2000 Mochrie Awards!

Here are the winners of the 2000 Mochrie Awards! 2000 was easily the worst year for film in recent memory (oddly enough, directly following the best year film ever had: 1999), but there were a few standouts:

Best Film Chicken Run, Requiem for a Dream, Traffic Winner: Requiem for a Dream Darren Aronofsky's stunning followup to the promising Pi is everything hoped for a more: unique, challenging, powerful, tight, and disturbing. All the elements here are excellent: the script, the directing, the cinematography, the acting, and the score. Show this film to someone you want to stop using drugs. Hell, show this film to everyone you know.

Best Screenplay Almost Famous, Chicken Run, Panic, Requiem for a Dream, State and Main, Traffic, You Can Count on Me Winner: Traffic This was a very tough decision, but in the end, Traffic is a wonderfully structured script, and mandatory study material for screenwriting students.

Best Director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream), Ridley Scott (Gladiator), Stephen Soderbergh (Traffic) Winner: Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) This film is as disturbing and claustrophobic to watch as it is to read the script. Excellent on all fronts.

Best Actor Benicio Del Toro (Traffic), Jared Leto (Requiem for a Dream), Russel Crowe (Gladiator), Tom Hanks (Cast Away) Winner: Tom Hanks (Cast Away) While clearly not his best performance, Tom Hank's work in Cast Away still rises above the impressive but somewhat overblown performances of the other contendors.

Best Actress Ellen Burstyn (Requiem for a Dream), Jeniffer Connely (Requiem for a Dream), Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich), Laura Linney (You Can Count On Me), Julia Sawalha (Chicken Run) Winner: Julia Sawalha (Chicken Run) Julia Sawalha not only held her own against the also-great Mel Gibson, but stunned viewers and critics alike. She communicated more history, character, and emotion through her voice than the other nominees did with their whole body.

Best Visual Appeal Chicken Run, Dinosaur, Gladiator, The Emperor's New Groove, The Perfect Storm Winner: Dinosaur As impressed as I was with The Perfect Storm, and as much as I laughed with the animation of The Emperor's New Groove, Dinosaur really blew me away, doing more of everything Jurassic Park did, doing it better, and doing it gloriously.

Best Score/Soundtrack Dinosaur, Gladiator, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Requiem for a Dream Winner: Requiem for a Dream The partially electronic, partially string quartet score for Requiem chronicles the slow, creepy decent into destruction and madness experienced by the characters and on screen. Fits seemlessly with the direction, acting, and script.

Worst Quality to Box Office Gross Ratio Battlefield Earth, Highlander: Endgame, Pokemon: the Movie 2000 Winner: Pokemon: the Movie 2000 A kids flick with awful voice acting, terrible animation, a boring premise and an atrocious script makes 43 million!? Damn you, little children! DAMN YOU!

Most Important Film Gladiator, X-Men Winner: X-Men Gladiator rebirthed the historical epic genre, and X-Men really kicked off the current superhero movie craze. Since the number of superhero movies made in the five years following X-Men will surpass the number of historical epics made following Gladiator by about 30, X-Men wins.

Best Scene Bathtub Confrontation (What Lies Beneath), Dinner (Meet the Parents) Pie Machine (Chicken Run), Plane Crash (Cast Away), Running from Murder (Requiem for a Dream), Statue of Liberty (X-Men), Wolverine vs. Mystique (X-Men) Winner: Running from Murder (Requiem for a Dream) I remember almost falling out of my seat when Tyrone jumped out of the limo and started running, the shaky camera stuck on his face, and Clint Mansell's incredible theme taking over. One of the most powerful moments in film of the last decade.

And, the breakdown. The most nominated films were:

Requiem for a Dream - 7
Chicken Run - 4
Gladiator - 4
Traffic - 4
X-Men - 3

Requiem for a Dream had the most wins, with 4. No other film had more than one win. Gladiator had 4 nominations without a single win. Critical darling Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon wasn't nominated for a single award.