Best of 2018 Poll + Oscars Poll

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8. Vada Chennai (Vertrimaaran)

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7. Pariyerum Perumal (Maari Selvaraj)

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6. Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski)

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5. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coen Brothers)

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4. Kaala (Pa. Ranjith)

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3. Burning (Lee Chang-dong)

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2. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)

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... and the best film of 2018, according to SCFZ voters, is...

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1. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)

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The complete top 100:

1. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)
2. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)
3. Burning (Lee Chang-dong)
4. Kaala (Pa. Ranjith)
5. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coen Brothers)
6. Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski)
7. Pariyerum Perumal (Maari Selvaraj)
8. Vada Chennai (Vertrimaaran)
9. Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher)
10. The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier)
11. Leave No Trace (Debra Granik)
12. The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack)
13. Asako I&II (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
14. Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski)
15. Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
16. Claire's Camera (Hong Sang-soo)
17. Mission Impossible: Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie)
18. An Elephant Sitting Still (Bo Hu)
19. Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)
20. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)
21. Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley)
22. Long Day's Journey Into Night (Gan Bi)
23. Widows (Steve McQueen)
24. The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard)
25. Dead Souls (Wang Bing)
26. Ee.Ma.Yau (Lijo Jose Pellissary)
27. Manmarziyaan (Anurag Kashyap)
28. Hotel by the River (Hong Sang-soo)
29. Permanent Green Light (Dennis Cooper/Zac Farley)
30. Twisted Pair (Neil Breen)
31. Knife + Heart (Yann Gonzalez)
32. Transit (Christian Petzold)
33. Madeline's Madeline (Josephine Decker)
34. The Tale (Jennifer Fox)
35. Free Solo (Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi/Jimmy Chin)
36. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti/Peter Ramsey/Rodney Rothman)
37. Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg)
38. Drift (Helena Wittmann)
39. Grass (Hong Sang-soo)
40. Private Life (Tamara Jenkins)
41. Unsane (Steven Soderbergh)
42. Vice (Adam McKay)
43. Searching (Aneesh Chaganty)
44. Black Panther (Ryan Coogler)
45. The Real (Kim Eung-soo)
46. The Princess Switch (Mike Rohl)
47. Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino)
48. Your Face (Tsai Ming-liang)
49. I Can Only Imagine (Erwin Brothers)
50. The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
51. First Reformed (Paul Schrader)
52. Hereditary (Ari Aster)
53. Avengers: Infinity War (Russo Brothers)
54. Pataakha (Vishal Bharadwaj)
55. Historytelling (Guillaume Langlois)
56. Gens du Lac (Jean-Marie Straub)
57. Black Mother (Khalik Allah)
58. The Wolf House (Joaquin Cocina/Cristobal Leon)
59. They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (Morgan Neville)
60. The Old Man and the Gun (David Lowery)
61. Green Book (Peter Farrelly)
62. First Man (Damien Chazelle)
63. Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson)
64. Classical Period (Ted Fendt)
65. Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings (Tsui Hark)
66. Andhadhun (Sriram Raghavan)
67. Capernaum (Nadine Labaki)
68. Zama (Lucrecia Martel)
69. Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell)
70. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (JA Bayona)
71. A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper)
72. BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee)
73. House of Hummingbird (Kim Bo-ra)
74. Soni (Ivan Ayr)
75. 9 Fingers (FJ Ossang)
76. Welcome to Marwen (Robert Zemeckis)
77. Destination Wedding (Victor Levin)
78. Unfriended: Dark Web (Stephen Susco)
79. The Commuter (Jaume-Collet Serra)
80. Ant-Man and the Wasp (Peyton Reed)
81. Bohemian Rhapsody (Bryan Singer)
82. Altiplano (Malena Szlam)
83. Carolee, Barbara and Gunvor (Lynne Sachs)
84. October (Shoojit Sircar)
85. Tumbbad (Rahi Anil Barve/Adesh Prasad)
86. The Wild Boys (Bertrand Mandico)
87. Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)
88. Everybody Knows (Asghar Farhadi)
89. Mary Queen of Scots (Josie Rourke)
90. Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham)
91. Annihilation (Alex Garland)
92. Fountains of Paris (Stephen Broomer)
93. Savarakathi (GR Adithya)
94. Candelaria (Jhonny Hendrix)
95. The Hymns of Muscovy (Dmitry Venkov)
96. Bhavesh Joshi Superhero (Vikramaditya Motwane)
97. Dead in a Week (Tom Edmunds)
98. Padmaavat (Sanjay Leela Bhansali)
99. Won't You Be My Neighbor? (Morgan Neville)
100. Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard)

