The 2019 MacGuffin Awards—Honoring the Best in Film

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 1st annual MacGuffin Awards! I'm your writer host, Jonathan Sim, and the 2019 MacGuffin Awards will be honoring the best we've seen this year in the world of film.

These nominations are based off of both personal and public opinions. You may agree with some, you may disagree with others. Without further ado, let's get started on the first of our sixteen categories.

Best Action Film

Every year, we get a bunch of incredible action films. These films are expensive to make and difficult to execute, but are usually snubbed by most high-level award shows. But I'm an action movie junkie, so I wanted to honor some of the best action films of the year.

To be clear, all superhero movies have been excluded from this category; they have their own separate category. Here are your nominees:

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

Alita: Battle Angel

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum

Pokémon: Detective Pikachu

Triple Threat

And the Best Action Movie of 2019 is...

Best Drama

When it comes to dramatic films, we get a large number of them every year. They generally make up a majority of the Best Picture winners at the award shows, and I figured it was time for these drama films to have their own category.

I love a good drama film, and here are your nominees:

Marriage Story

The Irishman

Waves

Luce

The Farewell

Little Women

Uncut Gems

Just Mercy

And the best Drama of 2019 is...

Best Actor

Another thing that's different from most award shows is the separation between "Best Actor" and "Best Supporting Actor". I don't think the distinction is important enough to have an entirely different category separating the two.

So here are your nominees:

Taron Egerton (Rocketman)

Leonardo Dicaprio (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood)

Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)

Adam Driver (Marriage Story)

Christian Bale (Ford v Ferrari)

Kelvin Harrison, Jr. (Waves)

Adam Sandler (Uncut Gems)

And the Best Actor of 2019 is...

Best Comedy

Comedies generally don't receive too much recognition at these big award shows. But these are the MacGuffin Awards, where we recognize films of almost every genre.

These are the films that made us laugh and cry. Here are your nominees:

Fighting With My Family

Shazam!

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

Booksmart

Good Boys

Jojo Rabbit

Knives Out

The Peanut Butter Falcon

And the Best Comedy of 2019 is...

Best Director

As a lover of all things film, I aspire to become a director in the future. Directing is one of the most fundamental aspects of telling a story, and this was one great year for directors.

Here are your nominees:

Jordan Peele (Us)

Chad Stahelski (John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum)

Ari Aster (Midsommar)

Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood)

Sam Mendes (1917)

Martin Scorsese (The Irishman)

And the Best Director of 2019 is...

Best Visual Effects

One of my favorite parts of watching a movie is seeing it and wondering, "How'd they do that? That looks so real but I know it's not!" And in our age of superhero cinema, we've seen some impressive CGI over the past few years.

Here are your nominees:

Avengers: Endgame

Dark Phoenix

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Alita: Battle Angel

Captain Marvel

Ad Astra

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

The Lion King

And the Best Visual Effects of 2019 goes to...

Best Horror Film

When it comes to movies, I love being scared. There aren't too many films that have scared me, but 2019 had a good amount of well-crafted horror movies, and we know that most of these films won't be nominated for Oscars.

Here are your nominees:

Us

Midsommar

Ready Or Not

Climax

Doctor Sleep

The Lighthouse

It Chapter Two

And the Best Horror Film of 2019 is...

Best Actress

After Toni Collette was snubbed at the Oscars for her show-stopping performance in Hereditary, I decided that it was time for actresses of all genres to receive recognition for their performances.

Here are your nominees:

Renée Zellweger (Judy)

Lupita Nyong’o (Us)

Florence Pugh (Midsommar)

Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story)

Awkwafina (The Farewell)

Cathy Bates (Richard Jewell)

And the Best Actress of 2019 is...

Best Sequel

2019 has been a year that's been chock full of sequels, remakes, and reboots. We've had so many of them come out every month this year from Child's Play to Black Christmas to Men In Black: International to Aladdin. Luckily, not all of them sucked.

Here are your nominees:

Avengers: Endgame

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Toy Story 4

Doctor Sleep

And the Best Sequel of 2019 is...

