2024 IFJA Awards

Being a member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association is a point of pride, and as our group grows, I think our awards choices get more interesting. The Substance is one of my favorite films of the year (I'll have my personal top ten list closer to the end of the year or, more likely, early next year), and it's a bold choice for Best Film and Leading and Supporting performances.

The IFJA prides itself on picking movies that interest us whether they are traditional awards-bait movies from big studios or unique visions from independent filmmakers. If we like it, we like it. So with that, here are this year's winners.

“The Substance” dominated the 2024 awards by the Indiana Film Journalists Association (IFJA), earning Best Film, Best Director and both Lead and Supporting performances for Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, respectively.

A haunting mixture of social satire, cautionary science fiction and body horror, the film also took the prizes for Best Editing and Best Special Effects for a total of six wins.

“The Brutalist,” an ambitious tale of a post-WWII Jewish immigrant struggling to embrace the American Dream, was named runner-up in multiple categories including Best Film, Director, Editing, Cinematography and both Lead and Supporting Performances. It won the awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Musical Score.

Eight other films were voted Finalists for Best Film. Along with the winner and runner-up, they represent the IFJA’s selection as the Top 10 movies of the year. 

“Mars Express” won both Best Foreign Language Film and Best Animated Film in a rare category crossover. “Daughters” was named Best Documentary and “Nosferatu” earned the prize for Cinematography. 

Writer/director/star Vera Drew earned the Breakout of the Year Award for “The People’s Joker.” The Original Vision award for a film that is especially innovative went to “Hundreds of Beavers.”

“Nickel Boys” won Adapted Screenplay, Best Ensemble Acting went to “His Three Daughters” and Lupita Nyong’o took the prize for Best Vocal/Motion Capture Performance for “The Wild Robot.”

The Edward Johnson-Ott Hoosier Award, which goes to a film or filmmaker with Indiana ties, went to Michael Husain for writing and directing the documentary “The Waiting Game” about American Basketball Association players’ long fight for recognition from the NBA.

IFJA members issued this statement for the Edward Johnson-Ott Hoosier Award:

 

“‘The Waiting Game’ chronicles the David vs Goliath story of the fight to get former ABA players honored by the NBA after blazing a path for a more uptempo, exciting version of the game that today’s league has fully embraced without giving due credit. Filmmaker Michael Husain’s keen and objective eye follows the herculean effort by lawyers, players and fans to right a historic wrong. The roots of the saga run through Indiana, and Husain creates a clear and compelling portrait of those who finally prevailed in the most important contest of all.”

In addition to the winner, IFJA recognizes a runner-up in each category (with one exception, noted below). Here is the complete list:

Best Picture

Winner: The Substance

Runner-up: The Brutalist

 

Other Best Film Finalists: (listed alphabetically)

Civil War

Conclave

A Different Man

I Saw the TV Glow

Mars Express

Nickel Boys

A Real Pain

Sing Sing

Best Animated Film

Winner: Mars Express

Runner-up: The Wild Robot

 

Best Foreign Language Film

Winner: Mars Express

Runner-up: Aattam

 

Best Documentary Film

Winner: Daughters

Runner-up: No Other Land

 

Best Original Screenplay

Winner: Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold, The Brutalist 

Runner-up: Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

 

Best Adapted Screenplay

Winner: RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes, Nickel Boys

Runner-up: Peter Straughan, Conclave

 

Best Director

Winner: Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

Runner-up: Brady Corbet, The Brutalist

 

Best Lead Performance

Winner: Demi Moore, The Substance

Runner-up: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

 

Best Supporting Performance

Winner: Margaret Qualley, The Substance

Runner-up: Guy Pearce, The Brutalist

 

Best Vocal/Motion Capture Performance

Winner: Lupita Nyong’o, The Wild Robot

Runner-up: Jonno Davies (motion-capture) and Robbie Williams (voice), Better Man

 

Best Ensemble Acting

Winner: His Three Daughters

Runner-up: Sing Sing

 

Best Musical Score

Winner: Daniel Blumberg, The Brutalist

Runner-up: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Challengers

 

