I love lists and rankings. In fact, the only thing I love more than making a list is watching red carpet coverage hosted by Vanessa Hudgens. These are reasons why the Golden Globes, SAG Awards, and Oscars are more important to me than Christmas or my birthday. It would be fantastic if I were able to release some sort of manifesto about my “favorite films of the year,” but as someone in a suburb with no screeners, what is the point? I haven’t seen nearly enough stuff (not even Wonka–I’m busy) to make a list of so much significance to me. What I can do with relative confidence, however, is list some elements from some movies deserving honor in 2024. This is because what I haven’t seen has absolutely no chance of penetrating my choices for “the big 4.”1
Normally there are names in the running for movie awards like “Jamie Lee Curtis” that greatly offend me. This year, though, none of them really make me go “bleh” that much; if you want to award “Colman Domingo” or “Andrew Scott,” go ahead. At first I thought this lack of passion would make the activity challenging, because I would mostly be happy for anyone with a chance. When I sat down to do it, however, it wasn’t hard at all, because I don’t really care.
Here are the winners of the Inaugural (not First Annual, which would preempt doing this again, which we can never really count on me to do) Clare Awards:
Best Supporting Actress:
Da’vine Joy Randolph, The Idol
Because I spend so much time on my mobile phone, it’s quite rare for me to see a celebrity or working actor and say, “who is that?” with any sort of real shock or curiosity. For example, when I saw who plays Cady in the Mean Girls movie with Jon Hamm on a front-facing camera, I knew it was Mare’s Australian lesbian daughter Siobhan: whoop-di-doo. The Idol, on the other hand, ended up surprising me quite a bit. Lily Rose Depp was quite good, for instance. Even better, though, was Da’vine Joy Randolph, who I had never seen before in my life, and made me laugh many times, purposefully (at The Idol!). Her character is a kind, efficient publicist (I think) who spends most of the show staring in disbelief at stupidity, wearing ridiculous clothes. She was also in a bunch of other, more real stuff this year, including “Rustin” and The Holdovers. I thought the latter was pleasant and she was good in it, but she wasn’t given enough to do. So, feel free to award her “for The Holdovers” if that makes you feel better about audiovisual medium specificity, but the Clare Award is for The Idol. Hurray!
Best Supporting Actor:
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
The best performance by anyone in any category this year is Charles Melton in May December. It’s also one of the most challenging and well-written roles in recent memory, which I really shouldn’t have to explain to anyone with a functioning brain. If awards were about skill and art, that is who would be receiving the Clare in this category. No voting bodies have ever really cared about those things, though, and I’m not sure they should. Winning an Oscar in a couple months, for example, would not help Melton’s career. In fact, there is a historical precedent of early-career Academy Awards doing the opposite. Also, while affecting and effective, apart from Melton and his character that film is not a once-in-a-decade tour de force, in my opinion. And, because these are my awards, that is all that matters.
Barbie, on the other hand, is a movie made for children and dumb people that still manages to respect itself, its actors, its director, its artifice, and its audience with creativity and unabashedly unique spectacle that made me laugh a great number of times. What’s more, I expected to hate it: when the trailer and character posters came out I was legitimately depressed, because I like Little Women and Lady Bird very much, and have never really cared for Ryan Gosling. But then he was really good, like Nic Cage in Moonstruck turning the most trite (clearly Baumbach-scribed) one-liners into huge, surprising, memorable dances (I mean that poetically, I don’t think he does much actual dancing in the film).
Industrially and politically, in other words, Gosling is the clear takeaway from this year’s blockbusters and therefore deserves some kind of honor. Maybe not the Academy Award, but the Clare one is fine.2
Lead Actor:
Bradley Cooper, Maestro
You know when you’re a little kid, and you really want to carry around a purse but you don’t have anything to put in it, so you just stuff it with jewelry and random objects from your room? If you don’t like kids, you might watch one do this and think it’s a little cumbersome or unnecessary, even if you recall doing something equally stupid yourself at that age. Or, you might see it once and think it's harmless, then see it again and think it’s annoying. If you have an affinity for children however, you would be charmed by it, especially if it recalls a memory from your own life. It’s a carefree attempt at glamour, inspired by true longing and joy. And, in the end, who is it harming? You don’t have to carry around the purse–the kid is doing all the work.
This is what it’s like when Bradley Cooper screams or does a silly voice; if you’re not already accepting that this is something that happens every 5 years because an insane movie star has a burning desire to thrash and play dress up—as natural as a little kid wanting to roleplay adulthood with a purse from Claire’s—then you probably won’t take it very seriously. I hate children, but I love Bradley Cooper. It might not always be refined or logical, but what’s the harm in a little whimsy or passion for mimetically physicalizing life? It is his way of understanding humanity, which, in the joy of playing a man’s butt cheeks like bongos, I find quite honest and resonant.
Lead Actress:
Penélope Cruz, Ferrari
Stomp, stomp, stomp! She wanta her gun back.
Honorable mentions:
Jennifer Lawrence, No Hard Feelings (laughter!)
Tom Cruise, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (joy!)
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon (skill!)
Franz Rogowski, Passages (laughter!)
I do not feel qualified to judge scores, screenplays, or costumes, so I will only really “get into it” about actors. I liked the Oppenheimer score and May December and Ferrari’s screenplays. I can’t think of any costumes that were particularly special, but I suppose I found some sensual pleasure in the inseams of Oppenheimer’s pants.
In the real world, Gosling should be nominated for Lead. He is in Supporting because it’s more woke that way and because they thought he would have a better chance, but that makes no sense: Supporting is stacked and Lead is not. In my world, however, the opposite is true, so I put him in Supporting.
I love when Penelope carries two bags in Ferrari
and the Clare for Best Clare goes to Clare !