The B.A.D.S. by The Goods, 2024

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. We gather once more for the anti-Oscars, as selected by the prestigious committee that includes: me. Like every year, I am nominating and then immediately selecting a winner in a bunch of categories that kinda resemble the Oscars but have a few wrinkles thrown in. Here they are, the 2024 Better Awards by Dan Stalcup presented by The Goods.

A change in eligibility rules this year: I have decided to go by theatrical/streaming release rather than premiere to match the Academy, meaning more films qualified, including some that Letterboxd classifies as 2022 and 2023. You can see the 88 films deemed eligible here.

Normal caveat: I’ve missed a lot of movies that would inevitably place in some of these categories, and I’m sure I’ll change my mind on plenty of selections within 24 hours of hitting “Publish,” if not 24 seconds. Especially after you tell me what I got wrong in the comments.

Previous B.A.D.S.: 2023 | 2022

(Pictured: The 4:30 Movie)

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Best Film Title

• Boy Kills World
• Hot Frosty
• I Saw the TV Glow
• Lisa Frankenstein
• Orion and the Dark

I use this category to honor “title that tells me the flavor of the film and also desperately makes me want to watch it” rather than “title is eventually revealed to be clever,” otherwise I’d include His Three Daughters and A Different Man (and maybe even Here) among the nominees.

(Shoutout to Hot Frosty, which wins the 2024 Cocaine Bear Honorary Award for “movie that people only care about because of its title.” Still don’t like either film.)

Winner: I Saw the TV Glow

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Best Editing

• Challengers
• Here
• It’s What’s Inside
• The Substance
• Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

I guess you have to call what goes on in Here “editing,” though it’s something much more radical and unusual than your typical schema for continuity. It’s the most ambitious and interesting work of the year by far, though Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’s innovative cadence would have a shot here if documentary editing didn’t include “making sure 90 minutes of material isn’t stretched out to 150.”

Winner: Here

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Best Debut Director

• Sean Wang – Didi
• Natalie Rae and Angela Patton – Daughters
• Annie Baker – Janet Planet
• Daina Oniunas-Pusić- Tuesday
• Jordan Weiss – Sweethearts

A few of my favorite films of the year were debuts, and I’m sad to leave the “well-observed” Good One by India Donaldson and the very Dan-core I Love Movies by Chandler Levack off this list. If I were going best film overall, this would be a tight contest between Didi and Daughters, but since the title is “director,” I’ll hand it to Wang for his lovely, painful coming-of-age dramedy.

Winner: Sean Wang – Didi

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Best Ensemble

• A Complete Unknown
• Conclave
• Dune: Part Two
• Nosferatu
• Saturday Night

I like to reserve this category for casts with a deep bench rather than a top-weighted two or three performances. Dune almost gets it, but every turn in Conclave is terrific and it’s led by one of the year’s best in Fiennes.

Winner: Conclave

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Best Song/Musical Number

• “Rock DJ” – Better Man
• “Let Me Entertain You” – Better Man
• “Your Song” finale – Elton John: Never Too Late
• “What Is This Feeling?”– Wicked
• “What Do You Hear?” – Musica

I missed a few musicals, but this is still a weak crop, to the point that I feel like I’m cheating with the Elton doc’s finale and the Musica segment. (I literally can’t remember a Moana 2 song, so that was out.) At least there’s an obvious winner, my favorite musical sequence in years,  the single-shot bonanza “Rock DJ.”

Winner: “Rock DJ” – Better Man

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Best Original Score

• Daniel Blumberg – The Brutalist
• Kris Bowers – The Wild Robot
• Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – Challengers
• Isabella Summers – Lisa Frankenstein
• Alex G – I Saw the TV Glow

I’ve spent the last two days listening to 2024 film scores as I prepare this post, and my shortlist was about 9 long. I had to rationalize myself out of Conclave (funny overdramatic use of a single cue is not “Best Original Score” material) and Dune 2 (even Zimmer admits it’s just an extension of Dune 1). Sean Fennessey has effectively propagandized me on The Brutalist score, but it’s fifth place here.

Then I spent last night asking myself “should Isabella Summers’ Lisa Frankenstein score actually win the dang thing, or have I just been listening to ‘Creature’s Love Theme’ on loop for a half hour?” I’m close to defying all consensus and selecting LF, even though I forgot about it until I rediscovered it the past few days. But I’m not quite there.

So now I’m pulling out my hair agonizing between three scores that vastly improve their films and set perfect tones, but I don’t think any do more than Alex P’s otherworldly I Saw the TV Glow score that’s like Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks score composed as if it were for a Canadian-produced PBS teen TV show, and by a millennial who likes computers. The film’s “creepypasta” vibe is deeply indebted to it.

