It’s September. Here in the States, that means the school year is starting and the new car models are coming out. The NFL is revving up. Soon the leaves will turn. And soon, the fancy movies will start appearing.

You know the movies I mean. The ones where some producer is looking for an award. An actor will give a “career performance.” A director will be redefining the very limits of cinema.

I like to take a moment as the calendar flips into the months ending in “ber” to acknowledge that there have been eight other months in 2018 and at least a few notable achievements in the world of film. So, here’s a brief look, awards-style, at 2018, the unheralded days.

SUPPORTING ACTORS

This year, in a nod toward gender neutrality, I am selecting ten performers regardless of sexual designation. This, I believe, is the wave of the future.

Simon Russell Beale (The Death of Stalin) Could there be a more definitive Lavrentiy Beria, disbelieving right up until his demise that a lightweight like Kruschev could possibly defeat him?

Harry Belafonte (Blackkklansman) He has one scene and one speech and if you want to argue that this isn’t as complete a performance as others who deserve acknowledgement, so be it. But it is the beating heart of a fine movie, and whether the strength, frailty, passion, fear, and outrage are coming from Belafonte the actor or Belafonte the man, there is no denying it is a highlight of 2018.

Selma Blair (Mom and Dad) Here’s your mission. Play the Mom half of a couple gone over the edge opposite Nicholas Cage as Dad. That’s the real mission impossible of 2018. Blair does outrageous comedy/horror and genuine struggling mom emotions equally well.

Rafael Casal (Blindspotting) He wrote and starred in Blindspotting along side his friend Daveed Diggs. More on that in a moment.

Cedric the Entertainer (First Reformed) I never know how to alphabetize Cedric. No matter, stepping outside comedy, he shows just how good he is. Want a little clue? Martin Sheen plays a very similar role in a similar 2018 movie, Come Sunday, and Sheen does it very well. Cedric does it better.

John Gallagher Jr (The Miseducation of Cameron Post) I’m beginning to think that Gallagher’s presence in a movie means said movie will be much more interesting than I think it will be walking in. As the brave-faced Reverend Rick, Gallagher Is a poster child for everything that is wrong with sexual preference conversion therapy.

Shaden Kanboura (In Between) In Between is the powerful story of three young Muslim women making their way in an evolving world. All three performances are excellent, but Kanboura, as the devout Noor, makes the biggest journey.

Chris O’Dowd (Juliet, Naked) The entire cast is very good, (including young Azhy Robertson, who would get my award for Best Child, were I giving one.) But I always bet on O’Dowd. My dream is to see him and Adam Driver in a reimagining of Twins, only this time one is Irish and the other is Kylo Ren.

Robert Pattinson (Damsel) We knew he looked fabulous and that he could do drama and action. Apparently he can do comedy too.

Lakeith Stanfield (Come Sunday) He’ll get more acclaim for his lead in Sorry to Bother You. As long as Stanfield gets acknowledged for something, I’ll be OK. He’s pretty much as good as it gets among the younger actor set.

And the Winners are (I’m giving two because, gender considerations aside, that’s how the big boys do it):

Rafael Casal and Shaden Kanboura

Casal provides the guts and energy to Diggs’ heart and soul in Blindspotting. And Kanboura is nuanced enough to reveal glimpses of inner strength in her seemingly submissive character that makes her ultimate evolution tangible.

LEAD ACTORS

Back in the ‘70s, it was sometimes hard to even identify five lead female performances that truly stood out. Today, I could have easily selected ten women for this category, though I did allow for a few men.

Jessie Buckley (Beast) Buckley plays Moll, a shy and troubled young woman who finds her inner strength when she confronts an equally troubled young man. This type of thing may become a theme.

Patricia Clarkson (The Party) Why does it seem so hard to find the right role for Clarkson? She is as dynamic as it gets amongst women over 50. Sally Potter gives her all the best lines in this acerbic chamber play and Clarkson knows exactly what to do with them.

Glenn Close (The Wife) And while we’re on the subject of dynamic actresses past 50, well, the seething resentment just below the surface of Close’s “king maker” push an un-even movie past the finish line.

Olivia Cooke (Thoroughbreds) She was also in Ready Player One, but let’s not talk about that. Thoroughbreds was a hidden gem and Cooke’s troubled Amanda is at its very core.

Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade) There is a chance that given her age (14, when Eighth Grade was filmed) and previously unknown status, that Fisher will be overlooked come award time. If so, it would be a crime against Thalia. (Look it up.) She is a revelation.

Ethan Hawke (First Reformed) Yay – a guy. I still don’t always get Hawke, but with this and Born to Be Blue in the past few years, I’m starting to come around.

Kelly Macdonald (Puzzle) A shy and troubled wife and mom finds herself through … crossword puzzles. I know it sounds like can’t miss material.

