The Boston Society of Film Critics Honors Nomadland


Like all things this year, 2020’s Awards Season is a bit strange.  Because the Academy foolishly decided to extend the Oscar-eligibility window to February, several groups sold out and moved their annual awards back as well.  The National Board of Review, for instance, won’t be giving out their awards until February or something stupid like that.

Fortunately, some groups — like the Boston Society of Film Critics — are continuing to honor the best of 2020 at the end of 2020.  I love these groups because they’re reminding us that these awards are supposed to be about the movies and not about influencing the Academy.  I mean — seriously, the best films of 2020 should be films that came out in 2020, not films that came out in 2020 and the first two months of 2021.

On that note, earlier today, the Boston Society of Film Critics announced their picks for the best of 2020.

And here they are:

Best Picture
Nomadland
Runners Up: First Cow

Best Foreign Language Film
La Llorona
Runner Up – The Painted Bird

Best Director
Chloé Zhao – Nomadland
Runner Up: Kelly Reichardt – First Cow

Best Ensemble
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Runner Up: Minari

Best Actor
Anthony Hopkins – The Father
Runner Up: Riz Ahmed – Sound of Metal

Best Actress
Sidney Flanigan – Never Rarely Sometimes Always
​Runner Up: Julia Garner – The Assistant

Best Supporting Actor
Paul Raci – Sound of Metal
Runner Up: Brian Dennehy – Driveways

Best Supporting Actress
Youn Yuh-jung – Minari
Runner Up: Amanda Seyfried – Mank

Best Screenplay
I’m Thinking Of Ending Things
​Runner Up: First Cow

Best New Filmmaker
Florian Zeller – The Father
Runner Up: Autumn de Wilde – Emma.

Best Documentary
Collective
​Runner Up: The Painter & The Thief

Best Animated Feature
The Wolf House
​Runner Up: Wolfwalkers

Best Cinematography
Nomadland
Runner Up: Lover’s Rock

Best Editing
I’m Thinking Of Ending Things
Runner Up: Nomadland

Best Score
Minari
Runner Up: Mank

Belatedly, Here Are The Gotham Award Nominations!


The Gotham nominations were announced on Thursday and I totally missed them!

Seriously, that’s how crazy this year has been.

Anyway, with so much up in the air, it’s probably debatable how much anything can be gleaned about the state of the Oscar race from these nominations.  In fact, even in a normal year, the Gothams aren’t exactly known for being Oscar precursors.  However, they do honor worthy independent films and often, they encourage us to track down films that we may have otherwise missed.

Only film with a budget under $35 million were eligible for a Gotham nomination.  So, don’t look at this list and go, “OH MY GOD, WHERE’S MANK!?  WHERE’S TENENT!?”  They’re not eligible.

Anyway, here are the Gotham nominations:

Best Feature
“The Assistant”
“First Cow”
“Never Rarely Sometimes Always”
“Nomadland”
“Relic”

Best Documentary
“76 Days”
“City Hall”
“Our Time Machine”
“A Thousand Cuts”
“Time”

Best International Feature
“Bacurau”
“Beanpole”
“Cuties (Mignonnes)”
“Identifying Features”
“Martin Eden”
“Wolfwalkers”

Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award
Carlo Mirabella-Davis, “Swallow”
Rhada Blank, “The Forty Year Old Version”
Andrew Patterson, “Vast of Night”
Channing Godfrey Peoples, “Miss Juneteenth”
Alex Thompson, “Saint Frances”

Best Screenplay
“Bad Education,” Mike Makowsky
“First Cow,” Jon Raymond and Kelly Reichardt
“The Forty-Year-Old Version,” Radha Blank
“Fourteen,” Dan Sallitt
“The Vast of Night,” James Montague and Craig Sanger

Best Actor
Riz Ahmed, “Sound of Metal”
Chadwick Boseman, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
Jude Law, “The Nest”
John Magaro, “First Cow”
Jesse Plemons, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”

