Online Film Critics Society Have Got 'Mommy' Issues
Tuesday, December 9, 2014 at 10:00AM
Glenn Dunks in Boyhood, Grand Budapest Hotel, Ida, Mommy, NNightcrawler, OFCS, Two Days One Night, Under the Skin, critics awards

Well this is a pleasant surprise!

Glenn here with a look at the slate of nominees that the Online Film Critics Society sent our way today. You can thank me for a smidgen of the rather wonderful list since I am a member. The cynical person that I am assumed group think and the homogeny of the pack would give us the usual suspects, but the OFCS blessedly included some curveballs and left of field choices that should make the AFI and other singularly Oscar-hunting awards bodies look foolish. Let's take a look.

 

BEST PICTURE

This being an online critics organisation, they are going to lean a little bit to the "cool" side of things. Having said that, only four of the organisation's nominations for Best Picture are likely going to get correlating Oscar nominees - they could be Boyhood, Grand Budapest, Selma and Whiplash. The rest of the list is spectacularly diverse with three foreign language films, a semi-experimental sci-fi, a creepy genre thriller, and the other meta-superhero flick from 2014. Speaking of which, the omission of Birdman is as surprising as it is delightful. I mean, I like the movie, and certainly much more than Whiplash, but I have no qualms with it missing for the sake of Xavier Dolan's Mommy. Not one bit.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

It's looking more and more like this might be Oscar's five as well, but although maybe it's just my own dislike for the film I'm not sold on Big Hero 6 as a nominee. But, unless they choose another small animation (like Song of the Sea for instance), what else is there to choose?

BEST FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The Missing Picture was my number one film of last year (it received an Oscar qualifying run last year so...) and Mommy is one of my top three films of this year. Place them alongside the amazing Ida and the Dardennes and the Japanese animation that I have unfortunately not seen yet and you've got an amazing category, only three of which are eligible for Oscar though.

BEST DOCUMENTARY

 

BEST DIRECTOR

Glazer and the Dardennes! How many organizations are going to go in that cool of a direction with their ballots? We can hope plenty, but in reality...

BEST ACTOR

BEST ACTRESS

There's a very real chance that there will be a 3 for 10 crossover with these two acting categories and that is a very good sign of the diversity that this year has given us. All ten of these performances are interesting - only Keaton doesn't excite me as much - and it's great that Gyllenhaal and especially Cotillard are racking up some early citations since I'm not sure they have the power to get to Oscar. Two big, giant cheers for Anne Dorval and Essie Davis who pulled big nominations ahead of much bigger names.

Okay, I still don't believe this Cotillard band-wagon can carry on all the way to the Kodak, but it's great that's getting all these citations without even trying. And can we get two big cheers for Essie Davis and Anne Dorval, the latter of whom especially pulled it out somewhat surprisingly against much bigger names. My vote is going to Davis, but everyone here is just fabulous.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

The women are by far the better of the two supporting categories, no? Some crazy-good surprises like Suzanne Clement make that category one of the highlights of the nomination announcement. The actors? Well, they are all good, but with no big surprises it feels more like a snooze than it ought to be.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Pretty much as expec-- oh my god! Some crazy so-and-sos put We are the Best! on their ballot and wouldn't ya know there it is. Whoever did that is pretty amazing, yeah? Yeah!

BEST EDITING

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

What a fantastic roster of nominees, yes?

BEST NON-US RELEASE (NON COMPETITIVE)

And so that's that. The winners will be announced next week, and I doubt they will be half as interesting as the nominee. But then again, that's nothing new, is it? What do you guys think? Should I and my fellow OFCS members be proud?

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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