Breakout of the Year

Winner: Vera Drew (director / co-writer / editor / performer), The People’s Joker

Runner-up: Mikey Madison, Anora

 

Best Cinematography

Winner: Jarin Blaschke, Nosferatu

Runner-up: Lol Crawley, The Brutalist

 

Best Editing

Winner: Jérôme Eltabet, Coralie Fargeat and Valentin Feron, The Substance

Runner-up: Dávid Jancsó, The Brutalist

 

Best Stunt/Movement Choreography

Winner: Guy Norris (action designer / supervising stunt coordinator / second-unit director), Tim Wong (stunt coordinator), Harland Norris (assistant stunt coordinator), Karl Van Moorsel (sequence coordinator) and Michael Roughan (stunt rigging coordinator), Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Runner-up: Runner-Up: Ashley Wallen (dance choreographer), Nicholas Daines (stunt coordinator), Slavisa Ivanovic (stunt coordinator), Tim Wong (fight choreographer) and Spencer Susser (second-unit director), Better Man

Best Special Effects

Winner: Bryan Jones (visual effects supervisor), Pierre Procoudine-Gorsky (visual effects producer) and Jean Miel (special effects supervisor), The Substance

Runner-up: Mike Cheslik (visual effects) and Jerry Kurek (assistant effects artist), Hundreds of Beavers

 

Original Vision Award

Winner: Hundreds of Beavers

Runner-up: The Substance

 

The Edward Johnson-Ott Hoosier Award*

Michael Husain (writer / director), The Waiting Game

*As a special honor, no runner-up is named for the Hoosier Award. It is named after founding IFJA member and longtime NUVO Newsweekly critic Edward Johnson-Ott.

Established in 2009 by a dedicated group of Indiana journalists, the Indiana Film Journalists Association (IFJA) endeavors to promote quality film criticism in the Hoosier state and support Indiana’s growing film industry.

 

For more information, visit http://indianafilmjournalists.com.

Nosferatu - The Night Demon

Robert Eggers has quickly become one of my favorite filmmakers, but I was disappointed when I found out Nosferatu would be his next project. I wasn’t worried about the quality, but I did wonder why he felt it necessary to make yet another Dracula movie. Sure, this was specifically the Nosferatu version of the Dracula story, but that had been revisited by Werner Herzog quite effectively already. After watching Nosferatu (twice, with a third watch planned as soon as possible), I realized how stupid I was to ever doubt Eggers’s choice of source material.

Eggers has a way of making the horrific beautiful, and his Nosferatu is the best example of this yet. There is no romanticizing of the vampire here as Orlock is a rotting corpse come to life. He doesn’t de-age into a sexy Gary Oldman after drinking blood; he is constantly a truly disturbing Bill Skarsgård. Eggers makes the first meeting with Orlock equally frightening and hypnotic. It’s easy to understand how Nicholas Hoult’s Thomas could be paralyzed with fear. Yet the film itself isn’t what I would consider properly scary; it’s more about creating a horrifying experience. 

Nosferatu is much more interested in presenting a cinematic experience of horror. There are so many expertly staged shots that many frames look like paintings come to life, and when Willem Dafoe shows up with nearly every line sounding like poetry, the movie completely takes you into this dark, beautiful world. 

The world of Nosferatu that’s always been more interesting and darker than that of most Dracula adaptations is the more monstrous and deadly version of the vampire. He brings a literal plague with him when he arrives. This gives the story an appropriately apocalyptic feel.

Of course, all the bad vibes in the world are wasted if the performances aren’t there. Skarsgård is the go-to monster these days for good reason, and he somehow creates his own take on one of cinema’s most iconic characters. But Lily-Rose Depp is the most impressive, easily portraying inner and outer turmoil. One scene near the end should make her a shoe-in for starring in an Evil Dead movie. Hoult proves he can be serious as well as funny in a vampire movie after last year’s Renfield. And Willem Dafoe serves as a perfect guide to the supernatural world, running around calling the vampire a “night demon” and whatnot.

