be wrong to say this was a poor year for cinema. The year's Palme d'Or winner, I, Daniel Blake, saw Ken Loach back to his very best. Another veteran, Jim Jarmusch, shone with Paterson at the same event. In an earlier era, accessible high-end genre pictures such as Green Room and The Witch would have been enormous. What can you do?
- I, Daniel Blake
- Arrival
- Paterson
- Embrace of the Serpent
- Son Of Saul
- The Witch
- The Edge Of Seventeen
- Mustang
- Pete's Dragon
- Green Room
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BEST IRISH FILM
We've crunched the numbers and sexed-up the dossier and we're sorry to report that there's just no way that this small island will match last year's extraordinary number of Oscar noms at the 2017 shindig. Still, John Carney's wildly popular Sing Street may have a shot at Best Song. Room – which led last year's "The Irish are Coming" charge, but which received an oddly belated release here – is certain to be a popular holdover among readers. Elsewhere newer talents are represented by critical wows South and Mad Mary. An appealingly varied selection features comedy (Young Offenders), music (Viva), drama (Mammal), documentary (66 Days, I Am Belfast) and post-apocalyptic thrills (The Survivalist).
- The Young Offenders
- A Date for Mad Mary
- Room
- Viva
- Sing Street
- The Survivalist
- South
- Mammal
- Bobby Sands: 66 Days
- I Am Belfast
VOTE HERE: www.irishtimes.com/culture/the-ticket-awards
BEST DIRECTOR
Apichatpong Weerasethakul returned after six years with Cemetery of Splendour to offer us one of his most ruminative pictures. In contrast, Fede Alvarez's Don't Breathe was the best straight-up horror picture of the year. In Queen of Earth, Alex Ross Perry took the traditions of that genre and applied them to a drama that seemed descended from Ingmar Bergman's Persona. Lucile Hadzihalilovic 's Evolution was a surreal trip. Felix Thompson's King Jack found yet new angles on the coming-of-age story. There's variety for you.
- Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Evolution
- Fede Alvarez, Don't Breathe
- Felix Thompson, King Jack
- Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Cemetery of Splendour
- Alex Ross Perry, Queen of Earth
VOTE HERE: www.irishtimes.com/culture/the-ticket-awards
BEST PERFORMANCE
Stupid PC-gone-mad Irish Times filling its gender-neutral performance category almost entirely with women. When's International Men's Day? Huh? Huh? If you have seen better performances than those by Brie Larson (heartbreaking in Room), Elizabeth Moss (disturbed in Queen of Earth) or Seána Kerslake (mighty in A Date for Mad Mary), then we'll eat our collective heads. Interestingly, the fight for this year's best actress Oscar is tastier than that for best actor. Has something happened?
- Amy Adams, Arrival
- Hailee Steinfeld, Edge of Seventeen
- Catherine Frot, Marguerite
- Brie Larson, Room
- Seána Kerslake, A Date for Mad Mary
- Kate Beckinsale, Love and Friendship
- Elisabeth Moss, Queen of Earth
- Adam Driver, Paterson
- Géza Röhrig, Son of Saul
- Teyonah Parris, Chi-Raq
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BEST ENSEMBLE
Tom Ford's tricky Nocturnal Animals and Whit Stillman's witty Love and Friendship had identifiable leads, but those films surged with great supporting performances (hats off to Tom Bennett for a comic masterpiece in the latter). In contrast The Witch, Mustang and Spotlight showed how to structure a film around collective bodies of various sizes. The Witch is about a family. Spotlight is a great workplace movie. The sisters in Mustang come across as one massed character.
- Nocturnal Animals
- Mustang
- The Witch
- Love and Friendship
- Spotlight
VOTE HERE: www.irishtimes.com/culture/the-ticket-awards
BEST SCREENPLAY
Lots of clever writing this year. Just bubbling under our final selection: S Craig Zahler's Bone Tomahawk, which re-imagined the western as a cannibal holocaust; Matt Ross's post-woke family drama Captain Fantastic; and Babak Anvari's sneakily politicised ghost story Under the Shadow. Who knew that Rocky 7 would be similarly innovative - with Creed, director Ryan Coogler undermined any suggestion that Sylvester Stallone's beloved pugilist has been trading on Great White Hope mythology. Whit Stillman's Love and Friendship weaponised Jane Austen's disdain for conventional romantic heroines. Tom McCarthy's Spotlight offered a next-gen All the President's Men. Divorce has seldom seemed as cerebral as it did in Mia Hansen-Løve's Things to Come. And teenage bullying rarely felt so raw as in Felix Thompson's King Jack.
- Whit Stillman, Love and Friendship
- Mia Hansen-Løve, Things to Come
- Tom McCarthy & Josh Singer, Spotlight
- Felix Thompson, King Jack
- Ryan Coogler & Aaron Covington, Creed
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BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Here is a field where domestic professionals excel. Seamus McGarvey's delicious shades in Nocturnal Animals chime with the Tom Ford sensibility. Robbie Ryan gets his mobile camera into every corner of the west for Andrea Arnold's sprawling American Honey. Natasha Braier's relishes in the vulgarity of The Neon Demon. The most beautiful film of the year, Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Assassin, found the director finally working digitally, but Mátyás Erdély, cinematographer on Son of Saul, confirmed that there is still a role for 35mm.
