Boston Loves "Manchester"
Sunday, December 11, 2016 at 4:53PM 
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
Reader Comments (7)
I think that Mahershala Ali get all the awards love so far because his role is more "universal": father figure. My MVP in Moonlight is easily Trevante Rhodes, who was so sensitive and emotionally accurate in his role, but "longing gay love" might not be so easily to celebrate after all. Even though it is 2016.
I'm glad about the runner up mention to Joel Edgerton for Loving, who is so far in my viewing, my go for Best Actor this year. I literally cried from start to finish while watching Loving. I don't understand how he is not in every Oscar conversation.
Here is an interesting question, who do we think Huppert's accolades hurt the most?
Portman as the, for lack of a better term, "critics snob choice" appears to be Huppert when many people had expected Portman?
Or Bening, due to the career honors/respect/overdue vote being directed at Huppert mostly?
Does Stone's campaign hope Huppert gets nominated as it will increase Stone's chance for the win?
I actually loved both MOONLIGHT and MANCHESTER BY THE SEA but I'm getting soooooooo bored with everyone thinking they were the only deserving movies. I'm not saying the following are my winners, but I'd be nice to see a critics group go this direction...
Best Picture: ZOOTOPIA
Best Director: Paul Veerhoeven, ELLE
Best Actor: Viggo Mortensen, CAPTAIN FANTASTIC
Best Actress: Annette Bening, 20TH CENTURY WOMEN
Best Supporting Actor: Greg Powell, EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!
Best Supporting Actress: Paulina García, LITTLE MEN
Best Screenplay: THINGS TO COME by Mia Hansen-Løve
Best Ensemble: LITTLE MEN
Best Cinematography: THE WITCH
Best Editing: JACKIE
Considering their "best new filmmaker" runnerup was Kristen freakin' Johnston, I think multiple rounds of voting is entirely necessary. I didn't think CAMERAPERSON was her first film, but it's the best film of the year that I've seen so far so losing out to THE WITCH is a bit of a disappointment. I don't know how many voters this org has, but I can tell there were some hardcore CAMERAPERSON fans like myself - that editing runner-up AND doc runner-up suggests as much. Ugh to OJ MADE IN AMERICA though. Stop it.
Love the Lily Gladstone citation though!
If Michelle Williams can get so much Oscar consideration (Don't get me wrong - she's fantastic), why not Laura Kinney in Nocturnal Animals? My God, what an incredible five minutes. If my theater seat had had a Rewind button I'd've pressed it over and over again! And bonus points for the fiercest hairdo since Reese Witherspoon in Inherent Vice!
Am i being overly hopeful in thinking The Witch might go on a run from its "new filmmaker" attention and actually make the Oscar Best Picture list? I think I'm still recovering from how harrowing and strange it was to watch in the theater (thought it would be a dumb slasher pic going in)!
Wow, ever since seeing Certain Women at Sundance, I've been totally gung-ho about Lily Gladstone. Could she actually slip into the BSA lineup? Has there been a Native American acting nominee (Oscar) since Graham Greene in Dances With Wolves? What a treat that would be, and a fantastic, non-binary, anti-#OscarSoWhite choice to be sure. Make it happen, world.