The Skoobies 2024: Awarding the movies the Oscars ignored
By Jake Skubish and Sam Coutu
JS: This year will be the rare occasion that the Oscars gets the main attraction correct: The best movie of the year is going to win Best Picture. But if you think that’s going to stop us from offering up our silly little ideas, you’ve got another thing coming. Sam and I are back again for the third annual Skoobies, where we give out awards to the movies and performances the Oscars should have honored but, in most cases, probably never even considered.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
JS:
Winner: The Killer
Runner-up: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Mid-way through David Fincher’s The Killer, an assassin portrayed by Tilda Swinton tells a joke involving a bear and anal sex that may be the funniest moment in a movie all year. It's a nasty joke, perverse and violent and cynical about what people really want. In all of these ways Swinton’s joke is a microcosm for the film itself, possibly Fincher’s funniest while also being his most pessimistic. And like a great joke, the ending is a punchline that reorients everything you thought you knew about the setup. The Killer is not a standard killer-gets-revenge tale. It is something much, much darker than that.
I had to give some love to Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves in my runner-up slot. Consistently funny and heartwarming, it may end up being the 2023 movie I rewatch the most.
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Winner: Killers of the Flower Moon
I will take a second to redress the absolute fiction Jake wrote in the intro. In no way, shape, or form is Oppenheimer the best flick of the year. I genuinely don’t know if it is even in the year’s top 10 movies. Now, on to the Skoobies.
I almost feel bad for picking such an obvious home run, but it was simply such an unbelievable snub that The Skoobies are then forced to step in and right a wrong. Killers of the Flower Moon should not only have been nominated, it should have won.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
JS:
Winner: Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain
Runner-up: You Hurt My Feelings
The Treasure of Foggy Mountain is the funniest pure comedy in a long time, made by the guys putting out the most consistently funny stuff on Saturday Night Live. It’s a joke every five seconds, it’s silly, and I’m going to watch it so many times. Looking forward to everyone catching up with how great this movie is in like 10 years. You Hurt My Feelings, meanwhile, is funny in a much more thoughtful way. It’s a story about dishonesty in relationships without resorting to a finger-wagging lesson on either side of the decision to tell your partner a lie. And the therapy scenes with David Cross and Amber Tamblyn are outright hilarious. Give screenplay awards to comedies!
SC:
Winner: The Boy and the Heron
Quite possibly the best original screenplay of the last 10 years (didn’t go back and look at the last 10 years so don’t hold me to this). There’s really nothing else to say that hasn’t been said already. We’re watching a master at work.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
JS:
Winner: Dave Bautista, Knock at the Cabin
Runner-up: Jason Momoa, Fast X
When I recall Knock at the Cabin, the first thing I think about is Dave Bautista’s giant head taking up nearly the entire screen. The man is massive, and M. Night Shyamalan uses his physique to great effect, showcasing the physical danger he presents to the family Bautista’s Leonard is holding hostage. At the same time, Bautista’s soft-spoken, gentle giant performance throws what we think we might know about this man into disarray, creating a villain with depth that carries the movie forward.
The same cannot be said of Jason Momoa’s performance as the villain “Dante Reyes” in Fast X: You know exactly who he is immediately and without complication. Momoa delivers one of the most delirious, unhinged film performances I’ve ever seen. He may be the only actor in the movie who is fully aware of just how stupid Fast X is, and I loved his batshit cackling enough to not completely lose interest in the franchise’s worst installment.
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Winner: Holt McCallany, The Iron Claw
The Iron Claw was a pretty good flick, though it did not nearly reach the heights that some (Jake) claimed it did. But that is not true of Holt McCallany, who carried an otherwise mediocre movie. I desperately wanted more of the dad throughout, to learn more about the man who made the family a ticking time bomb.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
JS:
Winner: Rachel McAdams, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Runner-Up: Amie Donald, M3GAN
McAdams has been a common pick as a snub for this year’s Oscars, but I have to pick her. She gave, by far, my favorite supporting actress performance of the year. She has multiple scenes in Are You There, God? that made me tear up, and she deserved a nomination. My runner-up pick is Amie Donald, who portrayed the artificial intelligence doll M3GAN in the film M3GAN. This movie would not have been the viral sensation it was without her dance movies and knowing line deliveries. The disbelief in the theater when she started singing Sia was one of my favorite theatrical moments of the year.
