Empire Records (1995) - Dir. Allan Moyle
A ROUSING DILLY-DALLY THROUGH
CINEMA’S LITTLEST wonders
FOR THE ENJOYERS
FOR THE NOTICERS
FOR THE FANS
It seems quite preposterous, really, to only celebrate something as complex as a movie in its entireties (entire cinematography, entire score, entire screenplay), when every scene is a hundred performances: the dance of cameras, the stitches of costume design, a manipulation of light, the misdirection of a cut, the storied curation of objects, a stutter, a glance…
A hundred choices a second, but every year we pick ten films and divvy up the awards between them. At every ceremony, the same ten films, the same awards, the same entireties.
THIS IS A HOME FOR EXQUISITE BREVITY
Launched in October 2025, the Itty Bitty Awards are a new and growing project, developed to give a home not only to the minutiae of film but the beautiful art of over-analysis.
two moments among millions
There were two catalysts for the Itty Bitty Awards, two moments in cinema that left such a unique impression that their existance demanded official celebration.
Cruel Intentions (1999) - Dir. Roger Kumble
cruel intentions - kiss scene
This damn saliva has played on my mind since I first saw it, aged 13. The kiss was fantastic, of course, but (to my mind) secondary to the saliva it produced. This wasn’t a fascimile of real life, like the kiss itself, this was real; a product of Sarah and Selma more than Kathryn and Cecile.
Mother! (2017) - Dir. Darren Aronofsky
mother! - sink scene
This scene is impeccable. The pinnacle of its craft. And it’s ‘just’ Jennifer Lawrence getting mad at people for sitting on her sink.
all about mother!
Let’s go big. Let’s start with one of the five generally acceptable options for “best film of all time”: The Shawshank Redemption (1994). The Shawshank Redemption is brilliant in its entirety. You watch The Shawshank Redemption and, when the credits roll, you think, ‘Oh boy, The Shawshank Redemption surely is good.’
Now let’s compare it to Aronofsky’s Mother!. A very well-made film that excels in some entireties, such as the absolutely captivating cinematography, but receives reasonable criticism. The narrative is a bit heavy-handed. It’s pretentiously overwrought, but lacks nuance. Really, it insists upon itself.
That said, no individual part of Shawshank impressed or engaged me as much as the execution of the sink scene in Mother!.
The sink scene in Mother! is so well done that it’s hard to believe it was pulled off by silly little humans.
I vividly remember sitting in the cinema, next to my friend Matt, and being absolutely fucking livid that people were sitting on Jennifer Lawrence’s sink. LIVID, I TELL YOU. What absolute gaggle of wizards came together to so effectively manifest rage and despair in me over a fictitious sink?
I walked out of a movie, where the third act featured a visually unique and powerful sequence culminating in a crowd of people eating a baby, turned to Matt, and said, “Those motherfuckers on her sink.”
It’s been almost a decade since the release of Mother! and whenever I’m embroiled in a “best film” conversation, my brain sends alerts to my mouth, Mother! Mother! Mother!, before remembering the film in its entirety, which I have ironically mostly forgotten, and I switch my answer to an irritating monologue about genre.
AND THAT, FRIENDS, IS AN ITTY BITTY AT WORK
ANYTHING, ANYWHERE, ONLY ONCE
There is no way to adequately and emphatically state
how itty an Itty Bitty can be.
Santa Claus: The Movie (1985) - Dir. Jeannot Szwarc
There’s this moment in Santa Claus: The Movie (1985) when Cornelia (Carrie Kei Heim) steps away from her Christmas meal to leave a plate of food and a Coke outside for a local homeless boy.
Let me tell you, it is one of the most uniquely satisfying moments of product placement I have ever been fortunate enough to witness.
Heim very delicately steps from the tile of her home onto her front doorstep. Two crisp footsteps are heard as her black patent leather Mary Janes touch the glistening fake snow. After calling out for the boy, she places the ceramic plate onto the snow before placing the can of Coke next to it with a satisfying but gentle crunch.
The extreme precision with which each of these actions are taken, the delicate grace in positioning the ‘Coke’ label towards the camera, and the crisp supporting audio, made this the most desirable snow-chilled Coke can I’ve ever seen.
This can of Coke is absolutely Itty Bitty viable.