Best Cinematography

One of the most important aspects of a film is the cinematography, and over the years, we have seen quite a few films with amazing work behind the camera. And in 2019, we got to see some movies with wonderful cinematography.

Here are your nominees:

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (Dan Lausten)

Midsommar (Pawel Pogorzelski)

Ad Astra (Hoyte van Hoytema)

Joker (Lawrence Sher)

Waves (Drew Daniels)

1917 (Roger Deakins)

And the film with Best Cinematography in 2019 is...

Best Soundtrack

I love it when a movie has some amazing songs, and this has been quite a year for movies with great songs. While no new Guardians of the Galaxy movies were released, we still had some great music this year.

Here are your nominees:

Rocketman

Yesterday

Hustlers

The Lion King

Aladdin

Blinded by the Light

Frozen II

And the film with the Best Soundtrack of 2019 is...

Best Screenplay

I've written a bunch of spec scripts and none of them are very good. One day, I'll make my masterpiece, but as of now, I can only sit back and marvel at how fantastic some of the scripts were this year.

Here are your nominees:

Us (Jordan Peele)

Joker (Todd Phillips & Scott Silver)

Parasite (Bong Joon-ho & Han Jin-won)

The Farewell (Lulu Wang)

Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach)

Knives Out (Rian Johnson)

And the Best Screenplay of 2019 is...

Best Superhero Film

I know, I know. These movies aren't "cinema" and they're all the same and we have so much of them. But at the end of the day, these movies make people, including myself, really happy. They provide brilliant escapism and massive entertainment every year, and I love them.

Here are your nominees:

Avengers: Endgame

Shazam!

Captain Marvel

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Dark Phoenix

Glass

Brightburn

And the Best Superhero Film of 2019 is...

Best Animated Film

This is one of my favorite categories–animation has improved a lot in the past few decades, and this year, we got to see movies that not only had wonderful animation but some very well-written stories.

Here are your nominees:

Toy Story 4

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

Frozen II

Abominable

And the Best Animated Film of 2019 is...

Best Original Score

When you go to the movies, you don't just watch–you hear. You don't just hear dialogue–you hear music as well, and music makes a film so much better. It adds tension, it changes the mood, and it makes us cry.

Here are your nominees:

Avengers: Endgame (Alan Silvestri)

Ad Astra (Max Richter)

Joker (Hildur Guðnadóttir)

Marriage Story (Randy Newman)

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (John Williams)

1917 (Thomas Newman)

And the Best Original Score of 2019 is...

Best Film

This is our final category and this is what the hours of writing have led up to. 2019 has been one hell of a year for movies, and it has had some fantastic films. My pick for Best Film is not my personal favorite, though it is one that I gave a 10/10 to.

Here are your nominees:Us

Avengers: Endgame

Once Upon a Time In Hollywood

The Farewell

Ford v Ferrari

Marriage Story

Parasite

Joker

1917

The Irishman

And the Best Film of 2019 is...

Well, that's it, folks! 2019 has been quite a good year for cinema, and while it hasn't been free of controversy, I think we're all ready for the 2020s.

Here are some highlights of the noteworthy films of the year and how they fared at the 2019 MacGuffin Awards:

• Avengers: Endgame (5 nominations, 2 wins)
• Parasite (2 nominations, 2 wins)
• Ford v Ferrari (2 nominations, 0 wins)
• Joker (5 nominations, 1 win)
• Us (5 nominations, 2 wins)
• The Irishman (2 nominations, 0 wins)
• Rocketman (2 nominations, 0 wins)
• John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (4 nominations, 1 win)
• Midsommar (4 nominations, 0 wins)
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (3 nominations, 1 win)
• 1917 (4 nominations, 2 wins)
• Toy Story 4 (2 nominations, 1 win)
• Marriage Story (6 nominations, 1 win)
• Alita: Battle Angel (2 nominations, 1 win)
• Waves (3 nominations, 0 wins)
• Ad Astra (3 nominations, 0 wins)
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (3 nominations, 0 wins)

Thank you so much for reading and I want to know what you thought. Send me thoughts on Twitter, @TheJonathanSim.