And the Winners Are….Washington Area Film Critics Awards 2021

Posted on December 6, 2021 at 4:31 pm

“Belfast” headlined a diverse roster of winners when The Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA) announced their top honorees for 2021 this morning. A semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama from filmmaker Kenneth Branagh centering on a nine-year-old boy and his family during the Troubles in 1969 Northern Ireland, “Belfast” won Best Film and Branagh took home Best Original Screenplay.

Jane Campion won Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for “The Power of the Dog,” based on Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel, a provocative western of toxic masculinity and repressed longing set in the big sky country of 1925 Montana. As a college-aged young man with an increasing enigmatic connection to his petulant rancher uncle, Kodi Smit-McPhee was also awarded Best Supporting Actor for the film.

WAFCA awarded Best Actress to Kristen Stewart for her stirring portrayal of Diana, Princess of Wales, reaching the life-altering decision to leave her marriage to Prince Charles and the royal family over the 1991 Christmas holiday, in Pablo Larraín’s “Spencer.” Also superbly playing a late real-life figure, talented composer, lyricist and playwright Jonathan Larson, Andrew Garfield won Best Actor for Lin Manuel-Miranda’s musical-drama “tick, tick…BOOM!” Best Supporting Actress went to Aunjanue Ellis, wonderful as Oracene “Brandy” Price, mother of future tennis greats Venus and Serena Williams, in Reinaldo Marcus Green’s “King Richard.”

Best Acting Ensemble accolades were awarded to Fran Kranz’s “Mass,” an emotionally shattering drama starring Ann Dowd, Reed Birney, Martha Plimpton and Jason Isaacs, as grieving parents who meet in the wake of a tragic school shooting. For Best Youth Performance, Woody Norman won for Mike Mills’ “C’mon C’mon,” as a nine-year-old boy who forms a bond with his uncle while his mother is out of town.

Mike Rianda’s vibrant sci-fi comedy “The Mitchells vs. the Machines,” about a family road trip that turns into a fight to save the world from a robot uprising, took Best Animated Feature honors, while Best Voice Performance went to Awkwafina for her standout work as excitable dragon Sisu in “Raya and the Last Dragon.” Best Documentary kudos went to “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. Best International/Foreign Language Film was awarded to Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Japanese drama “Drive My Car.”

In technical categories, Denis Villeneuve’s sweeping fantasy epic “Dune” was the major victor, winning Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score, while Best Editing went to “tick, tick…BOOM!”

The Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association comprises over 65 DC-VA-MD-based film critics from television, radio, print and the Internet. Voting was conducted from December 3-5, 2021.

THE 2021 WAFCA AWARD WINNERS:

Best Film:
Belfast

Best Director:
Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)

Best Actor:
Andrew Garfield (tick, tick…BOOM!)

Best Actress:
Kristen Stewart (Spencer)

Best Supporting Actor:
Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog)

Best Supporting Actress:
Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard)

Best Acting Ensemble:
Mass

Best Youth Performance:
Woody Norman (C’mon C’mon)

Best Voice Performance:
Awkwafina (Raya and the Last Dragon)

Best Original Screenplay:
Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)

Best Animated Feature:
The Mitchells vs. the Machines

Best Documentary:
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

Best International/Foreign Language Film:
Drive My Car

Best Production Design:
Patrice Vermette, Production Designer; Richard Roberts and Zsuzsanna Sipos, Set Decorators (Dune)

Best Cinematography:
Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS (Dune)

Best Editing:
Myron Kerstein, ACE; Andrew Weisblum, ACE (tick, tick…BOOM!)

Best Original Score:
Hans Zimmer (Dune)

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Belfast

Posted on November 11, 2021 at 5:53 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:

Middle School

MPAA Rating:

Rated PG-3 for strong language and some violence

Profanity:

Strong language

Alcohol/ Drugs:

Alcohol

Violence/ Scariness:

Peril and violence, mobs, sad death of a family member

Diversity Issues:

A theme of the movie

Date Released to Theaters:

September 1, 2021

Date Released to DVD:

February 28, 2022

“Buddy! Buddy!” A boy is outside playing with his friends when he hears his mother is calling him home for dinner. He does not think anything of it except perhaps that it’s too bad the game has to stop or that he is hungry, but it is the kind of moment he will look back on as an adult as a moment of perfect safety and comfort, a time of feeling completely at home, supported by the family and the community, a feeling that the world makes sense. It is the kind of memory we come back to when we miss those feelings very much.

Sir Kenneth Branagh came back to those last golden moments of childhood, as many people did, during the Great Pause of the pandemic, when so many of us, even well past childhood, felt a new sense of uncertainty. And so he wrote and directed “Belfast,” based on those moments in his own life, when he was nine, and began to understand for the first time that the world can be a dangerous place.

He hears “Buddy! BUDDY!!” again, but this is not a “come home, where dinner is ready invitation from his mother. This is a sound of pure terror. Nine-year-old Buddy (newcomer Jude Hill) lives on what was once a peaceful street in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but it has. become a center for unrest and violence due to The Troubles, the struggle between the Catholics and Protestants.

Branagh skillfully shows us the world through Buddy’s eyes, though we understand more than he does. Sometimes that is amusing. Sometimes it is heart-wrenching. Buddy’s parents are almost impossibly glamorous and beautiful, as we see through his idealized perspective, and because they are played by the gorgeous (and Irish) Jamie Dornan (Pa) and Caitriona Baize (Ma). Also in the family are grandparents played with asperity and a twinkle in the eye by Dame Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds.

Gorgeous black and white cinematography gives the film the quality of a timeless memory and there are flashes of color when the family sees some Hollywood movies like “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Another film we get a glimpse of is more to the point, “High Noon.” Buddy’s family loves their home. But The Troubles are forcing everyone to take sides. Pa, whose travel for business has added to the strain has been offered a much better-paying job in England.

Branagh expertly mingles humor and drama, shooting us what Buddy sees but does not fully understand and the way that he gives equal curiosity and weight to all of the new information he is learning and all of the new emotions that he is feeling, including some romantic sentiments about a pretty classmate. The very gifted Hill conveys the purity of these first-time experiences with great simplicity and open-heartedness. Buddy’s story (and Branagh’s) is of a very specific place and time but the bittersweet end of childhood and beginning of deeper understandings is universal and told here with tenderness and compassion.

Parents should know that this movie includes scenes of mob violence with peril and injuries and the very sad death of a family member. Characters drink and smoke and use strong language.

Family discussion: Did the family make the right decision? If you made a movie about your childhood, what story would you tell?

If you like this, try: “The Journey,” about the two men who negotiated a resolution of The Troubles and “The Commitments,” about young Irish musicians forming a music group

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