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if anyone is interested in how close the votes were near the top, these were the point totals:

The Favourite - 59 pts
The Other Side of the Wind - 56 pts
Burning - 46 pts
Kaala - 34 pts
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - 31.5 pts
Cold War - 30 pts
Pariyerum Perumal - 28 pts

and then the next nine films all had between 20 and 23 pts.

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and a note for josiah - i elected not to count that tv mini-series, i don't have any great justification for that except that it was the only tv miniseries that got a vote, so it seemed out of place (unlike last year, when twin peaks got several votes). hope that's cool!

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i have posted the top 100 to letterboxd:

https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... scfz-poll/

[DT.]

Thanks for putting this all together, flip!

Somewhat disappointed with the #1 pick. I loved Lanthimos’ previous two films, but The Favourite felt too clever by half.

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i'll update this as the night progresses, not watching it though. i've listed scfz's picks, not the actual winners

we agree with the academy
Best Actress: Olivia Colman in The Favourite
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali in Green Book
Best Cinematography: Roma
Best Animated Film: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Best Original Song: "Shallow" from A Star is Born

we did not agree with the academy
Best Picture: The Favourite
Best Director: Yorgos Lanthimos for The Favourite
Best Actor: (tie) Viggo Mortensen in Green Book / Bradley Cooper in A Star is Born
Best Supporting Actress: (tie) Emma Stone in The Favourite / Rachel Weisz in The Favourite
Best Original Screenplay: The Favourite
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Best Editing: BlacKkKlansman
Best Original Score: If Beale Street Could Talk
Best Documentary Film: Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Best Production Design: The Favourite
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Mary Queen of Scots
Best Costume Design: The Favourite
Best Sound Editing: A Quiet Place
Best Sound Mixing: A Star is Born
Best Foreign Language Film: Shoplifters
Best Visual Effects: Ready Player One
Best Animated Short: One Small Step
Best Documentary Short: (tie) End Game / A Night at the Garden
Best Live Action Short: Fauve

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

I'm pleased to know that I singlehandedly made The Princess Switch appear in the top 50 of an otherwise very respectable list of learned cinephile's favourite films of 2018.

Thanks for tallying it all up, flip! Already excited thinking of what 2019 ballots will bring...

[ItsUhhMee]

Best Documentary Film: Hale County This Morning, This Evening

I'll just chalk this up as not enough people haven't gotten around to Free Solo yet. Amirite?

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I'm pleased to know that I singlehandedly made The Princess Switch appear in the top 50

i want to see that

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one last comment about the poll: our best-of-the-year lists are always varied and unusual with a blend of commercial cinema (some widely appreciated, some not), world film, experimental film, and obscurities. but this year seemed especially diverse - there was almost no overlap among any of the ballots. so lots of films on the list only received a single vote, which i guess means the list reflects all of our tastes somewhere or other. outside of the few films at the top of the list, the only other films about which there seemed to be a consensus was film from india. the voters familiar with indian cinema seemed to agree almost completely about which films from that country were best this year, and a few achieved a very high placing in our poll. i'm happy to see those films (and a few other almost unseen films like the grand bizarre) near the top of the list, because they'll be unfamiliar to a lot of the letterboxd people who see the list there (and also to me!).

[nrh]

the only other films about which there seemed to be a consensus was film from india.

what's really surprising is not only are all three films in the top ten from tamil film industry but all have same composer and producers...