‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ Earns Five Awards, Including Best Film, from St Louis Film Critics Assn.

‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ Earns Five Awards, Including Best Film, from St Louis Film Critics Assn.

The wild action, sci-fi and comedic adventure “Everything Everywhere All at Once” has been named Best Film of 2022 by the St. Louis Film Critics Association.

Writer-directors The Daniels’ chaotic tale of an overworked Chinese immigrant’s multiverse journey won five awards overall, including Michelle Yeoh for best actress. She plays Evelyn Wang, whose business is struggling, her marriage is on the rocks, and she has complicated relationships with her daughter and father.

As Evelyn’s milquetoast husband, Ke Huy Quan won supporting actor while Paul Rogers won for editing and The Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), who directed, were named in a tie for best original screenplay.

SLFCA announced its awards in 23 categories on Dec. 18, with honors spread out among 13 films.

“The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Elvis” and “Women Talking” each received three awards.

 Martin McDonagh tied with the Daniels for original screenplay, for his pitch-black comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin,” which is about friends at an impasse, who live on a remote Irish island in 1923, while Kerry Condon won best supporting actress as the smart and feisty Siobhan, sister to Colin Farrell’s Padraic, and Ben Davis won for his moody and rugged cinematography.

This is the third year the group has selected a woman for its director award — Chloe Zhao, “Nomadland,” in 2020; Jane Campion for “The Power of the Dog” in 2021; and now, Sarah Polley for “Women Talking.”

“Women Talking,” about the women in an isolated religious community deciding on what action to take after a series of sexual assaults in 2010, also won for best ensemble cast and for Hildur Guðnadóttir’s acoustic music score that taps into community and hope.

Catherine Martin won for designing costumes and with Karen Murphy for production design on her husband Baz Luhrmann’s electric “Elvis” biopic, which was also singled out for best soundtrack.

For best actor, Brendan Fraser was selected for his bravura performance in “The Whale,” playing a 600-lb. recluse grappling with loss and guilt while trying to reconnect with his daughter.

The regional critics group announced its annual nominations Dec. 11, with “The Banshees of Inisherin” leading with 11 nominations, followed by ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ with 10; ‘Women Talking’ and ‘The Fabelmans’ earned eight each. Those nominations are listed here: http://www.stlfilmcritics.org/awards.

For Special Merit recognition, the St. Louis Film Critics selected three people for the honor:  imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi, whistleblower actress Ashley Judd and posthumously, influential musician-actor David Bowie.

SLFCA President Jim Tudor said the group wanted to recognize filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who was sentenced to six years in prison by the Iranian government for inquiring about the arrests of his fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad.

The international film community has denounced his imprisonment as unjust. His latest work, “No Bears,” was shown at the Venice Film Festival and New York Film Festival this fall.

Jafar Panahi

The SLFCA statements on the three Special Merits:

Jafar Panahi

“In recognition of the courage of imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi and all those film professionals confronting political oppression in the pursuit of free speech, human rights, and artistic expression.”

Ashley Judd

“We recognize Ashley Judd for the bravery and courage she demonstrated in portraying herself in ‘She Said.’”

David Bowie

“After nominating the experimental documentary “Moonage Daydream,” we want to also honor the expansive and continuing cinematic presence of singer-songwriter and actor David Bowie, whose life and music continues to permeate and enrich the cinema landscape.”

Here’s the list of our 2022 SLFCA Awards winners and runners-up:

Stephanie Hsu, Michelle Yeoh, Ke huy Quan of “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

BEST FILM

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Runner-up Women Talking

Best Director – Sarah Polley, “Women Talking”

Runner-up: The Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) , “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Best Actor – Brendan Fraser, “The Whale”

Runner-up: Austin Butler, “Elvis”

Best Actress – Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Runner-up: Danielle Deadwyler, “Till”

Best Supporting Actor – Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Runner-up: Brendan Gleeson, “The Banshees of Inisherin”

Best Supporting Actress – Kerry Condon, “The Banshees of Inisherin”

Runners-up: (tie) Angela Bassett, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and Janelle Monae, “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”

Women Talking

Best Ensemble – Women Talking

Runner-up: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Best Adapted Screenplay – She Said Rebecca Lenkiewicz; based on the book She Said by Jodi Cantor and Megan Twohey, and on the New York Times investigation by Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey, and Rebecca Corbett

Runner-up: Women Talking – Sarah Polley, adapted from book by Miriam Toews

Best Original Screenplay – tie “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Martin McDonagh, and The Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Runner-up: “The Menu,” Will Tracy and Seth Reiss

Best Cinematography – Ben Davis, “The Banshees of Inisherin”

Runner-up: Greig Fraser, “The Batman”

Best Editing – Paul Rogers, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Runner-up: Matt Villa and Jonathan Redmond, “Elvis “

Best Production Design – Elvis, Catherine Martin and Karen Murphy 

Runner-up: “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” Rick Heinrichs

Best Costume Design – “Elvis,” Catherine Martin 

Runner-up: “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” Ruth E. Carter

Best Visual Effects – Avatar: The Way of Water”

Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon, and Daniel Barrett

Runner-Up: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Music Score – “Women Talking,” Hilda Guðnadóttir

Runner up (tie): Carter Burwell, “The Banshees of Inisherin”;  Michael Giacchino, “The Batman” and John Williams, “The Fabelmans.”