Winner: Alex G – I Saw the TV Glow

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Best Scene

• Goon home invasion – Anora
• Match point and tiebreaker – Challengers
• Secretarybird’s ascent – Flow
• Notes app – Hit Man
• Monstro Elisasue on stage – The Substance

I was tempted to just write “Every scene – The Substance” because the way Coralie Fargeat makes every beat the ultimate version of itself, then pushes it even further, is a key part of the movie’s appeal. But the blood hose finale has to be the peak; it would win if not for Hit Man’s incredible capstone scene where all its ideas and performances crash together into a phenomenal moment.

Winner: Notes app – Hit Man

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Best Screenplay

• Between the Temples
• Challengers
• Hit Man
• The Substance
• A Real Pain

This is a category that baffles me more with each passing year. It used to be quite obvious to me as a way to honor my favorite talky movie of the year. But a script is more than just dialogue; it’s story shape and tone; though those are also direction and production, so how do I disentangle it all?

I don’t know. But no script made me laugh harder than Between the Temples this year, and it doubles as a loopy inspection of grief and lost potential and unexpected connections.

Winner: Between the Temples

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Best Streaming-Only Feature

• Incoming
• Carry-On
• Rebel Ridge
• Sweethearts
• Turtles All the Way Down

This is a tough category to award, to the point I considered just not doing it this year. Many movies that were marketed as streaming-only (Hit Man, Woman of the Hour) in fact had limited releases to qualify for the Oscars.

I’m tempted to pick the raunchy teen comedy Sweethearts, especially as contrarian because it got so much hate, but I’d be surpassing my own capacity for intellectual dishonesty if I did not pick the delightful Rebel Ridge.

Winner: Rebel Ridge

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Best Documentary Feature

• Daughters
• The Greatest Night in Pop
• Music by John Williams
• Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
• Sugarcane

Hey, I’ve actually seen more than two docs this year? Eight, even! And seven of them were no worse than solid (eat shit, D+ Elton doc; not you, “Your Song,” you can stay). But only one ranks among the most touched and saddened I’ve been this year.

Winner: Daughters

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Best International/Foreign Language Feature

• All We Imagine as Light
• Dahomey
• I’m Still Here
• The Seed of the Sacred Fig

I don’t have rigid rules for this category because I find production nationality completely opaque, so I tend to follow American award body consensus. But Flow’s nomination for the International Feature Oscar seems wrong; despite being a Latvian production, it has no spoken dialogue, and most award bodies, the Academy included, use foreign language dialogue as a bar a film must pass to qualify. It would win this category if I included it, but I want a chance to honor the lovely All We Imagine as Light, so I’m fine excluding Flow.

Winner: All We Imagine as Light

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Best Animated Feature

• Flow
• Inside Out 2
• Orion and the Dark
• Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
• The Wild Robot

Easy pick for Flow. Wallace & Gromit is great but a hair underwhelming given the franchise pedigree; Wild Robot charmed me in the moment but has rusted the more I’ve thought about it, and nothing else I saw stuck.

Winner: Flow

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Best Cinematography

• Jarin Blaschke – Nosferatu
• Greig Fraser – Dune: Part Two
• Benjamin Kračun – The Substance
• Bill and Turner Ross – Gasoline Rainbow
• Eric Yue – I Saw the TV Glow

Is it lazy to always pick whatever Blaschke-Eggers or Yeoman-Anderson project came out this year? Maybe! Still always seems right.

Winner: Jarin Blaschke – Nosferatu

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Best Sound

• Between the Temples
• Flow
• Nosferatu
• Tuesday
• The Substance

This has become one of my favorite categories to consider and award each year, and you can make a really strong case for all five of these nominees. Between the Temples has my single favorite sound effect in awhile (the creaky door), but The Substance’s audiovisual phantasmagoria has to take it.

Winner: The Substance

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Best Visual Effects

• Better Man
• Dune: Part Two
• Here
• The Substance
• Tuesday

In contrast to Sound, this is a category I’ve come to dread, because I tend to skip out on the big-budget shenanigans, and I’m not even always sure what constitutes “visual effects.” Cool fight props and staging in Jackpot? The weird de-aging and digital manipulation in Here? Special achievement in running by Taron Egerton in Carry-On? This year is especially tough because the line between “makeup” and “visual effects” in The Substance is blurry to me. I dunno, I can’t give that film every award, can I?

Winner: Dune: Part Two

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Best Costuming

• The Book of Clarence
• Lisa Frankenstein
• Nosferatu
• The Substance
• Wicked

I completely skipped this in 2022 and 2023, but I had enough costume thoughts in 2024 that I’m going to try awarding this one going forward. There was some good and unconventional costuming this year, but Nosferatu’s evocative and attractive Victorian fits by Linda Muir are off the chain. (That means “very good,” right?)