Thomasin Mckenzie (Leave No Trace) The comparisons to what director Debra Granik did for Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone are obvious, but McKenzie’s role is very different from Lawrence’s. Her halting strength perfectly captures a girl both older and younger than her age.

Denis Menochet (Custody) He is a tidal wave of righteous male outrage in this small family tragedy. This is among the most emotionally violent movies of the year, and much of that emanates from Menochet’s troubled father.

Shinobu Terajima (Oh, Lucy!) She’s quirky, she’s stolid, she’s strong, she’s pathetic. Another woman trying to reinvent herself as a new person in a new country, Terajima’s Setsuko/Lucy doppleganger is just about the most interesting character of the year.

And the winners are:

Kelly Macdonald and Shinobu Terajima

Macdonald proved it in her long run on Boardwalk Empire. She can play a seemingly small woman who reveals inner reserves of strength, humor, and wit to ultimately loom large. Let’s get her some more good roles. And Shinobu plays both halves of the most interesting character of the year, equal parts fierce and pathetic.

THE THOMAS MITCHELL MEMORIAL

For the most inescapable performer of the year.

Ann Dowd

Her most crucial role was in the clever heist picture American Animals but she also had key roles in Nancy, Hereditary, and A Kid Like Jake, not to mention her TV turn in The Handmaid’s Tale.

FAVORITE COUPLE

Awkwafina (as Peik Lin) and Nico Santos (as Oliver) in Crazy Rich Asians. They only have two major scenes together but they rev the entertaining comedy into a different gear with their snarky wit. I see a spin off TV show.

BEST ENSEMBLE

Crystal Moselle’s Skate Kitchen has echoes of everything from Sean Baker and Andrea Arnold to Juan Sebastian Mesa’s Los Nadie, but her story of young skateboarding women in NYC has a voice all its own. Much of that voice comes from its vibrant ensemble of skating actors, headed by Rachelle Vinberg, with outstanding contributions from Nina Moran, Ardelia Lovelace, and a host of others. (BTW – if I were giving an award for best use of a song, it would go to Moselle’s inclusion of Khalid’s Ýoung, Dumb & Broke” in Skate Kitchen. But I don’t give such an award.)

THE RIN TIN TIN

For the best actor, non-human.

Charlie, in Dog Days. It’s a three horse race (or rather, one horse, two dog race). The horse in in Lean On Pete and the dog (played by Chuck) who plays Alpha in Alpha do marvelous physical work. But Charlie, the Goldendoodle who steals Adam Pally’s heart in Dog Days, does action and comedy and pathos, and well, he is just so cool. A genuine star.

MOVIES

Wait, before we do that, a few special recognitions…

DIRECTOR

Regular readers know I don’t give director awards. I’m a screenwriter with an inferiority complex (I know – unnecessarily redundant) and I feel directors always grab too much credit already. But I’ll make an exception for Debra Granik. The highly episodic Leave No Trace could have grown tedious in the hands of less skilled and authentic American storyteller.

THE CRAFTS

The new Oscar television format probably means that at least some of these awards will be given out while the program is in commercial. Shamefully disrespectful. Kind of like me lumping assorted craft awards into one brief paragraph. Despite the recent Desplatification of film scores, Music goes to Anna Meredith for her bold, emotional synth score for Eighth Grade. Everything else – Cinematography, and all the Design awards, goes to the gang that created the look of Zama. Lucrecia Martel’s historical allegory can certainly be abstruse, but my god does it look good.

DOCUMENTARY

A banner year thus far with not one, but two, blockbusters. Though I did enjoy both RBG and Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, the best doc I have seen this year is Simon Lereng Wilmont’s The Distant Barking of Dogs. The Danish director embedded himself with a Ukrainian family in the middle of a war and paints an indelible portrait of a ten-year boy growing up in the most impossible of conditions — while remaining a ten-year old boy.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

I don’t generally choose a foreign language film at this point since the nature of foreign releases dictates that I won’t see most of them until the last few months of the year. But when I see something as powerful as Adrian Goiginger’s The Best of All Worlds (Die Beste Aller Welten), it’s easy to make an exception. As with the documentary above, this chronicles a young boy growing up in seemingly impossible circumstances. Only this time, it isn’t war – it’s a drug addicted single parent. Yet despite several harrowing moments, this remains a buoyant story of youth, life, and redemption.

COOLEST

After all, isn’t this why we go to movies? Coralie Fargeat’s blood-soaked revenge thriller Revenge edges out Bob Giordano’s psychological thriller The Odds, a movie soaked in emotional blood.

WORST

This is hard to evaluate, in part because I don’t go out of my way to see terrible movies. (Well, maybe if it’s a horror). And what’s truly worse? A low budget amateur mess, or a well-financed, star-laden monstrosity? So, for instance, I truly disliked Dean Devlin’s wildly implausible Bad Samaritan, with its bland lead, and its unforgiveable wasting of David Tennant. But I was more put off by Francis Lawrence’s ponderous sex-and-spy would-be thriller Red Sparrow. At 140 minutes, it overstays its welcome by at least a half hour and most of that time is spent early on with the most unpleasant sequence of the year – the sexual training of Jennifer Lawrence’s soon-to-be spy. It takes a lot to make Charlotte Rampling look terrible, and Red Sparrow is just the movie to do it.

