The National Society of Film Critics is the second oldest film critics group, after the grandfather of them all the New York Film Critics Circle. This year they swooned for that cad with the cat, Llewyn Davis, giving the Coen brothers Inside Llewyn Davis four of its major prizes: Picture, Director, Actor and Cinematography.
Their prizes
PICTURE Inside Llewyn Davis (runner up: American Hustle)
DIRECTOR Joel and Ethan Coen Inside Llewyn Davis (runner up: Alfonso Cuaron)
ACTRESS Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine (runner up: Adéle Exarchopoulus)
ACTOR Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis (runner up: Chiwetel Ejiofor)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle (runner up: Lupita Nyong'o)
SUPPORTING ACTOR James Franco, Spring Breakers (runner up: Jared Leto)
FOREIGN FILM Blue is the Warmest Color (runner up: A Touch of Sin)
NON-FICTION [tie] The Act of Killing & At Berkeley)
EXPERIMENTAL FILM Leviathan
SCREENPLAY Before Midnight (runner up: Inside Llewyn Davis)
CINEMATOGRAPHY Inside Llewyn Davis (runner up: Gravity)
BEST FILM STILL AWAITING DISTRIBUTION: Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming Liang) and Hide Your Smilling Faces (Daniel Patrick Carbone)
FILM HERITAGE AWARD
• To the Museum of Modern Art, for its wide-ranging retrospective of the films of Allan Dwan.
• “Too Much Johnson”: the surviving reels from Orson Welles’s first professional film. Discovered by Cinemazero (Pordenone) and Cineteca del Friuli; funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation; and restored by the George Eastman House.
• British Film Institute for restorations of Alfred Hitchcock’s nine silent features.
• To the DVD “American Treasures from the New Zealand Film Archive.”
The Wrap Up
With the National Society of Film Critics sounding off we can now close the book on the critics portion of this year's awards season. I know the BFCA prizes (announcing Thursday the 16th... I'll be in the audience this year!) is technically called "Critics Choice" but it's more of a journalists / TV association since there are a lot of talking heads and the like. It's not strictly critics if you will so I tend to group them mentally on par with the Globes and NBR and AFI as general media organizations.
So the big three broke down like so... only completely unified on Cate Blanchett for Actress and Blue is the Warmest Color for foreign language film but no disagreement (at all) on Best Picture of Best Actor
|
The Holy Trinity of Film Critics Prizes
|
|||
|
NYFCC
|
LAFCA
|
NSFC
|
|
| picture |
American Hustle
|
Gravity / Her
|
Llewyn Davis
|
| director |
McQueen
|
Cuarón
|
Coen Bros
|
|
|
|||
| actress |
Blanchett
|
Blanchett / Exarcopoulus
|
Blanchett
|
| actor |
Redford
|
Dern
|
Isaac
|
| supporting actress |
Lawrence
|
Nyong'o
|
Lawrence
|
| supporting actor |
Leto
|
Franco / Leto
|
Franco
|
| documentary |
Stories We Tell
|
Stories We Tell
|
Act of Killing / At Berkeley
|
|
|
|||
| foreign film |
Blue is the Warmest Color
|
Blue is the Warmest Color
|
Blue is the Warmest Color
|
| screenplay |
American Hustle
|
Before Midnight
|
Before Midnight
|
| cinematography |
Inside Llewyn Davis
|
Gravity
|
Inside Llewyn Davis
|
What'cha think?