WFCC PAULINE KAEL SPECIAL JURY AWARDS 2019

WFCC PAULINE KAEL SPECIAL JURY AWARDS 2019

'Criticism is the only thing that stands between the audience and advertising.' - Pauline Kael

BEST FEMALE ACTION HEROES



Cynthia Erivo, Harriet
Runner-Up: Keira Knightley, Official Secrets



THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD [Supporting performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored]
 

Janelle Monae, Harriet
Runner-Up: Anna Paquin, The Irishman

MOMMIE DEAREST WORST SCREEN MOM OF THE YEAR AWARD

Penny Fleck, Joker - Directed by Todd Phillips

WFCC HALL OF SHAME [Individual Member Picks]

*Hustlers - This was NOT a female empowering film as it was billed to be. But rather an eye candy vehicle for men to watch Jennifer Lopez show off her butt and pole dancing skills.

*Vita & Virginia: For portraying Virginia Woolf as a waif instead of a force of nature.

*Roger Ailes: A monster, who this year was especially exposed for his monstrosity both on film in Bombshell, and on television in The Loudest Voice.

*Luc Besson: Who has been officially charged with sexual assault by at least nine women. The actions not only affected the lives of the women assaulted, but also all the people associated with his latest film, Anna.

*John Krasinski: The actor brags about soliciting CIA instructions for his macho 'thank you to the CIA every day' role as 'Next Stop Venezuela' Jack Ryan, in that repugnant propaganda infomercial for US imperialism's neo-Monroe Doctrine assault on Latin America.

The Women Film Critics Circle Awards 2019!

                                                                                                       
BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (dir. Céline Sciamma)

Runner-up: Little Women (dir. Greta Gerwig)

BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN

Harriet (dir. Kasi Lemmons)

Runner-up: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (dir. Céline Sciamma)

BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER (Screenwriting Award)
Greta Gerwig (Little Women)

Runner-up: Céline Sciamma (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)

BEST ACTRESS

Tie: Cynthia Erivo (Harriet) and Lupita Nyong'o (US)

Runner-up: Renée Zellweger (Judy)

BEST ACTOR

Adam Driver (Marriage Story)

Runner-up: Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)

BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (dir. Céline Sciamma)

Runner-up: Atlantics (dir. Mati Diop)

BEST DOCUMENTARY BY OR ABOUT WOMEN

Varda by Agnès (dir. Agnès Varda)

Runner-ups: Maiden (dir. Alex Holmes) and Honeyland (dir. Tamara Kotevska, Ljubo Stefanov)

BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES

Marriage Story

Runner-up: The Aeronauts

BEST ANIMATED FEMALE

Anna (Frozen 2)

Runner-up: Bo Peep (Toy Story 4)

BEST SCREEN COUPLE

Tie: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Noémie Merlant/Adèle Haenel) and Marriage Story (Scarlett Johansson/Adam Driver)

Runner-up: Hustlers (Jennifer Lopez/Constance Wu)

ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD – For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women

Tie: Bombshell (dir. Jay Roach) and The Nightingale (dir. Jennifer Kent)

Runner-up: Hustlers (dir. Lorene Scafaria)

JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD – For best expressing the woman of color experience in America

Harriet (dir. Kasi Lemmons)

Runner-up: Queen & Slim (dir. Melina Matsoukas) 


KAREN MORLEY AWARD – For best exemplifying a woman's place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity

Harriet (dir. Kasi Lemmons)

Runner-up: Little Women (dir. Greta Gerwig) 


ACTING AND ACTIVISM AWARD

Jane Fonda 

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Alfre Woodard

A Conversation With Roma Actress Yalitza Aparicio Prairie Miller in a conversation with Roma actress Yalitza Aparicio. She has been nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress this year, the first indigenous woman to do so. This interview aired on Arts Express, on WBAI Radio In NY and the Pacifica National Radio Affiliate Stations.

The Women Film Critics Circle Awards 2018

The Women Film Critics Circle Announces Awards 2018

The Women Film Critics Circle has announced their 2018 Awards for the best movies this year by and about women, and outstanding achievements by women, who get to be rarely honored historically, in the film world.

