The 2nd Annual Fallacy Awards

Animated Feature Film
Frozen 2
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
I Lost My Body
Missing Link
Toy Story 4

Winner: I Lost My Body

Cinematography
The Lighthouse
Little Women
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Parasite
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Winner: Long Day's Journey Into Night

Costume Design
The Irishman
Little Women
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
The Souvenir

Winner: Little Women

Directing
Hu Bo, An Elephant Sitting Still
Lulu Wang, The Farewell
Joe Talbot, The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Greta Gerwig, Little Women
Bong Joon-ho, Parasite

Winner: Lulu Wang, The Farewell

Documentary Feature
Apollo 11
The Cave
Honeyland
Maiden
One Child Nation

Winner: Apollo 11

Film Editing
The Farewell
Little Women
Marriage Story
Parasite
Us

Winner: Little Women

International Feature
Atlantics
An Elephant Sitting Still
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Parasite
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Winner: Parasite

Makeup and Hairstyling
Bombshell
Hustlers
Judy
Little Women
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Winner: Little Women

Original Score
Apollo 11
The Farewell
Little Women
Marriage Story
Us

Winner: Little Women

Original Song
"Beautiful Ghosts," Cats
"When I Am Older," Frozen 2
"Stand Up," Harriet
"Glasgow," Wild Rose

Winner: "Glasgow," Wild Rose

Production Design
Ad Astra
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Little Women
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Parasite

Winner: Parasite

Sound Editing
Ad Astra
Ford v Ferrari
In Fabric
John Wick: Chapter 3 -- Parabellum
Long Day's Journey Into Night

Winner: Ford v Ferrari

Sound Mixing
Ad Astra
Ford v Ferrari
In Fabric
John Wick: Chapter 3 -- Parabellum
Long Day's Journey Into Night

Winner: Ad Astra

Visual Effects
1917
Alita: Battle Angel
Ad Astra
The Irishman
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Winner: Ad Astra

Adapted Screenplay
Steven Zaillian, The Irishman
Greta Gerwig, Little Women
Christian Petzold, Transit

Winner: Greta Gerwig, Little Women

Original Screenplay
Lulu Wang, The Farewell
Joe Talbot & Rob Richert, The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
Bong Joon-ho, Parasite
Jordan Peele, Us

Winner: Lulu Wang, The Farewell

Supporting Actress
Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell
Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers
Florence Pugh, Little Women
Laura Dern, Marriage Story
Park So-dam, Parasite

Winner: Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell

Supporting Actor
Joe Pesci, The Irishman
Jonathan Majors, The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse
Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Song Kang-ho, Parasite

Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse

Actress
Awkwafina, The Farewell
Elisabeth Moss, Her Smell
Saoirse Ronan, Little Women
Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
Lupita Nyong'o, Us

Winner: Lupita Nyong'o, Us

Actor
Brad Pitt, Ad Astra
Robert Deniro, The Irishman
Adam Driver, Marriage Story
Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory
Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems

Winner: Adam Driver, Marriage Story

Best Picture:
An Elephant Sitting Still
The Farewell
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Little Women
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Marriage Story
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Parasite
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Us

Winner: The Farewell

2019 - A Year in Movies

I feel like I say it every year: "It's been a great year for movies." And 2019 was no exception--in fact, it was one of the best years for movies that I can remember. Each year I keep a running list of movies that would make a potential best-of list and for the first time that list reached triple digits. Certainly, a large number of those movies had no real shot of making a top 10 or 25 list of the year's best, but it goes to show how deep 2019's slate really was. Even with that, I still feel like I missed a handful of movies that may have been included had I been able to screen them in time.

As always, the final list is in order of how I felt at the moment I finalized it. Ask me in two weeks or two months, something between 15-25 could be in the top 10 or something in my list of honorable mentions (see below) would be in the video. What feels like fixtures, though, are the two titles at the top of the list. There are a several things going on in each of those films: the internal conflict between coming of age in the West, but having your heritage come from the East (The Farewell); the options (or lack thereof) one has in deciding the path they take in life as a woman (Little Women). But what struck me about each of those is that they depict how time and circumstance can slowly pull a family apart. That as we age, even the closest of family bonds need tending to lest they wither away. It's something I've thought about a lot in my life recently and while these two films are much richer than just this aspect, it's perhaps why they seemed to have resonated with me more deeply than others.

I've long praised the quality of the releases from the production/distribution company A24. They are to me what perhaps Focus Features was in the early 2000s, a company that wisely devotes its resources to idiosyncratic auteurs who make personal films that, with regularity, end up being among my favorites of the year. Six A24 releases make the top-25 video above and another two make the honorable mentions below. That also makes 3 out of the last 4 years in which they claimed the #1 spot (Moonlight, 2016; A Ghost Story, 2017).

It almost pains me to have left so many other wonderful films off the video. So in the hopes you'll search some of them out and in honor of 2020, here are 20 more movies I loved released over the past 12 months. Here's to another great movie year.

3 Faces (Jafar Panahi)
The Art of Self-Defense (Riley Stearns)
Asako I & II (Ryūsuke Hamaguchi)
Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)
The Beach Bum (Harmony Korine)
Climax (Gasper Noé)
The Dead Don't Die (Jim Jarmusch)
Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Schmidt)
Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler)
First Love (Takashi Miike)
Ford v Ferrari (James Mangold)
I Lost My Body (Jérémy Clapin)
The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers)
The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent)
Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas)
One Child Nation (Nanfu Wang, Zhang Jia-Ling)
Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodóvar)
Starfish (A.T. White)
Waves (Trey Edward Shults)