Washington Area Film Critics Awards 2016

Posted on December 5, 2016 at 10:57 am

This morning the Washington Area Film Critics announced our award winners for 2016.

“La La Land” was singing a happy tune when The Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA) announced their top honorees for 2016 this morning. Sparkling musical love story “La La Land” was the big winner, racking up seven awards, including Best Film and Best Director (Damien Chazelle).

“La La Land,” a song-and-dance romance about two star-crossed lovers struggling to make their professional dreams a reality, also earned the Best Original Screenplay prize for Chazelle’s adept balance of intimate human drama and heart-soaring musical set-pieces. The film swept the technical categories, including Best Original Score for Justin Hurwitz’s lushly beautiful compositions and Best Cinematography for Linus Sandgren’s resplendent lensing.

WAFCA awarded Best Actor to Casey Affleck for his quietly devastating work in touching family drama “Manchester by the Sea.” In the film, Affleck plays a grieving handyman who is given custody of his teenage nephew following the sudden death of the boy’s father. Lucas Hedges, who portrays his nephew, took home the award for Best Youth Performance.

For her exquisitely authentic turn in “Jackie,” Natalie Portman was feted with Best Actress honors. Portman portrays First Lady Jackie Kennedy during the week following President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Best Supporting Actor was awarded to Mahershala Ali, as a sympathetic drug dealer who offers solace to a bullied and neglected young boy, in “Moonlight.”

Best Supporting Actress went to Viola Davis for her searing work in “Fences,” based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by August Wilson. Of special note, Davis previously earned a Tony Award for playing the same role in a 2010 Broadway production.

The Best Acting Ensemble award went to gritty Texas-set crime drama “Hell or High Water,” starring Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Jeff Bridges, Gil Birmingham and Katy Mixon.

In thoughtfully adapting author Ted Chiang’s short story “Story of Your Life,” Eric Heisserer earned Best Adapted Screenplay honors for humanist science-fiction drama “Arrival.”

Lyrical stop-motion animated adventure “Kubo and the Two Strings,” set in Ancient Japan, was awarded Best Animated Feature.

Best Documentary kudos went to “13th,” director Ava DuVernay’s incisive look at racism and the United States criminal justice system.

Paul Verhoeven’s electrifying psychological thriller “Elle” won Best Foreign Language Film.

WAFCA introduced two new categories this year. For his delicious turn as a big friendly giant who befriends a young orphaned girl in “The BFG,” Mark Rylance won the award for Best Motion Capture Performance. Tenderly playing a different kind of giant who comes to the aid of a child in need, Liam Neeson earned Best Voice Performance for “A Monster Calls.”

The Joe Barber Award for Best Portrayal of Washington, DC, given each year in honor of one of WAFCA’s cherished late members, went to “Jackie.”

The Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association comprises 50 DC-VA-MD-based film critics from television, radio, print and the Internet. Voting was conducted from December 2-4, 2016.

THE 2016 WAFCA AWARD WINNERS:

Best Film:
La La Land

Best Director:
Damien Chazelle (La La Land)

Best Actor:
Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea)

Best Actress:
Natalie Portman (Jackie)

Best Supporting Actor:
Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)

Best Supporting Actress:
Viola Davis (Fences)

Best Acting Ensemble:
Hell or High Water

Best Youth Performance:
Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea)

Best Voice Performance:
Liam Neeson (A Monster Calls)

Best Motion Capture Performance:
Mark Rylance (The BFG)

Best Original Screenplay:
Damien Chazelle (La La Land)

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Eric Heisserer, Based on the Story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang (Arrival)

Best Animated Feature:
Kubo and the Two Strings

Best Documentary:
13th

Best Foreign Language Film:
Elle

Best Production Design:
Production Designer: David Wasco;
Set Decorator: Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, SDSA (La La Land)

Best Cinematography:
Linus Sandgren, SFS (La La Land)

Best Editing:
Tom Cross, ACE (La La Land)

Best Original Score:
Justin Hurwitz (La La Land)

The Joe Barber Award for Best Portrayal of Washington, DC:
Jackie

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Awards

WAFCA Movie Award Nominations 2016

Posted on December 4, 2016 at 1:48 am

I am proud to announce the nominations for the 2016 movie awards from the Washington Area Film Critics Association.

