Sunset Circle names "TÁR" best of the year

by Nathaniel R

Sarah Polley's philosophical drama Women Talking and Park Chan Wook's twisty noir Decision to Leave led the nominations for the Sunset Circle Awards in their third year but came up mostly empty-handed when it came to wins. Todd Field's TÁR emerged as the big winner taking Picture, Director, Actress, and Screenplay. The smaller the critics group the more likely you are to have nominee and winners list with some personality. Whether or not that personality is a good one is of course up to the eye of the beholder. Sunset Circle is composed of just 9 film journalists who specialize in awards coverage. We don't love that they vote before all the movies are screened each year in order to be first but we do love that they don't try to predict the Oscars. No critics group should. If you're voting on anything other than your own preferences, you're doing it wrong! Their nominees and winners (marked by ★) follow along with a few more comments... 

TOP FILMS

• Aftersun
• Decision to Leave
• Elvis
• Everything Everywhere All At Once
• The Menu
• RRR
• She Said
• ★ TÁR
• Top Gun Maverick
• Women Talking

A nice spread of genres and release dates there!  That said recency bias is a fact of life / human nature and nearly all awards groups bear this out in some small way since you can watch as it happens in real time as the season goes on and various groups vote in different weeks (and even different months). In their nominations, for instance, you'll see much more love for Black Panther, She Said, and The Menu than you're likely to see later in the season from critics awards; all three were very "new" right before voting. There are limits though. Recency did not help Babylon which had big screenings on both coasts a handful of days before they voted on their nominations. It received no nominations

BEST DIRECTOR

• ★ Todd Field – TÁR
• Joseph Kosinski – Top Gun Maverick
• Park Chan-wook – Decision to Leave
• Sarah Polley – Women Talking
• S.S. Rajamouli – RRR

BEST ACTOR

• ★ Austin Butler – Elvis
• Tom Cruise – Top Gun Maverick
• Colin Farrell – The Banshees of Inisherin
• Brendan Fraser – The Whale
• Paul Mescal – Aftersun

Awards season is *just* starting. So it'll be interesting to see what the critical consensus becomes. Seems like it could be nicely competitive (even if the Oscar race might not be)

BEST ACTRESS

• ★ Cate Blanchett – TÁR
• Danielle Deadwyler – Till
• Mia Goth – Pearl/X
• Tang Wei – Decision to Leave
• Michelle Yeoh – Everything Everywhere All At Once

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

• Paul Dano – The Fabelmans
• Brendan Gleeson – The Banshees of Inisherin
• Brian Tyree Henry – Causeway
• ★ Ke Huy Quan – Everything Everywhere All At Once
• Micheal Ward – Empire of Light

The Sunset Circle is obviously not big on smaller roles as nominees for supporting. Notice they went with Dano over Hirsch, and Gleeson over Keoghan for their films. We think one of those decisions are correct and incorrect, respectively. There's more to a performance than the size of a role! 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

• Angela Bassett – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
• Claire Foy – Women Talking
• Hong Chau – The Whale/The Menu
• Thuso Mbedu – The Woman King
• ★ Carey Mulligan – She Said

Giving the year's most egregious case of Category Fraud a "supporting" win is just (sigh).

About Hong Chau being cited for two films. That used to be common for critics groups but with the increasing habit of critics groups releasing nominee lists first instead of just naming winners, we've seen this decrease a lot as that doesn't work with simple vote counts. The double citations naturally spring up more in discussion- based critics awards decisions. 

