— Cᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ Iɴᴅᴇx —

a Celebration of the previous decade in cinema and related media.
“Hosted by” the Crow, and the Azure-Winged Magpie.
(Apologies for the delay. We’ve had to re-write this entire post.)

RIP Max Von Sydow
(1929 — 2020)

ᴄʟɪᴄᴋ ʜᴇʀᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴠɪᴇᴡ ᴛᴏ ᴠɪᴇᴡ ᴘᴀʀᴛ ᴏɴᴇ (2019)

ᴄʟɪᴄᴋ ʜᴇʀᴇ ᴛᴏ sᴋɪᴘ ᴛʜᴇ ɪɴᴛʀᴏᴅᴜᴄᴛᴏʀʏ sᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ

ɪɴᴛʀᴏᴅᴜᴄᴛᴏʀʏ sᴛᴀᴛᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ
ʙʏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʀᴏᴡ

Welcome back to the 2nd Annual Oscine Awards.

The 10s have been an interesting decade for media. We saw the rise of the assembly line superhero movie (that is not intended as an insult), we saw arms races between nascent franchises spark and die out, and we saw a steady decline in both original content as well as fantasy storytelling. On the whole, it has been a decade most significantly defined by the corporatism of filmmaking. Instead of lurking in the shadows and behind popular names, that corporatism is now branded and used as a signifier of quality. That cyberpunk dystopia that has long been coming? It’s not only here. It’s here and you’re happier for it.

All cynicism aside, we’re here to discuss the high points — as well as condemn some of the low points — of the 10s. We invite you to join us as we take a look at those productions — and the creatives who have worked on them — which have given us the fondest memories over the course of the previous decade.

Of course, due to the subjective nature of art and its consumption, we don’t expect most people to agree with us. Neither are we saying that this is a definitive guide to the best of the 10s, but it is our guide — argued and discussed over the course of nearly four months. Unlike the Oscine Awards for 2019, this post is subject to much more rose-tinting and is, therefore, less objective by default. While we haven’t seen everything that has existed within the last ten years, we have seen all of the movies that have been talked about amongst the movie-going public, as well as in critique circles.

That doesn’t mean that we have only looked at popular movies. The Corvid Review has long been a home for lesser known movies that either deserve more attention, or deserve a public flogging. From the likes of Baskin and Nowhere Line: Voices from Manus Island to more questionable productions, we have watched quite a large selection of movies. And all of that will factor in to tonight’s awards.

The nominees for the following categories — bar one — are in competition for our latest virtual trophy: the Golden Legacy Oscine Award, pictured above.

Unlike the winners for 2019, the winners for the Best of the Decade Awards will be presented with — relatively — little accompanying text. This is due to a variety of reasons; one of which is that most of the winners have already been covered on The Corvid Review. There will be no technical awards, either. Tonight, we will only be looking at the best productions of the decade. We will be presenting these awards by genre — a concept we’ve elected to apply somewhat loosely. It would be easy to hand — strictly for example — Blade Runner 2049 the “Best Aesthetic Design of the Decade”, but that would exlude such other works which could arguably stand against it.

Apart from movies, there will be awards for the best “performers” (acting) and “creatives” (directors, editors, etc.), as well as a special achievement award. At the end of the awards “ceremony”, a summary of the awards will be provided for reflection.

With all that said, let us take a look at the nominees for the first-ever Oscine Award given to the best production of a given decade, with:

Best TV Programme of the Decade

The Crow: Over the course of this decade, the small screen has evolved. The meteoric descent of Netflix and other streaming services has led to a swell in the number of high-budget programmes. And as Netflix has encroached upon the traditional studios and their monopoly of the “classic” TV market, the traditional studios have pushed back with high-budget productions of their own. These days, it isn’t uncommon to have a programme in which the budget for a single episode can rival most movies.

This is a look at the best of the evolving beast that is the small screen. The nominees for the Best TV Programme of the Decade are:

  • A Very Secret Service / Au service de la France
  • Broen / Bron
  • Black Mirror
  • Breaking Bad
  • Cobra Kai
  • Game of Thrones
  • Peaky Blinders
  • Person of Interest
  • Sacred Games
  • Stranger Things
  • True Detective
  • Westworld

And the “winner” is:

Game of Thrones

While not my cup of tea, it’s undeniable that Game of Thrones has been quite the phenomenon amongst TV audiences worldwide. However, it’s interesting to note that Game of Thrones was originally not a front-runner in this category. It’s only once the distinction (seasons 1 — 6) was applied did the tide turn in the show’s favour. And overwhelmingly so.

