Volume's Annual Alternative Movie Awards

___________________________________

MVP Award

Winner: Josh Brolin

Before 2007, this mustachioed actor had been in only one film worth mentioning: 1985’s The Goonies, where he played an overbearing brother on an underground treasure hunt. This year he mines greatness with roles in Grindhouse, American Gangster, In the Valley of Elah and No Country For Old Men. Bravo, Mr. Brolin.

___________________________________

"Shame On You, Audience, For Neglecting This Movie" Award
Winner: Grindhouse

Supremely wicked and devilishly twisted, Grindhouse wasn’t just a movie, but an experience, a roller-coaster ride of sleaze and violence. It was the most unique movie event in decades. And audiences poo-poo’d all over it. It opened behind Are We Done Yet? for heaven’s sakes.

___________________________________

Great Line Award
Winner: Marisa Tomei, Before the Devil Knows Your Dead

Tomei’s character is cheating on her husband with his brother. The brother, the one who’s not her spouse, tells her, “I want more,” meaning more of her love and sinful affection. Tomei, naked from the waste up and cooing provocatively, says the best line of the amazing movie: “So does Oliver Twist.”

___________________________________

Best Actress Who Won’t Win the Oscar for Best Actress Award
Winner: Lauren Ambrose, Starting Out In the Evening

The Six Feet Under star plays a hyper-intelligent muse to an author 50 years her senior (Frank Langella). They fall in love, but they don’t have sex; they have something more meaningful and powerful. Toward the end of the movie, Ambrose leans forward for a caress and instead gets a cold slap from her senior citizen author. Her reaction is priceless.

___________________________________

Best Movie Marketing Award
Winner: The Simpsons Movie

We waited way too long for a so-so movie, but that’s beside the point. The marketing behind The Simpsons’s long-awaited movie was hilarious and inventive: 7-Elevens posed as Kwik-E-Marts with Buzz Cola and Squishees, a Simpsonize Me Web site offered to manipulate photos into yellow-tinted cartoon characters, and the producers of the film finally (with their fingers crossed) named the state that contains Springfield. It’s Vermont, by the way.

___________________________________

Scariest Villain Award
Winner: Ben Foster, 3:10 to Yuma

I’m not sure what’s scarier: his spinning six shooters or his cult-like obsession with his Bible-totin’ gunfighter boss (Russell Crowe).

___________________________________

Coldest Villain Award
Winner: Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men

He kills ruthlessly and with no apparent instigation of any kind. Child-like wives, country bumpkins, hotel desk clerks, accountants, chicken owners … his evilness knows no bounds.

___________________________________

Sleaziest Villain Award
Winner: Billy Mitchell, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

Billy Mitchell, who holds the world record for points in a single game of Donkey Kong, is not a character. He’s as real as the ink on this page. With his hair-metal coif, Chuck Norris-style beard, Florida-based hot sauce company and those arcade-calloused digits, Mitchell is easily the nastiest villain of the movie year. Just play the rookie in Donkey Kong already!

___________________________________

Worst DVD Commentary Award
Winner: William Friedkin, Bug

Friedkin gave us The Exorcist and The French Connection, but on his Bug DVD commentary all he can do is stammer through a brain-vaporizing rehash of what’s happening on the screen. “Uhh, here the character, uhh, hmmmm, is answering the door. She, uhhh, looks outside.” I had to check to see if the commentary was designed to describe scenes for the blind. (It wasn’t.)

___________________________________

Totally Awesome, Yet Forgettable, Summer Movie Award
Winners: Disturbia and Surf’s Up

We were all to wrapped up in Spider-Man, green ogres and overacted pirates to notice these two gems. They were the best the summer had to offer.

___________________________________

Reasons to Cook/Bake Award
Winners: Ratatouille and Waitress

A rat makes cuisine in Ratatouille and a pregnant diner worker makes scrumptious pies in Waitress. Between the two all you’ll want to do is spend some quality time in the kitchen making, or at least smelling, delicious food.

