The 2023 BenWatchesThings Awards

With the Oscars tomorrow, I figured there was no better time to present my own awards and honor a terrific year in film. For every category, I am picking my own winner and nominees, irrespective of the Oscars nominees. I hope you enjoy.

Best Supporting Actor

Winner:

• Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All At Once)

Few actors look like they’re having as much fun as Ke Huy Quan is having in Everything Everywhere. After a hiatus from acting, Quan destroys in a performance that allows him to be both as fierce as Jackie Chan and as lovable as a teddy bear. His delivery of the now-iconic ‘laundry and taxes’ line is not just the highlight of the movie, but one of the highlights of all that 2022 films had to offer.

Runner-up:

• Brendan Gleeson (The Banshees of Inisherin)

Honorable Mentions:

• Paul Dano (The Fabelmans)
• Steven Yeun (Nope)
• Justin Long (Barbarian)

Best Sound

Winner:

• Nope (Johnnie Burn)

For as much of a visual spectacle as Nope is, its sound design might be most key to its immersion. Hopeless wailing from the clouds above you are enough to send chills down your spine, yet it’s the Gordy’s Home sequence that’s the true standout here: the abrupt popping of balloons, the brutal beating upon corpses, the static silence in between… it’s the most unnerving scene of 2022, and it’s all indebted to the sound.

Runner-up:

• The Batman (Lee Gilmore and Craig Henighan)

Honorable Mentions:

• TÁR (Roland Winke)
• Top Gun: Maverick (Al Nelson)
• All Quiet on the Western Front (Frank Kruse)

Best Visual Effects

Winner:

• Avatar: The Way of Water (Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett)

I mean, is there any other choice here? Beyond its breakthroughs in motion-capture technology, Avatar presents a digital world that somehow looks more real than our own. You can’t tell me you’ve ever seen water that looks more refreshing than the water in this movie.

Runner-up:

• Top Gun: Maverick (Ryan Tudhope, Seth Hill, Bryan Litson and Scott R. Fisher)

Honorable Mentions:

• All Quiet on the Western Front (Frank Petzold, Viktor Müller, Markus Frank and Kamil Jafar)
• Everything Everywhere All At Once (Zak Stoltz, Ethan Feldbau, Benjamin Brewer, Jeff Desom, and Matthew Wauhkonen)
• The Batman (Dan Lemmon, Russell Earl, Anders Langlands and Dominic Tuohy)

Best Cinematography

Winner:

• The Batman (Greig Fraser)

There isn’t a frame of The Batman that’s anything less than a feast for the eyes. Bathed in darkness and drenched in rain, Gotham has never felt so fully realized as a city. It’s near-impossible to settle for an average-looking blockbuster after watching this.

Runner-up:

• Nope (Hoyte van Hoytema)

Honorable Mentions:

• Top Gun: Maverick (Claudio Miranda)
• Avatar: The Way of Water (Russell Carpenter)
• TÁR (Florian Hoffmeister)

Best Supporting Actress

Winner:

• Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All At Once)

For my money, Stephanie Hsu is the MVP of Everything Everywhere, and that’s no small feat in an acting ensemble so impressive. She has a swagger that completely radiates off the screen as the film’s villain. However, it’s her grounded emotion in the film’s climactic scene that’s enough to salvage an otherwise messy third act.

Runner-up:

• Janelle Monáe (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery)

Honorable Mentions:

• Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin)
• Nina Hoss (TÁR)
• Michelle Williams (The Fabelmans)

Best Costume Design

Winner:

• Everything Everywhere All At Once (Shirley Kurata)

The costumes here are wildly inventive, leveraging a multiverse worth of possibilities at every turn. Who knew that fanny packs could be so cool?

Runner-up:

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Ruth Carter)

Honorable Mentions:

• Babylon (Mary Zophres)
• Avatar: The Way of Water (Deborah Lynn Scott)
• Elvis (Catherine Martin)

Best Screenplay

Winner:

• TÁR (Todd Field)

A complete non-contest here. Aside from its delicious dialogue, which functions almost as music to the ears, TÁR‘s script is most notable for how much trust it places in its audience. There are so many interesting questions here: Do you need to insert your identity to make great art? Should an artist’s identity matter when evaluating their art? The list of questions goes on, and TÁR doesn’t answer a single one; it’s much more interested in providing details that can be read any which way, allowing you to come to your own conclusion. The film’s moral gray area extends to its characters, none of which emerge unscathed from the corrupt and transactional world of orchestra politics. This is just a complete masterclass from top to bottom.

