There now. There now. Breathe easy once again, cinema lover. Respite is upon us, and it is probably months before another arrogant guy learns to humbly save the day with his cool powers, or an animated animal does the exact same thing its friend did in the last film about those two animated animals.

Is it snobbish to decry most of the mass-market movies made between March and November? Well, if loudly booing a bus emblazoned with the B-Level, pretty much all white, magical heist super team of Zuckerberg, True Detective, Almost Franco, Batman’s helpers, and now also Harry Potter makes me a snob, then send me to snob jail where my days can be filled writing a better script for Lizzy Caplan. I mean, come on. Will their magic get them out of this scrape? Yes! It’s magic ya ding-dongs!!

Anyway, now is not the time to berate blockbusters and the postering they can’t help but be dressed in, and instead to concentrate on the tight-rope walk between interesting art and palatable expensiveness that is the Hollywood awards season. Everyone knows that the Oscars do about as good a job at picking the best film of the year as global democracies currently do at not empowering retrograde, racist, rightwing, fiscally incompetent earth exploders. So… why do we pay attention to these tuxedo parties?

Rather than perhaps identifying the best of the best, awards do an alright job at highlighting the best of a predetermined and pre-approved range of cinematic categories. The Oscars are excellent at finding the Best Male Actor who Grew Facial Hair while in the Olden Days. No one is better at recognising Best Screenplay with Two Many ‘Fuck’s for a General Audience. The awards season emphasises the best of a certain type of film, and year in year out they tend to throw up the same types and tropes.

Here’s a rundown of the films that we’ll see celebrated multiple times throughout the next couple of months.

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The Crowdpleaser: La La Land (Winner), Lion (Runner Up)

These are the films that pull off the reasonably impressive feat of not doing anything wrong. They are the ones For The Whole Family.

First up: La La Land. Did you ever wish that Girls or Love, tales of obsessively nerdy and emotionally withholding men, were recast as Disney musicals? Did you ever watch An American in Paris but think that Gene Kelly stupidly missed an opportunity for a scene that makes fun of Flock of Seagulls? La La Land has been winning over romantics and critics, firmly landing this in the same slot previously held by Amelie and The Artist. Your aunt and your niece are going to love it, and if you’re in the right mood on the day, you might too.

Lion is based on a true story, which is insane because it feels like it is entirely based on the success of Slumdog Millionaire. In the tradition of inspiring struggles over adversity — see everything from Chariots of Fire, to Rocky, to Unbroken — Lion sees Dev Patel play another orphan, this time stranded in Australia, who uses Google Maps to track down his home in India. David Wenham and Nicole Kidman diversify their resumes, full of pale skinned connivers and brittle ginger weirdos, to play Mum and Dad.

This Christmas, you will believe an orphan can Google.

La La Land is in cinemas from December 26 and Lion is out January 19.

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The Showcaser: Jackie (Winner), Fences (Runner Up)

Look, no one can afford to go the theatre. And the theatre you can afford to see is stacked with actors who, while nice and good and trying, have also never been in a Star Wars or shot Russell Crowe. This is why we need the showcase, so we can see our fave movie stars ACTING — big, and long, and hard, and loud. Daniel Day Lewis. Julianne Moore. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Cate Blanchett. Get in my movies and SHOW ME THE ACTING!

This year sees Natalie Portman (previous ACTING credits include Black Swan) take on the role of Jacqueline Onassis, who in this film is the extremely new widow of JFK. Watch Jacquie O juggle grief and glamour, politicians and paparazzi, as she deals with the immediate days after her husband’s assassination. Will she transform into a bird mutant at the end? The answer has been lost to history… until now.

Then there’s Fences. It feels like a while since Denzel Washington has been in a real film and not a computer game (Book of Eli). So it is a relief to have him back chewing up the screen and ACTING in this stage adaptation, playing a man dealing with the reality of his small, humble life.

Rumour is that Viola Davis overshadows Washington, reprising her award-winning stage role as the family’s mother. This is a lady who can walk away with trophies after basically only eight minutes screen-time in each film; we’ll probably be thoroughly ACTED out after seeing her in a rare cinematic leading role.

Jackie is in cinemas from January 12 and Fences is out February 9.

