The Films of 2018. The 19th annual FiLM BiTCH Awards
PICTURE | ACTING | VISUALS | AURALS | EXTRAS | SPECIAL | SCENES
And the Nominees Are...
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Best Picture
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EIGHTH GRADE
Bo Burnham (A24) July 13th |
THE FAVOURITE Yorgos Lanthimos (Fox Searchlight) November 23rd |
ROMA Alfonso Cuarón (Netflix) November 21st |
SHOPLIFTERS Hirokazu Koreeda (Magnolia) November 23rd |
A STAR IS BORN
Bradley Cooper (Warner Bros) October 5th |
 You'll get through this, Kayla! This junior high comedy is so authentic it's a time machine. |
 Yorgos Lanthimos vivid masterfully crafted tragicomedy is his best film yet. Hilarious, too. |
Cuaróns Felliniesque mythologically potent ode to the woman who helped raise him. Beautiful. |
Koreeda's humanitarian cry for people at the margins and chosen families. Just sublime. |
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Finalists: Tully (Jason Reitman, Focus Features), Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller, Fox Searchlight) Semi Finalists: BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, Focus Features), A Simple Favor (Paul Feig, Lionsgate),We the Animals (Jeremiah Zagar, The Orchard), Wildlife (Paul Dano, IFC Films), and Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski, Amazon) |
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Best Director
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| Alfonso Cuarón ROMA |
Marielle Heller CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? |
Hirokazu Koreeda SHOPLIFTERS |
Yorgos Lanthimos THE FAVOURITE |
Spike Lee BLACKkKLANSMAN |
 For style, panache, and sincerity while excavating and riffing on his own memories. His images feel both real and mythological at the same time. He IS the movie. |
For bringing out such authenticity and nuance, in time, place, and character. Deceptively simple (i.e. not simple at all) empathic storytelling and camera choices; she's multi-tasking like crazy. | Koreeda's deeply humanistic eye makes for a non-preachy political plea for the disenfranchise. He guides his incredible ensemble to intimate but non-showy depths. | He expands his vision (albeit thru a fisheye lens) and sees something funnier / more accessible without ever compromising his absurdist worldview or way with a merciless gut-punch. |
For his ceaseless brio and nerve with tone and message. For interrogating cinematic takes on history while simultaneously cinematically embellishing a 'true' story. |
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Finalist: Bo Burnham for Eighth Grade and Pawel Pawlikowski for Cold War Semi Finalists: Damien Chazelle for First Man, Paul Schrader for First Reformed, Nadine Labaki for Capernaum, Ari Aster for Hereditary, and Lee Chang-dong for Burning |
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Best Original Screenplay
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| EIGHTH GRADE Bo Burnham |
THE FAVOURITE Deborah Davis & Tony McNamara |
FIRST REFORMED Paul Schrader |
SORRY TO BOTHER YOU Boots Riley |
TULLY Diablo Cody |
| This insightful comedy puts you deep in junior high headspace. Despite its jokes about adult cluelessness "It's gonna be lit," Burnham sees it all |
This razor-sharp tragicomedy keeps multiple squirmy character arcs ruthlessly pinned down while always feeling loose and playful |
Schrader's crisis of faith and mortality owes a lot to Bergman but its a gripping character study and bracing scream into the void | Boots Riley wasn't pulling any punches announcing himself as a fresh new cinematic voice. Messy, thrilling, political, totally original. | A rather genius dramedy about making peace with our past and present from one of American cinema's most distinct and vital voices. |
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Finalists: Hirokazu Kore-eda's examination of family in Shoplifters, Wes Anderson's deadpan whimsical Isle of Dogs and Ari Aster's take on family trauma and grief through the lens of a horror in Hereditary Semi-Finalists: Andrew Bujalski's Support the Girls, Pawel Pawlikowski, Janusz Glowacki, and Piotr Borkowski's Cold War, Alonso Ruizpalacios & Manuel Alcala for Museo , Quinn nd Laurie Shephard for Blame |
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Best Adapted Screenplay
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| BLACKkKLANSMAN Spike Lee, David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel and Kevin Willmott |
CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty |
DISOBEDIENCE Sebastian Lelio and Rebecca Lenkiewicz |
WE THE ANIMALS Daniel Kitrosser & Jeremiah Zagar |
WILDLIFE Paul Dano & Zoe Kazan |
| They play fast and loose with facts but always in the service of either entertainment or pointed truth-telling, and often both at once. Based on the memoir of the same name by Ron Stallworth |
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Lelio & Lenkiewicz created one of the year's deepest love stories and fascinating identity plays from the novel by by Naomi Alderman | This vignette filled memoir of the same name by Justin Torres doesn't read at all like cinema. Kitrosser and Zagar find a way, making thoughtful changes while retaining the lyricism |
Dano & Kazan, talented actors both, prove just as adept at writing, with keen insights in character drama, family dynamics, and gender from the novel by Richard Ford |
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Finalists:Oh Jungmi and Lee Chang-dong adapted the short story "Barn Burning" as Burning, Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman 's fresh take on Spider-Verse and Marvel characters in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and Jessica Sharzer having genre-hopping fun with Darcey Bell's novel A Simple Favor Semi Finalists: Sara Colangelo's adaptation of Nadav Lapid's film The Kindergarten Teacher, Ali Abbasi, Isabella Eklöf, and John Ajvide Lindqvist expansion of the short story "Gräns" for Border, Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim's adaptation of Kevin Kwan's bestseller Crazy Rich Asians and Debra Granik and Anne Rossellini's take on Peter Rock's novel "My Abandonment" as Leave No Trace |
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Best Animated Feature
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| ISLE OF DOGS Wes Anderson |
RUBEN BRANDT COLLECTOR ??? |
SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE Bob Persischetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman |
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Finalists: The warm childhood fantasy of Mirai and Incredibles 2, a fun sequel to one of the greatest animated films ever (it's no patch on the original, but what could have been?) NOTE: We only offer three nomination spots a year since the Academy's rules there are kind of crazy. You only need 16 features to trigger a 5 wide race with AMPAS. That's about a 33% chance of being nominated if you even so much as exist! If Best Picture had the same ratio of existence to nominees, our Best Picture list would be something like 90 nominees long each and every year! Can you imagine? No, please don't. |
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