The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of women film critics and scholars from around the country and internationally, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media. They came together in 2004 to form the first women critics' organization in the United States, in the belief that women's perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully.

Critical Women On Film, a presentation of The Women Film Critics Circle, is their journal of discussion and theory, and a gathering of women's voices expressing a fresh and differently experienced perspective from the primarily male dominated film criticism world. Critical Women On Film is online HERE

THE WOMEN FILM CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2018

BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN

Mary Shelley
**The Favourite
Roma: Runner-up
Widows

               Elle Fanning as Mary Shelley

BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN
**Can You Ever Forgive Me? Marielle Heller
Leave No Trace: Runner-up, Debra Granik
The Kindergarten Teacher
You Were Never Really Here

BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER [Screenwriting Award]
**Audrey Wells: The Hate U Give
Debra Granik: Leave No Trace, Runner-up 
Sara Colangelo: The Kindergarten Teacher
Tamara Jenkins: Private Life

                                    Widows

BEST ACTRESS

**Olivia Colman, The Favourite

Toni Collette, Hereditary, Runner-up

Viola Davis, Widows
Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Kindergarten Teacher

BEST ACTOR
**Ethan Hawke, First Reformed
Viggo Mortensen, Green Book, Runner-up

Ben Foster, Leave No Trace

Hugo Weaving, Black 47

BEST YOUNG ACTRESS
**Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade
Thomasin McKenzie, Leave No Trace Runner-up
Elle Fanning, Mary Shelley 

Amandla Stenberg, The Hate U Give

BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS
**Olivia Colman, The Favourite
Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me? Runner-up
Helena Bonham Carter, 55 Steps
Kathryn Hahn, Private Life

                      Yalitza Aparicio in Roma

BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN

**Roma

Capernaum, Runner-up
Happy As Lazzaro

Zama

BEST DOCUMENTARY BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
**RBG

Shirkers, Runner-up
Say Her Name: The Life And Death Of Sandra Bland
Seeing Allred

*SPECIAL AWARDS*

COURAGE IN ACTING [Taking on unconventional roles that radically redefine the images of women on screen]
**Nicole Kidman: Destroyer
Viola Davis: Widows, Runner-up
Helena Bonham Carter: 55 Steps
Melissa McCarthy: Can You Ever Forgive Me?

COURAGE IN FILMMAKING
**Jennifer Fox, The Tale
Haifaa Al-Mansour, Mary Shelley, Runner-up
Sara Colangelo, The Kindergarten Teacher
Sandra Luckow, That Way Madness Lies

    Haifaa Al-Mansour, First Saudi Woman Director
 

*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women
**Say Her Name: The Life And Death Of Sandra Bland 

Call Her Ganda
I Am Not A Witch
On Her Shoulders

*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America
**If Beale Street Could Talk
Life And Nothing More
The Hate U Give
Widows

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman's place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity

**Roma

93 Queen
On The Basis Of Sex

Woman Walks Ahead

  
THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD [Supporting performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored]

**Glenn Close, The Wife

Yalitza Aparicio, Roma

Andrea Riseborough, Nancy
The Women Of Widows

WOMEN'S WORK: BEST ENSEMBLE
**Widows

The Favourite, Runner-up

55 Steps
Ocean's Eight

Helena Bonham Carter and Hillary Swank: 55 Steps

BEST FEMALE ACTION HEROES

**Black Panther

Adrift
55 Steps

RGB

MOMMIE DEAREST WORST SCREEN MOM OF THE YEAR AWARD
**Jacki Weaver: Widows

BEST KEPT SECRET AWARD
All The Overlooked 'Gone Girls Of Cinema' PIONEERS: FIRST WOMEN FILMMAKERS -  A Kino Lorber Collectors Edition Release

BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES
**Black Panther
Like Me
On The Basis Of Sex
Widows

                        Addison Timlin: Like Me

BEST ANIMATED FEMALES
**Incredibles 2
Liyana
Mary And The Witch's Flower
Mirai No Mirai

