What the National Review Board and the Gotham Awards really mean

The ultimate goal of every rewards race is to show your movie. The more people who see and love it, the more likely you are to win an appointment or win. The actual impact of the first awards, such as the National Board of Review (a hodgepodge of educators, moviegoers and critics from New York) and the idiosyncratic Gothams (continuous version of the Independent Spirit Awards in New York), involves moving other groups of rewards such as criticism. , SAG and Academy to movies they might otherwise have overlooked.

For example, most award observers have long assumed that Paul Schrader's "First Reformed" film ($ 3.5 million domestic, A24) would register with the end-of-year groups and would as an Oscar nominee for an appointment expected for a long-awaited script – if someone deserves a career The award is the creator of "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull". Now "First Reformed" and his extraordinary performance of Ethan Hawke (nominated for "Training Day" and "Boyhood") come to the fore. It's not a bad thing that "First Reformed" is seen by many people at the end of the year. It will be fresh in their minds. And Hawke also gains credibility thanks to his strong achievement of "Blaze".

Elsie Fisher and Bo Burnham

Michael Buckner / Variety / REX / Shutterstock

Similarly, A24 has always relied on the independent film community and critics to stimulate the dramatic "Eighth Grade" (Metascore: 87, US $ 13.5 million), and the intelligent horror film "Hereditary" ( Metascore: 87, 44 million US dollars) at the end of the year. For example, Gotham's winners Bo Burnham (who also won the NBR Best Director) and actresses Elsie Fisher and Toni Collette join the conversation for the director, the original screenplay and the best actress, respectively. They may not succeed – unless enough SAG voters and acting voters do not watch these films. NBR has included "eighth grade" and "first reform" among his best films. While few people watched Michael Sheen's passionate tribute by Gotham to Rachel Weisz (who shared the Special Jury Award for overall performance with her co-stars "The Favorite" Olivia Colman and Emma Stone ) or his thank you speech by giving him some public attention for a superb performance.

Joshua James Richards Director of Photography on "The Rider" by Chloe Zhao

"The Rider" marks the first time that a film is nominated for the Independent Spirit Awards one year and wins the Gotham Best Feature the following. Although the highly-rated Sony Classics Release (US $ 2.4 million) has propelled accomplished screenwriter and director Chloe Zhao into the arms of Hollywood – she is about to direct "The Eternals" of Marvel – it's all about it. is a documentary-fiction hybrid with extraordinary performances by non-professional actors unlikely to register with the voters of the Academy.

Another thing to remember about these two voting groups is that they are small, they do not overlap with guilds or academy, and vote early, missing some last minute movies (this year, "Mary Poppins Returns" made the high place of the NBR List of films, but not "Vice"). Peter Farrelly's green book, winner of the NBR Award for Best Picture, is the real road movie of the 1960s on jazz pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and his driver, bouncer Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), plays like a gangbusters with the Hollywood (mostly white) Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Academy, film critics and guilds, despite some reluctance from the black community, including IndieWire's Tambay Obenson.

The question is how sticky the reaction will be. In addition to previous Oscar winners such as "Driving Miss Daisy" or "In the Heat of the Night" (examples of films suggested by James Baldwin have allowed whites to feel better), other traditional dishes, comparable to " Green Book ", are" Seabiscuit ". or "The blind side."

NBR, more widespread, often misses the mark to prefigure the winners of the Oscars. Past top columnists include Oscar nominees "The Post", "The Social Network", "Zero Dark Thirty", "Her", "Mad Max: Fury Road" and "Manchester by the Sea" as well as non-fiction. candidate "A year of the most violent". Mortensen (NBR winners), Mortensen ("Green Book"), director of the NBR this year, is the director and star of "A Star Is Born". Bradley Cooper and his teammates Lady Gaga and Sam Elliott, as well as Regina King, actress lead secondary actress for Barry Jenkins' adaptation to Baldwin's "If Beale Street Could Talk."

Courtesy of Sundance Institute, photo by Scott Green

"Leave No Trace" ($ 6 million, Bleecker Street) by Debra Granik, whose New Zealand actress Thomasin McKenzie won the other film that won over the first prize groups, was awarded by NBR.

It is clear that "The Incredibles 2", winner of the NBR, is one of the pioneers of the Oscar for best animated film.

In the documentary race, two leaders: the Gotham public winner "Do you want to be my neighbor?" (Focus Features) and the winner of the NBR "RBG" (CNN / Magnolia), while coming to the Is the best of Gotham Documentary "Hale County this morning, tonight" (Guild of the cinema). This film was not one of the NBR's five most important documentaries, including "Crime + Punishment," "Free Solo," "Minding the Gap," "Three Identical Strangers," and "Won & # 39; t you be my Neighbor Finish on the list of 15 Academy Award nominees on December 17.

"Cold War", winner of the Amazon prize in Cannes, has won the award for Best Foreign Language Film from NBR, which should challenge the movie "Roma" of Netflix, which has landed in the Top 10 and so has not been retained.

The separation of the Top Films and Top 10 Independent Films from the NBR does not make it possible to precisely determine which independent films make which list. Inevitably, the independent list looks like rans.

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