Director Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow earned Best Feature distinction at the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) Awards today (12/18). The Best Director honor went to Chloe Zhao for Nomadland.
Da 5 Bloods and Never Rarely Sometimes Always were the only two films to win more than one award. Each garnered two honors with Never Rarely Sometimes Always scoring Best Screenplay for Eliza Hittman and Best Actress for Sidney Flanigan. Da 5 Bloods saw Delroy Lindo win for Best Actor and the late Chadwick Boseman for Best Supporting Actor. Additionally, Spike Lee, director of Da 5 Bloods, won a special award for his short film New York, New York Love Letter, a salute to the Big Apple during the pandemic.
Maria Bakalova was named Best Supporting Actress on the strength of her performance in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Time won for Best Documentary while Wolfwalkers took the Best Animated Film mantle. Radha Blank came up a winner for Best First Film on the basis of The 40-Year-Old Version. Bacurau earned recognition as Best Foreign Language Film. And Shabier Kirchner was named Best Cinematographer for his lensing of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology
Lee wasn’t the only Special Award winner. Also taking a special honor was Kino Lorber for its Kino Marquee Virtual Cinema.
The NYFCC selection for Best Feature frequently goes on to perform well on the Oscars front. Recent NYFCC Best Features included The Irishman, Roma, Lady Bird and La La Land which all wound up with Academy Award nominations for Best Picture.
Here’s a full rundown of NYFCC 2020 winners:
Best Picture
First Cow
Best Director
Chloe Zhao
NOMADLAND
Best Screenplay
Eliza Hittman
NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS
Best Actress
Sidney Flanigan
NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS
Best Actor
Delroy Lindo
DA 5 BLOODS
Best Supporting Actress
Maria Bakalova
BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM
Best Supporting Actor
Chadwick Boseman
DA 5 BLOODS
Best Cinematographer
Shabier Kirchner
SMALL AXE
Best Animated Film
Wolfwalkers
Best Non-Fiction Film (Documentary)
Time
Best Foreign Language Film
Bacurau
Best First Film
Radha Blank
THE 40-YEAR-OLD VERSION
Special Award
Kino Lorber
KINO MARQUEE VIRTUAL CINEMA
Special Award
Spike Lee
”NEW YORK NEW YORK” LOVE LETTER
Review: Director John Crowley’s “We Live In Time”
It's not hard to spend a few hours watching Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield fall and be in love. In "We Live In Time," filmmaker John Crowley puts the audience up close and personal with this photogenic British couple through the highs and lows of a relationships in their 30s.
Everyone starts to think about the idea of time, and not having enough of it to do everything they want, at some point. But it seems to hit a lot of us very acutely in that tricky, lovely third decade. There's that cruel biological clock, of course, but also careers and homes and families getting older. Throw a cancer diagnosis in there and that timer gets ever more aggressive.
While we, and Tobias (Garfield) and Almut (Pugh), do indeed live in time, as we're constantly reminded in big and small ways — clocks and stopwatches are ever-present, literally and metaphorically — the movie hovers above it. The storytelling jumps back and forth through time like a scattershot memory as we piece together these lives that intersect in an elaborate, mystical and darkly comedic way: Almut runs into Tobias with her car. Their first chat is in a hospital hallway, with those glaring fluorescent lights and him bruised and cut all over. But he's so struck by this beautiful woman in front of him, he barely seems to care.
I suppose this could be considered a Lubitschian "meet-cute" even if it knowingly pushes the boundaries of our understanding of that romance trope. Before the hit, Tobias was in a hotel, attempting to sign divorce papers and his pens were out of ink and pencils kept breaking. In a fit of near-mania he leaves, wearing only his bathrobe, to go to a corner store and buy more. Walking back, he drops something in the street and bang: A new relationship is born. It's the... Read More