BEST FAMILY FILM
**Eighth Grade
Incredibles 2
Science Fair
The Hate U Give

BEST SCREEN COUPLE
**If Beale Street Could Talk

A Star Is Born
Crazy Rich Asians
Disobedience

ACTING AND ACTIVISM AWARD

**Viola Davis

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
**Ellen Burstyn

 Ellen Burstyn: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore [1974]

WFCC HALL OF SHAME
**Member Picks:

*Fifty Shades Freed: For perpetuating unrealistic and demeaning stereotypes of women, being defined by men emotionally and physically.

*Bryan Singer: Accused of committing crimes against young men, his continued status as a hirable, high-paid director is an affront to the women in the film industry who are struggling for recognition.

*Les Moonves: Chairman and CEO of CBS, Moonves resigned in light of allegations that he sexually abused many women, and information on the culture of fear that he reigned over is now coming out.

Baby It's Cold Outside. This traditional holiday season song has now been banned on radio stations following Me-Too protests, as promoting suggestive date rape lyrics. The debate that has followed is raising critical issues for discussion, but all agree that the male character, however culturally dated, is creepy. The Oscar winning song originated in the 1949 musical Neptune's Daughter, performed by Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban.

* As a footnote, perhaps more relevant during this season when greedy landlords deny heat to tenants, would be revising the title to: Baby It's Cold Inside!

*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: Adrienne Shelly was a promising actress and filmmaker who was brutally strangled in her apartment in 2006 at the age of forty by a construction worker in the building, after she complained about noise. Her killer tried to cover up his crime by hanging her from a shower20rack in her bathroom, to make it look like suicide. He later confessed that he was having a "bad day." Shelly, who left behind a baby daughter, had just completed her film Waitress, which she also starred in, and which was honored at Sundance after her death.

*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: The daughter of a laundress and a musician, Baker overcame being born black, female and poor, and marriage at age fifteen, to become an internationally acclaimed legendary performer, starring in the films Princess Tam Tam, Moulin Rouge and Zou Zou. She also survived the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois as a child, and later expatriated to France to escape US racism. After participating heroically in the underground French Resistance during WWII, Baker returned to the US where she was a crusader for racial equality. Her activism led to attacks against her by reporter Walter Winchell who denounced her as a communist, leading her to wage a battle against him. Baker was instrumental in ending segregation in many theaters and clubs, where she refused to perform unless integration was implemented.

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: Karen Morley was a promising Hollywood star in the 1930s, in such films as Mata Hari and Our Daily Bread. She was driven out of Hollywood for her leftist political convictions by the Blacklist and for refusing to testify against other actors, while Robert Taylor and Sterling Hayden were informants against her. And also for daring to have a child and become a mother, unacceptable for female stars in those days. Morley maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.

The Women Film Critics Circle Awards 2017

The Women Film Critics Circle Announces Awards 2017

The Women Film Critics Circle has announced their 2017 Awards for the best movies this year by and about women, and outstanding achievements by women, who get to be rarely honored historically, in the film world.

The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of women film critics and scholars from around the country and internationally, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media. They came together in 2004 to form the first women critics' organization in the United States, in the belief that women's perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully.

Critical Women On Film, a presentation of The Women Film Critics Circle, is their journal of discussion and theory, and a gathering of women's voices expressing a fresh and differently experienced perspective from the primarily male dominated film criticism world. Critical Women On Film is online HERE

THE WOMEN FILM CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2017

BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN

A Quiet Passion
**Lady Bird
Sophie And The Rising Sun
The Florida Project

BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN

Detroit
First They Killed My Father
**Lady Bird
Mudbound

BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER [Screenwriting Award]
**Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
Maggie Greenwald: Sophie And The Rising Sun
Dee Reese, Mudbound
Angela Workman, The Zookeeper's Wife

BEST ACTRESS
Sally Hawkins, Maudie
Sally Hawkins, The Shape Of Water
**Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Cynthia Nixon, A Quiet Passion

BEST ACTOR
Timothée Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name
Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out
**Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
Denzel Washington, Roman J. Israel, Esq.