Runner-up:

• The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)

Honorable Mentions:

• The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner)
• Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)
• Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Rian Johnson)

Best Score

Winner:

• The Batman (Michael Giacchino)

I take no shame in admitting that Michael Giacchino topped my Spotify Wrapped last year, and for good reason: The Batman‘s score absolutely owns. Sure, all the character themes are fantastic, but it’s the mysterious and romantic Catwoman theme that has lodged itself deep inside my heart and refused to leave. This is perhaps career-best work from one of our most prolific film composers.

Runner-up:

• Tie: RRR (M.M. Keeravani) and Babylon (Justin Hurwitz)

Honorable Mentions:

• Nope (Michael Abels)
• Ambulance (Lorne Balfe)

Best Editing

Winner:

• TÁR (Monika Willi)

Many will highlight the electrifying cross-cutting of Everything Everywhere or the technical wizardry of Top Gun, but this was a pretty easy call for me. TÁR’s editing is the film’s secret weapon: it’s a movie defined by time and control, and the editing plays a pivotal role in setting the film’s internal metronome. As TÁR’s protagonist loses grasp of her life, the film undergoes various tempo changes; ellipses in the narrative conceal information from the audience in at every turn, building up to one of the most unexpected — yet utterly perfect — endings I’ve ever seen to a movie.

However, disregard everything I just said. Another review much more eloquently (and succinctly) said all there is to say: “Every cut is like a notation on a composer’s score.”

Runner-up:

• Top Gun: Maverick (Eddie Hamilton)

Honorable Mentions:

• Everything Everywhere All At Once (Paul Rogers)
• Babylon (Tom Cross)
• The Fabelmans (Sarah Broshar and Michael Kahn)

Best Production Design

Winner:

• Babylon (Production Design: Florencia Martin; Set Decoration: Anthony Carlino)

The detail in Babylon is simply staggering. Whether it be a lavish party or a chaotic film set, you can’t help but want to pause every frame and soak all the spectacle in. That is, of course, until a traumatizing descent into the depths of Hell that solidifies Babylon‘s production design as the best of the year.

Runner-up:

• Avatar: The Way of Water (Production Design: Dylan Cole and Ben Procter; Set Decoration: Vanessa Cole)

Honorable Mentions:

• Elvis (Production Design: Catherine Martin and Karen Murphy; Set Decoration: Bev Dunn)
• All Quiet on the Western Front (Production Design: Christian M. Goldbeck; Set Decoration: Ernestine Hipper)
• The Fabelmans (Production Design: Rick Carter; Set Decoration: Karen O’Hara)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Winner:

• Elvis (Mark Coulier, Jason Baird and Aldo Signoretti)

They made Austin Butler a spitting image of Elvis, and they transformed Tom Hanks into a cartoon villain. What more could you want?

Runner-up:

• The Batman (Naomi Donne, Mike Marino and Mike Fontaine)

Honorable Mentions:

• All Quiet on the Western Front (Heike Merker and Linda Eisenhamerová)
• The Whale (Adrien Morot, Judy Chin and Anne Marie Bradley)
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Camille Friend and Joel Harlow)

Best Scene

Winner:

• Palace Fight (RRR)

The question was not if I would choose a scene from RRR, but a matter of which one. However, no scene in 2022 brought me as much joy as the fight at the film’s intermission, which is one of the most purely awesome pieces of spectacle I have ever seen. Showing it to first-time viewers and watching them erupt in applause is the only proof I need that this is an instantly iconic piece of movie magic. It simply needs to be seen to be believed.

