2018 Kaedrin Movie Awards

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Welcome to the thirteenth annual Kaedrin Movie Awards! Lucky number 13! A baker’s dozen! The idea is to recognize films for various achievements that don’t always reflect well on top 10 lists or traditional awards. There are lots of formal award categories and nominees listed below, but once those are announced, we’ll also leave some room for Arbitrary Awards that are more goofy and freeform. Finally, we’ll post a traditional top 10 list (usually sometime in early/mid-February). But first up is the awards! [Previous Installments here: 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017]

Standard disclaimers apply: It must be a 2018 movie (with the one caveat that some 2017 films were not accessible until 2018 and are thus eligible under fiat) and I obviously have to have seen the movie. As of this writing, I’ve seen 79 movies that would be considered a 2018 release. Significantly less than your typical critic, but more than your average moviegoer and enough to populate these awards. Obviously this is a personal exercise that is entirely subjective in nature, but the world would be a boring place indeed if we all loved the same things for the same reasons, right? Right. Without further ado:

Best Villain/Badass

Another middling year for villainy. I didn’t have any problem populating the list, and there are a couple that stand out as front runners, but still not a banner year. As usual, my picks in this category are limited to individuals, not groups (i.e. no vampires or zombies as a general menace, etc…) or ideas.

Best Hero/Badass

Perhaps better than villainy this year, and certainly a broader spectrum, but still a middling year overall. Again limited to individuals and not groups.

Best Comedic Performance

This category is sometimes difficult to populate because comedy so often comes in the form of an ensemble and that certainly impacts this year. Looking through what I watched this year, I see very few straight comedies, which is something that happened last year too. There are some decent choices, but obvious standouts are rare.

Breakthrough Performance

Always an interesting category to populate. Sometimes, it’s not so much about someone’s industry breakthrough, but a more personal breakthrough. This can happen even with established actors who put out a performance that forces me to reconsider what they’re capable of. This year, we’ve got more of a moderate crop of young up-and-comers. The main criteria for this category was if I watched a movie, then immediately looking up the actor/actress on IMDB to see what else they’ve done (or where they came from). A somewhat vague category, but that’s why these awards are fun.

Most Visually Stunning

Sometimes even bad movies can look really great… A moderate year for this sort of thing, perhaps leaning towards more sober, well-photographed beauty than flashy spectacle, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film

I always try to throw some love towards genres. In the past, cinematic SF was so poor that I had to pad out the category with horror. In the last five or six years, though, SF has really come into its own. It’s still far outweighed by horror, but there’s often a handful of great SF movies in any given year. I suppose I should also note that I’m probably using a stricter definition of SF than most would for something like this, because I’m a huge nerd and think about that sort of thing a lot. But I digress.

Best Sequel/Reboot

Sometimes a difficult category to populate, and there was a fair share of duds this year, but there were still a surprising number of worthwhile sequels/reboots.

Biggest Disappointment

A category often dominated by sequels and reboots, and lo, this year is a bit of a return to form, though there’s still some original films that were quite disappointing as well. This category is definitely weird in that sometimes I actually enjoy these movies… but my expectations were just too high when I saw them. Related reading: Joe Posnanski’s Plus-Minus Scale (these movies scored especially poor on that scale).

Best Action Sequences

This award isn’t for individual action sequences, but rather an overall estimation of each film, and this has been a pretty good year for action, though there are two clear stoundouts, with the rest just being filler. I honestly had a hard time coming up with these, so I had to reach for a few of them. On the other hand, the two frontrunners are so amazing that it still qualifies as a pretty good year for action.

Best Plot Twist/Surprise

Well, I suppose even listing nominees here constitutes something of a spoiler, but it’s a risk we’ll have to take, right?

Best High Concept Film

A nebulous category, to be sure, but a fun one because these are generally interesting movies. There are often borderline cases here, and this year is no exception, but a few strong standouts…

2018’s 2017 Movie of the Year

There are always movies I miss out on, whether due to availability or laziness, but when I do catch up with them, I’m often taken with them. Sometimes a very difficult category to populate, maybe because I didn’t see much after I posted last year’s Top 10, or didn’t like what I did manage to see, or just plain forgot that I saw it (which, to be fair, probably says something about the movie’s chances). Frankly, not a lot going on this year for this category…

As per usual, it feels like I overpopulated these awards with nominees and maybe some of them were a stretch, but hey, these are my awards and I play by no ones rules but my own. And sometimes not even those. Winners to be announced next week, followed by Arbitrary Awards, a traditional Top 10 of the year, and finally some Oscars commentary. Stay tuned!

Update: I just watched Eighth Grade, so I needed to update the Breakthrough Performance category. Also the Action Sequences, because man, that mall scene. Rivals the one in Commando. Just kidding, Eighth Grade is excruciating (in a good way?), so just the Breakthrough Performance one was added (because I know you still weren’t sure.)

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