2019 Critics Choice Documentary Award Nominations

By Glenn Dunks

they shall not grow old

We do a good job here covering documentaries. Especially since I have a 9 to 5-Monday to Friday day job. But we cover, I want to say, somewhere between 50 and 80 films a year in Doc Corner. I only say this to preface the news of the 2019 Critics Choice Documentary Awards because my gosh there are still just so many we do not or can not (or will not) get to. There are an estimated 300+ docs released every year. That is, to put it mildly, quite a lot.

Which brings us to their nominees for 2019. The list features many that we have already covered, more that we plan to upon their theatrical release or as we get deeper into the season, and even some that we do not want to review. Leading the pack with six nominations are Apollo 11, The Biggest Little Farm (more good news this week for Parasite distributor NEON) and Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old (which some would consider a 2018 release).

Read on the see the nominations (AND NOW UPDATED WITH WINNERS) in full...

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32 films competing for nominations in Best Animated Feature

by Nathaniel R

Frozen 2 is clearly hoping to be the first animated franchise to win the Animated Feature category twice.

The Oscar race is officially on for Best Animated Feature. 32 films are planning to compete, which is easily a record as there are usually closer to 22 or so, so we'll definitely have 5 nominees again this year. But the question is which. We've divvied the 32 films up into types to make this easier to process...

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Soundtracking: Amazing Grace

by Chris Feil

In the year and change since Aretha Franklin has passed, it feels as if she never left, much as it often does when an artist’s legacy feels as eternal as hers. It’s not just that the Aretha songbook has remained as omnipresent in our culture as ever, but her place remained as cemented this year with the successful release of Amazing Grace. The concert doc captures the live recording of Franklin’s highest selling album of the same name, her first that was fully in the gospel genre that fostered her otherworldly gift. But perhaps what made the film feel even more special in the months after her death isn’t just the opportunity to witness her at peak powers, but also to see fragments of a more personal side revealed.

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116 days til Oscar

Though Manhattan is a wonderful place to be a movie lover -- there is ALWAYS something to see between the first run multiplexes and the rep theaters -- it's also filled with the ghosts of movie theaters past. The Paris closed down just about a month ago and the Ziegfeld died in... well, we'll always be mourning the Ziegfeld.  It was Moulin Rouge! and Chicago premiered in the early Aughts, and seeing the movie musical return to prominence in two consecutive years in a massive old school movie palace was heaven. It's also the site of the first time we saw Michelle Pfeiffer in the pflesh. Needless to say it was part of our soul. 

Speaking of old movie houses. On this 116th day before the 92nd Oscars we randomly found that there was once a grand movie theater on 116th street and 7th avenue (not so far from where we live) called The RKO Regent...

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Top Ten: Greatest Supporting Actors of the Decade Who Weren't Oscar Nominated

A truth. Year after year, Best Supporting Actor is the category with which we have the most disagreement with Oscar. Before our hearts are broken anew this impending season we wanted to celebrate the decade that's nearly behind us. We tend to view it Best Supporting Actor as the category wherein the Academy acting branch is at their absolute laziest each year, though we've never quite figured out why so much of their laziness funnels into this category ("whoever's in a best picture! YOU")

Today, for fun, a grumpy what-coulda-been list celebrating ten performances that rank among the best supporting work this decade...

10 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR PERFORMANCES OF THE '10s
THAT WERE NOT OSCAR NOMINATED

10 Tracy Letts, Lady Bird
Oscar nominees he was superior to that year: All but Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project

Want to buy him all the "World's Greatest Dad" mugs for this performance. This kind of warm performance easily finds a home in Supporting Actress but "Supportive" fathers are a no go for voters for reasons we've never been able to ascertain apart from basic toxic masculinity... and that being supportive is just not considered an interesting or valuable thing in a male role... 

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