Awards Season 2019: BAFTA Film Awards Nominations

Morning all!

In recent years, the British Academy have started taking a cue from their American counterpart by announcing the nominations for their annual film awards at an early morning press conference (although, thankfully, not as early as 5:30am). But it was at the slightly more respectable time of 07:30 this morning (9th January) that Will Poulter and Hayley Squires announced this year's BAFTA Film Award nominees.

Here's a selection of the nominees:

BEST FILM

BlackKkKlansman

The Favourite

Green Book

Roma

A Star Is Born

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM

Beast

Bohemian Rhapsody

The Favourite

McQueen

Stan & Ollie

You Were Never Really Here

LEADING ACTOR

Christian Bale (Vice)

Steve Coogan (Stan & Ollie)

Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born)

Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody)

Viggo Mortensen (Green Book)

LEADING ACTRESS

Glenn Close (The Wife)

Olivia Colman (The Favourite)

Viola Davis (Widows)

Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born)

Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Mahershala Ali (Green Book)

Timothee Chalamet (Beautiful Boy)

Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman)

Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)

Sam Rockwell (Vice)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Amy Adams (Vice)

Claire Foy (First Man)

Margot Robbie (Mary Queen Of Scots)

Emma Stone (The Favourite)

Rachel Weisz (The Favourite)

DIRECTOR

Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born)

Alfonso Cuaron (Roma)

Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite)

Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman)

Pawel Pawlikowski (Cold War)

A full list of nominees can be found here.

The Favourite is indeed the favourite with a staggering 12 nominations, with Bohemian Rhapsody, First Man, Roma, and A Star Is Born with seven apiece. Interestingly, of Roma's seven nods, Alfonso Cuaron is nominated for six of them! (Must be some kind of record, surely?). Mind you, of A Star Is Born's seven, Bradley Cooper has five. 

Pretty much the same names that you've come to expect throughout the season- although Steve Coogan's nod was a nice touch, and it was interesting to see the director choices (this is Pawlikowski's first nomination in this awards season). This is also Viola Davis' first nomination this season. Widows as a whole seems to have been overlooked somewhat. That said, it's been a strong year for film, so not everything is going to get the recognition it perhaps should.  

This year's EE Rising Star nominees are Jessie Buckley, Cynthia Erivo, Barry Keoghan, Lakeith Stanfield, and Letitia Wright. This award is voted on by the general public and you can vote for your favourite here.

The BAFTA Film Awards will be handed out on Sunday 10th February with the utterly radiant and sublime Joanna Lumley hosting for a second year.

Congratulations to all nominees!

Next up is the Critics' Choice Awards on Sunday 13th January, so there'll be a post about that on Monday (14th January)

Review: The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (UK Cert 15)

SPOILER WARNING! This review discusses and/or mentions a few important plot points. If you would prefer not to have these spoiled, please stop reading now and come back once you've seen the film.

Dr. Stephen Murphy (Colin Farrell) is a successful cardiologist with a beautiful wife called Anna (Nicole Kidman) and two beautiful children called Kim and Bob (Raffey Cassidy and Sunny Suljic), a beautiful house and- as we keep being told- beautiful hands. He also has a secret: he's been spending time with Martin (Barry Keoghan), a strange teenager who has a link to Stephen's past. When Martin starts to impose his way further and further into Stephen's life, Stephen is forced into a terrible decision.  

I sometimes wonder whether I've seen the same film as other people, especially if it's been praised immensely highly. Here are some of the superlatives that have been given to The Killing Of A Sacred Deer: 'intense, powerful and unsettling', 'venomously funny', 'truly staggering', 'Colin Farrell is perfect', 'one of the finest performance of Nicole Kidman's career'. These are on the poster to advertise the film and some of them are from reputable newspapers. I tend to ignore reviews (because ultimately it's all subjective) but, if I'd been swayed by any of these comments to sit through this tremendous load of old crap, I'd be feeling massively shortchanged. 

Let me unpack some of these statements. 'Intense, powerful and unsettling' (two out of three ain't bad; definitely intense and definitely unsettling- all the characters seem damaged or messed-up in one way or another); 'venomously funny' (I don't think I laughed once); 'truly staggering' (yes, it is staggering; staggering that this film is getting such fulsome praise); 'Colin Farrell is perfect' (he really isn't); 'one of the finest performance of Nicole Kidman's career' (it really isn't; she was better in Batman Forever).

I don't know what irked me more: the fact that everyone seems to speak in a fairly even, dull monotone even in moments where you think they'd be showing some emotion (only twice do either Stephen or Anna break down under the strain of the situation), the incredibly discordant and shoddy sound mixing- where portentous tones suddenly blare over scenes- which actually gave me a headache, or the crashingly implausible moves that Stephen makes as the story becomes more and more ludicrous. 

I'm going to get spoilery now because there's no other way to demonstrate exactly how ridiculous I found this film. Aboiut halfway through the film, Bob starts to get ill. At the hospital, Martin tells Stephen he has to kill either Anna, Kim, or Bob to balance the scales from Stephen killing Martin's father in surgery years ago otherwise all three of them will die of a mystery illness that first paralyses theim, makes them stop eating and then bleed from the eyes before they die. The next shot sees Martin being escorted from the hospital by security. At no point do they ever consider calling the police. There's also no explanation of how Martin has made the children ill (because Kim soon succumbs to the paralysis); all medical tests come back negative. It's utterly ridiculous to think that anyone with a scintilla of common sense would go along with the lunatic plan rather than call the teenage psycho out.   

Frankly this decrepit piece of horseshit has already stolen two hours of my life, and I'm loathe to give it any more of my time. There's an interesting idea buried amongst the pretention but writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos doesn't utilise it. A major disappointment.

Rating: 1 out of 5

Tez