‘Nickel Boys' Named Best Picture by National Society of Film Critics

The National Society of Film Critics has named RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys” best picture, with Sean Baker’s “Anora” and Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine As Light” serving as runners-up.

“Nickel Boys,” which tells the sad story of a notoriously corrupt Florida reform school in the ‘60s, has been hailed by many critics, especially the NYC crowd, as a major achievement, and the New York Times went a step further by claiming Ross “has just reinvented the act of seeing.” lol. Talk about hyperbole.

The story follows two boys whose close friendship helps sustain their hope even as the horrors mount around them at Nickel Academy, which is supposed to be seen as a microcosm of American racism in the mid-20th century.

I’ve seen Ross’ innovative film, twice now, and it’s a frustrating one to experience. The first hour of the film is unnerving and brilliant, going for broke with a tilt-a-whirl visual scheme. However, the gimmick eventually wears you down, and you soon come to realize that the film is a pure case of style over substance. There would have been way more tension if Ross had opted to not overdo the whole thing and tell his story in more subtle fashion.

Ross and Joslyn Barnes’ screenplay, based on Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel, refuses to adhere to convention, and I salute their risk-taking, but the film is overlong (140 minutes), and the overindulgence takes its toll. You don’t care as much about the stakes because the gimmick always has you on the outside looking in. Ross refusing to show us the facial emotions of his characters ends up cooling you down on them.

The majority of “Nickel Boys” is shot in first-person POV, with perspective alternating between the two leads throughout. There are also some sequences of fixed-camera third-person POV shots. The film is in a 4:3 aspect ratio, and there are several sequences of stock footage, recordings of historical events, and even snippets of other films interspersed throughout

Maybe someday I’ll revisit this film and will suddenly be more struck by its story, but I’ve given it a couple of shots already, and it just doesn’t work as a whole for me.

This is Ross’ narrative debut. He previously hailed the poetic and visually stunning documentary ‘“Hale County This Morning.” Amazon MGM Studios’ Orion Pictures have already released “Nickel Boys” in select theaters, and it’s set to expand wider in the coming weeks.

To find out all the NSFC winners and runners-up, keep reading below.

Best Picture: “Nickel Boys”
Runners-up:
“Anora”
“All We Imagine As Light”

Best Actor: Colman Domingo, “Sing Sing”
Runners-up:
Adrien Brody, “The Brutalist”
Ralph Fiennes, “Conclave”

Best Actress: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, “Hard Truths”
Runners-up:
Mikey Madison, “Anora”
Ilinca Manolache, “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World”

Best Supporting Actress: Michele Austin, “Hard Truths”
Runners-up:
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, “Nickel Boys”
Natasha Lyonne, “His Three Daughters”

Best Supporting Actor: Kieran Culkin, “A Real Pain”
Runners-up:
Guy Pearce, “The Brutalist”
Edward Norton, “A Complete Unknown”
Adam Pearson, “A Different Man”

Best Director: Payal Kapadia, “All We Imagine As Light”
Runners-up:
RaMell Ross, “Nickel Boys”
Sean Baker, “Anora”

Best Screenplay: Jesse Eisenberg, “A Real Pain”
Runners-up:
Radu Jude, “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World”
Sean Baker, “Anora”

Best Cinematography: Jomo Fray, “Nickel Boys”
Runners-up:
Lol Crawley, “The Brutalist”
Jarin Blaschke, “Nosferatu”

Best Nonfiction Film: “No Other Land”
Runners-up:
“Dahomey”
“Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”

Best Foreign-Language Film: “All We Imagine As Light”
Runners-up:
“Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World”
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig”