Carol named best picture
Toronto film critics awards
The Toronto Film Critics Association has joined the New York Film Critics Circle in naming Todd Haynes’ Carol as the best picture of 2015. The group also gave Haynes the best-director nod.
Carol, which opened Dec. 11 in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, with more cities to follow, is a lesbian love story based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt. Rooney Mara plays a New York shopgirl who falls for the elegant Carol Aird, played by Cate Blanchett.
The film premièred at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where Mara was named best actress by the festival jury. It has since received five Golden Globe nominations — for best drama, best director, best score and best actress ( drama), with nominations for both Blanchett and Mara in that category.
The TFCA gave its f emale acting awards to Nina Hoss for her leading role in the German post- Holocaust drama Phoenix; and to Alicia Vikander for what has been deemed a supporting role — though a very meaty one — as a self-aware robot in Alex Garland’s science- fiction thriller Ex Machina.
Both those films picked up additional prizes from the critics’ group. Phoenix was named best foreign- language film, while Ex Machina took the vote for best first feature. Garland has previously worked as a screenwriter on such films as Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and Sunshine, and on Never Let Me Go. His novel The Beach was adapted into another Boyle film.
In the male categories, Tom Hardy was named best actor for his dual performance as twin brothers Ronald and Reggie Kray in Legend. Best supporting actor went to Mark Rylance for playing Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies.
The best screenplay award was given to Charles Randolph and director Adam McKay for their adaptation of The Big Short by Michael Lewis. The film, about the financial crisis of 2008, opens on Christmas Day.
Best animated feature went to Shaun the Sheep movie, a wordless ( though hardly si-
To be decided is ... the $100,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film
lent) adventure from Britain’s Aardman Animation studio. And the best documentary prize was given to Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence, his follow- up to 2012’s The Act of Killing, about the legacy of massacres in Indonesia in the 1960s. That film also won the critics’ best- doc prize.
Still to be decided is the winner of the $100,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film prize, the richest of its kind in Canada. The three finalists are Sleeping Giant, by Andrew Cividino; My Internship in Canada, by Philippe Falardeau; and The Forbidden Room, by Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson. The winner will be announced at the TFCA’s annual gala on Jan. 5.
The TFCA represents approximately 40 Toronto-based critics ( including this one) working in various media.