SPOTLIGHT PULLS IT OUT WITH LAS VEGAS CRITICS AWARDS

We couldn't have seen it coming - it may be the Best Picture Oscar frontrunner, but that was the only category in which Spotlight appeared to lead when nominations were announced for the Las Vegas Film Critics Society. That is, ofc, due to the fact that those nominations appeared to be in ranked order. The film won four awards from LVFCS, including a rare Best Director prize for Tom McCarthy. Btw this group has horrible taste, as you'll see. Have a look below:

Best Picture
1. Spotlight
2. Creed
3. Ex Machina
4. Straight Outta Compton
5. Beasts of No Nation
6. The Martian
7. Mad Max: Fury Road
8. Sicario
9. Legend
10. Room

Best Director
Tom McCarthy (Spotlight)

Best Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant)

Best Actress
Brie Larson (Room)

Best Supporting Actor
Sylvester Stallone (Creed)

Best Supporting Actress
Elizabeth Banks (Love & Mercy)

Best Original Screenplay
Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer (Spotlight)

Best Adapted Screenplay
Drew Goddard (The Martian)

Best Cinematography
Emmanuel Lubezki (The Revenant)

Best Film Editing
Margaret Sixel (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Best Art Direction
Irene O'Brien and Robert Parle (Brooklyn)

Best Costume Design
Jenny Beavan (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Best Visual Effects
Mad Max: Fury Road

Best Score
Ennio Morricone (The Hateful Eight)

Best Song
'See You Again' (Furious 7)

Best Ensemble
Spotlight

Best Animated Film
Inside Out

Best Documentary
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

Best Foreign Film
Goodnight Mommy

Best Action Film
Mad Max: Fury Road

Best Comedy
Trainwreck

Best Family Film
Cinderella

Best Horror / Sci-Fi Film
Ex Machina

Breakout Filmmaker Award
Alex Garland (Ex Machina)

Youth in Film Award
Jacob Tremblay (Room)

MAKEUP SHORTLIST FOR OSCAR - USUAL SUSPECTS, UNUSUAL SUSPECTS

Did you see this coming? Period makeup gets rather roundly snubbed by the Academy's makeup branch, as effects, prosthetics, character makeup and a good bit of grubbiness impress voters in this first stage of the road to the Oscar. Among the expected contenders who've made it this far is a very welcome surprise - 2013 Swedish comedy The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. This is the kind of shocker that we need more of, and hopefully this visibility will send the film toward one of the year's wackiest Oscar nominations. The seven titles are below:

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

Black Mass

Concussion

Legend

Mad Max: Fury Road

Mr. Holmes

The Revenant

TORONTO CRITICS RIGHT SOME WRONGS, HONOUR CAROL

The Toronto Film Critics Association pulled its usual shtick, tapping into the genuine best of 2015, rather than what's being dictated as 'best' by other critics, with its year-end awards. Carol took top honours and was cited as a runner-up in several categories. The Best Actress award went to Nina Hoss for Phoenix, a very pleasant surprise, and there were wins for Ex Machina and Tom Hardy in Legend too. Take a look at all the details below:

Best Picture

Carol

Mad Max: Fury Road

Spotlight

Best Director

Todd Haynes (Carol)

Tom McCarthy (Spotlight)

George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Denis Villeneuve (Sicario)

Best Actor

Tom Hardy (Legend)

Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant)

Michael Fassbender (Steve Jobs)

Best Actress

Nina Hoss (Phoenix)

Cate Blanchett (Carol)

Brie Larson (Room)

Best Supporting Actor

Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies)

Benicio del Toro (Sicario)

Michael Shannon (99 Homes)

Best Supporting Actress

Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina)

Rooney Mara (Carol)

Kristen Stewart (Clouds of Sils Maria)

Best Screenplay, Adapted or Original

Adam McKay and Charles Randolph (The Big Short)

Charlie Kaufman (Anomalisa)

Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer (Spotlight)

Phyllis Nagy (Carol)

Best Animated Feature

Shaun the Sheep Movie

Anomalisa

Inside Out

Allan King Documentary Award

The Look of Silence

Amy

Listen to Me Marlon

Best Foreign-Language Film

Phoenix

The Assassin

Son of Saul

Best First Feature

Ex Machina (Alex Garland)

Sleeping Giant (Andrew Cividino)

Son of Saul (Nemes Laszlo)

Rogers Best Canadian Film

The Forbidden Room (Evan Johnson and Guy Maddin)

My Internship in Canada (Philippe Falardeau)

Sleeping Giant (Andrew Cividino)

REVIEW - LEGEND (BRIAN HELGELAND)

A film built around a gimmick, a gimmick disguised as innovation. Tom Hardy plays both Kray brothers, the London gangsters from the 1960s whose story is likely no more remarkable than those of any other real-life career criminals adapted for the screen for decades now. This trick, admittedly not particularly well-achieved through dodgy effects work, and the London setting, also questionably recreated with artificial backdrops and cramped, styleless interior design, seems to be all that Brian Helgeland has to distinguish Legend from countless similar films, and his lack of directing expertise shows through in an unimaginatively-helmed attempt at constructing a crime saga that's legendary in its own right. With plodding pace, Legend recounts the Krays' experiences with a disinterest that suggests Helgeland simply expected gravitas to spring from nowhere to redeem his vapid work, and it doesn't. We just progress from one scene to the next, all ambiguity stripped of what was surely a most complex situation, that we might know without doubt where we're being led - Legend slips into a groove early and stays there throughout, and the forced immediacy of a few sizzling sequences can't rescue it from this turgid trough. Yet those sequences are, indeed, sizzling, as much as Tom Hardy's brilliant performances as Reggie and Ronnie. Even as the film offers nothing new, Hardy holds your attention and your admiration alike, and embraces the film's comedic and dramatic elements with glee in his intense portrayals. He's there to facilitate a gimmick, certainly, but he ends up elevating that gimmick. It's not innovative, it's barely even interesting, but it's a long way better than it ought to be, and we've Hardy to thank for that.