BEST ENSEMBLE

• ★ Everything Everywhere All At Once
• The Menu
• She Said
• Top Gun Maverick
• Women Talking

BEST SCREENPLAY

• Decision to Leave
• The Menu
• She Said
• ★ TÁR
• Women Talking

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

• Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
• The Batman
• Elvis
• Empire of Light
• ★ TÁR

BEST SCORE

• The Batman – Michael Giacchino
• Bones and All – Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
• Empire of Light – Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
• Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio – Alexandre Desplat
• ★ Women Talking – Hildur Guðnadóttir

BEST EDITING

• Decision to Leave
• Elvis
• Moonage Daydream
• RRR
• ★ Top Gun Maverick

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

• All Quiet on the Western Front
• Athena
• Decision to Leave
• Holy Spider
• ★ RRR

BEST HORROR FILM

• Barbarian
• The Black Phone
• NOPE
• Smile
• ★ X

FIVE FIRE DIRECTORS

• Parker Finn – Smile
• Dean Fleischer-Camp – Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
• Chloe Okuno – Watcher
• ★ Charlotte Wells – Aftersun
• Ti West – X/Pearl

SCENE STEALER

• Jennifer Ehle – She Said
• Judd Hirsch – The Fabelmans
• David Lynch – The Fabelmans
• ★ Brad Pitt – The Lost City
• Taylor Swift – Amsterdam

Comments

[DK]

I have a feeling this will be another tight Best Actress race. If you look at Streep (The Iron Lady) and McDormand (Nomadland), third Oscar wins aren't “coronations.” Viola Davis came close for The Help, and in 2020 major precursors tried to make Mulligan + Andra Day happen. There’s always the urge to find an alternative when it looks like the AMPAS is about to do it.

So even if Cate wins this year, it won’t look inevitable. I think the major prizes will be split between her, Yeoh and Deadwyler. Then maybe (perhaps the likeliest outcome in a close race) Cate takes it in the end.

[McGill]

So Jennifer Ehle has to be classified as a “Scene Stealer” so that lead Carey Mulligan can pretend to be Supporting? Not only is that disrespectful, it’s diminishing, as if Ehle is “stealing” her time rather than supporting the narrative.

Robert Hamer over at the Awards Radar site makes the point that category fraud was turned into standard operating procedure by ... Harvey Weinstein. (His browbeating, bullying, cheating practices institutionalized into industry habit).

Hamer makes the point that “She Said” is a movie that absolutely should not condone and continue Weinsteinian practices (my reading of his point).

[Jésus Alonso]

Fraser lost.
Quan won.
The Fabelmans really underperforms.
Tàr swept, but it's hardly a surprise...

I think the only fact from these that will translate to the industry awards is Quan... there's a consensus building and seems about to steamroll all the way to Oscar... he's just loveable and many are eager to see him going on stage again and again.

Bonus points: he probably never thought he would be in an Oscar race, and certainly not for his role of Waymond in such an atypichal film like Everything Everywhere All At Once

[Mr Ripley79]

These are not that important,just tells us a rough outline of the season,most of which we know ourselves.

[NATHANIEL R]

Mr Ripley79 -- well none of the critics awards are "that important" but for the biggies (NYFCC & LAFCA) but collectively they are of interest!

[Amy Camus]

Jesus - Just remember at this point last year, it was practically unanimously assumed that Kodi Smit-McPhee was going to steamroll his way to a Supporting Actor Oscar and Troy Kotsur was barely an afterthought. The season is young.

[Mr Ripley79]

Exactly my point Amy,people as usual are claiming someone's locked for a win due to some random nomination from an obscure critics group or what some bloggers perceive.

I'm out on a limb on my JLC winning an Oscar,it's just a hunch not based on any bandwaggon jumping or aligning with what so called pundits,critics,blogs or awards group say,no-one else seems to feel she's more then a 7th place and I might feel a total fool when she doesn't get a nomination.

[Michael R]

It'd be nice if this organization considered late 2022 releases- ones they did not get a chance to see - for next year's awards.

[Michael R]

Mr. Ripley : I too am torn about Ms. Curtis. I would love to see her get nominated but I can't shake two facts. One, BSA is sooo competitive with multiple candidates coming from the same films : EEAAO, The Whale, Tar, and Women Talking. And secondly, as wonderful as she is she ends up giving the second best Supporting Actress performance in her own film behind Hsu. I have her JUST missing the nomination unfortunately.