Every aspect of the film comes together to create a unique, horror experience unlike any other adaptation of the source material. At first glance, the idea of yet another vampire movie may create skepticism as it did with me, but immediately the film grabs you and doesn’t let you go until the sun comes up. Sorry about that. I’ll stop now.

Random Thoughts

“My dear husband, there’s something I need to tell you now that we are wed. Years ago, in an act of desperation, I summoned an ancient evil to satiate my carnal desires. I thought it was a passing fancy, but apparently the entity sees it as a more permanent situation. So fate, and a deranged real estate agent, will conspire to bring him here. A plague will follow him, and he will personally kill everyone I love until I swear myself to him and let him corpse-fuck me. Now enjoy your work trip to the Carpathians; I’m sure it’s not related to this.”

The count’s name is Orlock? At least it’s not something evil-sounding, like Dracula.

This Orlock doesn’t take dainty bullshit sips like other vampires; he’s straight up chugging that blood.

I think Dafoe could’ve made his trance point without pushing the needle all the way through her arm.

The scene with Thomas and a possessed Ellen is some straight up Evil Dead shit.

It seems like Hoult has been in ten movies this year, but it’s actually four: this, The Garfield Movie, Juror #2, and The Order.

The choice for the bite to be directly on the chest is creepy. Makes sense to go directly to the source, I guess. And it really seems like he’s drinking blood. Too often in vampire movies there’s a bite sound, and then there’s this little trickle of blood on the neck, like the vampire just stopped in for a sip. These motherfuckers would be gulping this shit down.

A Complete Unknown - Blow in the Wind: The Bobby Dylan Story

In theory, fuck this movie. It looks like the kind of typical music biopic shit that Walk Hard spoofed (and made by the guy who partially inspired the spoof in James Mangold). You have Dylan dressed like his album covers and literally shooting the pictures for his album covers, muttering lyrics, rushing into his apartment to get parts of songs down, etc. It all just appears too plain and unnecessary. Not to mention Dylan himself has always been aloof and downright deceptive about his origin to the point that films about him have been more about how he’s a different person at times (I’m Not There) or his inclusion in a film has to be fictionalized (Hayden Christensen’s underappreciated performance in Factory Girl). In fact, this movie in many ways looks like the film within a film in I’m Not There. Other filmmakers have looked at this idea and thought, “The only way to tell this story is to be meta or complete fiction.” But it works, and works amazingly well. Yes, the cliche moments are all there, but this isn’t trying to explain how Dylan became Dylan (the most you get in that department is that he is shown to always be listening to sounds on the street for inspiration); it’s a snapshot of a few years of his career. And everything here, especially how he handles his relationships, shows who he is more than any scenes from his childhood could.

But more than anything this is a film about music. I suppose it’s a musical, to a certain degree, which made me finally realize that I don’t dislike traditional musicals, I just don’t like show tunes. When I like the music, as I do here, then I’m on board. 

Beyond simply recreating many classic songs, A Complete Unknown is about Dylan’s emergence in the folk scene up to his “betrayal” by going electric in 1965. If I wasn’t already versed in this era, then I might watch this and think, “Who gives a fuck?” But the film does a great job of showing how monumental this was in the music world, and the real world, too. The culture shifted from peace and love to something a bit angrier. 

The culture isn’t the focus, of course. It’s about Bob Dylan, and how he cannot be defined beyond his claim early in the film of simply being a “musician.” He coasts in the world, going wherever it takes him, musically. This may seem like a Dylan fanboy thing to write, but he has written songs that sounded like they always existed and were just waiting for him to come along and reveal them. 

I suppose this is a good time to admit that I am a massive Bob Dylan fan (as if it wasn’t clear already, but for further evidence, I’ve included a picture below of the Bob Dylan-themed hot sauce I made). It’s hard for me to judge this movie on its own because of this fandom. I’m not sure I would care for this movie much at all if it wasn’t about the music of Dylan, Joan Baez, and Johnny Cash (among others). But I am a fan, and I can’t separate that part of me while watching this movie. So I understand why some people will shrug at this movie, and others, like me, will proclaim it the best film of the year. 

