The Online Film Critics Society awards for 2022 are in the books. As expected, Daniels‘ Everything Everywhere all at Once fared well—in fact, better than expected (and maybe better than even I thought it deserved). No other films of weird bent received much notice at all. Still, overall I think we got it right this year: two films (Everything Everywhere and Banshees of Inisherin) stand far above all the others, and deservedly dominate the awards.

As always, despite the occasional levity in my tone, I take my voting responsibility seriously. I do not put forward weird films at the expense of worthier mainstream candidates just because it’s “my thing.” Here is the list of this year’s winners, along with my choices and a touch of personal commentary for the major categories.

This post was written before the 2022 Academy Awards nominations were announced, but the slates turned out to be similar enough that this can also serve as an Oscar preview.

BEST PICTURE

Winner: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Also nominated (listed ranked in order of votes): The Banshees of Inisherin, Tár, The Fabelmans, Nope, RRR, Top Gun: Maverick, Aftersun, Women Talking, EO

My vote: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Comments: An easy choice here. What surprises is that mainstream audiences and critics like Everything every bit as much as those who crave strange fare. We might worry about the cosmic implications of the collision of the weird cineverse and the mainstream cineverse: will they annihilate each other? Is it a sign of the End Times? Coincidentally, the movies finished in the voting in almost exactly the same order I would have ranked them.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Winner: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Also nominated: Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Turning Red

My vote: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

Comments: I have no issue with Guillermo del Toro‘s antifa take on Pinocchio winning this award. I, however, found Marcel an unexpected, charming surprise. The fact that Phil Tippett‘s life’s work, Mad God, did not get any love was a huge disappointment. I also thought Inu-Oh had a legitimate shot at a nomination.

BEST DIRECTOR

Winner: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert – Everything Everywhere All at Once

Also nominated: Todd Field – Tár, Martin McDonagh – The Banshees of Inisherin, Steven Spielberg – The Fabelmans, Charlotte Wells – Aftersun

My vote: Martin McDonagh

Comments: Fair enough. I thought I’d try the old trick of splitting Best Picture and Best Director awards, to indicate how close the two movies were in my mind. Although both ensembles are great, McDonagh got better performances out of his once-in-a-lifetime cast than Daniels did from theirs. (Also, with two directors it seems like they only had to work half as hard as McDonagh all by himself). Don’t worry, McDonagh and Banshees are going to do well down-ballot.

BEST ACTOR

Winner: Colin Farrell – The Banshees of Inisherin

Also nominated: Austin Butler – Elvis, Brendan Fraser – The Whale, Paul Mescal – Aftersun, Bill Nighy – Living

My vote: Colin Farrell

Comments: Farrell was great as the wimpier half of the Banshees broken friendship, and is long overdue a major acting award. This still feels like an upset over Fraser’s Whale.

BEST ACTRESS

Winner: Michelle Yeoh – Everything Everywhere All at Once

Also nominated: Cate Blanchett – Tár, Viola Davis – The Woman King, Danielle Deadwyler – Till, Mia Goth – Pearl

My vote: Michelle Yeoh

Comments: An easy pick, with Yeoh performing comedy, action, and even a little sentimental drama in multiple roles. Blanchett was good in a more conventional role, and Deadwyler carried Till. The Mia Goth nomination for Pearl was a pleasant outside-the-box surprise.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Winner:  Ke Huy Quan – Everything Everywhere All at Once

Also nominated: Paul Dano – The Fabelmans, Barry Keoghan – The Banshees of Inisherin, Brendan Gleeson – The Banshees of Inisherin,
Brian Tyree Henry – Causeway

My vote: Brendan Gleeson

Comments: Quan seems to have the momentum on the awards circuit (it also sounds like he’s well-liked as a person, which helps when courting votes). Still, I thought Gleeson deserved recognition, since he’s essentially Farrell’s co-lead in Banshees. Both Banshees and Everything have an issue with too many good performances for the available awards slots. In a different year, Keoghan might have been a shoo-in for his role as the slow-witted, sadly smitten third wheel in Banshees.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Winner: Kerry Condon – The Banshees of Inisherin

Also nominated: Angela Bassett – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Dolly De Leon – Triangle of Sadness, Jamie Lee Curtis – Everything Everywhere All at Once, Stephanie Hsu – Everything Everywhere All at Once

My vote: Jamie Lee Curtis

Comments: My vote was torn between Curtis and Hsu, and yet Condon is a perfectly sane choice. And Bassett is likely the Oscar favorite. It’s a sign of how crazily competitive this category is this year.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Winner: The Banshees of Inisherin

Also nominated: Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Fabelmans, Nope, Tár

My vote: The Banshees of Inisherin

Comments: Another easy choice. McDonagh’s Irish Civil War allegory is constantly surprising and darkly humorous.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Winner:  Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Also nominated: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, She Said, White Noise, Women Talking

My vote: Wyrm (not nominated), Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (of the nominees)

Comments: Confession: I did not see Glass Onion. (I also don’t buy that sequels should automatically be considered “adapted” screenplays.) Wyrm, of course, had no shot (did any other critic even see it?), but I thought Christopher Winterbauer‘s feature-length expansion of his own absurdist teen short was a marvelous piece of work. Pinnochio was a great second choice, though: by setting the story in Mussolini’s Italy, del Toro harnesses his own theme of  disobedience to authority as a virtue (a key point in Pan’s Labyrinth) to the fairy story about a disobedient puppet, flipping the original story’s moral in a clever way.

