A Constant Visual Feast

Well: We did it.

It’s not often that a critics group’s awards match up closely with my own feelings, and if I’m being really nitpicky, this year’s Boston Online Film Critics Association awards miss a few marks for me; if you know me well and you’ve followed this blog since I started bitching about a certain horror movie this past June, you can guess what those “marks” happen to be, blindfolded and with both hands tied behind your back while suspended upside down over a vat of very bad movies. And I guess I’m disappointed in our choice in documentary, not because Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is bad, but because it’s an easy choice (and it’s nowhere near as good as Hale County This Morning, This Evening). 

But there’s only so much dunking on everyone else’s choices I can do, half because I love my BOFCA peeps, and half because You Were Never Really Here, the single best thing I saw all year, took a ridiculous number of awards home with it, including best picture, best director, best editing, and best score, topping every other movie awarded in the bunch. (As a tertiary thing, I’m also really happy with the diversity of movies on display here.) 

So: Happy 2018. You can read over the full scope of the BOFCA awards here. (And if you aren’t already, you should follow BOFCA on social media.) And if you’re curious, you can find my personal ballot below, and of course you are curious.

PICTURE
1 – You Were Never Really Here
2 – Hale County This Morning, This Evening
3 – Cold War
4 – The Rider
5 – First Reformed
6 – Mandy
7 – Shoplifters
8 – Happy as Lazzaro
9 – Paddington 2
10 – If Beale Street Could Talk

DIRECTOR
1 – Lynne Ramsay, You Were Never Really Here
2 – Pawel Pawlikowski, Cold War
3 – Chloe Zhao, The Rider

ACTOR
1 – Nicolas Cage, Mandy
2 – Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here
3 – Ethan Hawke, First Reformed

ACTRESS
1 – Sakura Ando, Shoplifters
2 – Yalitza Aparicio, Roma
3 – Kiki Layne, If Beale Street Could Talk

SUPP ACTOR
1 – Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
2 – Brian Tyree Henry, If Beale Street Could Talk
3 – Steven Yeun, Burning

SUPP ACTRESS
1 – Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
2 – Andrea Riseborough, Mandy
3 – Ashlie Atkinson, BlacKkKlansman

ENSEMBLE
1 – If Beale Street Could Talk
2 – Shoplifters
3 – The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

SCREENPLAY
1 – Paul Schrader, First Reformed
2 – Nicole Holofcener & Jeff Whitty, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
3 – Tamara Jenkins, Private Life

FOREIGN
1 – Cold War
2 – Shoplifters
3 – Happy as Lazzaro

DOCUMENTARY
1 – Hale County This Morning, This Evening
2 – Bisbee ‘17
3 – Minding the Gap

ANIMATED
1 – Liz and the Blue Bird
2 – Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
3- Night is Short, Walk On Girl

CINEMATOGRAPHY
1 – Łukasz Żal, Cold War
2 – James Laxton, If Beale Street Could Talk
3 –  Kondo Ryuto, Shoplifters

EDITING
1 – Joe Bini, You Were Never Really Here
2 – RaMell Ross, Hale County This Morning, This Evening
3 – Jarosław Kamiński, Cold War

SCORE
1 – Jonny Greenwood, You Were Never Really Here
2 – Nicholas Britell, If Beale Street Could Talk
3 – Jóhann Jóhannsson, Mandy

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN FILM
The Other Side of the Wind