Skandies: #20 (Patreon)

Most of you are likely familiar with the Skandies, but for those just tuning in: This is an annual year-end survey I've been conducting since 1995. Roughly 30 cinephiles take part—some of them professional critics, most of them not. The August Voting Body (AVB), as we call it, mostly formed on a Usenet movie chatgroup in the mid-to-late '90s, and now consists almost entirely of middle-aged dudes. It runs later than every other such undertaking because I try to wait until all notable films have properly opened in at least a couple of major cities (though we're still waiting on La chimera, which got a buried qualifying run but "really" opens in late March). Rather than announce the results all at once, I draw the thing out for three freakin' weeks, revealing the top 20 in each category one day at a time, starting with everything that placed 20th. (That's what you'll find below.) Eventually the complete results and all ballots will be available at the not-terribly-official Skandies website, where you can currently find results from all previous years. Any questions, ask away in the comments. Away we go...

(The parenthetical numbers are points/votes. I stole the Pazz & Jop rules: 100 points for each category, maximum of 30 and minimum of 5.)

Picture: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (41/4)
Director: Éric Gravel, Full Time (45/6)
Actress: Greta Lee, Past Lives (37/4)
Actor: Zac Efron, The Iron Claw (39/4)
S. Actor: Jamie Bell, All of Us Strangers (46/5)
S. Actress: Parker Posey, Beau Is Afraid (45/6) [tie for #19]
Screenplay: Éric Gravel, Full Time (45/5)
Scene: Give me back my letter, About Dry Grasses (30/1)

Rarely does anything place on the strength of just one vote (30 points, again, being the maximum; it generally takes more than that to reach #20), but my own, for what was by far the most powerful dramatic scene I saw last year, managed to squeak in without any help at all. Incredible to me that others weren't similarly reduced to quivering jello by that girl's quiet anguish in the face of overweening dickishness. (Instead, two people voted for the epic dinner argument, which is where I started having Winter Sleep PTSD flashbacks.) I'll be posting clips from Best Scene when possible, but there isn't one out there for this, alas. 

HISTORY:

Gravel's first feature, Crash Test Aglaé, never opened in the U.S. and hence wasn't Skandie-eligible. (That was 2017, when films still had to play in a NYC theater. Though I doubt it was streaming-eligible, either.) He hasn't written any scripts for other directors. 

This is Posey's seventh career Skandies appearance, dating back to 1997. She placed 15th in Actress that year for The House of Yes, then 6th and 15th in Supporting the following year, for Clockwatchers and Henry Fool, respectively. Cut to 2007 and she scored another double, landing at #17 for Fay Grim and #19 for Broken English. Last seen eight years ago at 17th in Supporting for Irrational Man. 

Bell, by contrast, gets his first nod since placing 19th in the lead category for Billy Elliot, 23 years ago. Now he's someone's dad (albeit...well, you know if you've seen the film). Lee and Efron are new. Never expected to find myself voting for the latter, but some of those points are mine. 

For those wondering, no, Into the Spider-Verse did not place five years ago. Finished a fairly distant 37th. Our last Spidey sightings were the first two Raimi films (which placed 17th and 15th, respectively), two decades back.

Check back tomorrow for #19, and so forth.