Gotham Award Winners & Favourite Cheekiness
Tuesday, November 27, 2018 at 9:33AM 
The Gotham Awards proved a great night for multiple films, but especially for A24 who dominated the prizes with multiple awards for both First Reformed and Eighth Grade and even a Best Actress win for our beloved Toni Collette in Hereditary. Not that other studios didn't get some attention. Sony Picture Classics nabbed a surprise win in the Best Feature category and Fox Searchlight's The Favourite got a lot of attention, given that it received essentially two special prizes with an Ensemble Award and a tribute to Rachel Weisz. Weisz brought her co-stars along in cutout form in the acceptance speech - love it!
The list of winners and a few notes are after the jump...
Best Feature The Rider
What a strange journey The Rider has had. It was nominated for four Spirit Awards last year including Best Feature losing all of them, before it had been released. Then it was a sleeper hit in arthouses this past spring despite no real known quantities (the director's second film, the stars first), and now it takes Best Feature at the Gothams beating more high profile films like First Reformed, The Favourite, and If Beale Street Could Talk as well as the tiny arthouse indie Madeline's Madeline.
Best Actress Toni Collette for Hereditary
Toni wasn't at the ceremony so director Ari Aster accepted thanking her for being incredible and because "her participation got it made." We hope that this isn't Toni's last award this season given the thousands of critics groups that like to hand out prizes but competition sure is stiff in such an amazing Best Actress year. That she managed to beat Glenn Close in The Wife her is something, isn't it! (On the other hand the Gothams are scrappy prizes and perhaps The Wife is too Oscar lite, for them?)
We daren't hope this means Colette could be Oscar nominated. It is still, in the end, a really grotesque horror entertainment.
Ethan Hawke with Alessandro Nivola
Best Actor Ethan Hawke for First Reformed
So proud to have been prophesying this performance as a future Oscar nominee for many many months now.
Breakthrough Actor Elsie Fisher for Eighth Grade
when i say iām DEAD dead pic.twitter.com/eA2tSTOyLR
— ā š (@justanothertown) November 27, 2018
Special Gotham Award Best Ensemble The Favourite
Best Screenplay Paul Schrader, First Reformed
I'd argue that First Reformed got the biggest Oscar boost of the night taking two awards that also represent the categories in which it has an obvious shot at Oscar nominations.
Best Documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening
This doc sure has been doing well in the early stretch of awards season. Perhaps we should bump it up that particular Oscar chart.
Barry Jenkins and Bo Burnham (Bo Burnham is 6'5"!!!)
Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Bo Burnham for Eighth Grade
Love a humble supremely talented writer/director, who basically claimed this award belonged to Elsie Fisher. "My job was to the point the camera at her and tell her to be incredible and she would be incredible."
Audience Award Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Breakthrough Series -Long Form Killing Eve
Breakthrough Series - Short Form 195 Lewis
Made in New York Award Sandra Lee
This award given to prominent New Yorkers is given out by the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment.
Willem Dafoe happy about his honor!
Reader Comments (24)
I have never been more enamored with a director-actor pairing than Bo Burnham and Elsie Fisher. Their Q&A at the Seattle IFF was the best piece of comedy this year, and their appreciation of each other's talents is admirable. Eighth Grade remains my favorite movie of the year.
I need to rewatch First Reformed and catch Madeline's Madeline as they are both on Prime now.
I liked the Rider, and am happy Chloe Zhao is getting some recognition. But my favorite horse-and-his-boy movie (and maybe my all-around favorite) of 2018 was Lean on Pete, which I hope gets recognized *somewhere* this season.
Could Collette as nominee actually happen?
While Close, Gaga and Colman seem certainties, there's a big question mark over Blunt at this stage (time, reviews and box office will tell) and McCarthy, Davis, Kidman and Aparicio are all vulnerable...
Let's see what the Globes and SAG bring in terms of whittling down the contenders...
I liked Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher but hope the awards spread the wealth with the breakthroughs and the younger actors. Thomasin McKenzie and Charlie Plummer were incredible as well.
How is no one talking about how First Reformed is basically a remake of Winter Light?
I hope Glenn Close still wins the Oscar.
It's about time we give Rachel Weisz's her second Oscar nom!
Really thrilled for First Reformed. I hope Hawke and Schrader can follow this up with Oscar nominations.
I thought that Colette would with the Gotham and the Indie Spirit over Close. She's the younger, more populist choice. But I think The Favourite under-performed here. It may have gotten a lot of attention, but I'm sure they would have preferred a win in one of the competitive categories (and most people were predicting that it would win Screenplay and Picture).
"How is no one talking about how First Reformed is basically a remake of Winter Light?"
FR - There is an entire piece here at TFE about it and Paul Schrader has repeatedly mentioned it inspired the film in interviews.
I really LOVE the choice of winners!!!
Turn off Glenn Close. Queen Toni has arrived.
(I hope so)
Wow the winners were all wonderful even if I have obvious preferences.
First off, I am loving the fact that Paul Schrader is back on the spotlight with First Reformed and his screenplay, and Ethan Hawke. This is a good precursor for all the wonderful things that's yet to come.
Second, how pleasant to read that Toni Collette won in the lead actress category. Although the Gotham folks are just one of many award-giving bodies and that their taste may totally differ from the rest, but maybe Toni Collette's nomination is becoming a sure thing? It will be a bloodsport who gets into the top five.
I am liking the love for Willem Dafoe and Rachel Weisz and wish Disobedience gets some notice down the road. But it gets funny from now on now that the initial awards have been given and a certain degree of groupthink will start to form. Hope there will be pleasant surprises.
Too bad I missed The Rider when it was showing at the IFC but there were way too many film festivals happening at that time that I overlooked a cinematic gem like that.
Hope the NBR throws a curveball for their winners to give this season even more variety and excitement.
I've been predicting THE RIDER for Best Picture and Zhao for Best Director for months and I've always thought it was more of a wishful thinking... but then THE RIDER beats IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK, FIRST REFORMED and THE FAVORITE...! So happy! This year's WINTER'S BONE?
Hopefully the Hereditary love ends here. Sorry Toni.
Please remember we're entering the period when the Lauries and the Willems righteously win everything until the televised awards begin and then they never win anything again.
I think they just said, let's be completely irrelevant to the whole Oscar season and do our own thing.
The terrible fact that Toni only has one Oscar nomination is too dreadful to contemplate. That needs to be fixed.
I've said all along that Toni has a real shot at a nom, but she'll need to get some major love from the critics groups to go with the Gotham. That said, the Gotham has been very not predictive when it comes to best actress, with only Julianne Moore winning both the Gotham and the Oscar in her year, and more than one winner not even getting an Oscar nom.
Dg -- which I respect!
Wow, that's a good bunch of winners from where I sit: Collette, Hawke, Fisher, Burnham, Schrader, & Won't You Be My Neighbor. Well done, Gotham Awards!
I can't put into words how pleased I am for Ethan Hawke,he is truly spellbinding in First Reformed and to think most people had him as a maybe at best but Nat kept on that train.
I want to have a beer and a chat with Rachel Weisz.
Rachel Weisz demonstrates early on in the season how to give a good speech, props and all. If anyone now comes up with just alist of names, their head should be on a cutout.
Murtada -- PREACH!
I really hope Weisz gets nominated for The Favourite. So overdue for her second nomination.
and just when i think i can't love rachel weisz any more...