Announced over nearly two hours of an enthusiastic social media rollout, the Seattle Film Critics Society announced the winners of their annual awards celebrating the best in 2022 film. Everything Everywhere All At Once, the film with the most nominations took home four of the top prizes: Best Picture and Best Director for DANIELS (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) and their multiverse-spanning family adventure; Best Supporting Actor to Ke Huy Quan for his emotionally resonant performance as family man Waymond Wang; and Best Editing. A SunBreak favorite since its premiere, it wound up on three of our top ten lists.
The SFCS also honored Sweetheart Deal with the inaugural Pacific Northwest Award. The clear-eyed documentary tells the heart-wrenching stories of sex workers on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue and was championed by Chris when it premiered at SIFF as “an exercise in empathy and finding the humanity in everyone we encounter.”
The Banshees of Inisherin,another SunBreak favorite since its TIFF premiere earned three awards: Best actor for Colin Farrell, Best Supporting Actress for Kerry Condon, and Best Screenplay for McDonagh’s sharply funny script about a severed friendship on a fictional Irish island during the civil war. In other acting categories Cate Blanchett’s monumental performance as Lydia Tár in TÁR earned both Best Lead Actress as well as Villain of the Year prizes and Frankie Corio was recognized for her dazzling dual performances in Aftersun, as the year’s year’s Best Youth Performance. Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (which we loved so much we reviewed it twice) was recognized as the Best Ensemble Cast for the collection of self-styled disruptors that Benoit Blanc encounters on a pandemic getaway to a billionaire’s private island.
Other feature film awards went to Park Chan-wook’s sumptuous and twisty criminal romance Decision to Leave (which Chris called “a master class in filmmaking“) as the Best International Film; Marcel the Shell with Shoes On won Best Animated Feature (the melancholic little shell made a big impression on us during SIFF); and Fire of Love, Sara Dosa’s molten volcanologist romance was chosen as Best Documentary Feature. In the craft categories, Damien Chazelle’s Babylon — a film so big it required three of us to recap it — nabbed Best Original Score and Best Production Design; Elvis won the award for Best Costume Design; Top Gun: Maverick faced no hard deck when swooping into Best Cinematography; and Avatar: The Way of Water‘s sometimes woozy, always impressive return to Pandora saw a win for Best Visual Effects. Finally, S. S. Rajamouli’s “chaotic and absolutely incredible” Indian Telugu epic musical RRR danced away with the Best Action Choreography for its epic fight sequences and incredible dance numbers.
More information about SFCS (of which a few of us are members, full disclosure) and an account of this year’s awards can be found at SeattleFilmCritics.com.