Of the many kindnesses Bennett Campbell Ferguson showed me during the two years he edited my Willamette Week writing, among the kindest was naming a year-end column after me (not at my request).
For a couple of years prior, I’d tried to skirt the best-of list trope by handing out customized joke awards. At the very least, they made me laugh and perhaps reminded readers of the many diverse movies that came out in a given year—beyond the tony titles that dominate the conversation between November and the Oscars.
In 2022, Ben dubbed this tradition “the CSP Awards.” Now, he’s asked me to roll up my sleeves again, raise my blacksmith’s hammer, and smelt a new batch of little gold men…that turn out to be plastic gag trophies.
This time without a newspaper’s strict word count!? Let’s do it.
Slaps of the Year

Both are in “Challengers.” The first is obvious. Josh O’Connor’s Patrick asks Zendaya’s Tashi to coach him. They’re standing in a back alley, and it’s a job so far beneath her that she slaps the cigarette out of his mouth so hard it probably lands two streets over. Also, if you rewatch the scene, she has no clearance on the windup at all. Expertly done.
Did Patrick have it coming? Absolutely. After all, he slapped his best friend’s erection earlier in the film. And why? Because erections just never know how to play it cool during a three-way makeout session. God, I love “Challengers.”
2024 Laugh-Rate Leader

Ninety-five percent of June Squibb’s dialogue in “Thelma” makes me laugh. She just sends her squeaky, oblivious voice into the air like a balloon that may never come down. Her delivery turns almost every line into a question. She could read a diner menu and it would be funny from omelets to sodas. What a treasure.
Least Explicable Choice of the Year

Look, I’m sure Jon M. Chu’s job directing “Wicked” was hard. But I will never understand why there is harsh 2:45 pm lighting outside every window that blots out the face of every actor singing their heart out. Blowing a visual choice that hard would be like directing “Wicked” with muted colors—oh, wait.
Voice of the Year (That I Hear in My Dreams)

The rumbling (and aching breathing) of Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlock now commands me to do his eternal bidding. I will address him as “My Lord.”
Bad Boyfriends of the Year

I want to give this award to Will Patton in “Janet Planet,” who’s sort of like Count Orlock in “Nosferatu” (too scary to look directly at). But then one hour later, our child protagonist’s mom is dating Elias Koteas (playing a veritable cult leader) as her rebound. She just knows how to pick ‘em.
Action Hero of the Year

In “Rebel Ridge,” Aaron Pierre has the biceps and the baritone, but he also threaded the needle in an action movie for pacifists. His go-to move is taking guns apart and letting the cartridges fall into the dirt. Which is more exciting than any movie kill I saw this year.
Look of the Year

We’re so used to seeing onlookers in music biopics pretend to be stupefied by the first performance of a song we’ve heard for 50 years. Yet when Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) fixes her eyes on Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) in “A Complete Unknown,” Barbaro’s gaze is calibrated perfectly to “You’re a great songwriter, Bob, but you’re such a piece of shit.”
License to Be Killed

Jason Bateman plays an “I have my reasons” terrorist in “Carry On,” and the airport thriller is almost brave enough to give him the Anthony Zerbe airlock treatment from the ’89 Bond movie (here’s to you, Ben). But not quite.
First-Annual Comedy and Tragedy Mask Award Recipient

No one has ever gone bigger than Aubrey Plaza went in “Megalopolis.” And there I was firing up “My Old Ass” thinking Aubrey was going to bring unrestrained carnage to the life of her younger self in Megan Park’s touching, smart coming-of-age comedy.
Instead, Plaza plays the 39-year-old version of Maisy Stella’s Elliott as softly weathered, beaten up by life enough that she’s quietly scared of more pain. And in one of the more subtle acting moments of 2024, she lets us know with a simple hug that some pain is worth it.
Character Introduction of the Year

Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) strides into act three of “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” in leather pants, a swaggering gift to the audience from director George Miller. You haven’t had a hit of uncut Han Solo in awhile, have you, starving franchise-goers? One observer sums up Jack’s instant cool factor with a simple line: “He looks lucky.”
Independent Spirit Award

There are independent films released by labels we all know (A24, Neon, etc.) and then there are those made by artists scratching and clawing their way onto our screens with visions too scratchy for the mid-majors. If you haven’t seen “The People’s Joker”—a trans stand-up comedian’s take on anti-heroism in Gotham—do yourself a favor. Superhero fatigue goes through the looking glass; this genre is now a language so universal that it can be meaningfully punked by an outsider artist in director-star Vera Drew.
Best Echo of an Oregon Classic

For me, the finale of “A Real Pain” instantly recalled Kelly Reichardt’s “Old Joy” (2006). In the waning moments of a fraught bonding trip with his more put-together cousin (Jesse Eisenberg), Kieran Culkin’s Benji elects to remain at the airport. He looks side-to-side at strangers, still searching for something, just as Will Oldham’s Kurt does outside the Laurelhurst Theater to close Reichardt’s hangout masterpiece.
Bless the free spirit in an awkwardly aging friendship. It’s scary, always trying to catch a breeze to the next thing.
Smash Cut of the Year

I don’t want to spoil “Rap World” for anyone who hasn’t seen it. But this mockumentary about small-town Pennsylvania rappers recording a (terrible) album is punctuated by the sudden death of a main character. Enjoy the truly hilarious lack of preciousness to this progression: “We just made an album!” Coffin shot. Baby wailing in the background.
Fantasy Role Swap of the Year

Daisy Edgar Jones seems like a nice person…and that’s about all I can say about her character in “Twisters.” And both times I beheld this Glen Powell charisma fest back in the summer, I couldn’t help but notice the movie murders Kiernan Shipka in the first five minutes.
The child prodigy made her name on “Mad Men,” fixing the most knowing, most withering looks imaginable on her gorgeous parents. Could Shipka have thrown that shade at Powell if we recast her as the co-lead? Might I have felt the love and the hate between these rival storm chasers reach F5 levels instead of F3? Hmm!?
Movie That My Mom Has Said Four Times She Wants to See But Still Hasn’t

Just buy the “Conclave” ticket, Mom. No one is stopping you. It’s truly so “liberal people in their 60s who raised their children on ‘The English Patient’” coded.
Chance’s Actual Top 10 List:
10. “Rebel Ridge”
9. “Confessions of a Good Samaritan”
8. “The Brutalist”
7. “Red Rooms”
6. “I Saw the TV Glow”
5. “My Old Ass”
4. “Nosferatu”
3. “Nickel Boys”
2. “Challengers”
1. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”