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Winner: Julianne Moore, May December
Again, another performance carrying an otherwise lifeless, mediocre movie. To be honest, I thought all of the performances in May December were pretty fantastic, but I genuinely didn’t enjoy the movie at all. Moore was the strongest of the bunch.
BEST ACTOR
JS:
Winner: Jason Schwartzman, Asteroid City
Runner-Up: Channing Tatum, Magic Mike’s Last Dance
Schwartzman is a longtime Wes Anderson collaborator, and few actors in Anderson’s troupe are better able to capture the deadpan energy needed to bring his films to life. Anderson’s films ask for melancholy and straight delivery, but also require a sense of the emotions bubbling below that austere surface. In Asteroid City Schwartzman has to do this while playing multiple characters, and he pulls it off beautifully.
Schwartzman delivers one sort of great performance — all mannerisms and dialogue — and Channing Tatum delivers a very different sort of great performance in Magic Mike’s Last Dance. It’s all swagger, charisma, and movement, a true movie star turn.
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Winner: Chris Pine, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
I honestly just couldn’t think of anything else and I did like this movie.
BEST ACTRESS
JS:
Winner: Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla
Runner-Up: Julia Garner, The Royal Hotel
I would have honestly picked Cailee Spaeny over any of the nominees for Best Actress this year. Her task in believably playing Priscilla Presley over the course of 14 years was challenging enough, but she also had to communicate a lot nonverbally about Priscilla’s shifting relationship to Elvis and about her sense of self. She can hold the screen without saying much at all. Anyone who drafted her in the Movie Star Draft, I have to imagine, would be grinning ear to ear.
My runner-up is another Movie Star Draftee, Julia Garner, who can similarly hold the screen with just a scowl or a smile. Unfortunately, no one saw The Royal Hotel. Can someone please get Kitty Green a proper film release??
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Winner: Sydney Sweeney, Reality
Anyone who drafted her in their movie star draft must be grinning ear to ear!!! I’ll also log this into the record: I wrote this blurb before Jake’s and the SOB took my line. For what it’s worth, he loved Sweeney’s performance as well and I think it’s fair to say we both agree she has one of the brightest futures in all of Hollywood.
BEST DIRECTOR
JS:
Winner: Sean Durkin, The Iron Claw
Runner-Up: Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick, Missing
If you asked me to pick 50 favorite shots from 2023 movies, 30 of them might come from The Iron Claw alone. It is an absolute masterclass in visual storytelling. The shot of Pam getting up during her first date with Kevin ... the three Von Erich boys slithering into the ring together ... Doris staring at the dress ... Kerry’s motorcycle .... I could go on and on and on. What a blessing this movie is.
My runner-up is Missing, which continued the style of 2018’s Searching: The entire film takes place within the confines of computer screens. It’s far from a gimmick; these are the most inventively conceived thrillers of recent years.
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Winner: Celine Song, Past Lives
It is simply unbelievable that Celine Song didn’t score a nomination for her directorial effort on Past Lives, one of the year’s best films. She directed, and wrote, such a moving picture about these incredibly ordinary people. Everything about the picture is subdued, but so richly detailed.
BEST PICTURE
JS:
Winner: Wonka
Runner-Up: May December
My pick for Best Picture is also the most defiantly optimistic film of the year. Optimism is going out of fashion, I think, but between Wonka and Paddington 2 director Paul King is single-handedly trying to bring it back. There’s nothing easier than being broadly cynical about the world, and nothing harder than making something hopeful that feels like it earns its earnestness. Wonka pulls this off, and it is a treasure of a film.
My runner-up is May December, the best-written movie of the year (but ineligible for the Skoobies as a screenplay). I’m looking forward to watching it again to find out if it stands out more for how sad it is or how funny it is on the second watch.
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Winner: Godzilla Minus One
Yeah, I’d say that’ll do it.