Best Soundtrack – Elvis

Runner-up: Moonage Daydream

Best Action Film – Top Gun: Maverick
Runner-up: RRR

Best Comedy Film – Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Runner-up: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Best Horror Film – Nope
Runner-up: X

Best Animated Film – Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

Runner-up: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On


Best International Feature – Decision to Leave

Runner-up: RRR


Best Documentary Feature – All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Runner-up (tie): Good Night Oppy and Moonage Daydream


Best Scene – Sam Fabelman meets one of his idols on the studio lot in “The Fabelmans”

Runner-up: Iceman meets with Maverick in “Top Gun: Maverick”

Founded in 2004, the St. Louis Film Critics Association is a nonprofit organization of professional film reviewers who regularly publish current and timely film criticism, support local productions and festivals, and enhance public education, awareness, and appreciation of films. Vetted members are affiliated with qualifying media outlets in the St. Louis metropolitan region. (Note: PopLifeSTL.com critics Alex McPherson and Lynn Venhaus are members).

For the awards, eligible films are those that opened in the greater St. Louis area or had an online premiere during the 2022 calendar year – including those film that were given awards-qualifying runs in 2021 but were not available to all SLFCA members until 2022. Films slated for release in early 2023 are also eligible if a press screening, DVD screener, or screening link was provided to all SLFCA members.

For more information, visit http://www.stlfilmcritics.org

In addition, follow us on Twitter (@stlfilmcritics) and “Like” our Facebook page.

The Banshees of Inisherin

Blanchett Fierce But ‘Tar’ Disturbing and Discordant Melodrama

Blanchett Fierce But ‘Tar’ Disturbing and Discordant Melodrama

By Lynn Venhaus
It is easy to be dazzled by Cate Blanchett’s virtuoso performance as a brilliant maestro whose rise in the cutthroat world of classical music will be thwarted by a spectacular fall from grace.

But overall, the excruciatingly bloated melodrama “Tar” is a pretentious exercise.

Set in the international world of classical music, the film centers on Lydia Tár, widely considered one of the greatest living composer-conductors and first-ever female music director of a major German orchestra. But just as her professional career is soaring, her personal life is going to crash, and she is in danger of getting burned.

As played by the two-time Oscar winner, the unsympathetic Lydia is at once brilliant and brittle. Haughty and vain, her carefully cultivated image is going to take big hits in the age of social media outrage and swift cancel culture, for –spoiler alert – she’s a sexual predator.

Cavalierly, she wields power over the vulnerable women she grooms while they curry favor with her. But she doesn’t attend to the messiness that will expose her true nature, and this fatal flaw, for being arrogant enough to think she is untouchable, will be her downfall.

Yet, there is no redemption and little accountability. We’re not going there, but where we’re going is a rather muddled and bumpy journey where we’re kept at arm’s length.

However, Blanchett is fierce as the formidable composer and conductor. She conducts with a ferocity, plays piano nimbly, and speaks several languages. She is on screen nearly the whole 2-hour, 38-minute runtime (which feels like 6 hours), and she’s a thoroughly unlikable character.

The acting is uniformly first-class, as are the production elements moving us between her homes, the concert hall, and the streets of Berlin, New York, and Thailand. Florian Hoffmeister’s cinematography captures the moodiness, the bleak gray skies, and growing unease as well as the upper echelon in the arts and the associated lofty lifestyles that production designer Marco Bittner Rosser has conveyed so well.

The main frustration here is that writer-director Todd Field has decided to concentrate on repetitive minutiae with a backdrop of mundane everyday life details, which drags the story.

At home, she lives with her wife Sharon, the Philharmonic’s concertmaster (an outstanding Nina Hoss), and their daughter Petra (Mila Bogojevic), but she also keeps another place.

And not only is the film’s pacing uneven, but Field is stingy with answers while questions keep proliferating. By the time it’s over – sweet relief (and some of the movie seems in real time) — there are baffling loose ends that prevent it from being a satisfying experience.

That seems indulgent, and a lengthy opening lecture with the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik and a master class at Juilliard are in desperate need of editor Monika Willi (wait – there is an editor listed in the credits?).

Field, a three-time Oscar nominee who hasn’t made a film in 16 years, isn’t clear about his feelings for the protagonist, or how he wants us to feel. Normalizing her would be a mistake, for she’s a monster. Nor is she deserving of a pity party. Her undoing is entirely her own fault.

For those of you playing at home, do we want to watch a prickly personality pontificate for several hours?

Time and time again, life shows us that you can only run so far before fate catches up with you. What should happen – a comeuppance, criminal charges, civil lawsuit, apology?

That is not where Field is headed. Nor is he compelled to flesh out the vague backstory of Krista (Sylvia Flote), a supposedly ‘unstable’ protégé who committed suicide.

As a fan of Field’s acclaimed “In the Bedroom” (2001) and “Little Children” (2006), this was confounding. But others accept it and have lavished widespread praise. I would hope a second viewing isn’t needed for more insight and clarity.

The music, of course, is gorgeous. Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, whose work on “Joker” won her an Oscar, may earn another nod with this sleek score. Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, as the chosen piece to record, is sumptuous.

Other noteworthy performances include Noemie Merlant as Tar’s assistant Francesca and Sophie Kauer as the hotshot young cellist.

There is a story, of course, in the intriguing take on male-female power dynamics, and out-of-control actions made worse in the era of cellphones and social media. And suspense does build, if only in fits and starts.

Full of nagging holes, “Tár” is imperfect, and that’s not acceptable, no matter how sophisticated, given the people associated with this project.

It again, if anything, raises the issue about separating the art from the artist, but that opens a dialogue best served in another more succinct movie, as who wants another paradox after this disturbing – and cumbersome — portrait?

“Tar” is a 2022 drama written and directed by Todd Field. It stars Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Mila Bogojevic, Noamie Merlant, Sophie Kauer and Mark Strong. It runs 2 hours, 38 minutes, and is rated R for some language and brief nudity. Locally, it opened in theatres Oct. 21. Lynn’s Grade: C.