Imaginary Cinema Awards for 2023

 It's that time of year again! Just ahead of the Oscars, here's my awards for the best in fantasy, horror and sci-fi movies for the year they're already calling 2023.

Best Movie: Godzilla Minus One

Runners-up: Poor Things, Barbie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Boy and the Heron, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, They Cloned Tyrone

Best Screenplay: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Dave Callaham, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller)

Best Direction: Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)

Best Actor: Michael Keaton (The Flash)

Runners-up: Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things), Willem Dafoe (Poor Things), Ryan Gosling (Barbie), Hugh Grant (Dungeons and Dragons), Nicolas Cage (Renfield)

Best Actress: Emma Stone (Poor Things)

Runners-up: Margot Robbie (Barbie), America Ferrera (Barbie), Hailee Steinfeld (Across the Spider-Verse), Michelle Pfeiffer (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Best Music: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Daniel Pemberton)

Runners-up: The Boy and the Heron (Joe Hisaishi), Barbie (various)

Best Sound: The Creator

Runner-up: Godzilla Minus One

Best Visual Effects: Godzilla Minus One

Runner-up: The Creator

Best Production Design: Barbie

Runner-up: Poor Things

Best Cinematography: El Conde

Runner-up: Poor Things

Best Make-up: Poor Things

Best Costumes: Barbie

Runner-up: Poor Things

Best/worst cameo: Nicolas Cage in The Flash. Great that we finally got to see his Superman. Shame it was a CGI mess. 

Disappointment of the Year: Quantumania and Indiana Jones 5 tied for biggest disappointment.

Most pointless sequel/remake: Indy again. They really made him an old man yelling at kids to turn down that Beatles music.

Guilty Pleasure: Five Nights at Freddy’s wasn’t terrible.

Imaginary Cinema Awards for 2022

Reviving my blog for the annual awards for the best in Fantasy, Horror and Sci-fi movies!

Best Movie: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Runners-up: Everything Everywhere All at Once, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Prey, The Black Phone, Avatar: The Way of Water, Beavis & Butt-head Do the Universe, The Batman, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Wendell & Wild, You Won’t be Alone

Best Screenplay: Everything Everywhere All at Once (The Daniels)

Best Direction: Everything Everywhere All at Once (The Daniels)

Best Actor: Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All at Once)

Runners-up: Ethan Hawke (The Black Phone), Tenoch Huerta Mejía (Black Panther 2), Christian Bale (Thor: Love and Thunder), Adam Driver (White Noise)

Best Actress: Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once)

Runners-up: Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All at Once), Amber Midthunder (Prey), Sigourney Weaver (Avatar 2), Angela Bassett (Black Panther 2), Natalie Portman (Thor 4), Xochitl Gomez (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness)

Best Music: Everything Everywhere All at Once (Son Lux)

Runners-up: Dr Strange 2 (Danny Elfman)

Best Sound: Avatar 2

Best Visual Effects: Avatar 2

Best Production Design: White Noise

Best Editing: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Cinematography: The Batman

Best Make-up: The Batman

Best Costumes: Black Panther 2

Runner-up: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Worst cameo: Michael Keaton in Morbius. I love the guy, but that was nonsensical. 

Disappointment of the Year: All the Marvel movies, even the good ones. And the fact that Morbius didn’t make a Morbillion dollars.

Most pointless sequel/remake: Disney’s live-action Pinocchio

The Return of the Imaginary Cinema Awards for 2021!

Just when you thought I was gone, I return (a few months late) with my awards for the best in fantasy, horror and sci-fi movies of 2021!

Best Movie: Spider-Man: No Way Home

Runners-up: Dune, The Suicide Squad, The Mitchells vs the Machines, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Encanto, Godzilla vs. Kong, Don’t Look Up, In the Earth, Nightbooks, Last Night in Soho.