___________________________________

Don’t Release Your Movie So Early in the Year Award
Winner: Seraphim Falls

It was a western with Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson, and despite its early 2007 release, it was terrifically bloody and well acted. By the time it was in theaters we were already thinking about the previous year’s Oscar nominations. It’s a shame everyone missed it.

___________________________________

Bad Month for Movies Award
Winner: February 2007

The month of Valentine’s Day and National Lactose Intolerance Month (Canada) saw the release of stinkers Hannibal Rising, Norbit, Ghost Rider, Bridge to Terabithia and The Number 23. It’s amazing so much badness could even fit in one full year, let alone the shortest month on the calendar.

___________________________________

Worst Title Award
Winner: I Think I Love My Wife

Well, I think I hate your title. No, I know it.

___________________________________

Shoulda Stopped at Two Award
Winners: Shrek 3, Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Big budgets they were; quality filmmaking they weren’t.

___________________________________

“Did They Really Just Do That?” Award
Winner: Hostel 2

A girl is trussed naked and upside down over a bathtub to be sliced open for the enjoyment of … it’s too indescribable to even describe. If we’re watching this stuff, we’ve sunk too low as a people.

___________________________________

Good Sport Award
Winner: Malin Akerman, The Heartbreak Kid

The Farrelly Brothers really pile up the abuse on this beautiful, darling-cute actress in the atrocious Heartbreak Kid, which also stars Ben Stiller as an undecided new husband. Poor Malin never deserves it, especially in a supporting role, but she’s a sport through and through, donkey and all.

___________________________________

Longest Movie Title, Which Also Happens to Have the Longest Award Named After It, Award
Winner: The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford

Great movie, greater title.

___________________________________

You’re REALLY Good When You Steal Scenes From Tom Hanks Award
Winner: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson’s War

Charlie Wilson’s War is Tom Hanks film, but Philip Seymour Hoffman makes him look like a chump with better lines, funnier jokes and a ridiculously nostalgic mustache/glasses combo. Hanks is superb, but PSH is much better.

___________________________________

Super-Awesome Beard Award
Winner: Joaquin Phoenix, Reservation Road

Phoenix, who can still play young guys, went for an older, wiser look in this family drama about the hit-and-run death of his young son. The dark beard and mustache make him look regal and important. (This is the third reference to facial hair, thus making Phoenix, Hoffman and Brolin, officially, the Mustache Trilogy of 2007.)

___________________________________

Best Trailer Award
Winner: TIE: Funny Games and Iron Man

Both movies don’t open until 2008, but their trailers debuted this year and to great acclaim … at least from the people who grant acclaim to movie trailers and that list is rather short. Iron Man is pretty much a forgettable ad until an early version of the Iron Man character comes blasting out of a set of steel doors to the tune of Black Sabbath’s monster-riffed “Iron Man.” The trailer choreographs the punches of the massive metal man to connect with several terrorists’ chests at the same time as Tony Iommi’s guitar crushes out big, wide power chords. It really gives new meaning to the song, which is strange since the exact scene was explicitly written into the lyrics nearly 38 years ago. As for Funny Games, it also features music, Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” a devious little classical number that’s been used in the past for Satan himself. I’ve recently see the Austrian/German version of this Michael Haneke film and I’m looking forward to the English remake, also by Haneke. I could watch the trailer a dozen.

___________________________________

Good Effort Award
Winner: Adam Sandler, Reign Over Me

Sandler is the bane of a critic’s existence, but I’ll give him points for trying — first with Punch-Drunk Love and this year with Reign Over Me, where he plays a lonely widower crashing into an old friend. Sandler is the widower who lost his family and Don Cheadle (who was also great in Talk To Me) is the friend. Both are excellent in probably one of the most forgotten movies of the year. But congrats to Sandler for not doing cartoon voices or punching strangers in the sacks so he can laugh at them squealing.

___________________________________

***This Volume feature originally ran in the West Valley View Dec. 28, 2007.***