Precursor: 85th New York Critics Awards (2019)

The New York Film Critics Circle always enjoy being contrary and they often choose a mixture of popular and off-beat. That is very true this year with films like The Irishman and Uncut Gems being awarded side-by-side. When Parasite won Foreign Language Film and Quentin Tarantino won the screenplay award, it seemed likely The Irishman would take Best Picture and it did. The surprise was the Safdie brothers taking the director prize as they were never really in the conversation for that award. Their penchant for awarding multiple performances manifested in Laura Dern’s two-film victory in Best Supporting Actress and their love of foreign films was well represented in Antonio Banderas’ Best Actor win and the Best Cinematography win of Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

Oscar season seems to be running towards a set outcome with two of the Old Greats going for Martin Scorsese’s magnum opus. We’ll see how the Los Angeles Film Critics Association votes when they announce on Sunday and when the Chicago Film Critics Association announces later this month. The National Society of Film Critics is the last of the oldies, but they are much later than the others. It’s been awhile since a film truly ran the table. Even last year’s juggernaut, Roma, managed to lose both NBR and NSFC. The last time all five groups went with the same film, The Social Network swept in 2010, but that film didn’t win Best Picture either, so that might not be at all instructive. Before that, it was 1997 with L.A. Confidential, which is also a bad sign for The Irishman. Beyond 1996, I don’t have the records to easily access, but NBR is usually the odd one out, so Irishman could be headed for a sweep.