Best Screenplay: The Suicide Squad (James Gunn)

Best Direction: Denis Villeneuve (Dune)

Best Actor: King Kong (Godzilla vs. Kong)

Runners-up: Tony Leung (Shang-Chi), Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man: No Way Home), Alfred Molina (Spider-Man: No Way Home), Andrew Garfield (Spider-Man: No Way Home), Oscar Isaac (Dune), Idris Elba (The Suicide Squad)

Best Actress: Thomasin McKenzie (Last Night in Soho)

Runners-up: Kathryn Newton (The Map of Tiny Perfect Things), Anya Taylor-Joy (Last Night in Soho), Zendaya (Spider-Man: No Way Home, Dune) , Krysten Ritter (Nightbooks), Daniela Melchior (The Suicide Squad), Mckenna Grace (Ghostbusters: Afterlife)

Best Music: In the Earth (Clint Mansell)

Runners-up: Dune (Hans Zimmer)

Best Sound: Dune, Godzilla vs. Kong

Best Visual Effects: Dune

Runners-up: Godzilla vs. Kong

Best Production Design: Dune, Last Night in Soho

Best Editing: The Suicide Squad

Best Cinematography: Dune

Best Make-up: Dune, The Suicide Squad

Best Costumes: Dune, Last Night in Soho

Best (extended) cameos: Ben Kingsley in Shang-Chi, pretty much everyone in No Way Home

Cutest Character That is Not Baby Yoda: Morris in Shang-Chi

Disappointment of the Year: Zac Snyder’s Justice League was slightly better than the Whedon version but certainly not the masterpiece some were claiming. I preferred his Army of the Dead

Guilty Pleasure: Free Guy was better than you’d expect from a gaming version of The Truman Show

Most pointless sequel: Ghostbusters: Afterlife. It certainly wasn’t terrible, but remaking the ending of the first movie was lazier than anything in that reboot a few years ago that everyone hated.

See you next year!

To all things an ending...

 So, after 14 years, I've decided to retire this blog. It never really picked up the audience I was hoping for (and the website it was supposed to support is long gone) so there doesn't seem much point continuing it. I may still post my annual imaginary cinema awards, but there won't be any regular (or semi-regular) updates aside from that.

Just in case anyone does care about my opinion on movies, you can follow me on Twitter (@imaginarycinema) or check out my Letterboxd profile. I've made it my goal to watch every fantasy, horror and sci-fi movie of the last 100 years that sounds at least vaguely interesting, so there should be frequent reviews posted. I'm also going to focus more on my own screenplay writing, so maybe one day someone will be making a blog post about a movie that I wrote. So long and farewell, Blogger world!

Imaginary Cinema Awards 2020

2020 was a very strange, sad year. For movies and also, of course, for the world in general. There weren’t any of the usual big blockbusters, but on the plus side there was a lot more focus on low budget and indie films. I saw a whole bunch of films I wouldn’t ordinarily see thanks to being stuck at home much of the year. So here are my picks for the best of the year in fantasy, horror and sci-fi movies.

Best Movie: Palm Springs

Runners-up: The Invisible Man, Vampires vs. the Bronx, Soul, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey, Color Out of Space, Onward, His House, Extra Ordinary, Freaky, Over the Moon, Possessor, Sputnik.

Best Screenplay: Palm Springs (Andy Siara)

Runner-up: Vampires vs. the Bronx (Oz Rodriguez and Blaise Hemingway)

Best Direction: Leigh Whannell (The Invisible Man)

Runner-up: Richard Stanley (Color Out of Space)

Best Actor: Nicolas Cage (Color Out of Space)

Runners-up: Andy Samberg (Palm Springs), Jim Carrey (Sonic the Hedgehog), Pedro Pascal (Wonder Woman 1984), Vince Vaughn (Freaky), Will Forte (Extra Ordinary)

Best Actress: Elizabeth Moss (The Invisible Man)

Runners-up: Kathryn Newton (Freaky), Cristin Milioti (Palm Springs), Kristen Wiig (Wonder Woman 1984), Margot Robbie (Birds of Prey), Madeleine Arthur (Color Out of Space), Anya Taylor-Joy (The New Mutants)

Best Music: Soul (Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste)

Runners-up: The Invisible Man, Birds of Prey, Color Out of Space

Best Sound: Color Out of Space

Best Visual Effects: The Invisible Man

Runners-up: Tenet

Best Production Design: Jingle Jangle

Best Editing: Palm Springs

Best Cinematography: She Dies Tomorrow

Best Make-up: Color Our of Space

Best Costumes: Mulan

Cutest Character That is Not Baby Yoda: Sonic the Hedgehog

Nicest film: Bill and Ted Face the Music. Perfectly enjoyable but also totally forgettable.

