The start of July marks the halfway point of the year. I wanted to take a look back at what kind of year 2019 has been so far for film. At the end of each year I compile a list of my favourite films of the year and do my own personal awards, complete with nominations and winners in specific categories. For the mid-year review, we are going to do exactly that as if the year were ending today. I’ve included two films that technically came out after the halfway point, but I had seen them before I finalized this list and I couldn’t help myself from including them.
Scott’s Favourite Films of 2019 (so far..)
20. Spider-Man: Far From Home
19. Teen Spirit
18. Under The Silver Lake
17. Late Night
16. Shazam!
15. The Beach Bum
14. Long Shot
13. Paddleton
12. I Am Mother
11. Toy Story 4
10. John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
9. Fighting With My Family
8. Avengers: Endgame
7. Us
6. Climax
5. Her Smell
4. The Last Black Man In San Francisco
3. High Life
2. Booksmart
1. Midsommar
And now we get to the awards. The official 2019 version of these awards will be taking place in January of next year, but I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what these awards look like now, that way we can compare and contrast and see what’s stood the test of time at the end of the year. If you’re interested in seeing last year’s nominations and winners, they can be found here and here.
The Nominations
In keeping with the format I used last year, I will be breaking the nominations down into the following 6 categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Performance By An Actress, Best Performance By An Actor, Best Screenplay, and Best Cinematography, with 5 nominees in each category (except Best Picture, which gets 10). At the end of the year I may decide to revamp this format, separating lead/supporting performances and original/adapted screenplays, and possibly adding the Best Editing category, amongst others. Here are the nominees:
Best Picture
- Avengers: Endgame
- Booksmart
- Climax
- Her Smell
- High Life
- John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
- The Last Black Man In San Francisco
- Midsommar
- Toy Story 4
- Us
Best Director
- Ari Aster (Midsommar)
- Claire Denis (High Life)
- Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell)
- Joe Talbot (The Last Black Man In San Francisco)
- Olivia Wilde (Booksmart)
Best Performance By An Actor
- Zac Efron (Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile)
- Jonathan Majors (The Last Black Man In San Francisco)
- Matthew McConaughey (The Beach Bum)
- Robert Patinson (High Life)
- Ray Romano (Paddleton)
Best Performance By An Actress
- Juliette Binoche (High Life)
- Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart)
- Elisabeth Moss (Her Smell)
- Lupita Nyong’o (Us)
- Florence Pugh (Midsommar)
Best Screenplay
- Booksmart (Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel & Katie Silberman)
- Her Smell (Alex Ross Perry)
- High Life (Clair Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau & Geoff Cox)
- Midsommar (Ari Aster)
- Us (Jordan Peele)
Best Cinematography
- The Beach Bum (Benoit Debie)
- High Life (Yorick Le Saux)
- The Last Black Man In San Francisco (Adam Newport-Berra)
- Midsommar (Pawel Pogorzelski)
- Teen Spirit (Autumn Durald)
The Winners
For the official awards the nominations and winners will obviously not be announced simultaneously, but since this is just for fun and we’re only working with what will likely end up being less than half of the films I’ll see this year, I think we can go ahead and jump right into the winners. The winners of the 2019 Mid-Year Film Awards are:
Best Performance By An Actor
Winner: Robert Pattinson (High Life)
Runner Up: Jonathan Majors (The Last Black Man In San Francisco)
Best Performance By An Actress
Winner: Florence Pugh (Midsommar)
Runner Up: Elisabeth Moss (Her Smell)
Best Cinematography
Winner: Midsommar (Pawel Pogorzelski)
Runner Up: High Life (Yorick Le Saux)
Best Screenplay
Winner: High Life (Clair Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau & Geoff Cox)
Runner Up: Her Smell (Alex Ross Perry)
Best Director
Winner: Ari Aster (Midsommar)
Runner Up: Claire Denis (High Life)
Best Picture
Winner: Midsommar
Runner Up: Booksmart
And there we have it! 2019 is off to a relatively promising start with a small handful of films that I absolutely adore, and we don’t even have to look ahead very far to see that this year still has a great chance of being a special one for film. In the next two months alone we’ll be getting The Farewell, The Art of Self Defense, Stuber, The Lion King, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Luce, Them That Follow, Blinded By The Light, and Good Boys, amongst others. And fast-forward to the end of the year where we’ll be getting titles like Ad Astra, A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, Ford v. Ferrari, Joker, Parasite, Zombieland: Double Tap , and my personal most anticipated film for 2019’s second half, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. And that doesn’t even really scratch the surface! You should revisit my 2019 Most Anticipated Films post if you’re curious what else is still set to come out this year.
Thank you all so much for checking out this post. Still to come, I’m going to be doing a 2010’s Decade Retrospective. Two posts a month from now until the end of the year, each one focusing on one year of the decade and examining all the notable films released that year. Should be fun! I’ll also continue posting periodic film reviews. No set schedule, just whenever I see a film that I feel compelled to write about, it’ll get posted here! My Twitter is located on the sidebar of this site, following me there would be the best place to get notified when a new post has gone up. Any feedback is welcomed and can be left down below or tweeted at me. Thanks again for reading and I hope you’ll be back!
Alert The Audience 