Skandies: #15 (Patreon)

Picture: Mr. Bachmann and His Class (44/4)
Director: Ramon & Silvan Zürcher, The Girl and the Spider (62/5)
Actress: Henriette Confurius, The Girl and the Spider (44/4)
Actor: Brendan Fraser, The Whale (51/6)
S. Actor: Theo Rossi, Emily the Criminal (46/3)
S. Actress: Molly Gordon, There There (49/5)
Screenplay: Riley Stearns, Dual (43/4)
Scene: The Star Lasso Experience, Nope (36/4)

[I wound up voting this year for quite a few scenes in films that I didn't like overall, or even that I watched only the first 10 minutes of. (Mine was the sole lonely vote for Wendell & Wild's amusement park of the damned). This is one of those.] 

HISTORY:

Ramon Zürcher was credited solo for The Strange Little Cat (2014), and placed 12th. First (credited) time at bat for Silvan. Not sure if this was a Joel-and-Ethan-style arrangement that collapsed almost immediately or what.

All four actors, including Fraser, are new. Glad that Molly Gordon received more votes than just my own—Bujalski's oddball doodle barely opened and was not widely seen, but she and Lennie James created my single favorite scene of last year (for which only other person voted, alas; here's a very small piece of it).

Stearns' scripts for Faults and The Art of Self-Defense did not place. Wasn't expecting to see this one, either, honestly. Didn't realize that film has fans.

Mr. Bachmann was a W/O for me ("at" TIFF '21), which makes this the third consecutive year that such a film has wound up placing (without my feeling obligated, pre-deadline, to go back and rewatch it in full). Last year it was Azor; the year before that, Possessor. Prior to that it had happened only once in Skandie history, with The Exploding Girl in 2010. They always land toward the bottom, but still, clearly I'm not being as comprehensive as I used to be. Anyway, gonna take another, complete look at this one now, despite not even being able to remember what constitutes Mr. Bachmann's pedagogical approach.