BEST EDITING

Winner: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Also nominated: Elvis, The Fabelmans, Tár, Top Gun: Maverick

My vote: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Comments: The million-worlds montage!

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Winner: Top Gun: Maverick

Also nominated: The Banshees of Inisherin, The Fabelmans, Nope, Tár

My vote: Blonde (not nominated), Nope (of the nominees)

Comments: I guess people wanted to give Maverick something? I would have been prefectly happy if it had been shut out. Blonde was arguably a terrible, offensive movie, but it wasn’t cinematographer Chayse Irvin’s fault, as he shuffled from black and white to color stock to mimic a number of vintage Marilyn Monroe photographs in a film of constantly changing visuals. I also would have voted for Bardo, A False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths had it been nominated.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Winner: The Banshees of Inisherin

Also nominated: Babylon, The Batman, The Fabelmans, Women Talking

My vote: Neptune Frost (not nominated), The Banshees of Inisherin (of the nominees)

Comments: I only saw the movie after nominations were announced, or I might have voted for RRR (which won a special award for “Best Original Song,” making its absence from the main nominations a bit strange.) The cool electronic score for Fire of Love (see documentaries, below) would also have been a great choice. Other than those, it seemed like a fairly weak year for soundtracks to me, but Neptune Frost, at least, had “Fuck Mr. Google,” which earned it my vain nomination. Banshees had some Irish tunes and was the best of the rest.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN 

Winner: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Also nominated: Avatar: The Way of Water, Babylon, Elvis,
The Fabelmans

My vote: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Comments: Hard for the others to compete with the multiple worlds of Everything. No other movie featured hot dog fingers. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was a surprise snub in this category.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Winner: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Also nominated: Babylon, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Elvis, The Woman King

My vote: Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (not nominated), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (of the nominees)

Comments: Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris was a mediocre little movie–basically a feature length advertisement for Christian Dior anchored by a nice little-old-lady performance–but it was all about costume design. I’m surprised it was forgotten in this category. Wakanda may have been the best of the rest (although I confess to not having seen Babylon).

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Winner: Avatar: The Way of Water

Also nominated:  Everything Everywhere All at Once, Nope, RRR, Top Gun: Maverick

My vote: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Comments: Again, my vote here has to be discounted because I did not see the Avatar sequel. Was it in 3D again? Still, not ashamed to  vote for Everything for nearly anything. I admit I also toyed with Blonde, for the trippy menage a trois that segues into a waterfall.

BEST DEBUT FEATURE

Winner: Aftersun – Charlotte Wells

Also nominated: Emily the Criminal – John Patton Ford, Funny Pages – Owen Kline, Hit the Road – Panah Panahi, Saint Omer – Alice Diop
Turning Red – Domee Shi

My vote: Hatching – Hanna Bergholm, (not nominated), Hit the Road – Panah Panahi (of the nominees)

Comments: It’s hard to figure out which features are directorial debuts; no one keeps a comprehensive list of them anywhere. Admittedly, I only saw three of the six nominees in this category, and was not terribly impressed with any of them: Aftersun,  Saint Omer and reluctant choice Hit the Road are all examples of the type of slow, realistic art-house cinema that I find soul-killing (even if a few are intermittently thought-provoking). Hatching at least had some real blood pumping through it. I also would have liked to have seen Christopher Winterbauer‘s Wyrm, Rob Schroeder‘s Ultrasound, or B.J. Novak’s Vengeance nominated. Or what about this as a landing spot for the greatly respected Phil Tippett (Mad God)?

BEST FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Winner: Decision to Leave

Also nominated: All Quiet on the Western Front, EO, No Bears, RRR

My vote: No Bears

Comments: Again, I’m no expert here, as I only saw two of these nominees. Jafar Panahi’s No Bears might deserve the award anyway as the greatest work of cinematic courage here: he was the only nominee to make his film in defiance of a personal filmmaking ban, and to be subsequently arrested for “propaganda” against his homeland of Iran. (The movie is recommended, too, following the fictional story of an Iranian director secretly making a film in defiance of a personal filmmaking ban.)

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Winner: Fire of Love

Also nominated: All That Breathes, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Good Night Oppy, Moonage Daydream

My vote: Nalvany (not nominated), Moonage Daydream (of the nominees)

Comments: I thought the fact that the timely and thrilling Nalvany—which investigates the poisoning plot against the biggest domestic political thorn in Vladimir Putin’s side—failed to be even nominated here was one of the biggest surprises of the awards. I’ll blame its omission on there being so many documentaries to pick from (it’s by far the largest category of films to sort through). Fire of Love, the literally volcanic story of the lifelong love affair of two volcanologists, would have been my third choice after the psychedelic David Bowie doc Moonage Daydream.