BEST YOUNG ACTRESS
Seo-Hyun Ahn, Okja
Mckenna Grace, Gifted
**Brooklynn Prince, The Florida Project
Millicent Simmonds, Wonderstruck

BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS
Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip
**Allison Janney: I, Tonya
Margo Robbie: I, Tonya
Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird

BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
A Fantastic Woman
**First They Killed My Father
In The Fade
Thelma

*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women
Maudie
**The Light Of The Moon
The Rape Of Recy Taylor
Wind River

*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America
Girls Trip
**Mudbound
Step
The Rape Of Recy Taylor

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman's place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity
Battle Of The Sexes
**Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
Mudbound
The Post

COURAGE IN ACTING [Taking on unconventional roles that radically redefine the images of women on screen]
Sally Hawkins, Maudie
**Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Michelle Rodriguez, The Assignment
Charlize Theron, Atomic Blonde

COURAGE IN FILMMAKING
Amma Asante, A United Kingdom
Kathryn Bigelow, Detroit
Angelina Jolie, First The Killed My Father
**Dee Rees, Mudbound

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD [Supporting performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored]
Jessica Chastain, The Zookeeper's Wife
**Betty Gabriel, Get Out
Sally Hawkins, Maudie
Cynthia Nixon, A Quiet Passion

BEST DOCUMENTARY BY OR ABOUT WOMEN **TIE
**Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
Faces Places
**Jane
Step

WOMEN'S WORK: BEST ENSEMBLE
A Quiet Passion
**Girls Trip
Sophie And The Rising Sun
Wonder Woman

BEST FEMALE ACTION HERO
Atomic Blonde
In The Fade
The Shape of Water
**Wonder Woman

MOMMIE DEAREST WORST SCREEN MOM OF THE YEAR AWARD
Allison Janney: I, Tonya

BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES
Atomic Blonde
**Battle Of The Sexes
Professor Marston And The Wonder Women
Wonder Woman

BEST SCREEN COUPLE

Maudie

Professor Martson And The Wonder Women

**The Big Sick

The Shape Of Water

BEST ANIMATED FEMALE(S)
**Coco
Loving Vincent
The Breadwinner
Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming

BEST FAMILY FILM
**Coco
Beauty And The Beast
The Breadwinner
Wonder

ACTING AND ACTIVISM AWARD
Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan, and all the women who spoke out against the culture of sexual abuse 

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Agnes Varda 

BEST RISING FEMALE STARS
Izabela Vidovic, Wonder
Peyton Kennedy, American Fable

WFCC HALL OF SHAME
Harvey Weinstein 

*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: Adrienne Shelly was a promising actress and filmmaker who was brutally strangled in her apartment in 2006 at the age of forty by a construction worker in the building, after she complained about noise. Her killer tried to cover up his crime by hanging her from a shower20rack in her bathroom, to make it look like suicide. He later confessed that he was having a "bad day." Shelly, who left behind a baby daughter, had just completed her film Waitress, which she also starred in, and which was honored at Sundance after her death.

*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: The daughter of a laundress and a musician, Baker overcame being born black, female and poor, and marriage at age fifteen, to become an internationally acclaimed legendary performer, starring in the films Princess Tam Tam, Moulin Rouge and Zou Zou. She also survived the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois as a child, and later expatriated to France to escape US racism. After participating heroically in the underground French Resistance during WWII, Baker returned to the US where she was a crusader for racial equality. Her activism led to attacks against her by reporter Walter Winchell who denounced her as a communist, leading her to wage a battle against him. Baker was instrumental in ending segregation in many theaters and clubs, where she refused to perform unless integration was implemented.

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: Karen Morley was a promising Hollywood star in the 1930s, in such films as Mata Hari and Our Daily Bread. She was driven out of Hollywood for her leftist political convictions by the Blacklist and for refusing to testify against other actors, while Robert Taylor and Sterling Hayden were informants against her. And also for daring to have a child and become a mother, unacceptable for female stars in those days. Morley maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.