Person of Interest (my personal pick) and Breaking Bad had quite the number of votes in their favour, but once the tide turned, there was no stopping it. Game of Thrones wins the award for Best TV Programme of the Decade by way of sheer volume.

Best Horror / Thriller Movie of the Decade

The Azure-Winged Magpie: Horror is my favourite genre and thrillers are up there too, but good-good films usually come out of horror. We watched a lot of horror this decade and had to really think to find the best ones (No. We still don’t like The Wailing and the Crow might publish his takedown of the film someday). Thrillers were a little easier, but it was a little hard to figure out which ones counted for this category and not the others. For this award, we’re not counting films which are more action-y (like Sicario), since we think they belong in the drama category. We’re also not counting films where fantasy goes over horror (like The Shape of Water) since they’re going over to the fantasy award..

The nominees for Best Horror / Thriller of the Decade are…

  • Agassi / The Handmaiden — 2016
  • The Blackcoat’s Daughter — 2015
  • Bone Tomahawk — 2015
  • Get Out — 2017
  • Hush — 2016
  • Akmareul boatda / I Saw the Devil — 2010
  • MidSommar — 2019
  • The Neon Demon — 2016
  • Nightcrawler — 2014
  • The VVitch — 2015
  • Busanhaeng / Train to Busan — 2016
  • Suspiria — 2018
  • You Were Never Really Here — 2018

And the winner is…

Agassi / The Handmaiden

Everyone knows that The Handmaiden was one of our favourites this decade. Get Out and I Saw the Devil gave her a run for her money, but our Lady still has a claw on our hearts! The film is creepy and mysterious, and it’s got some of the best what the! moments in cinema. Period.

It’s got a little bit of this and that. It’s got some comedy. It’s got some character drama. It’s got some period piece things going on. But it’s the best at creeping its viewers out even at the most chill moments in it. And that’s why the Lady gets the top honours for the decade!

(And to any Octopuppers reading this… run!)

Best Sequel, Reboot, or Remake of the Decade

The Crow: The 10s have been a decade ripe with movies which don’t count as “original”. Most movies are either appended by a number or a subtitle, and as we know: sequels are rarely any good. The same applies to reboots, which are usually disastrous (see: The Girl in the Spider’s Web), as well as remakes (see: The Lion King).

Despite the commonality, this decade has seen some exceptional sequels. The nominees for the Best Sequel, Reboot, or Remake of the Decade are:

  • Avengers: Endgame — 2019
  • Blade Runner 2049 — 2017
  • Captain America: Civil War — 2016
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 — 2017
  • How to Train Your Dragon 2 — 2014
  • Logan — 2017
  • Mad Max: Fury Road — 2015
  • Suspiria — 2018
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past — 2014

And the winner is:

Blade Runner 2049

The movie which arguably is the most original out of our nominees takes the award for Best Sequel, Reboot, or Remake of the Decade, and I doubt anyone would object. It’s by far one of the best movies of the decade, and it’s a shame that it didn’t receive the turnout it did.

Stylish; gorgeous; and both a homage, as well as a sequel to the original, Blade Runner 2049 exists on a different level than most movies from the past decade. Mad Max: Fury Road and Logan both had a strong amount of support, but at the end of the day, all pales to 2049.

Best Fantasy Movie of the Decade

The Azure-Winged Magpie: Even though this last decade was a bit… meh for fantasy, there were some real gems in there. I’m not complaining. As long as we get one good fantasy film a year, I don’t care if they only make thirty or forty a decade.

The nominees for Best Fantasy Movie of the Decade are:

  • Alice in Wonderland — 2010
  • Fast Color — 2018
  • Frozen — 2013
  • The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — 2012
  • Kimi No Na Wa / Your Name — 2016
  • The Shape of Water — 2017
  • Trollhunter — 2010
  • What We Do in the Shadows — 2014
  • Wonder Woman — 2017

And the winner is…

What We Do in the Shadows

We really like this film. It’s funny. It’s got great characters. It’s got great dialogue. It’s just… awesome! Now that we’ve announced it as the winner for the Best Fantasy Movie of the Decade, we’ll let it do it’s dark bidding …on the internet! in peace.

Best Science Fiction Movie of the Decade

The Crow: Unlike fantasy, the 10s have been rather a good decade for science fiction. The nominees for the Best Science Fiction Movie of the Decade are:

  • Annihilation — 2018
  • Arrival — 2016
  • Blade Runner 2049 — 2017
  • Contagion — 2011
  • Ex Machina — 2014
  • Inception — 2010
  • Interstellar — 2014
  • The Martian — 2015
  • Shin Gōjira / Shin Godzilla — 2016
  • Snowpiercer — 2013
  • Upstream Color — 2013

And the winner is:

Interstellar

The movie speaks for itself. It features a small crew of explorers stretching — as it has been described by its makers — the limits of human experience, and yet is concurrently a story about a father’s relationship with his daughter. I’ve said previously that I felt that Interstellar was made for me, because it explores much of the topics I have personally dipped my toe into (with the exception of farming), and I’m pleased that our voting committee were inclined to agree.

