2005

Since 2005 is my favorite year for cinema in this decade (high praise considering this decade has Lord of the Rings and Garden State), it's only right that 2005 also has precedent-setting BMAs.  Last year only had BMAs for Best Picture and acting awards, followed by a Losers and Shout-outs section.  This year, several new awards are beginning, including BMAs for Best Ensemble, 2005 MVP, Best Poster, Best Trailer, and Lifetime Achievement Award.  And now, I give you the BMAs for 2005. 

 

Best Picture: 

Brokeback Mountain
Good Night and Good Luck
Jarhead
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Syriana

The BMA goes to:  Brokeback Mountain.  But of course, you already know that this was my favorite picture, this year.  So no surprises yet, just like the Oscars (excluding the Crash upset).   

The Brandon Academy Award for Best Picture:

Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Crash
Good Night and Good Luck
Munich

And the BAA goes to:  Brokeback Mountain.  If you're smart, you'll figure out that a pattern has just been set into place that will carry over into every BAA.    If you're not, I'll just let you be surprised later on. 

 

Best Actor:

Daniel Day-Lewis--The Ballad of Jack and Rose
Jake Gyllenhaal--Brokeback Mountain
Phillip Seymour Hoffman--Capote
Heath Ledger--Brokeback Mountain
David Strathairn--Good Night and Good Luck

The BMA goes to:  Heath Ledger--Brokeback Mountain.    This one was a toughie, especially considering Phillip Seymour Hoffman has won practically every other acting award this year for his role as Truman Capote.  But I preferred Ledger's Ennis Del Mar, partially because his character is fictional and not a real person.  Just like Jamie Foxx's perfect impersonation of Ray Charles, Hoffman's Capote is seamless, but it means more to me that Ledger had to start from scratch with his character.  In other words, the fact that Hoffman's Capote voice and mannerisms are true to life holds no water with me.  His ability to bring his character authentically to life, however, does, and it is this reason that I think Hoffman's Capote is barely second to Ledger's Del Mar and head and shoulders above Foxx's Ray Charles.  But this award isn't about Hoffman not winning, it's about Ledger winning.  So much is clearly going on inside him that isn't explicit in the script, and Ledger really expresses this perfectly.  I think it's really a toss-up, since this year had so many great performances (I started out with 14 people in this category), but in the end, Ledger wins for affecting me more. 

Phillip Seymour Hoffman--Capote
Terrence Howard--Hustle and Flow
Heath Ledger--Brokeback Mountain
Joaquin Phoenix--Walk the Line
David Strathairn--Good Night and Good Luck

The BAA goes to:  Heath Ledger--Brokeback Mountain.  See above BMA. 

 

Best Actress:

Dame Judi Dench--Mrs. Henderson Presents...
Felicity Huffman--Transamerica
Keira Knightley--Pride and Prejudice
Rachel Weisz--The Constant Gardener
Reese Witherspoon--Walk the Line

And the BMA goes to:  Felicity Huffman--Transamerica.  What do you do when two performances are equally astonishing and both carry the film?  Well, let's compare.  Reese Witherspoon went from girl-next-door type to cutesy Southern type.  Felicity Huffman went from beautiful, intelligent woman to intelligent man who wants to be a woman and just found out she had a son.  But it's not just that Huffman's role was more challenging, it's that she does her job perfectly.  I will never understand reviews of Transamerica that call it "mediocre."  That movie certainly affected me, and I have no doubt that Huffman's onscreen pain is the reason.  Honestly, though, I have no idea why Witherspoon is the Best Actress frontrunner this year.  I would give it to Dench and then Weisz and then Knightley.  Witherspoon would get it last.  Not to say she's bad--she got a BMA nom and several awards--but she's definitely not the best.  I guess this is just a year of many great performances. 

Dame Judi Dench--Mrs. Henderson Presents...
Felicity Huffman--Transamerica
Keira Knightley--Pride and Prejudice
Charlize Theron--North Country
Reese Witherspoon--Walk the Line

And the BAA goes to:  Felicity Huffman--Transamerica. See above BMA. 