Winner: Nosferatu

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Best Production & Setting Design

• Conclave
• Dune: Part Two
• Nosferatu
• A Real Pain
• The Substance

I just loved how vivid Dune’s sand planet was. Like it actually felt like a real place this time. But Nosferatu’s frightening, immersive period production has to take it. Now I really believe bad stuff could happen in Germany.

Winner: Nosferatu

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Best Voice Actor

• Maya Hawke – Inside Out 2
• Lupita Nyong’o – The Wild Robot
• Pedro Pascal – The Wild Robot
• Sarah Snook – Memoir of a Snail
• Jacob Tremblay – Orion and the Dark

Memoir of a Snail runs out of ideas before it runs out of runtime, but part of the reason it comes so close to working is because of Snook’s voiceover. This is a category I don’t feel to strongly about this year, and I’m a rewatch away of any animated film from picking a new winner.

Winner: Sarah Snook – Memoir of a Snail

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Best Actor in a Leading Role

• Kieran Culkin – A Real Pain
• Ralph Fiennes – Conclave
• Nicholas Hoult – Juror #2
• Aaron Pierre – Rebel Ridge
• Glen Powell – Hit Man

2024 had by far the strongest Lead Actor slate for a given year since I started this site in 2022, and I haven’t agonized this much over a batch of nominees since the similarly stacked 2022 Best Actress lineup. (I could easily double up to ten and feel good about each pick.) You could talk me into literally any of these five being the winner; in my head, I went from Hoult to Fiennes to Culkin back to the candidate I thought might win when I saw his movie last fall. Powell might be the most fun and memorable, at least.

Winner: Glen Powell – Hit Man

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Best Actress in a Leading Role

• Mikey Madison – Anora
• Demi Moore – The Substance
• Julia Louis-Dreyfus – Tuesday
• Ariana Grande – Wicked
• Margaret Qualley – The Substance

Am I insane? Why have Qualley and Grande been labeled “supporting” all season? Qualley is on screen almost a full hour, practically as long as Moore. Grande is onscreen actually more than an hour, though in that case she’s at least obviously a smaller component than Cynthia Erivo.

One of the leads in the best movie (Moore or Qualley) would be the safe pick here, but I think Madison’s stripper riff on Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny is so electrically watchable it covers up a lot of flaws in Anora.

Winner: Mikey Madison – Anora

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Best Actor in a Supporting Role

• Austin Butler – Dune: Part Two
• Willem Dafoe – Nosferatu
• Gabrielle LaBelle – Snack Shack
• Clarence Maclin – Sing Sing
• Jeremy Strong – The Apprentice

It’s a strong (Strong?) and strange competition for supporting male actors this year — my short list was about 13 nominees long. But I’ve been searching for a performance that gives me the joy of LaBelle’s silly swagger in Snack Shack since I watched it, and I haven’t found it. (Kieran Culkin is pretty obviously a co-lead**, or he’d be the pick here.)

(** One takeaway for me this awards season has been that I need to do some soul searching on how I define lead vs. supporting — i.e. is it mere screentime, or is it story perspective, or is it both? Or do I just defer to consensus? Let the helpful Screen Time Central blog decide? See: Grande/Qualley as Lead dilemmas.)

Winner: Gabrielle LaBelle – Snack Shack

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Best Actress in a Supporting Role

• Adria Arjona – Hit Man
• Joan Chen – Didi
• Rebecca Ferguson – Dune: Part Two
• Elle Fanning – A Complete Unknown
• Carol Kane – Between the Temples

I rewatched half of Between the Temples a couple a days ago, and every single line delivery that came out of Carol Kane’s mouth made me feel like I’d just inhaled nitrous oxide.

Winner: Carol Kane – Between the Temples

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Best Director

• Robert Eggers – Nosferatu
• Luca Guadagnino – Challengers
• Coralie Fargeat – The Substance
• RaMell Ross – Nickel Boys
• Denis Villeneuve – Dune: Part Two

Fargeat is the real deal, delivering with The Substance a maximalist splatterfest that is beautiful and funny and scary and sad and hypnotic and hallucinatory and horny and all the other adjectives too.

Winner: Coralie Fargeat – The Substance

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Best Picture

• The Substance
• Flow
• Here
• Nosferatu
• Between the Temples

The obviousness of The Substance’s satire circles back around into profound. It’s like: “The media, and culture at large, define women by their attractiveness and ability to ‘present’ to the world… let’s take that idea to its logical endpoint in a Jekyll-Hyde riff, and then another 50% beyond that, so you feel it viscerally.” It’s full of fun allusion and wild production, every craft element working in overwhelming harmony. And the ending manages a note of tragedy and catharsis. It’s perhaps too impish and emotionally detached to get all the way to Masterpiece, but it’s damn, damn close.

Winner: The Substance

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Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.