Critical New York wins for Carol as film awards season heats up

Carol, with Cate Blanchette and Rooney Mara, has boosted its profile with four New York Film Critics Circle awards.

Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett in Carol, which dominated the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

Carol, a 1950s-set romance starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, racked up the most awards on Wednesday as the New York Film Critics Circle announced its choices for year-end honours.

The film, based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, won best film, best director (Todd Haynes), best cinema­tography (Edward Lachman) and best screenplay (Phyllis Nagy). Haynes previously won for 2002’s Far From Heaven.

The wins helped boost the awards-season profile of Carol, which made its debut at the ­Cannes film festival to acclaim earlier this year, as the Oscar race remains wide open at this early stage. On Tuesday, the National Board of Review named Mad Max: Fury Road the best film of the year, while the Gotham film awards anointed Spotlight.

George Miller’s latest Mad Max instalment remains the favourite to be named the best Australian film next week at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts awards after winning six AACTA technical and craft awards on Monday night in Sydney.

The New York Film Critics Circle spread the honours in the acting categories.

Saoirse Ronan won best actress for Brooklyn, another 1950s-set romantic drama, and Michael Keaton won best actor for Spotlight, even though his work in the film is generally being pushed as a supporting role. Mark Rylance won best supporting actor for his work in Bridge of Spies, and Kristen Stewart won best supporting actress for Clouds of Sils Maria.

Things continue to heat up across the next week with the Los Angeles Critics Association announcing its awards on Sunday. The Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe nominations also are coming next week. Nominations for the Academy Awards will be announced on January 14 ahead of the ceremony on February 28.

The NYFCC, one of the most influential critics groups in the US, will surely add momentum to the Academy Awards fortunes of Carol, has played in limited release abroad and is released in Australia on December 26.

Timbuktu, a Mali drama about a village under jihadist control nominated earlier this year for the Oscars, won best foreign language film. Frederick Wiseman’s In Jackson Heights, about the Queens, New York, neighbourhood, took best documentary, and Pixar’s Inside Out was best animated film.

The group also announced several special awards, including one for composer Ennio Morricone, who scored Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming The Hateful Eight, and another honouring the legacy of William Becker and Janus Films. Becker, who made Janus one of the premiere art-house distributors, died in September.

The Wall Street Journal, AP