 

Best Supporting Actor:

George Clooney--Syriana
Clifton Collins, Jr.--Capote
Matt Dillon--Crash
Barry Pepper--The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Peter Sarsgaard--Jarhead

And the BMA goes to:  Matt Dillon--Crash.    Talk about a great performance.  Matt Dillon was phenomenal in Crash, my favorite performance from a film of many.  I don't really think I need to say much more.  If you've seen Crash, you've seen the best male supporting performance in a movie this year.  Giamatti's won so much in payment for Sideways and American Splendor.  Clooney won the Oscar for being one of the most popular people in Hollywood.  But neither, though great, hold a torch to Dillon's wounded racist.  The scene they showed at the Oscars, the "you think you know who you are, you have no idea" speech is my favorite, and God, I just remembered how much I love that movie.  Also of note, Clifton Collins, Jr. should most definitely have been nominated as Perry Smith (Smith?  I think that's right), one of the killers in Capote.  Additionally, Barry Pepper rules in a creepy way in the redemption story Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.  And of all the performances in Jarhead, the only one that won a nomination was Sarsgaard's. 

George Clooney--Syriana
Matt Dillon--Crash
Paul Giamatti--Cinderella Man
Jake Gyllenhaal--Brokeback Mountain
William Hurt--A History of Violence

And the BAA goes to:  Matt Dillon--Crash.    See above BMA.  

 

Best Supporting Actress:

Amy Adams--Junebug
Anne Hathaway--Brokeback Mountain
Catherine Keener--The Ballad of Jack and Rose
Catherine Keener--Capote
Michelle Williams--Brokeback Mountain

And the BMA goes to:  Amy Adams--Junebug.  I feel like the Supporting Awards are generally the second-place awards, but that's not how it should be.  From time to time, a movie is made by it's supporting roles, and not just ensemble pieces like Magnolia and Traffic, but movies wherein the supporting characters steal the show, like Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York or even Gollum in The Two Towers.  Amy Adams most definitely stole the show as Ashley, and it is mostly to her credit that I liked Junebug so much.  Moreover, I should point out two performances that should have been more widely recognized, Sandra Bullock's bitchy rich wife Jean in Crash and Anne Hathaway's rodeo princess turned cold wife in Brokeback Mountain.  While Keener's Harper Lee and Williams' (Ledger's?) Alma Del Mar both worthily won nominations and awards, these two went unrecognized for whatever reason, and the BMAs are here to correct this injustice. 

Amy Adams--Junebug
Catherine Keener--Capote
Frances McDormand--North Country
Rachel Weisz--The Constant Gardener
Michelle Williams--Brokeback Mountain

The BAA goes to:  Amy Adams--Junebug.    See above BMA.  By the way, though, Rachel Weisz cheated, as Tessa Quayle, though dead for most of it, is the lead woman in The Constant Gardener.  She does indeed rule in the role, as I gave her a nomination for it over Charlize Theron in North Country, but she should not be winning supporting actress awards. 

 

Best Ensemble:
This is a new award given to the best cast this year, with the stipulation being that none of the actors in the movie can have a lead role, therefore making up for the impossibility of winning major acting awards with this one.  The nominees are: 

Crash
Good Night and Good Luck
Rent
Sin City
Syriana

The BMA goes to:  Syriana.  It's the only one of the movies above where absolutely every single actor was great in their role.  And together, they created the film that I felt was the second-best of the year.  From Matt Damon's American energy analyst who loses a son to George Clooney's CIA patsy to Alexander Siddig's educated and liberal Middle Eastern prince to Chris Cooper's oil mogul, Syriana's cast is brilliant and far too many to name each great performance.  Crash too deserves special attention, although it's already won an award for Best Ensemble.  Still, the nominees all deserve credit, because such an outstanding year shut both Rent and Sin City out of the Oscars altogether. 

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 

Brokeback Mountain
Capote
The Constant Gardener
Jarhead
Munich

The BMA goes to:  Brokeback Mountain.

 

Best Original Screenplay: 

Good Night and Good Luck
Junebug
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
The Squid and the Whale
Syriana

The BMA goes to:  The Squid and the Whale.  KKBB is runner up. 

 

Best Poster:

               

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
The Proposition
Rent
Sin City
Syriana

The BMA goes to:  Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.  What an f-ing spectacular poster.  Very Donnie Darko.  I'm sad to say that this year's best picture's posters didn't really wow me.  Crash's street corner poster (not the one with Michael Pena and his character's daughter on it, but the other one) is pretty awesome, but Brokeback, Munich, Capote, and Good Night and Good Luck all had posters that didn't really blow me away, but I will say that Munich's is my favorite of those. 