While each of the nominees in this category have been strong contenders, and are each nearly on par with the other, Interstellar endures to win the award for Best Science Fiction Movie of the Decade.

Worst Motion Picture of the Decade

(ಠ ◡ ಠ✿)

The Azure-Winged Magpie: Look. I’m the expert here. Don’t argue with me. Most of these are unwatchable. The biggest, driest turkeys of the decade are (and I’m being nice!)…

  • 50 Shades (series) — 2015–2018
  • Cats — 2019
  • The Emoji Movie — 2017
  • Ghostbusters — 2016
  • Holmes & Watson — 2018
  • Little Red Riding Hood — 2015
  • Movie 43 — 2013
  • Muck — 2015
  • The Mummy — 2017
  • The Nun — 2018
  • Playing With Dolls — 2015

And the “winners” are:

Little Red Riding Hood + Muck

I told you not to argue. Go read about what makes them so bad here (the links are NrSFW):

The Sir Pickpocket Award
for Excellence

The Crow: The Sir Pickpocket Award for Excellence is a “special achievement” prize; awarded to those who have redefined achievements within the field of cinema and its related media. From 2021 onwards, we expect the award to become a yearly occurence on the Oscine Awards; so, for tonight, we would like to announce that the first-ever winner of the Sir Pickpocket Award for Excellence goes to:

The Marvel Cinematic Universe

It is undeniable that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has redefined moviemaking. It established the assembly-line superhero movie, and has found a formula which continues to work. It is the reason that those nascent franchises went to war throughout the 10s; and yet, it remains unchallenged.

Twelve years in and twenty-three movies down the line, the franchise remains the juggernaut of cinema — undeterred even by the apocalyptic happenings of Endgame. While our interest in the franchise might have waned, the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to set up movies for far into the future, and it doesn’t look like it will be stopping — or stopped — any time soon.

Best Drama Movie of the Decade

The Azure-Winged Magpie: Hey! It’s not like we aren’t talking about comedy! Just ’cause we say drama doesn’t mean everything has to be serious (but most of these films are)! Let’s get to the nominees!

  • 12 Years a Slave — 2012
  • Agassi / The Handmaiden — 2016
  • Miljeong / The Age of Shadows — 2016
  • The Artist — 2011
  • Baby Driver — 2017
  • Drive — 2011
  • Dunkirk — 2017
  • Evolution — 2015
  • Get Out — 2017
  • A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night — 2014
  • Gone Girl — 2014
  • Her — 2014
  • I, Daniel Blake — 2016
  • Joker — 2019
  • Kimi No Na Wa / Your Name — 2016
  • Manbiki Kazoku / Shoplifters — 2018
  • Manjhi — the Mountain Man — 2015
  • Melancholia — 2011
  • The Revenant — 2015
  • Shin Gōjira / Shin Godzilla — 2016
  • The Social Network — 2010

Hoo boy! There’s a LOTTA them! And I even cut that list down by like half. Whatever film wins this has got to be special… right?! So let’s take a look and see which one it is! The winner for Best Drama Movie is:

Dunkirk

Yup. I think everyone who knows us knew this was coming.

Half of us on The Corvid Review knew that Dunkirk was one of the films of the decade before we even planned the first Oscine Awards (and I’m not going to mention that one boy who thinks its the worst film he’s ever seen. I’ll just whack him on the head instead if I ever see him).

Best Original Movie of the Decade

The Crow: The nominees for Best Original Movie of the Decade are:

  • The Artist — 2011
  • Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) — 2014
  • Dallas Buyers Club — 2012
  • Django Unchained — 2012
  • Dunkirk — 2017
  • Get Out — 2017
  • Inception — 2010
  • Interstellar — 2014
  • La La Land — 2016
  • The Neon Demon — 2016
  • Shoplifters — 2018
  • Sicario — 2015
  • What We Do in the Shadows — 2014
  • Upstream Color — 2013

And the winner/s is/are:

Dunkirk / Inception

Dunkirk: Once again, Dunkirk tops the list. While the original review needs a stiff rewrite (I recall rushing the review), I do think that I’ve said everything that I can say about Dunirk. Out of all of our nominees, Dunkirk and Birdman the most original in a technical sense. Dunkirk‘s treatment of time, however, is what gives it the feather in its cap. And it’s for that reason that Dunkirk shares a Golden Legacy Oscine Award for Best Original Movie of the Decade.

