My Award Nominations: Sound Mixing

A 3/5 crossover this year between my two sound categories. That's more than I usually want, but the three double-dippers just can't be denied. Find out what they are, plus what other two titles I loved for their Sound Mixing:

My Award Nominations: Sound Editing

Only a little more than a week before the big night. Over the next three days I'll be polishing off my personal nominations, leading up to the unveiling of my top 20 list starting on Tuesday.

For today, I'm tackling the sound categories, beginning with Sound Editing:

Review - Sicario

Cops and cartels, midnight raids and public shootouts, blood vendettas and hidden agendas, and a whole lot of dead bodies literally walled up in a house of horrors. If you told me all of this sounds like it belongs in a trashy detective novel, I'd probably agree. If told me it all sounds like it belongs in a trashy movie I'd say, “Hold the phone! Who says the movie has to be trashy?”

And of course, it isn't. French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve insinuates and executes all of these familiar genre tropes with hitman-like precision in Sicario, delivering one of the most cringe-inducing, butt-clenching, excruciating films of the year... And I mean every one of those in the best possible way.

Working from a twisty screenplay by actor-turned-writer Taylor Sheridan (Sons of Anarchy), Villeneuve has crafted an excellent thriller that's every bit as refined (if not more so) as the glossy biopics and period pieces that angle for adult dollars at the multiplex every fall. Along with 2012's Prisoners and last year's Enemy, Sicario further embosses his reputation as a filmmaker capable of elevating even the pulpiest story material with his surgical attention to form and construct.