Gotham Award Nominations 2014: Oscar frontrunners and Indie darlings get mixed together

Awards season for 2014 has kicked off early this year, with today’s announcement of the Gotham Film Award nominations.

It was a very good morning for Boyhood, the only film to earn the trifecta of major nominations – Best Picture, Actor (Ethan Hawke) and Actress (Patricia Arquette) – as well as a Breakthrough Actor nod for star Ellar Coltrane. Birdman and Under the Skin were both cited for Best Feature and earned additional nominations for their leading performers – Michael Keaton for Birdman and Scarlett Johansson for Under the Skin – while the final two nominees, Love Is Strange and The Grand Budapest Hotel, failed to make a dent in any other category.

Of what’s been released this year, Love Is Strange, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Boyhood are the three best films I’ve seen, and it’s hard to argue with Birdman – which I liked, but had some minor quibbles with – nabbing enough votes to compete here. It’s especially gratifying to see the very under-the-radar Love and the February release Grand Budapest get in here, as more anticipated releases like Foxcatcher, A Most Violent Year, Whiplash and Top Five have certainly stolen a lot of their awards thunder (yet none cracked Best Picture). Neither I nor Andrew have screened Under the Skin yet, but word is very positive on it; even so, this was a small art-house hit that met its fair share of detractors, so its leap over stronger Oscar contenders – and better-reviewed indies – is somewhat surprising.

Miles Teller, a longshot for an Oscar nod, gets deserved recognition from Gotham for "Whiplash" (Sony Pictures Classics)

For Best Actor, Keaton and Hawke were joined by Oscar Isaac for A Most Violent Year, whose co-star Jessica Chastain was snubbed in Best Actress (though Isaac is supposedly the star of the show); Miles Teller for Whiplash, in a performance we really liked; and Bill Hader for The Skeleton Twins, a lovely little bit of recognition for the comedy star’s breakout dramatic turn. Likely due to some combination of vote-splitting and the fact that it’s not represented anywhere else despite superb early reviews, Foxcatcher has received a Special Jury Prize for its three lead actors (Steve Carell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo). This is a very strong category – curiously, the only notable omissions come from leads of Best Feature contenders, including The Grand Budapest Hotel (Ralph Fiennes) and Love Is Strange (Alfred Molina and John Lithgow).

Arquette and Johansson headline a more eclectic category. Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who turned heads earlier this year for Belle (ineligible at Gotham, as it is not American-made), contends instead for Beyond the Lights, which doesn’t have much word on it even if her performance has already been praised. Julianne Moore, Oscar frontrunner for Still Alice, unsurprisingly fit into the final five. Much less expected (but very welcome) is the inclusion of Mia Wasikowska, so deserving for Tracks but overtaking Reese Witherspoon, whose Wild has a similar story to Tracks but also a lot more profile and awards buzz on it. Witherspoon’s omission here shouldn’t be taken too seriously – though the only lead acting Oscar nominee Gotham declined to acknowledge last year was Bruce Dern, as others like Meryl Streep and Judi Dench were ineligible. Regardless, her absence is quite surprising, as is Chastain’s.

Julianne Moore, Gotham nominee for Best Actress and Oscar frontrunner, stars in "Still Alice" (Sony Pictures Classics)

Gotham is most certainly not an Oscar bellwether, but operates on its own and provides indication as to how critics and industry insiders are thinking. In other words, expect Boyhood to fare just as well with critics’ groups through the rest of the season, but when big-budget giants like Unbroken and Interstellar are mixed in, others like Love Is Strange and Under the Skin probably won’t proceed any further. This is a chance for lower-profile actors and films to really shine – last year, Inside Llewyn Davis beat 12 Years a Slave for Best Picture, and Brie Larson beat Cate Blanchett in Actress – and it’s relieving to know that Wasikowska, Mbatha-Raw, Teller, Hader and others will have received at least some recognition for an awards season they will very likely be squeezed out of in a month’s time.

On the other foot, this is the first mention of many for Oscar frontrunners like Moore, Carell, Arquette and Keaton. And for those on the fence – Hawke, Ruffalo, Isaac, The Grand Budapest Hotel – this is a good, necessary start (for supporting players Hawke, Arquette and Ruffalo, them making it into lead – because Gotham does not give supporting trophies – is a very good sign for their chances going forward).

Above all, it’s just great to see most of the year’s best work (to date, anyway) get recognized.


A full list of nominees, including Breakthrough Actor and Director, and Documentary, can be found here.

Film brief: THE ONE I LOVE

Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass don't have much to work with in "The One I Love" (Radius-TWC)

The One I Love begins as an intriguing relationship study before descending into complete chaos. Starring Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass, Charlie McDowell’s single-location indie is too preoccupied with its central mystery, rendering the filmmaker's promising thoughts on marriage mere germs of ideas that wind up both jumbled and insignificant. It’s a shame, because the presence of Duplass – among the finer independent film directors working, and with a few solid performances under his belt as well – and the always-terrific Moss promised something more. But these two don’t have real characters to work with; instead, The One I Love brings out Duplass’ shortcomings as an actor, and never ceases to absolutely waste Ms. Moss. There are moments of effective comedy and intelligent provocation, but they’re ultimately bogged down by story – as the film rolls along, the plot takes up more time, becomes more convoluted and lands disappointingly flat. C

Film brief: YVES SAINT LAURENT

Pierre Niney and Marrie-Pierre Huster (The Weinstein Company)

Yves Saint Laurent is an excessively-melodramatic, creatively-misguided mess. This glossy, overstuffed biopic of the famed fashion designer wants to be too many things – an exploration of sexuality, of fame, of youth, of fashion, and, distressingly, much more – and, so, nothing really sticks. Director Jalil Lespert, for instance, settles on a strange balance in depicting Yves’ homosexuality; it’s heavily integrated but rarely beyond the surface, and so on-screen sex in Yves comes off as both indulgent and timid. Lespert succumbs to the classic biopic problem of covering too much ground with too little analysis – particularly of Yves' actual fashion work, which the director fails to adequately evoke – and a bizarre mix of operatic drama and incisive character study makes the whole thing feel seriously nonsensical. As disastrous as these elements may be, Pierre Niney is pretty great in the title role, and handles Lespert’s five or six (or more) versions of Yves with impressive versatility. C-

Film brief: JERSEY BOYS

Christopher Walken and John Lloyd Young (Warner Bros.)

Clint Eastwood’s cold streak hopefully hits bottom with Jersey Boys, an uninspired, drab and disastrously-structured adaptation of the Tony-winning musical. Chronicling the rise and fall of the Four Seasons, led by Frankie Valli (John Lloyd Young, reprising his Broadway role), this musical biopic checks every been-there-done-that box in the book. That alone would make this Jersey Boys harmless fun – a good time for fans of the music and the story – if so much wasn’t unfortunately miscalculated. The script’s handling of Valli’s personal life is horrifically balanced, creating jarring tonal shifts that seep into the film throughout; it doesn’t help that Young’s transition from stage to film is a very rocky one, even if his vocals do the songs justice. Most egregious and unforgivable is just how serious Eastwood is; Jersey Boys is frequently joyless, with all of its energy geared toward uninteresting band-related conflicts and familial drama. Who wants that in a blockbuster movie musical? D