Best Film:
Arrival
Hell or High Water
La La Land
Manchester by the Sea
Moonlight

Best Director:
Damien Chazelle (La La Land)
Barry Jenkins (Moonlight)
Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea)
David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water)
Denis Villeneuve (Arrival)

Best Actor:
Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea)
Joel Edgerton (Loving)
Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge)
Ryan Gosling (La La Land)
Denzel Washington (Fences)

Best Actress:
Amy Adams (Arrival)
Annette Bening (20th Century Women)
Ruth Negga (Loving)
Natalie Portman (Jackie)
Emma Stone (La La Land)

Best Supporting Actor:
Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)
Jeff Bridges (Hell or High Water)
Ben Foster (Hell or High Water)
Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea)
Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals)

Best Supporting Actress:
Viola Davis (Fences)
Greta Gerwig (20th Century Women)
Naomie Harris (Moonlight)
Molly Shannon (Other People)
Michelle Williams (Manchester by the Sea)

Best Acting Ensemble:
Fences
Hell or High Water
Manchester by the Sea
Moonlight
20th Century Women

Best Youth Performance:
Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea)
Lewis MacDougall (A Monster Calls)
Sunny Pawar (Lion)
Hailee Steinfeld (The Edge of Seventeen)
Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch)

Best Voice Performance:
Jason Bateman (Zootopia)
Auli’i Cravalho (Moana)
Ellen DeGeneres (Finding Dory)
Ginnifer Goodwin (Zootopia)
Liam Neeson (A Monster Calls)

Best Motion Capture Performance:
Liam Neeson (A Monster Calls)
Mark Rylance (The BFG)

Best Original Screenplay:
Taylor Sheridan (Hell or High Water)
Damien Chazelle (La La Land)
Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea)
Barry Jenkins, Story by Tarell Alvin McCraney (Moonlight)
Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou (The Lobster)

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Eric Heisserer, Based on the Story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang (Arrival)
August Wilson, Based on his Play (Fences)
Luke Davies, Adapted from the Memoir “A Long Way Home” by Saroo Brierley (Lion)
Patrick Ness, Based on his Novel (A Monster Calls)
Tom Ford, Based on the Novel “Tony and Susan” by Austin Wright (Nocturnal Animals)

Best Animated Feature:
Finding Dory
Kubo and the Two Strings
Moana
Sausage Party
Zootopia

Best Documentary:
Gleason
I Am Not Your Negro
O.J.: Made in America
13th
Weiner

Best Foreign Language Film:
Elle
Julieta
The Handmaiden
The Salesman
Toni Erdmann

Best Production Design:
Production Designer: Patrice Vermette; Key Decorator: Paul Hotte (Arrival)
Production Designer: Stuart Craig; Set Decorator: Anna Pinnock (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them)
Production Designer: Jean Rabasse, ADC; Set Decorator: Véronique Melery (Jackie)
Production Designer: David Wasco; Set Decorator: Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, SDSA (La La Land)
Craig Lathrop (The Witch)

Best Cinematography:
Bradford Young, ASC (Arrival)
Stéphane Fontaine, AFC (Jackie)
Linus Sandgren, SFS (La La Land)
James Laxton (Moonlight)
Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC (Nocturnal Animals)

Best Editing:
Joe Walker, ACE (Arrival)
Sebastián Sepúlveda (Jackie)
Tom Cross, ACE (La La Land)
Nat Sanders, Joi McMillon (Moonlight)
Blu Murray (Sully)

Best Original Score:
Jóhann Jóhannsson (Arrival)
Mica Levi (Jackie)
Justin Hurwitz (La La Land)
Nicholas Britell (Moonlight)
Cliff Martinez (The Neon Demon)

The Joe Barber Award for Best Portrayal of Washington, DC:
Jackie
Jason Bourne
Loving
Miss Sloane
Snowden

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Awards

Understanding “Arrival”

Posted on November 26, 2016 at 8:00 am

Still trying to figure out “Arrival?” These might help:

In the Washington Post, Michael O’Sullivan explains more about what a linguist does, with some comments from the woman who helped to inspire the character played by Amy Adams, Jessica Coon.

Linguists, Coons explains, aren’t so much glorified translators as they are theoreticians, more interested in the why of humankind’s natural affinity for language acquisition, when other species aren’t hard-wired for it.

In Entertainment Weekly, Darren Franich is one of the few people writing about the film to dismiss its aspirations of profundity.

There’s a phony core to Arrival, though, which emerges gradually and then suddenly. The film opens with the birth, life, and death of Banks’ daughter. The devastation of her loss haunts the film; mother-daughter scenes play through the movie. It seems like a character note, a clever bit of arc-setting: Banks, grieving the loss of her child, must now midwife our communication with an entirely new species. Perhaps you would say: Having cut herself off from humanity, she must now connect humanity to the stars. Or maybe not everything is plot-essential; maybe this is a movie daring enough to suggest that the characters have a life outside of the constraints of the movie.

