Awards
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that 10 films remain in the running in the Visual Effects category for the 88th Academy Awards®. The films are listed below in alphabetical order: “Ant-Man” “Avengers: Age of Ultron” “Ex Machina” “Jurassic World” “Mad Max: Fury Road” “The Martian” “The Revenant” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” “Tomorrowland” “The Walk” The Academy’s Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee determined the shortlist. All members of the Visual Effects […]
Nine features will advance to the next round of voting in the Foreign Language Film category for the 88th Academy Awards®. Eighty films had originally been considered in the category. The films, listed in alphabetical order by country, are: Belgium, “The Brand New Testament,” (pictured above) Jaco Van Dormael, director; Colombia, “Embrace of the Serpent,” Ciro Guerra, director; Denmark, “A War,” Tobias Lindholm, director; Finland, “The Fencer,” Klaus Härö, director; France, “Mustang,” Deniz Gamze Ergüven, […]
The American Film Institute (AFI) announced the Official Selections of AFI AWARDS 2015, celebrating the year’s most outstanding achievements in the art of the moving image. “Since AFI’s founding in the White House Rose Garden 50 years ago, its mandate has been to celebrate our nation’s storytellers,” said Bob Gazzale, AFI President & CEO. “This is the goal of AFI AWARDS — to bring together our community as colleagues, not competitors, and to shine a […]
AARP The Magazine announced their nominees for the 2015 Movies for Grownups Awards, with Brooklyn, Joy, Love & Mercy, The Martian, and Spotlight contending in the Best Picture category. In the “Best Actress” category, nominations go to Helen Mirren (Woman in Gold), Blythe Danner (I’ll See You In My Dreams), Charlotte Rampling (45 Years), Maggie Smith (The Lady in the Van), and Lily Tomlin (Grandma). In the “Best Actor” category, Bryan Cranston (Trumbo) is nominated alongside […]
“Spotlight,” a drama exploring the Boston Globe’s investigation of widespread sexual abuse by Catholic priests, was named Best Film of 2015 by the Indiana Film Journalists Association (IFJA). In addition to Best Film, “Spotlight” won for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, Mark Ruffalo. “Room,” an adaption of the best-selling novel about a woman raising her young son inside a solitary room, won runner-up in the best film race. “Room” also earned the Best […]
25 films have been selected for this year’s addition to the 2015 National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The documentaries and shorts named to the 2015 registry include “Portrait of Jason,” (pictured above) an exploration of a gay hustler’s life in his own words; Su Friedrich’s 1990 autobiographical tale about the schism between a daughter and her father, “Sink or Swim”; and “The Story of Menstruation,” a 1946 Disney-produced film seen by nearly 93 […]
Todd Haynes’ romantic drama Carol lead the 36th London Critics’ Circle Film Awards with seven nominations including Film of the Year and both Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara competing for Actress of the Year. Close behind in the race for the awards, which are voted on by 140 members of The Critics‘ Circle Film Section, is Andrew Haigh’s marital study 45 Years, with six nominations. Unusually, two films received three nominations each: Asif Kapadia’s Amy […]
Todd Haynes’ 1950s melodrama ‘Carol’, the swooning tale of a life-changing love affair, won two top prizes at the 2015 awards of the Toronto Film Critics Association, including Best Picture, and Haynes named Best Director. The film’s stars, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, were runners-up for this year’s Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress prizes, respectively. Joshua Oppenheimer, who won the Allan King Documentary Award in 2013 for The Act of Killing, won the 2015 […]
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant leads all films in the 2016 Vancouver Film Critics Circle International section with three nominations. The nominees for Best Documentary are Amy, Cartel Land and Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, while The Assassin, Goodnight Mommy and Son of Saul are up for Best Foreign Language Film. A riveting and uplifting tale of a mother and son escaping confinement, the Canadian-Irish co-production Room has earned six VFCC nominations […]
The Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association voted the newsroom drama SPOTLIGHT as the best film of 2015, according to the results of its 22nd annual critics’ poll. This year’s awards are presented in memory of Philip Wuntch, the longtime Dallas Morning News film critic who passed away in October. Rounding out the composite list of the top 10 films of the year were THE REVENANT (2), CAROL (3), SICARIO (4), MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (5), […]
The San Francisco Film Critics Circle picked SPOTLIGHT as the Best Picture of 2015, and gave three awards to MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, two to BROOKLYN and two to LOVE & MERCY. Paul Dano and Saoirse Ronan collected Best Actor and Best Actress, the former for his portrayal of Brian Wilson’s youthful but troubled musical genius in LOVE & MERCY and the latter for essaying delicate, nuanced emotional detail as a young immigrant woman coming of […]
Film Comment’s annual end-of-the-year survey of film critics, journalists, film-section editors, and past and present contributors is out, and Todd Haynes’s Carol, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin (pictured above), and George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road take the top spots among films released in 2015. Of the films that made appearances at film festivals or special screenings worldwide but have not received stateside distribution this year, Hong Sangsoo’s Right Now, Wrong Then, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Chevalier, […]