Runner-up:

• Ending (TÁR)

Honorable Mentions:

• Prom Night (The Fabelmans)
• Gordy Attack (Nope)
• Hello, College! (Babylon)
• Surgery (Ambulance)
• Measuring Tape (Barbarian)
• Batman’s Introduction (The Batman)
• Ending (Aftersun)
• Payakan Attacks (Avatar: The Way of Water)
• Test Run (Top Gun: Maverick)
• Blanc Pieces It All Together (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery)
• Fanny Pack Fight (Everything Everywhere All At Once)
• ‘If I Can Dream’ Performance (Elvis)
• Silence of the Lambs (Jackass Forever)

Best Director

Winner:

• SS Rajamouli (RRR)

I have spent too much of the last week deliberating between two choices here; however, SS Rajamouli narrowly edges it out for me. He is not only capable of executing an electrifying musical number, a wild action scene with thousands of extras, or an earnest moment of bromance, but he is capable of jumping between them like it is nothing. In doing so, RRR becomes a singular experience in which anything can happen in any given scene — regardless of how seemingly unfilmable it may be. Rajamouli’s true masterstroke is in ensuring that every moment, no matter how absurd, is grounded in the friendship at the film’s emotional core. It’s criminal he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar.

Runner-up:

• Todd Field (TÁR)

Honorable Mentions:

• Jordan Peele (Nope)
• Damien Chazelle (Babylon)
• Charlotte Wells (Aftersun)
• Matt Reeves (The Batman)
• Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick)
• Park Chan-wook (Decision to Leave)
• Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans)
• James Cameron (Avatar: The Way of Water)
• Baz Luhrmann (Elvis)
• Zach Cregger (Barbarian)
• Daniels (Everything Everywhere All At Once)
• Michael Bay (Ambulance)

Best Lead Actress

Winner:

• Cate Blanchett (TÁR)

I can’t help but feel that we’re taking this performance for granted. Cate Blanchett has long been regarded as one of our best working actresses, and here she devours a once-in-a-lifetime role that most people can only dream of. I simply can’t remember the last time somebody so thoroughly dominated the screen; effortlessly jumping between languages and gracefully wielding her baton, Blanchett is the film’s maestro, conducting every scene as if it’s the last thing she’ll ever do.

She perfectly embodies the hubris and snobbery of her character, yet she sings the most in the fleeting glimpses at a humanity and insecurity lurking beneath the surface. The fact that it’s sneakily one of the funniest performances of the year is enough to make you bow down in complete and utter awe. It simply doesn’t get better than this, folks.

Runner-up:

• Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All At Once)

Honorable Mentions:

• Keke Palmer (Nope)
• Tang Wei (Decision to Leave)
• Margot Robbie (Babylon)

Best Lead Actor

Winner:

• Colin Farrell (The Banshees of Inisherin)

Few actors could give a performance this heartbreaking or this hilarious; the fact that Colin Farrell manages to give both at once is just a cherry on top. With a simple furrow of an eyebrow, Farrell is able to break your heart and piece it back together again all in one go, and it’s a performance that has stuck with me ever since I left the theater.

Runner-up:

• Gabriel LaBelle (The Fabelmans)

Honorable Mentions:

• Tom Cruise (Top Gun: Maverick)
• Austin Butler (Elvis)
• Daniel Kaluuya (Nope)

Best Picture

Winner:

• TÁR

Ever since I saw TÁR in October, it has refused to leave my head, and I don’t foresee it leaving anytime soon. I have written about it extensively during this article, as well as during my 2022 ranking; all that’s left for me to say about this complex character study is that I am just happy it exists.

Throughout my time in college, there is no movie I have had more fun writing about, and there is no movie I have had more fun discussing with those that have seen it. Every time I watch it, it makes me feel like I’m in seventh grade again watching Whiplash for the first time, or like I’m in high school again watching Parasite for the first time. It reaffirms why I love movies and what I believe movies are capable of; more than that, it reaffirms the reason why I started this blog, which was to share movies I was passionate about. There simply couldn’t be any other choice for my movie of the year.

Runner-up:

• RRR

Honorable Mentions:

• Top Gun: Maverick
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Babylon
• The Fabelmans
• Everything Everywhere All At Once
• The Batman
• Nope
• Barbarian

Notable Movies I Didn’t See: Causeway, The Woman King, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Living, To Leslie, Blonde, Bones and All, Armageddon Time, White Noise, Empire of Light

Editor’s Note 3/11/2023: Although I only published this earlier this morning, I already feel a pang of regret in the screenplay category, where I should have listed Top Gun: Maverick and Babylon in my honorable mentions instead of Glass Onion and Everything Everywhere. I won’t change the initial article — I have to own my picks, after all — but just wanted to put that out there.