But Arrival, turns out, is entirely a Plot Movie. Every character trait and hanging line of dialogue is hermetically sealed into the architecture of what amounts to a Big Twist. As Banks learns the aliens’ language, her consciousness comes unstuck in time. The daughter we’ve been seeing hasn’t even been born yet.

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Movie Aliens — How Do the Creatures in “Arrival” Compare?

Posted on November 14, 2016 at 11:18 pm

If you like movies about aliens, be sure to read Stephanie Merry’s great look at 40 years of movie extraterrestrials in the Washington Post.

The aliens in “Arrival” are spectacular, and that’s no small feat. In most “first contact” movies, the otherworldly creatures almost always let us down. Either they’re predictable — you know, little green men speaking an echoey, indecipherable language or stereotypical “Greys” with the big eyes and the egghead — or they look fake.

Carlos Huante tested many iterations with director Denis Villeneuve before they settled on the final design for “Arrival”… He settled on characters that tap into conflicting emotions: They’re serene yet daunting and huge yet indistinct. They’re heptapods, meaning they have seven legs, and they look like a cross between a giant hand and a squid; their “fingers” resemble starfish that emit an inky, smoky substance, which is how they express their entirely visual language.

They are strange but graceful. Other movie aliens have ranged from the humanoid to the insect-like, from the endearing (“E.T.,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) to the creepy and strange (“Mars Attacks”) to the all-out terrifying (“Alien,” “War of the Worlds,” “Pacific Rim”). Merry’s article gives credit to the talented and imaginative designers who created aliens that were enticingly strange and yet believable.

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For Your Netflix Queue Movie History

Arrival

Posted on November 10, 2016 at 5:26 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for brief strong language
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Very sad death of a child, peril
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	November 11, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	February 13, 2017
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01LTHYE0O

It’s called “Arrival.” Not “Attack” or “War of the Worlds.” In this thought-provoking, conceptually ambitious film, the creatures from another world just…arrive. At twelve points around the globe, huge, monolithic spacecraft that look like flying saucers turned sideways are suddenly just there. What do you do? How do you determine the intentions and capacities for harm from a species of creature with whom you do not have the most fundamental experiences and assumptions in common? Do they even have a language we are capable of understanding? Do they have the capacity to speak or write? Do we have the capacity to understand? Is this “ET” or “Battlefield Earth?” Or maybe that “Twilight Zone” episode where the book the aliens bring titled To Serve Man turns out to be a cookbook?

And how can we tell? This is not one of those sci-fi movies where the aliens get some TV signals and teach themselves English by watching game shows and sitcoms. So, the US military seeks out a linguist (Amy Adams as Dr. Louise Banks) because before we can decide what our response will be, we have to try to find a way to figure out how to communicate with them. “Language is the foundation of civilization,” she says to another expert being transported to the alien ship with her. “No,” he tells her. “It is science.” He is a physicist (Jeremy Renner as Dr. Ian Donnelly). If you think that both sets of skills will be necessary, that they will find a way to communicate, and find some connection with one another as well, you are right, but it will still surprise you all the way to the end.

Director Denis Villeneuve is not afraid to take on big issues and complex questions. And, as always in movies about aliens, it is more about who we are than who they are. Positioning us against creatures who are completely unknown requires us to think more deeply about our assumptions and capabilities.

Louise figures out a way to begin to communicate with the floating squid-like creatures. But is the word they are conveying “tool” or “weapon?” And will humans around the world be able to find a way to work together or will one country undermine our efforts to communicate by attacking the alien ships? We may be better at communicating with other species than our own.

The details really matter here and production designer Patrice Vermette fills the screen with thoughtful, illuminating touches from the Brancusi-like sculptural curves of the spacecraft to the calligraphy-like symbols created by the aliens. Striking images inspire awe and wonder in us as they do the characters. And the Chomsky-esque notions that language shapes our thinking even more than our thinking shapes language is conveyed in the film’s own structure as well as its dialog. Ultimately, it is a reminder of the power of communication, with movies themselves as one of humanity’s best examples.

Parents should know that this movie’s theme includes worldwide threats, with some peril, very sad illness and death of a child, divorce, and some strong language.

Family discussion: Which is the foundation of civilization, language or science? Or is it something else? What would you ask the aliens?

If you like this, try: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “2001: A Space Odyssey”