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The Medicine: Manchester by the Sea (Winner), Silence (Runner Up)

Because it is harder to get small movies made these days (see dwindling box office receipts, the rise of quality TV) it is increasingly harder to get small movies made that are also a total bummer. On the plus side, you have fewer films that hit those awkward notes in the conversation, where you have to say “Oh, yes, I’ve been meaning to see that three-hour meditation on sexual abuse in the sweatshop industry, I really have, I’m just gearing myself up for it”, knowing full well that you’re actually just going to see Sing again, this time at a later screening with fewer kids around.

But every now and then a drizzle soaked exploration on grief, starring an actor barely skating the surface of a sexual harassment scandal arrives, made by a filmmaker whose own trials and tribulations are epically sodden, and every critics list tells you that you just have to see it… Up to you.

Meanwhile, can you imagine the meetings Scorsese had on his latest project?

“I’ve got Garfield, Driver, and Neeson.”

“Great — the dreamboat, the brooder, the veteran. Love it. We gonna take another swing at Wall Street, Marty? Cue Kanye!”

“No, it’s a period piece.”

“Love it. LOVE IT. You’re thinking two boys from the Bronx, big dreams, bigger guns, lotta cash, lotta gals, cue the Stones, it’s a HIT!”

“No, I’m thinking about the extreme torture of Christian missionaries in shogun Japan. It’s an historically accurate parable about Judas.”

“Oh. Well, okay. Look, you made us a bucket of cash in the past. We can work with this. We gotta get people excited though, make a lot of noise. What’s it called?”

“Silence.”

Manchester By The Sea is in cinemas from February 2 and Silence is out February 16.

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The Genre Curveball: Arrival (Winner), Nocturnal Animals (Runner Up)

It’s the Amy Adams double play! See her squint at an alien code, then see her shudder at a gruesome pulpy murder. See her translate the language of the stars in civvies, then see her translate the purple prose of Jake Gyllenhal in couture.

Every year a couple of genre movies wiggle their way into award season. They might be horror (Silence of the Lambs, The Orphanage) or crime (The Departed, The Dark Knight) or, more recently, sci-fi (Gravity, The Martian). Arrival firmly fits this bill, a thinky space flick that has divided audiences as they grapple with its big ideas and potentially hokey resolutions. Either way, Amy Adams rarely missteps, so she may raise her head for an accolade or two, even if the flick flounders.

Nocturnal Animals came and went with nary a whimper, but a late push from marketers and talent (director Tom Ford is apparently winning over film fans with his own signature scents?) sees nominations at the Golden Globes, and potential future flutter come Oscar time. It’s a stylish pulpy mess, so you at least know De Palma has voted for it. Right about now Kenneth Lonegran is just wishing he had bottled the smell of East Coast fishing village misery…

Arrival and Nocturnal Animals are in cinemas now.

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The Deserving: Moonlight (Winner), 20th Century Women (Runner Up)

And, every now and then, the awards season points us towards films with something to say, and a unique way of saying it.

Moonlight is the story of a young man growing up black and queer during America’s protracted War on Drugs. Played by three different unknowns at each stage of his life, with a who’s who of excellent supporting actors (Andre Holland, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali) Moonlight in some ways seems to play as an anti-Boyhood — it’s about big themes, a complex life, and ditches documentary reality for cinematic expressionism.

In a year when the run of award contenders are considerably apolitical, this is the type of story that needs to be seen. It’s the kind that will be ignored by the Trump administration, and continues to be largely unrecognised and under-told in our own country.

For pure movie-ness, Mike Mills is hard to beat, if undersold. His last film Beginners told a fictionalised version of his father’s story, who came out as gay in his eighties at the same time as he was diagnosed with cancer. 20th Century Women looks to tell the almost story of his mother, and from trailers alone seems to hit all the specialities of Mills — apt musical cuts, perfectly composed moments of emotion, and a sense of design that never overshadows the naturalistic work by the actors.

Look, I’m a fan, and anyone who is keeping the ever-curious Miranda July happy at home must be doing something interesting, right? Hopefully this awards season brings a lot of attention to the filmmaker/designer/writer/photographer and opens up opportunities for more work in the future.

Moonlight is in cinemas from January 26 and 20th Century Women is out January 20.

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Matt Roden works at non-profit writing centre Sydney Story Factory and co-hosts Confession Booth. His illustration and design work can be seen here.