Being a fan of the music helped make this film emotionally powerful. I got chills during nearly every performance, and “The Times They Are A-Changin’” scene is possibly my favorite cinematic moment of the year. Once again, if I wasn’t such a fan of the source material, I don’t know if that scene does much for me. (Okay, I’m done apologizing for being a fan; but I did want to make that qualifier clear.)

Of course, this film hinges almost entirely on Timothée Chalamet’s performance. The singing is great, but what made it work the most were the small quirks: the mumbling, the little “yeah”s and “okay”s. A Dylan performance is tricky because he’s like Christopher Walken in that the goofy impression is more famous than the actual way the person talks and acts. Some of it’s unavoidable, but overall Chalamet’s Dylan felt like a person, not a caricature or impression. 

The rest of the cast is solid, as well. Monica Barbaro as Baez deserves plenty of credit, and Elle Fanning as a renamed (at Dylan's insistence, supposedly) Suze Rotolo is great as Sylvie. Her performance is most powerful when she’s just watching Dylan, and she has these perfectly sad eyes that convey everything that cannot be said. Boyd Holbrook continues to impress me this year as Johnny Cash (with this and The Bikeriders I no longer see him as the go-to redneck villain in movies). And Edward Norton is a great calming presence trying to keep folk from being swallowed by rock’n’roll.  

A Complete Unknown is a good movie all around that, depending on your fan status, is possibly an amazing experience. As a Dylan fan, I plan on putting this on in the future to just live in the world for a bit, even though there’s plenty of actual footage and recording of Dylan (and he’s still touring). This condensed version of a few years takes me to a place I just want to hang out in for a couple hours. I can watch old footage of Dylan all day from classic performances, but since I wasn’t there, it’s a bit removed. With Mangold’s staging of some of these performances (even if they never actually happed [Dylan didn't play "The Times They Are A-Changin'" at Newport in 1964, for example]), it made me feel like part of the audience, and it helped me experience something I miss when just watching old videos or listening to records. So yeah, in theory, fuck this movie; but in practice, for me, this was the most exhilarating movie of the year.

Random Thoughts

I'm a big believer in the idea that movies based on real events are still "just movies," but I still like to know what got changed and omitted. This article does a great job in that regard.

As soon as I get a chance, I need to watch Inside Llewyn Davis and this back to back.

Nice touch for the protester outside Seeger’s trial to have a sign with a grammatical error: “Better Dead Then Red.”

Awesome that they had James Austin Johnson in this; his Dylan through the eras impression is hilarious.

I’ve seen it a hundred times: a woman goes off on a school trip and her boyfriend starts banging Joan Baez while she’s gone.

“You want me to make sense 100% of the time?”

“Did you teach yourself to make coffee?” is such a funny line not just because it shows how close he was to being caught cheating, but also that he’s such a dipshit with normal life things that his girlfriend would say something like that as if he were a dog that learned how to make coffee.

Elle Fanning deserves a nomination just for her face during “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”

“It’s not a request-type concert. If you want to do that, go see, go see uh, Donovan. But here, we’re going to play new songs.” This is still accurate for Dylan concerts, for the most part.  

Dan Fogler’s “What…the…fffffffuck?” when Dylan calls him out at the concert is great.

A highlight for me was a high Johnny Cash offering Dylan a Bugle. The corn snack, not the instrument.

I know this is covered territory for Mangold, but I would really like him to make another Cash movie, but with Boyd Holbrook and it’s just the pill years. Maybe recreate that eating cake in the bushes picture.

It was a nice touch to have Seeger’s wife, Toshi, step in like historical accuracy personified and stop him from grabbing an axe.

Why were there multiple axes there, by the way?

I know Dylan insisted on at least one historical inaccuracy (though there were already plenty). I hope it was the inclusion of the “Judas!” / “I don’t believe you.” moment, which happened in England, not in Newport. I just don’t like it shoe-horned into that moment.

Holbrook’s Cash sounds a little like Bill Paxton when he gets excited. 

Norton is perfect as the sad, out-of-touch dad-type.