 

Best Trailer:

Brokeback Mountain trailer
 Good Night and Good Luck trailer
Jarhead teaser and trailer
Munich trailer
Rent teaser and trailer

The BMA goes to:  This was one of the hardest decisions tonight.  I just watched all seven trailers in a row, twice, and each one gave me chills.  These are some damn fine trailers.  I just wanted to reiterate that before announcing yet another win for Brokeback Mountain.  It's a trailer that showcases both Gustavo Santaolalla's Oscar-winning score and Ang Lee's beautiful (and Oscar-winning) directing, and it shows cinematography that is far better than that of Memoirs of a Geisha.  Each trailer nominated, though, is great, and I'm happy that I now have an easy way of going to each one now that they're on my website. 

 

Overlooked Prize: 

Everything is Illuminated
The Matador
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Thumbsucker
An Unfinished Life

The BMA goes to:   Everything is Illuminated

Apologies to:  Breakfast on Pluto

 

Brandon A. Nowalk Award for Creativity: 

Sin City was incredibly fresh.  Never before (I'm making stuff up, but I think it's actually true) has a movie been done in this style, which I can't even describe.  It's like watching movie art of a film noir.  Which is to say it's perfect for me.  Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller created one of the most innovative films in recent years, I believe, since movies haven't been all that fresh (even the great ones) since 2001 or so, so they definitely deserve massive credit. 

 

BMA MVP: 

Jake Gyllenhaal for bringing to life three characters in three of my favorite 2005 movies and going otherwise largely unrecognized (except for the awesome BAFTA win).  Interesting fact:  Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Martin Scorsese are all former BMA MVPs who went on to rule Hollywood. 

 

Best Documentary:  The BMA goes to:  The 2005 Video.  An hour and a half of glorious narcissism.  What could be better?   

Best Foreign-Language Film:  Cache by Michael Haneke.  Suck it, Tsotsi. 

 

BMA Losers:

Chris Columbus--for cutting one of Rent's best songs/scenes, for doing horrible commentary on the deleted scenes, and for otherwise vandalizing a perfect (PERFECT) script
Tom Cruise--"And that's why I think Scientology is great, not only for this city, but for the entire country."
Harry Knowles--for putting Hustle and Flow above Brokeback Mountain, Munich, Crash, Syriana, etc.  We get it, you're street.  And you like to cuss.  But there's more to life than anime and MTV Films.

 

BMA Shout Outs: 


 

George Clooney--Most Versatile--for narrowly missing the MVP BMA, as he directed, wrote, and starred in Good Night and Good Luck as well as co-starring in Syriana, and for giving one hell of an Oscar speech praising Hollywood's liberal activism and doing it in a classy way
Val Kilmer--for stealing another movie, this time, the criminally underappreciated Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Jonathan Larson--for bringing Rent into my life thereby granting me one of the best artistic experiences of my life
Chris Nolan--for reinvigorating the Batman franchise in a great way
Steven Spielberg--for getting the shaft from Hollywood on Munich, which is incredible
Jon Stewart--for being generally hilarious and awesome during the Oscars, despite most critical opinion as to his blandness
Alan Tudyk--Wash from Serenity--for being a leaf on the wind
Elijah Wood--for not giving up after Frodo and for being my favorite character in Sin City

 

Recap: 

Brokeback Mountain:  3 BMAs--Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Trailer
Crash:  1 BMA--Best Supporting Actor
Junebug:  1 BMA--Best Supporting Actress
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang:  1 BMA--Best Poster
Syriana:  1 BMA--Best Ensemble
Transamerica:  1 BMA--Best Actress

One one final note, I would like to point out that no actor has been nominated in multiple years for a BMA.  Natalie Portman and Kate Winslet both scored double nominations in 2004, but no other actor has more than 1 nomination to their name.  In fact, the only actors/actresses who do have BMAs (for acting, not BMA shout-outs) are Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Clive Owen, Natalie Portman, Heath Ledger, Felicity Huffman, Matt Dillon, and Amy Adams.  The movies with 2 BMAs are Garden State, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Brokeback Mountain leads with 3.  Let's see if 2006 brings us any new multiple winners. 

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