‘Roma’ wins grand prize from NY Film Critics
WITH history suggesting a good connection between New York Film Critics Circle winners and Oscar nominees and eventual recipients, the early annual awards circuit stop-off is suggesting “Roma,” “First Reformed,” and a hotly anticipated “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” as essential viewing.
Three New York Film Critics Circle awards went the way of Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” during a Nov 29 announcement.
The year-in-the-life feature was named best Picture, with Cuarón recipient of both Best Director and Best Cinematography.
Next up in the list’s numerical rankings was priestly crisis-of-conscience “First Reformed,” writer-director Paul Schrader winner of Best Screenplay and Ethan Hawke the Best Actor.
“If Beale Street Could Talk” has generated no small amount of buzz, directed as it has been by “Moonlight” man and previous Oscar winner Barry Jenkins; Regina King netted Best Supporting Actress for her performance.
And Regina Hall was lauded as Best Actress for her work in a less talked-about movie, female-staffed sports bar comedy “Support the Girls.”
Animated movie “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” is due on general release mid-December, greeted by a clutch of extremely enthusiastic reviews earlier this week.
Count the NYFCC among its fans, having elected it Best Animated Feature, and consider it a late favourite for further accolades as awards season rolls on: the animation industry’s premiere specialist ceremony, the Annie Awards, announces its own spread of nominees on Dec 3.
Richard E. Grant won Best Supporting Actor for comedic literary forgery biopic “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” which has Melissa McCarthy as its lead, while Bo Burnham won Best First Film for middle school drama “Eighth Grade,” making the NYFCC Awards a relatively rare shut-out for Bradley Cooper’s “A Star is Born.”
The Best Non-Fiction title went to “Minding the Gap,” an unexpectedly hard-hitting skateboarding crew doc directed by Illinois resident Bing Liu, while Best Foreign Film was Poland’s Oscar submission, the Pawel Pawlikowski romantic drama “Cold War.”