The New York Film Critics Circle awards Alfonso Cuarón and his Netflix produced, black-and-white film “Roma” with three awards including BEST FILM, BEST DIRECTOR, and BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY. Whether this will help break the Oscars stigma towards Netflix films remains to be seen, as the narrative continues. The 2015-2016 season was the first indicator that the Academy wasn’t paying much attention to Netflix fare when they failed to nominate anything from “Beasts Of No Nation,” which had tons of buzz going into the nominations and with Idris Elba even winning the Screen Actors Guild award for Best Supporting Actor, then failing to even get an Oscar nod. Last year was also told the tale when “Mudbound,” which Netflix pushed hard in the race, was only nominated for a few awards. Granted, one of them was the first female ever to be nominated in the Best Cinematography category, it still missed the Best Picture mark. Now, it seems that with an Oscar favorite director like Alfonso Cuarón, who has an Oscar for directing “Gravity,” they have no choice but to finally take the leap into into the streaming service game, which will not be going away anytime soon. An even bigger deal is the fact that “Roma” could end up in both the Best Foreign Language Feature category as well as the Best Picture category.
The NYFCC makes its own history by crowning Regina Hall as the first black woman to ever win BEST ACTRESS. She grabs the win for her leading role in “Support The Girls,” where she plays the general manager of a Hooters-like sports bar dealing with one helluva day. Regina King also earns in a win, as a black actress, in the BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS category for her role in the much talked about “If Beale Street Could Talk.” Another surprise is “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” earning BEST ANIMATED FILM, after the reviews have surfaced that it might actually be good (some calling it the best Spider-Man film ever) and currently tracking at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. This being New York, it might just be some inside love as Spider-Man is set in New York, so we will have to see what tracks throughout the rest of the critics awards. “Cold War” is the consensus BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM thus far, taking both the NYFCC award and the National Board Of Review. The Hulu Original “Minding The Gap” grabs its first win for BEST DOCUMENTARY, which is really saying something in the landscape of documentaries like “RBG,” “Three Identical Strangers,” and, yet to find a win, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”
Best Film: “Roma”
Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón – “Roma”
Best Actress: Regina Hall – “Support The Girls”
Best Actor: Ethan Hawke – “First Reformed”
Best Supporting Actor: Richard E. Grant – “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
Best Supporting Actress: Regina King – “If Beale Street Could Talk”
Best Cinematography: “Roma” – Alfonso Cuarón
Best Screenplay: “First Reformed” – Paul Schrader
Best Animated Film: “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse”
Best Documentary: “Minding The Gap”
Best Foreign Language Film: “Cold War”
Best First Film: “Eighth Grade”
Special Awards: Kino Classics Box Set “Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers”
Special Awards: David Schwartz (stepping down as Chief Film Curator at Museum of the Moving Image after 33 years)
