November 29, 2018
by Carla Hay
With three prizes, including Best Picture, “Roma” was the top winner of the 2018 New York Film Critics Circle Awards, which were announced on November 29. The movie, which is inspired by writer/director Alfonso Cuarón’s childhood in Mexico, also won the awards for Best Director and Best Cinematography. Cuarón is also the movie’s cinematographer and one of the producers. The awards will be presented at New York City’s Tao Downtown on January 7, 2019.
The New York Film Critics Circle tends to award independent art-house movies instead of movies from major studios. That might explain why the New York Film Critics Circle completely snubbed Warner Bros. Pictures’ “A Star Is Born” and Universal Pictures’ “Green Book,” which have been racking up awards elsewhere, such as the National Board of Review Awards. In fact, the only movie from a major studio that the New York Film Critics Circle awarded for 2018 is Sony/Columbia Pictures’ “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” which won the prize of Best Animated Film. The “Spider-Man” victory is somewhat of an upset for Pixar’s “Incredibles 2,” which has been the presumed frontrunner in all the awards for animated films released in 2018.
Other big surprises: “Support the Girls” star Regina Hall won for Best Actress, in a race that many people have predicted would be dominated by Lady Gaga for “A Star Is Born.” The NYFCC Award is the first big prize for Hall’s role in “Support the Girls,” a little-seen comedy in which she portrays the no-nonsense manager of a Hooters-style restaurant. Richard E. Grant, who plays a charming con artist in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” won the prize for Best Supporting Actor. It’s his first major award for his role in the movie, and the prize comes at a time when many Oscar pundits have named “Green Book’s” Mahershala Ali as a Best Supporting Actor frontrunner. Although Hall and Grant were nominated for IFP Gotham Awards for their respective movies, they didn’t win at that award show.
“First Reformed,” a drama about a clergyman and his secrets, won two prizes: Best Actor (for Ethan Hakwe) and Best Screenplay (for writer/director Paul Schrader). Other winners of the 2018 NYFCC Awards include “If Beale Street Could Talk” co-star Regina King (Best Supporting Actress); writer/director Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade” (Best First Feature); and director Bing Liu’s skateboarder documentary “Minding the Gap” (Best Nonfiction Film).
Click here for an updated tally of major awards won by movies that have a 2018 U.S. release date.
2018 returning NYFCC chairman Eric Kohn, who is IndieWire’s chief film critic, commented in a press release: “Our membership expanded this year and so did the sheer volume of great movies worth voting on. We’re so thrilled to spread the love with these terrific films and performances, all of which deliver fresh, exciting visions of the world. From the poetic heights of ‘Roma’ to the haunting paranoia of ‘First Reformed’ and the mind-bending visual sophistication of ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,’ every single winner this year features a complex, unpredictable vision. Conventionality is for conventional awards shows. Our January dinner will certainly not fall into that category.”
Founded in 1935, the New York Film Critics Circle consists of critics from several media outlets. The organization meets in New York every year to vote for its awards, which honor films that were released in the U.S. in that calendar year.
A full list of voting members is below:
Eric Kohn (Chair)
IndieWire
Alison Willmore (Vice Chair)
BuzzFeed
Marshall Fine (General Manager)
Freelance
MEMBERS:
Sam Adams
Slate
John Anderson
Freelance
Melissa Anderson
FourFrames
Michael Atkinson
The Village Voice
Richard Brody
The New Yorker
Dwight Brown
NNPA Syndication
Kameron Austin Collins
Vanity Fair
Bilge Ebiri
The Village Voice
David Edelstein
New York Magazine
David Ehrlich
IndieWire
Kate Erbland
IndieWire
David Fear
Rolling Stone
Graham Fuller
Culture Trip
Owen Gleiberman
Variety
Ed Gonzalez
Slant Magazine
Steven Greydanus
The National Catholic Register
Rafer Guzman
Newsday
Jordan Hoffman
The Guardian
Caryn James
BBC
Stuart Klawans
The Nation
Richard Lawson
Vanity Fair
Tomris Laffly
Time Out New York
Violet Lucca
Film Comment
Joe Morgenstern
The Wall Street Journal
Sheila O’Malley
Rogerebert.com
Nick Pinkerton
Freelance
Peter Rainer
Christian Science Monitor
Rex Reed
New York Observer
Joshua Rothkopf
Time Out New York
Alan Scherstuhl
The Village Voice
Matt Zoller Seitz
Rogerebert.com
David Sims
The Atlantic
Matt Singer
ScreenCrush
Kyle Smith
National Review
Dana Stevens
Slate
Sara Stewart
New York Post
Amy Taubin
Artforum
Peter Travers
Rolling Stone
Keith Uhlich
Freelance
Elizabeth Weitzman
The Wrap
Stephen Whitty
The Star-Ledger
Alissa Wilkinson
Vox
Emily Yoshida
New York Magazine
Stephanie Zacharek
Time Magazine
Here is the complete list of winners of the 2018 New York Film Critics Circle Awards:
Best Film: “Roma”
Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón (“Roma”)
Best First Film: “Eighth Grade” (Bo Burnham)
Best Actor: Ethan Hawke (“First Reformed”)
Best Actress: Regina Hall (“Support the Girls”)
Best Supporting Actor: Richard E. Grant (“Can You Ever Forgive Me?”)
Best Supporting Actress: Regina King (“If Beale Street Could Talk”)
Best Non-Fiction Film: “Minding the Gap” (Bing Liu)
Best Screenplay: “First Reformed” (Paul Schrader)
Best Cinematography: “Roma” (Alfonso Cuarón)
Best Foreign Language Film: “Cold War” (Pawel Pawlikowski)
Best Animated Film: “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman)
Special Award: Kino Classics Box Set “Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers”
Special Award: David Schwartz, stepping down as Chief Film Curator at Museum of the Moving Image after 33 years