Nastiest film: Possessor and The Platform were both tough to watch, even though I liked them.

What the Fuck Were They Thinking? Award: Setting Wonder Woman in 1984 and not making it a critique of either Reaganism or Orwellian regimes. It might as well have been set in the present.

Surprise/Disappointment of the Year: Surprise was that the Sonic movie was decent. Disappointment was that the two big movie releases of the post-Covid period (Tenet and WW84) were both pretty much confusing messes with some good moments sprinkled in.

Guilty Pleasure: The New Mutants was cheap and cheesy, but I liked the whole Nightmare on Elm Street 3 vibe to it.

Best straight to DVD/streaming: Um, nearly all of the above.

Why does Christmas and horror go together so well?

 Oops, forgot to post this before December 25th. But really, any time of year is perfect to watch creepy Christmas movies so here's a list of my fave scary or just plain weird/fantastical Christmas movies.

Black Christmas (1974) - also known as Silent Night Evil Night, this Canadian slasher movie set the template for later movies such as Halloween, and it's still effective today (unlike the two awful remakes). Part of the reason it's held up so well is how little we learn about the killer, "Billy". Aside from his disturbing obscene phone calls to the sorority, he remains a terrifying enigma right up until the haunting final scene. The other reason this is worth a watch is because of the cast, who are actually treated like well-rounded characters. Unlike most exploitation movies of the time, the female characters are given more to do than scream, get naked and be killed (not always in that order). There's plenty of humour and even a nice feminist arc to Olivia Hussey's character, with her confronting her asshole boyfriend (2001's Keir Dullea) over his insistence she not get an abortion. Pre-Lois Lane Margot Kidder and genre legend John Saxon are also very entertaining. Saxon plays the cop trying to figure out where the killer's calls are coming from (spoiler alert: they're coming from inside the house!) This is a movie I definitely recommend as an annual viewing tradition.

Gremlins - a sadistic Christmas classic, nuff said.

Tim Burton's Christmas Trilogy (Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns and The Nightmare Before Christmas) - okay, not technically horror, but they all have their share of creepy moments and are all classic movies, too.

The Polar Express - this movie is just terrifying.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale - a Finnish film about the sinister creature behind the Santa legend and definitely the weirdest one on this list.

Krampus - Michael Dougherty's take on the festive legend is a later addition to the list, and while it's not perfect it does recapture some of the fun creepiness of 80s family horror movies like Poltergeist and the aforementioned Gremlins.

Belated 2020 Movie Roundup

It's been a while since I've posted anything. Movie reviews just haven't seemed as important during this strange, terrifying year. But I've still been watching them so here's a quick review catchup. 

Jaws and The Empire Strikes Back saw rereleases for their 45th and 40th anniversaries respectively. Guess what, they're still all-time classics. 

The New Mutants wasn't as bad as everyone expected. It had a nice creepy atmosphere (reminiscent of my fave Freddy movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3) and LGBTQ characters front and center (a rarity for Marvel movies). 

Tenet was your typical Christopher Nolan mindfuck of an action movie, but it lacked the heart of his best work.

Bill & Ted Face the Music was a pleasant belated sequel with a positive message. Unfortunately it just wasn't that funny.

Freaky was a surprisingly good horror riff on Freaky Friday with a fun performance from Kathryn Newton.

TV was really where it was at this year. The Mandalorian season 2 was great, of course, and I really liked The Haunting of Bly Manor, especially the central love story, though it wasn't as creepy as it could have been.

I'll be posting more soon, I promise, including my fave Christmas fantasy/horror movies and the 2020 Imaginary Cinema Awards.