The New York Film Critics Circle announced its annual award winners Thursday afternoon, adding some interesting new ripples to The Awards Conversation™.
As with the Gotham Awards earlier this week, young-ish distributor A24 was the night’s biggest winner, with awards for Best Film and Best Actress ( Lady Bird ) and Best Director and Best Supporting Actor ( The Florida Project ). NYFCC also threw a couple of curveballs, naming Girls Trip scene-stealer Tiffany Haddish Best Supporting Actress and singling out Rachel Morrison’s cinematography for Mudbound – a film that may face an uphill battle for Oscar consideration, as it is being released (and thus simultaneously streamed) by Netflix. And Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, which just began screening for critics, received its first major recognition in the form of a Best Screenplay prize.
Best Actress was also the only award upon which the NYFCC and the Gothams agree. Call Me By Your Name , which won Best Feature Monday night, only took Best Actor (which went to The Disaster Artist’s James Franco at the Gothams). What does the New York honor mean for Lady Bird’s Oscar chances? Probably not much – the NYFCC has a very good history of predicting Best Picture nominees, but not winners. (Recent NYFCC Best Films have included La La Land, Carol, Boyhood, American Hustle, and Zero Dark Thirty; their Best Picture that went on to take that Oscar was 2012’s The Artist.) The Gothams, on the other hand, have predicted the past three Best Pictures. But on the other other hand, Lady Bird is amazing, so who knows.
Here’s the full list of the New York Film Critics Circle award winners:
Best Film: Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig
Best Director: Sean Baker, The Florida Project
Best Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread
Best Actress: Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird
Best Actor: Timothée Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name
Best Supporting Actress: Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip
Best Supporting Actor: Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
Best Foreign Language Film: BPM (Beats Per Minute), Robin Campillo
Best Cinematography: Mudbound, Rachel Morrison
Best Nonfiction Film: Faces Places, Agnès Varda
Best First Film: Get Out, Jordan Peele
Best Animated Film: Coco, Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina
Special Award: Career Achievement, Molly Haskell