- Mátyás Erdély, Son of Saul
- Natasha Braier, Neon Demon
- Robbie Ryan, American Honey
- Mark Lee Ping Bin, The Assassin
- Seamus McGarvey, Nocturnal Animals
VOTE HERE: www.irishtimes.com/culture/the-ticket-awards
BEST FRANCHISE FILM
Was this the year that the franchise gold rush came crashing to a disastrous end? The box-office bonanza of 2015 was not replicated and films such as Suicide Squad, Warcraft and X-Men Apocalypse were roundly ridiculed. Not so fast. Dr Strange and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them cheered audiences and critics in the autumn. Creed had already showed the right way to revive Rocky. There is hope yet for the multiplex. (Apparently many people liked that horrible Deadpool thing too.)
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
- Dr Strange
- Creed
- The Conjuring 2
- Star Trek Beyond
VOTE HERE: www.irishtimes.com/culture/the-ticket-awards
BEST ANIMATION
What a pleasure to welcome a list so varied. Three of our shortlisted pictures escape the "family film" ghetto: Charlie Kaufman's searing Anomalisa, Hiromasa Yonebayashi's nostalgic When Marnie Was There and Makoto Shinkai's gender-swap oddity Your Name. Disney's gorgeous remake of its own The Jungle Book calls itself "live-action", but it was all made in an LA office block. The hilarious, exquisitely plotted Zootropolis (AKA Zootopia) – part noir, part dystopia – comes closest to fitting the usual templates.
- Anomalisa
- When Marnie Was There
- Zootroplis
- Your Name
- Jungle Book
VOTE HERE: www.irishtimes.com/culture/the-ticket-awards
BEST DOCUMENTARY
In the US, doc fans can look back on a vintage year, where the genre has received a boost from digital platforms. On this side of the Atlantic, however, we're still waiting on such critical darlings as Hotel Dallas, Operation Avalanche, Sour Grape and What He Did. Against this, there was plenty of innovation on offer: check out Laurie Anderson's quirky diary- doc Heart of a Dog; Gianfranco Rosi's urgent depiction of the European migrant crisis in Fire at Sea; and the compelling dialectics of Hitchcock/Truffaut. Watching the addictively mortifying Weiner, we thought, Here's an ego that could take down a president. Uh huh.
- Author
- Hitchcock/Truffaut
- Weiner
- Fire at Sea
- Heart of a Dog
VOTE HERE: www.irishtimes.com/culture/the-ticket-awards
BEST MUSIC
The pulsing electronica of Cliff Martinez' noodling for Neon Demon. The epic collaboration between Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Gustavo Santaolalla and Mogwai for Leonardo Di Caprio's climate change doc Before the Flood. Stephen Rennicks' unabashedly stirring accompaniment to Lenny Abrahamson's Room. The toe-tapping, neo-folk stylings of the Pete's Dragon OST. None of these terrific scores even made the cut. We may have been spoiled for selections, but the standout of the final five has to be Scott Walker's rip-roaring orchestral racket for Brady Corbet's The Childhood of a Leader.
- Childhood of a Leader
- Arrival
- Sing Street
- Nocturnal Animals
- The Hateful Eight
VOTE HERE: www.irishtimes.com/culture/the-ticket-awards
BEST REISSUE
We're still reeling from the news that due to some class of legal wrangling, Abel Gance's recently restored 1927 masterpiece Napoleon won't screened in Irish cinemas. Between grumbling – and there will be grumbling – we can still be grateful for the reappearance of Barry Lyndon, arguably Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, plus David Bowie at his spookiest, Brigitte Bardot at her sauciest, Ice Cube at his coolest and Joan Crawford at her campest. "Lie to me. Tell me all these years you've waited. Tell me," says Crawford. But of course, Joan.
-The Man Who Fell to Earth
- Barry Lyndon
- Boyz n the Hood
- Johnny Guitar
- Le Mepris
VOTE HERE: www.irishtimes.com/culture/the-ticket-awards
WORST FILM
What a waste. The worst part about compiling this worst-film list is remembering the best bits. Allegiant, a franchise that is (finally) being demoted to TV, features a sublime instrumental score, Tove Lo's Scars and a squadron of most-wanted-actors. In this squalid spirit, there was no reason for the expensive and well-staffed Independence Day and Ice Age sequels to be as criminally dull as they were. Ditto Warcraft, which somehow managed to be messier than this year's unlovely DC Cinematic Universe films. Me Before You's central message – disabled people are rubbish – was a jaw-dropper, but it was pipped at the post by War on Everyone, which imagined that dangerous paedophiles would sit easily within a zany plot. No.
- Warcraft
- War on Everyone
- Independence Day: Resurgence
- The Divergent Series: Allegiant
- Ice Age: Collision Course
