The Boston Film Critics Society formed in 1980 divvying up their first year of prizes largely between Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull and Jonathan Demme's undeappreciated Melvin & Howard. (Both auteurs would reign again with the BFCS via The Departed and Silence of the Lambs). While they don't often out on stylish limbs and aren't as invested in foreign films as they once did and were, when they return to either of those impulses it's often exciting. Our absolute favorite thing they occassional do is a weirdo but "why, yes, actually!" supporting performance pick like Toni Collette for The Hours, Juliette Lewis in Conviction or Ezra Miller in Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Here's what they chose as Best for 2016 along with several trivia notes...
Best Picture -La La Land (runner up: Manchester by the Sea)
Only 25% of the BFCS winners go on to win the Best Picture Oscar but we thank them for speaking their own truth which is the only thing any critics group should exist for! We don't know how close the voting was but we'll assume La La just eked this one out given the strength Manchester showed in so many categories.
Best Actor - Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea (ru: Joel Edgerton, Loving)
This is their acting category that sticks most closely to Oscar's wheelhouse. 38% of their winners have gone on to an Oscar win. Their favorite actor is Daniel Day-Lewis who has won this prize four times for The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), My Left Foot (1989), In the Name of the Father (1993), and Lincoln (2012)
Best Actress - Isabelle Huppert, Elle and Things to Come (runner up: Natalie Portman, Jackie)
33% of their winners have gone on to win the Oscar. Marion Cotillard, Meryl Streep, Holly Hunter, and Hilary Swank have all won their lead actress prize twice
Best Supporting Actor - Mahershara Ali, Moonlight (ru: Michael Shannon, Nocturnal Animals)
Is it strange that every single critics group is okay with only rewarding him? You'd think someone would throw a bone to Harris or Rhodes or something for that special cast. 36% of the BSFC winners in this category have gone on to win the Oscar.
Best Supporting Actress - Lily Gladstone, Certain Women (ru: Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea)
They tend to allow themselves to think most freely in this category than the others. Though 27% of their winners have gone on to win the Oscar, most of those were in this society's early years.
Best Director - Damien Chazelle, La La Land (ru: Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea)
Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg are their favorite directors with 3 wins each. Runner up with 2 wins are Polanski, Lynch, and Bigelow. They are typically much more diverse in their choices here than Oscar with multiple gay winners, multiple winners of color, and multiple female winners. The last choice of theirs that went on to an Oscar win was Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker (2009)
Best Screenplay - Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea (ru: Jim Jarmusch, Paterson)
Best Cinematography -Chung-hoon Chung, The Handmaiden (ru: James Laxton, Moonlight)
The Handmaiden is not the first foreign language film to win this category with Boston. Boston often goes that direction. Their other foreign tongued beauties were Ran (1985) and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Pan's Labyrinth (2006), and The Diving Bell & Butterfly (2007) the latter two being the only non-Asian foreign language winners. The BSFC's all time favorite cinematographer is Emmanuel Lubezki (4 wins), with Deakins and Kaminksi as runners up (3 each).
Best Documentary -O.J. Made in America (ru: Cameraperson)
They were once quite frisky in this category but lately they've been going with Oscar frontrunners. And apparently no film organization feels weird about rewarding a TV miniseries instead. It's a shame when there are so many good documentary features in existence for everyone to cite the same one that isn't even a documentary feature! Why not give it a special award and still hand out Best Documentary?
Best Foreign-Language Film - The Handmaiden (ru: Things to Come)
Between these two films and Aquarius it's been a really good year for foreign films that weren't submitted for Oscar's foreign category.
Best Animated Film -Tower
FYI This is not eligible for the Oscar in Animated Feature but it is eligible for the Oscar in Best Documentary
Best Film Editing - Tom Cross, La La Land (ru: [tie] Hacksaw Ridge and Cameraperson)
Cross won the Oscar for Whiplash and he could well be heading for a second statue. This is only his seventh movie.
Best New Filmmaker- Robert Eggers, The VVitch (ru: Cameraperson)
Multiple rounds of voting were required they say. Why? It's so awesome!
Best Ensemble Cast - Moonlight (ru: Certain Women)
Best Score - Mica Levy, Jackie (ru: La La Land)
They used to call this Best Use of Music and give the prize to things like Love and Mercy so apparently they finally changed that.
Recent Awardage Elsewhere
BOFCA: The more upstart Boston Online Film Critics Association (formed only 4 years ago) also recently announced their awards going with Moonlight for Best Film.
NYFCO: Another onlinegroup (formed in 2001) that people seem to mistake for the similarly named actual critics award institution (NYFCC) gave lots of prizes to Moonlight.
SFFCC: The San Francisco Film Critics Circle (formed in 2004) went for the his & her duo from Fences, which is a bit of a change of pace for critics prizes thus far