DISAPPOINTING

I was so looking forward to Ocean’s Eight. A talented writer-director in Gary Ross, a first-rate cast, and a “can’t miss” premise. So what do Ross and co-writer Olivia Milch do? They come up with a screenplay which gives their lead eight women almost nothing to do. Here’s how you know it’s bad. They have to import characters for cameos (Nathanya Alexander, Marlo Thomas, Dana Ivey, Elisabeth Ashley, Shaobo Qin) to actually do most of the stuff that allows the grand plan to unfold. I mean, how can you cast Cate Blanchett and then have her just sort of stand off to the side and offer occasional comments? It’s not a total train wreck, and there are some pleasures to be found. But it should have been so much more.

PLEASANTLY SURPRISING

I suppose if, unlike me, you didn’t find 2008’s Mamma Mia absolutely dreadful, you would not be so taken with Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Just goes to show what having a good cast, competent direction, and Richard Curtis in on the story can do for a movie. Oh yeah, I guess ABBA had something to do with it too.

AND NOW, MOVIES…

Damn – sorry – I forgot. I wanted to do one other thing.

MOMENTS (skip this bit if you like to go into movies without knowing a thing)

Half a dozen indelible moments from movies in the first eight months of the year:

The Opening Scene of Puzzle

A perfectly crafted introduction to the lead character and her life, with a clever punch line bringing it home.

The Parents Fight in A Kid Like Jake

Daniel Pearle’s screenplay is so knowing about the dynamic of raising a child who is different from the norm. Virtually every time Alex (Claire Danes) and Greg (Jim Parsons) argue, it feels painfully real. Their big emotional brawl is beautifully written and played.

Aunt Lucy comes to London in Paddington 2

Go ahead. Try not to cry at the end of the new Paddington. I dare you.

Mr. Rogers Gets his Funding in Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Fred Rogers was scared when he testified before the Senate hoping to prevent a slash in the public broadcasting budget. And Senator John Pastore could be a scary guy. But Pastore listened and was moved, as is anyone who watches this scene.

Collin Confronts the Killer in Blindspotting

Daveed Diggs explodes in righteous frustration at the climax of one of the year’s best movies.

Kayla’s Farewell Video in Eighth Grade

This isn’t the video she records for her future self at the end, which is also excellent. This is the end of Act 2, when Kayla decides it is not worth trying anymore. It is heartbreaking and heartfelt, written and delivered in an understated tone that suits the character to a tee. It is raw emotion without histrionics, and it is extraordinary.

And finally, as promised, Movies

(Our program is running a bit late, so I’ll keep this short.)

1945 (Ferenc Torok) Like a Durrenmatt chamber tragedy, this provincial drama set at the close of WW2 in a small Hungarian town, packs enormous power.

The Best of All Words (Adrian Goiginger) See above.

Blindspotting (Carlos Lopez Estrada) See above.

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) The best satire of the year.

Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham) See above.

First Reformed (Paul Schrader) See below.

Leave No Trace (Debra Granik) See above.

Love, Simon (Greg Berlanti) The best romantic comedy of the year.

Never Goin’ Back (Augustine Frizzell) The best raunchy comedy of the year has a 5.3 on IMDb. Philistines.

Tully (Jason Reitman) Nice to see Reitman back on his game.

And the winner is:

First Reformed – When speaking about another of his well-regarded film projects, Ethan Hawke, the star of First Reformed, said that the “Before” trilogy he created with director Richard Linklater and actress Julie Delpy should be measured against Ingmar Bergman’s epic Scenes from a Marriage. The “Before” trilogy comes up short in that comparison. But in First Reformed, writer-director Paul Schrader takes dead aim at another of Bergman’s most difficult films, 1963’s Winter Light. Schrader borrows major story elements but gives it a more modern and more American spin, inventing more incident and playing up current political themes in the plot. Action that Bergman leaves off screen is visualized in Schrader’s movie. The result is the most powerful contemplation of the nature of faith America has produced in the past several years. If Gunnar Bjornstrand outshines Hawke, that’s in part due to Bergman’s laser-like focus on the personal struggles of his central character, and in part due to the fact that Bjornstrand is one of the most powerful actors in the history of cinema. But Hawke acquits himself extremely well, and in the rest of the movie (excluding Ingrid’s Thulin’s monologue in Winter Light, which no one today would ever attempt to recreate) Schrader actually comes out on top. He makes the story more accessible without sacrificing the enormous emotional pain and desperate questioning of original. It is a work of astonishing power.

OK – now let’s see what the “Ber” months have in store for us.