by Nathaniel R
After LAFCA and the NYFCC, the NSFC completes what is essentially the holy trinity of American critics prizes for films. For the latter half of the 20th century these were the three that would get all the press. In the past two decades their influence has not waivered, exactly, but has become less visible. With 30 critics groups now voicing their opinions each year (the bulk of which formed after the year 2000) it's more important for films and performances to have a plurality of voices... unending FYC campaign noise. While LAFCA, NYFCC, and NSFC don't differ a lot this year they all chose separate films for their top prize, LAFCA went with Steve McQueen's collection of five telefilms Small Axe, NYFCC went with First Cow, and the NSFC chose Nomadland (which has been the most dominant with regional prizes...
55th Annual NSFC Awards
Best Film: Nomadland
Runners up: First Cow and Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Best Director: Chloe Zhao, Nomadland (also won NYFCC and LAFCA)
Runners up: Small Axe, Steve McQueen and Kelly Reichardt, First Cow
Zhao hasn't lost a single prize yet for her third feature. She previously directed Songs My Brother Taught Me and The Rider and hopefully the Nomadland will direct people backwards to those earlier films as well.
Best Actress: Frances McDormand, Nomadland
Runners up: Viola Davis in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Sidney Flanagan in Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Best Actor Delroy Lindo, Da 5 Bloods (also won NYFCC)
Runners up: Chadwick Boseman in Ma Rainey's and Riz Ahmed in The Sound of Metal
Best Supporting Actress: Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (also won NYFCC)
Runners up: Amanda Seyfried, Mank and Youn Yuh-Jung in Minari
Best Supporting Actor: Paul Raci, Sound of Metal
Runners up: Glynn Turman, Ma Rainey's and Chadwick Boseman, Da 5 Bloods
Though NSFC is the only one of the big three to give Paul Raci this prize, he's thoroughly dominated this prize among regional critics groups. Their runners up are the LAFCA and NYFCC winners.
Best Cinematography: Joshua James Richards, Nomadland
Runner up: Shabier Kirchner, Lovers Rock and Leonardo Simões, Vitalina Varela
Best Screenplay: Eliza Hittman, Never Rarely Sometimes Always (also won NYFCC)
Runners up: First Cow, I'm thinking of Ending Things
Best Foreign Language Film: Collective from Romania
Runner up: Bacarau (Brazil) and Beanpole (Russia), and Vitalina Varela
Best Non-Fiction Film: Time (also won LAFCA and NYFCC)
Runners up: City Hall and Collective
Documentary is the only category other than Best Director this year to totally unite the top three critics prizes. LAFCA, NYFCC, and NSFC all chose this doc about a long prison sentence. You can read our interview with the filmmakers here.
Film Heritage Award
Women Make Movies (Distributor)
Film Comment (Magazine)
And that's it!
The plethora of small regional critics groups choices each year are obviously influenced by the first wave claims of LA and NY (NSFC less so since they come later) since consensus ≠ coincidence. Unfortunately this rubber-stamping of previous choices also makes critics awards far more boring than they used to be! Now we rarely see much disagreement from group to group, with each group selecting from a tiny pool of like two or (maximum) three options for each prize. (For instance isn't it a bit strange given the orgiastic reviews for Anthony Hopkins in The Father that he is never mentioned for Best Actor but it's only Lindo, Boseman, and Ahmed? Some categories have had some variety like Documentary but the acting prizes especially have been in lockstep with just a couple of names per category.)
All that said, this year will prove interesting as a test of critical influence. Most of the mainstream awards bodies will be reacting much later to the film year (usually they're kind of happening alongside the critics prizes) so will any of this stick? We shall see come March and April.