*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.
