Lady Bird Conquers The National Society Of Film Critics

As the National Society of Film Critics earlier announced their winners (and runners-up), awards season is very much feeling like the latter of the high school exams, and the kids are just copying the other answer. That sensation is not, of course, the fault of the NSFC. This is the way the cookie crumbles every single year. The same batch of movies winning the same kinds of awards. Some years are divided between more films, some it is between just a select few. The NSFC winners (and runners-up), while dominated by Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, do not appear to offer anything new that can change the current awards tide.

Two more wins for Gerwig (Director and Screenplay), with Laurie Metcalf, Willem Dafoe and Sally Hawkins continuing their acting victories. Daniel Kaluuya nabbed Best Actor, and Roger Deakins grabbed Best Cinematography. I suppose the freshest victory might be Graduation winning in the Foreign Language category. Meanwhile, Phantom Thread and Get Out were heavy runners-up.

Here are the winners in full:

BEST PICTURE: Lady Bird (Runners-up: Get Out; Phantom Thread)

BEST DIRECTOR: Greta Gerwig – Lady Bird (Runners-up: Paul Thomas Anderson – Phantom Thread; Jordan Peele – Get Out)

BEST ACTOR: Daniel Kaluuya – Get Out (Runners-up: Daniel Day-Lewis – Phantom Thread; Timothée Chalamet – Call Me by Your Name)

BEST ACTRESS: Sally Hawkins – The Shape of Water (Runners-up: Saoirse Ronan – Lady Bird; Cynthia Nixon – A Quiet Passion; Frances McDormand – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Willem Dafoe – The Florida Project (Runners-up: Michael Stuhlbarg – Call Me by Your Name – The Shape of Water – The Post; Sam Rockwell – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Laurie Metcalf – Lady Bird (Runners-up: Lesley Manville – Phantom Thread; Allison Janney – I, Tonya)

BEST SCREENPLAY: Greta Gerwig – Lady Bird (Runners-up: Jordan Peele – Get Out; Paul Thomas Anderson – Phantom Thread)

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM: Graduation (Runners-up: Faces Places; BPM (Beats Per Minute))

BEST NON-FICTION FILM: Faces Places (Runners-up: Ex Libris: The New York Public Library; Dawson City: Frozen Time)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Roger Deakins – Blade Runner 2049 (Runners-up: Hoyte van Hoytema- Dunkirk; Alexis Zabe – The Florida Project)

SPECIAL CITATION FOR A FILM AWAITING U.S. DISTRIBUTION: Spoor – Agnieszka Holland

BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM: Good Luck – Ben Russell

FILM HERITAGE AWARD: One Way or Another: Black Women’s Cinema 1970-1991 – BAMcinématek; Dan Talbot for his pioneering work as an exhibitor and distributor in bringing worldwide cinema to the United States