The 9th Annual Jarmo Awards

*I only now realized that I never hit publish on this. So, a full year later, here are the 9th annual Jarmo Award winners!*

BEST ACTRESS

Toni Collette, Hereditary

Runner-up: Charlize Theron, Tully

Finalists: Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade; Anna Kendrick, A Simple Favor; Amandla Stenberg, The Hate U Give

Look, Toni has been doing truly transcendent work for years. There's no denying that. But with Hereditary, she's not only taken a lead role, but she's proven that horror is the genre where she does her best work. I dare you watch her dinner table scene - where she wishes she were never a mother - and not feel some degree of sympathy for her grieving mother Annie, a woman who's inherited (hint hint) a legacy of grief and depression with little guidance of how do deal with the loss of a child (how could any of us?). Colette fearlessly lets us experience the visceral rage that comes with such a loss, as irrational at it seems but as visceral as its felt, and transforms into the type of role that most actors only wish they could embody. Colette's performance may have been overlooked by Oscar, but it's only because she's on another level than the rest of the field. Here's hoping she has the opportunity to prove her immense talent outside of the horror genre (though there is certainly no shame in being the greatest horror actress to date).

BEST ACTOR

Bradley Cooper, A Star is Born

Runner-up: Lakeith Stanfield, Sorry to Bother You

Finalists: John Cho, Searching; Ben Foster, Leave No Trace; Ryan Gosling, First Man

Why does Oscar hate romantic male leads so much? That is the question I have leading into February's ceremony: no matter Rami Malek's technical prowess in representing a Freddie Mercury that Bohemian Rhapsody actively resists, Cooper fully embodies a past-his-prime country-rock star trying to make do with a shifting pop landscape. Everything from the subtle way in which he tilts his head (reflecting the hearing loss that's briefly explicitly addressed but forms the unheralded texture of his performance) to his straightforward singing ("Maybe It's Time" is the film's largely unsung (no pun intended) highlight) points to a past-his-prime star intend on helping the next generation survive in a ruthless pop music industry. Cooper wisely keeps his remove, creating a character who at once understands how the industry works but isn't happy with the direction it moves in. He should have been an Oscar winner, had the Academy not been weirdly resistant to romantic male leads. Here's hoping he eventually receives his Oscar due, but this will be a hard performance to top.

More winners after the jump.

The Entertainment Junkie's Top Ten Films of 2018

Guess who's back from another year-long blogging sabbatical! One of these days I actually will find a way to maintain a blog-school-life balance, but until then, I present to you my top ten list of 2018. Now, I feel like this shouldn't need to be said, but this list only represents my personal favorite films from the past year - it is not objective nor is it completist. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and maybe discover something new!

(I'll have the Jarmos posted sometime in the next month - I really just wanted to get this up before the Oscars started).

10. Hereditary (dir. Ari Aster)

The horror in Hereditary sneaks up on you. For the first third of the movie, you're not entirely sure what to expect as you watch this family - Annie (Toni Collette), Steve (Gabriel Byrne), Peter (Alex Wolff), and Charlie (Milly Shapiro) - barely holding themselves together as Annie struggles with a dark history. Then, out of the blue, THAT happens - a moment so sickening plausible that it elicited all sorts of pained reactions from the audience I saw it with - and all hell breaks loose. Despite the film's more Satanic turn, however, the real horror is what was there from the very beginning: the traumas we inherit from our families, and how those traumas become an inescapable part of who we are. First-time filmmaker Aster constructs a delicate film to explore these ideas, but the whole endeavor is anchored by Collette's volcanic performance as a woman so traumatized that the latest grief finally breaks her. The contortions of her face in a chilling dinner scene are just as terrifying as anything else in the film. I saw this film in mid-summer, and I've yet to shake it. Perhaps that's the point.

9. Crazy Rich Asians (dir. Jon M. Chu)

Much of the praise for Crazy Rich Asians centered around one embarrassing fact: this was the first studio-produced Hollywood film with an all-Asian cast in 25 years. The film, therefore, would have been a representational triumph if nothing else. It's more than that, of course: it's a winning romantic comedy that provides everything you want from the genre - hunky men, lavish weddings, upbeat pop songs in makeover montages - with an eye toward the culturally-specific issues at the heart of the film. Rachel (Constance Wu, wonderful) accompanies her boyfriend Nick (Harry Golding) to Singapore for a wedding, only to discover that is family is one of the wealthiest on the island. Nick's disapproving mother, Eleanor (the terrific Michelle Yeoh), presents a dilemma: Nick must choose between his family and Rachel. If you've seen a romantic comedy before, you'll think you know where this is going. But the film, magnificently directed by Chu, dances around those expectations in ways that make the genre's conventions feel fresh and particular to this story. Plus there's plenty of spectacle to look at, to the point where it often feels like the film is about to tilt into a full-fledged musical. Few films matched the levels of joy Crazy Rich Asians reached this year.

More after the break.