NYFCC loves "TÁR" and "Banshees of Inisherin"
Friday, December 2, 2022 at 4:11PM by Nathaniel R
TÁR
The New York Film Critics Circle was founded way back in 1935 and they hold a lofty place in film history given their publishing-giant of a city and their own rich history of interesting choices. For their 88th awards TÁR and The Banshees of Inisherin emerged victorious with two wins each, though a few of the other wins were quite surprising...
BEST FILM: TÁR
This heady drama about a famed conductor unravelling takes the top prize. Recent winners of this prize have included Drive My Car, First Cow, The Irishman, Roma, and Lady Bird. Though NYFCC is not attempting to predict the Oscars as some groups do this choice does bode well for TÁR's Oscar prospects; the NYFCC top pick usually makes the Oscar lineup although it's worth noting, at least in a coincidentally funny way, that in the case of Carol (2015) another glorious heady Cate Blanchett vehicle directed by a guy named Todd, it did not.
TÁR's writer/director Todd Field previously won the NYFCC "First Film" category for In the Bedroom (2001). He's now the only filmmaker to have won both categories.
BEST DIRECTOR: S. S. Rajamouli, RRR
TAR
He's the first Indian filmmaker to win this prize though NYFCC tends to be a friendly organization when it comes to embracing non-English language films.
BEST ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett, TÁR
This is Cate Blanchett's second lead win at NYFCC. She previously won for Blue Jasmine (2013). Several other actresses have also won twice. The only actresses to win three or more are Julie Christie, Sissy Spacek, Joanne Woodward, Liv Ullman, Ingrid Bergman, and Meryl Streep
BEST ACTOR: Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin and After Yang
Their taste in leading men usually aligns with Oscars (in terms of nominations but not wins) though there have been exceptions. The last man cited for two films at once was Brad Pitt for Moneyball / Tree of Life in 2011.
BEST "SUPPORTING" ACTRESS: Keke Palmer, Nope
NYFCC is known for surprising with "fun" performances winning (think Cameron Diaz for There's Something ABout Mary or Tiffany Haddish for Girls Trip). We love Keke Palmer and love her in Nope but this is in no way a "supporting" role and we wish they wouldn't encourage Category Fraud (Yes, Universal is pushing her as a "supporting" actress this year).
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All At Once
He's the first Asian to win in this category. (Best Actress is the only acting category that's never had an Asian winner now.)
BEST SCREENPLAY: Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Claudio Miranda, Top Gun: Maverick
Miranda was up for the Oscar for Benjamin Button and won that prize for Life of Pi four years later but this is his first NYFCC honor.
BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: EO (Poland)
Can it make the Oscar list? The international category is, as ever, highly competitive.
BEST NON-FICTION FILM: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
The NYFCC has much much broader taste in animation than Oscar does (with only a couple of exceptions Oscar wants their animated films to be CG adventure-comedies) so you shouldn't interpret this as meaningful in that Oscar race.
BEST FIRST FILM: Charlotte Wells, Aftersun
This is the fourth consecutive year that this prize has gone to a female filmmaker, a trend that began with Mati Diop (Atlantics, 2019) though women directors have been winning this prize intermittently for a long time.
SPECIAL AWARDS
In addition to cash prizes to two students studying film/journalism: Nico Pedrero-Setzer and Greg Nussen, they also honored the following men and organizations for 2022
Jake Perlin, curator, distributor, publisher, in recognition of his indispensable contributions to film culture.
Jafar Panahi, for his dogged bravery as an artist, and for the humanity and beauty of a body of work created under the most oppressive circumstances.
dGenerate Films, For their invaluable work bringing independent films from China to a wider audience
Reader Comments (17)
I'm happy for Keke and Ke Huy Quan. I will agree with everyone that Keke's role is not a supporting performance. Still, I'm just happy she got a major acting prize.
I’m starting to think RRR might actually nab a few Oscar nominations, and the fact that India didn’t select it as their submission for Best International Film might even work in its favor. Best Director would be really surprising (though not impossible), but I think it’s at least in contention for Editing, Visual Effects, and Original Song nominations.
Otherwise nothing too unexpected here except maybe Keke Palmer, but with the Supporting Actress category being so open it doesn’t feel THAT surprising.
LAFCA is even friendlier to international films, so I’m halfway expecting them to make a big play for something like Decision to Leave or Triangle of Sadness. Either that, or it’s also struck me as a possibility that TÁR could dominate the critics’ awards even if it’s almost definitely not winning Best Picture.
The Keke win is such an annoying thing where you want to admire it - a left-field choice for a fun performance in a cool movie - but just reward her in lead! Cate will win other prizes.
Anyway - the RRR win is fun, and Cate, Colin, Ke Huy are all wins that I'd love to see translate to Oscar wins.
New York film critics inveigled by the practical camerawork of TOP GUN above actual interesting images? That film looks awful.
Do we have any info about possible runners up? Or maybe how the voting went, i.e. were there a lot of contenders at the beginning or did, say Cate Blanchett, get Best Actress or the first ballot?
I hope this victory bumps RRR into serious consideration for a Best Picture nod.
No shade to Keke, but this kinda makes me look at NYFCC differently tbh... not only is that unquestionably a leading role, it's not awards-worthy by any stretch of the imagination.
Of course, I've been less impressed with Peele's filmography than most, but Nope was the definition of underwhelming to me. It's not even a slight against Palmer, but I didn't think any of the roles in that movie had all that much to do.
This would've been a cool way to reward Jamie Lee Curtis or Stephanie Hsu, heck even Gabrielle Union... so many great supporting actress performances this year. That's not one of them.
And trust me, when I heard Keke Palmer was gonna be in Jordan Peele's next flick, I so wanted it to be her ~*moment*~ ...meaning I'm not just a hater lol.
I doubt this will propel her much further in the race, but if the Academy were to nominate her after snubbing Lupita in a far more challenging, dynamic Jordan Peele role, as well as JLo in a way more fun, fully-loaded star turn, I'd be real disappointed.
Super ecstatic for Quan and Farrell. I'm usually against an actor winning everything in a season, but I wouldn't mind if these two swept it all on the way to the Oscars.
God, I still need to see RRR!
Wow, my gay brain went off.
Keke's win and my subsequent rant catapulted me into a "How DARE the academy snub JLo of her career Oscar nomination with a performance that was worthy of the win!" rabbit hole...
So much so that I failed to mention how ecstatic I am for Quan, and I really hope wouldn't be mad If he steamrolled his way to the Oscar podium.
I know it's early but looking good for Farrell/McDonagh.
BLANCHETT IS BACK! 🥂🍾✨️
4 acting wins are better than 2. That should be our new battle now that we've definitely lost the one with category fraud.
I'm very happy for the win for Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. It's still my favorite film of the year, and I've loved many releases this year.
I'm just going to leave this pic here: https://twitter.com/La_Pfeiffer/status/1598717404271345679
Omg if Ke Huy Quan can just go ahead and steamroll Best Supporting Actor and make all my dreams come true I'd really appreciate that. Thank u powers that be for hearing my prayer, amen.
To give Palmer Best Actress wouldn't have been deserved but less of a head scratcher than the supporting placement,I found her to be the most consistently annoying thing in the film,my sis thought so to and if she thought that it must be true.
The Cate Blanchett tsunami has officially begun.