Best Actress
Nicole Beharie, “Miss Juneteenth”
Jessie Buckley, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”
Yuh-Jung Youn, “Minari”
Carrie Coon, “The Nest”
Frances McDormand, “Nomadland”

Breakthrough Actor
Sidney Flanigan, “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”
Jasmine Batchelor, “The Surrogate”
Kelly O’Sullivan, “Saint Frances”
Orion Lee, “First Cow”
Kingsley Ben-Adir, “One Night in Miami”

Breakthrough Series – Long Form
“The Great”
“Immigration Nation”
“P-Valley”
“Unorthodox”
“Watchmen”

Breakthrough Series – Short Form
“Betty”
“Dave”
“I May Destroy You”
“Taste the Nation”
“Work in Progress”

Here’s The Trailer For The Assistant!


Here’s the trailer for The Assistant, starring Ozark‘s Julia Garner as …. well, as an assistant.

(Of course, the correct term in administrative professional.)

I’m usually pretty skeptical of late January/early February releases but this trailer looks pretty good and the film’s been well-reviewed by some sites and people whose opinions I generally respect.  I’ve worked as an assistant in an office so, to a certain extent, I could relate to the trailer.  Of course, my experiences were never as bad as Julia Garner’s appear to have been.  For instance, it recently occurred to me that I’ve never had an employer yell at me.  Apparently, that makes me unique or something.

Anyway, prepare to take a journey into wage slavery with the trailer for The Assistant!

 

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #36: Killer Assistant (dir by Danny J. Boyle)


(Lisa is currently in the process of trying to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing all 40 of the movies that she recorded from the start of March to the end of June.  She’s trying to get it all done by the end of July 11th!  Will she make it!?  Keep visiting the site to find out!)

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The 36th film on my DVR was Killer Assistant (also known as simply The Assistant.)

Killer Assistant originally aired on Lifetime on June 20th and it won major points from me just because of the title.  Though often underappreciated, administrative assistants are the glue that hold most offices together.  If there were no administrative assistants, the entire world would literally stop spinning so I’m always happy whenever I see a movie in which the assistants finally get their revenge.

The assistant of the title is … well, he claims his name is David (Brando Eaton).  That’s not his real name, of course.  And he’s really not from a small town in upstate New York despite what he tells everyone.  He may be a shady character who stole someone else’s identity but that doesn’t mean that he’s not a good assistant!  He especially proves to be invaluable to Suzanne Austin (Arianne Zucker), an editor at a fashion magazine.  As Suzanne struggles to put together the magazine’s 50th anniversary edition (all the while being watched by her boss, who bare a probably not coincidental resemblance to Anna Wintour), David proves to be a great source of ideas.  When Suzanne thinks that she’s seen her husband (George Stults) cheating on her, David proves to be a great source of comfort.

Which is another way of saying that they end up having a one night stand.  How passionate do things get?  So passionate that the sex scene is actually shown in slow motion.  (You know that Lifetime is getting serious when they start using the slow mo.)  However, the next morning, Suzanne announces that the previous night was a “mistake” and tells David that he is fired.

David, however, has other ideas.  After all, he already went through the trouble of attacking one of Suzanne’s other assistants just to make sure that he’d be able to keep his job.  David tells Suzanne that he’s not going anywhere.  He’s going to continue to answer the phones for her and schedule meetings for her.  And if she has a problem with that, he’ll just show everyone the little film that he made of the two of them during the previous night.

So, Suzanne is stuck with David.  And David is now flirting with her rebellious teenage daughter, Calista (Natalie Lander).

Anyway, Killer Assistant is rather ludicrous but I enjoyed it because 1) it was about a crazy administrative assistant and 2) it took place at a fashion magazine and was, therefore, full of bitchy dialogue.  Plus, Brando Eaton did a really good job in the role of David.  He was just so clean-cut, helpful, and cheerful, no matter what terrible things he was plotting.  As I watched the film, I found myself imagining a possible spin-off in which Suzanne is a guest judge on Project Runway and David blackmails her into praising the ugliest dress.  It was fun!

(For those keeping track of my efforts to clean out my DVR, that’s 36 films down and 4 to go!)