In the movie awards business, there are few entities that award an entire cast. The Screen Actors Guild does it and uses the award as their effective equivalent for Best Picture, but beyond them, most famous givers of awards tend to recognize individual talent. In our case, our Best Cast category has no parameters. We can give the prize to a film with just two great performers, but typically, it goes to a more ensemble type of film.

For 2018, the group of actors that impressed us the most was the cast of BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee’s exploration of race (and racism) in the 1970s. Led by John David Washington, who plays a cop who goes undercover in the KKK – though all via telephone. His alter ego – the man who publicly appears with the KKK members as a new initiate – is portrayed by Adam Driver in probably one of his best performances. In case you’re wondering, yes, David Duke IS a character in the film, and Topher Grace is just about perfect in the role. Other noteworthy cast members include Michael Buscemi (as a cop on the team with Washington and Driver), Laura Harrier, a college activist, and the group of Ryan Eggold, Jasper Pääkkönen, Ashlie Atkinson, and Paul Walter Hauser as members of the KKK. We first took great notice of Hauser last year in I, Tonya, and he continues his run of quirky supporting roles here.

BlacKkKlansman didn’t beat our second-place group by much. In fact, a single vote would probably have swayed it. In this case, our runner-up is Black Panther, the much-lauded superhero film that made big bucks and achieved critical acclaim. Obviously, the cast is led by Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa/Black Panther, but let’s be sure to give a shout out to the women of the film – Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright and Angela Bassett. They’re the perimeter that surrounds T’Challa, and their characters are critical to the film’s success. We’ve also got one of the great villains in Killmonger, played by Michael B. Jordan, as well as significant appearances from Daniel Kaluuya, Winston Duke, Martin Freeman, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis, and Sterling K. Brown.

We move from Wakanda to Singapore for our next recognized group, in this case the cast of Crazy Rich Asians. Honestly, this bunch is too deep to list out individually, as there are a ridiculous number of great small performances in this film in addition to the bigger ones. Central to the story are Constance Wu as Rachel Chu and Henry Golding as Nick Young, the couple the movie viewer follows from America to a wedding and family visit in Singapore. Michelle Yeoh is utterly intimidating as Nick’s mother, Akwafina is hilarious as Rachel’s friend, and Gemma Chan is icy on the outside but kind on the inside as Astrid, Nick’s cousin. Other great performers here include Lisa Lu, Ken Jeong, Sonoya Mizuno, Chris Pang, Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng, Remy Hii, Nico Santos, Jing Lusi, Pierre Png, and Fiona Xie. And that’s not even giving credit to everyone I should.

We like Marvel around these parts, as you can see by the fact that 50 percent of the top four finishers here are from the MCU. Avengers: Infinity War basically brings together every possible hero from every possible Marvel franchise (except for Jeremy Renner, but don’t worry because he’ll be back for the next installment). When it’s super hard to pick a favorite, we can just give a big ol’ hearty handshake to the entire group. Oh, and by the way, Boseman, Gurira, Wright, and Sebastian Stan are part of both Black Panther and this film, so maybe they should be the big winners.

Your feelings about our fifth place cast probably depend largely upon your politics, though I do think anyone who has seen Vice has to admit that Christian Bale did a spectacular job as Dick Cheney, while Sam Rockwell is a damned jovial and relatable George W. Bush. Amy Adams deserves her accolades for her portrayal of Lynne Cheney, while other notable performers include Steve Carell (Donald Rumsfeld), Alison Pill, Lily Rabe, Tyler Perry, and the omnipresent Jesse Plemons, a favorite of our staff thanks to his role as Landry in the TV series Friday Night Lights.

Our sixth and seventh place nominees were separated by just a point. Sixth went to Widows, the Steve McQueen-directed heist flick. The women at the center of the film were truly stellar and compelling, including Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, and Cynthia Erivo. We also have a number of dudes playing politicians and criminals, including Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Robert Duvall, and an especially menacing Daniel Kaluuya, who’s having a pretty great couple of years between this film, Black Panther, and Get Out.

Seventh place goes to First Man, director Damien Chazelle’s exploration of Neil Armstrong’s path from joining NASA to becoming the first man to walk on the moon. Ryan Gosling is pitch perfect as Armstrong, and his performance is bolstered by a great supporting bunch. Claire Foy is striking as Janet Armstrong, Neil’s wife, and Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll, Pablo Schreiber, and Patrick Fugit also strike the right notes as Neil’s fellow NASA workers.

We close out the list with three films that just… don’t have much in common. They’re all movies, I guess? The Favourite is our eighth-place choice, largely on the strength of the trio of Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, though Nicholas Hoult is darned good, too. Ninth goes to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which combines a crazy cast to deliver the various “short story” vignettes. Tim Blake Nelson, David Krumholtz, Clancy Brown, James Franco, Stephen Root, Liam Neeson, Harry Melling, Tom Waits, Zoe Kazan, Bill Heck, Grainger Hines, Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson, Jonjo O’Neill, Saul Rubinek, and Chelcie Ross all have important roles to play. And finally, Mission: Impossible – Fallout brings together its usual talented group of actors, led of course by Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Rebecca Ferguson, but also joined this time around by Henry Cavill, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Vanessa Kirby, and more beyond.

Some movie casts that barely missed inclusion are A Quiet Place, Ready Player One, Bad Times at the El Royale, Ocean’s Eight, and Isle of Dogs.

2019 Calvin Awards
Calvins Intro
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Cast
Best Character
Best Director
Best Overlooked Film
Best Picture
Best Scene
Best Screenplay
Best Supporting Actor
Best Supporting Actress
Best TV Show
Best Use of Music
Breakthrough Performance
Worst Performance
Worst Picture

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