Inception: Inception seems to have faded a little (only a little) from the public consciousness in the years since its release. It might not be the first movie about having adventures in dreams, and might present dreams in a much more rigid and “mathematical” way than they are in reality, but it is one of the most original concepts for a big budget movie. While there exists a 2004 Scrooge McDuck story with a very similar plot, it’s important to note that some form of Inception has existed since the early 2000s. Visually stylish — despite Nolan’s black-and-white visuals — and paced to near-perfection, Inception is a clear call to share the Golden Legacy Oscine Award for the Best Original Movie of the Decade — giving the decade over to Chistopher Nolan, wholesale.

Top 10 Best Performers of the Decade
[Acting; any number of roles]

The Azure-Winged Magpie: It took us a long time, but we’ve finally narrowed all of this down! There were so many names that got submitted that we had to “game” the way in which we picked the final names. We’re not going to go on about each of these people like we did with our “best film” winners, and we’re not going to mention the other nominees. This is a straight-up list of the people we thought had the best acting chops from 2010 to 2019.

The 10 Best Performers of the Decade are…

  • Leonardo DiCaprio
  • Lena Heady
  • Scarlett Johansson
  • Song Kang-ho
  • Carey Mulligan
  • Lupita Nyong’o
  • Joaquin Phoenix
  • Natalie Portman
  • Nawazuddin Siddiqui
  • Emma Stone

Let’s hand out an Oscine Award to all these lovely folks!

Best Creatives of the Decade

The Crow: Much like the previous award, this will be a list of names, each of whom have shown excellence in their work behind — and sometimes in front — the scenes of the movies with which they have been involved.

Without further ado, the recipients for the Golden Legacy Oscine Award for the Best Creatives of the Decade are:

Summary & Round-Up

The Crow: A full list of the winners and their total nominations follow:

Continue reading for our final thoughts on the ceremony:

Hans Zimmer is a true heavyweight in his field, and given the fact that he has been involved with four of the movies on this list — which have won a total of five awards — he ends up being the most awarded person at the end of the night, with a total of six Golden Legacy Oscine Awards.

Christopher Nolan walks away as the second-biggest winner of the decade. Not only does he receive a personal award, but his movies win a total of four awards — bringing his total to five Oscine awards.

Taika Waititi walks away as the biggest winner at the end of 2019. He has won a personal award tonight, as well as an award for one of his movies; counting the two wins for Jojo Rabbit at the Best of 2019 awards, he walks away with four Oscine awards at the end of the night.

Hildur Guðnadóttir won two Oscine Awards for her work on Chernobyl and Joker at the 2019 awards, but has appeared in many of the movies nominated here tonight, and with her personal award, brings her total up to three Oscine awards.

As much as we liked Parasite, we find its inclusion as the only international feature to be nominated for the Best Picture category at the 92nd Academy Awards a little bit strange. There were a number of movies from 2019 which could have arguably knocked some of the other nominees off the final shortlist. Parasite is, however, a worthy winner, and we hope director Bong Joon-ho drank until the next morning; but it is time to address another director from South Korea who has gone unnoticed by the Hollywood machine.

Park Chan-wook — no matter the controversy he has become involved with back at home — has been one of the best creatives in the field for years. While most famous for Oldboy, he hasn’t yet made a bad movie as far as we’ve investigated his filmography. We are happy to award him with his two awards tonight, and hope his next feature is as good as his last few have been.

Congratulations to all of our winners. It wasn’t easy picking out winners, and we hope — somewhat — that we have an even tougher time doing so next year, as well as ten years from now.

The Corvid Review shall return to its regularly-scheduled programming soon, with all new faces and an all-new team (the members of which shall be unveiled slowly). 2019 was a difficult year on all fronts, and while we aren’t out of the weeds yet, we hope to bring you a lot of content over the next few months. Further details on this front will be outlined in a post expected to go up some time in the next two weeks.

For now, we will allow our winners to take centre stage. A big congratulations to all of our winners once again, and we welcome any and all discussion about the awards (arguments will be handled by the Azure-Winged Magpie, so tread lightly).

We shall see you soon. Have a good night.

— Team out

Published by the Crow | The Corvid Review

The Crow is a secretive ɴᴜʟʟ who also dabbles in the fields of visual arts, engineering, and physics. A jack of all trades, and a master of one.

3 thoughts on “ Awards / Scorecard: The 2nd Annual Oscine Awards [2020]; Part Two — The Best of the 10s (Decade) ”

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