For the third year, the 26 voting members of Atlanta’s only dedicated city-specific critics group, the Atlanta Film Critics Circle, have awarded their top films of the year.
The AFCC’s number one film this year is South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s fascinating blend of social commentary and dark comedy, Parasite.
A very contemporary tale of a struggling-to-stay-afloat South Korean family that finds dark forces unleashed when they infiltrate a wealthy family’s home, Parasite highlights the deep class divides and economic inequality in that country.
The film also won AFCC’s award for Best International Film and Best Director for Bong Joon-ho as well as a Best Screenplay award for co-writers Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won.
AFCC co-founder and Atlanta Journal-Constitution critic Felicia Feaster, calls Parasite “a lacerating take on the incredibly topical 21st century issue of income inequality that bubbles up a very nasty vein of dark comedy.” Bong Joon-ho’s genre-bending thriller centers on a poor family, the Kims, and a rich family, the Parks, who come together under unusual circumstances.
Martin Scorsese’s ensemble mob epic The Irishman, staring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci was the second place award-winning film on the AFCC’s top 10 list.
The based-on-fact film stars longtime Scorsese collaborator De Niro as a man in his twilight years reflecting upon his career as a mob hitman and confidante of union organizer Jimmy Hoffa.
“Martin Scorsese and his brilliant cast made a movie which is measured and thoughtful and at nearly three and a half hours doesn’t feel the least bit overlong,” says Atlanta Film Critics Circle co-founder Michael Clark.
“Two films on our list are from two of the worlds’ greatest directors, 77-year-old Martin Scorsese and 70-year-old Pedro Almodovar, and both have aging protagonists looking back at their lives with regret,” notes AFCC member and Creative Loafing columnist Curt Holman. Both The Irishman and Spanish director Almodovar’s rueful semi-autobiographical Pain and Glory — number nine on the AFCC’s top 10 award list — are thoughtful meditations on time’s passage.
Other notable winners in this year’s AFCC awards include Best Documentary Apollo 11 which uses archival footage of the first-manned mission to the moon in 1969 to document an event of incredible importance and — considering our own politically divided times —remarkable solidarity and national pride.
For his role as a husband and father contending with a traumatic divorce from his actress wife (Scarlett Johansson), Adam Driver won the AFCC’s Best Lead Actor award for Marriage Story. “It’s a performance full of bewilderment, surprise, pent-up anger and sadness, yet a hope that the two can still be part of each other’s lives in some way,” says AFCC member and Georgia Voice critic Jim Farmer.
Laura Dern garnered a Best Supporting Actress award for her equally enthralling performance as a mercenary, charismatic divorce lawyer in Noah Baumbach’s third on AFCC’s top 10 list, Marriage Story. For her deeply empathetic, galvanizing performance as troubled, beloved actress and singer Judy Garland, Renée Zellweger received the Best Lead Actress award from the AFCC for Judy.
The AFCC also presented special awards for Best Breakthrough Performer to Kelvin Harrison Jr. who in 2019 appeared in both Luce as an adopted son and model student who may be harboring dark impulses, and in Waves as a suburban Florida teenager trying to balance his father’s expectations and his own anxieties in the family melodrama Waves. Actress-turned-director Olivia Wilde won AFCC’s Special Award for Best First Feature Film for another tale of anxious, overachieving teens. Her ribald, deliciously inventive tale of two nerdy high schoolers finally cutting loose during one wild night in Booksmart was an inventive, convention-busting take on the usual teen comedy.
“Many of this year’s biggest films had moments of high anxiety that cut across genres,” says AFCC member and ScreenRex editor Hannah Lodge of films like Parasite, Sam Mendes’ World War I epic 1917 (number 5 on the AFCC’s top 10 list) and the Adam Sandler drama Uncut Gems (number 7), about a compulsive gambler watching his life fall apart.
“I think whatever element of collective unrest or unease has sparked the trend has given us a year of amazing and thrilling films,” says Lodge.
TOP 10 FILMS:
- PARASITE
- THE IRISHMAN
- MARRIAGE STORY
- ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD
- 1917
- LITTLE WOMEN
- UNCUT GEMS
- KNIVES OUT
- PAIN AND GLORY
- APOLLO 11
BEST LEAD ACTOR:
Adam Driver in MARRIAGE STORY
BEST LEAD ACTRESS:
Renee Zellweger in JUDY
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Brad Pitt in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Laura Dern in MARRIAGE STORY
BEST ENSEMBLE:
THE IRISHMAN
BEST DIRECTOR:
Bong Joon-Ho for PARASITE
BEST SCREENPLAY:
Bong Joon-Ho and Han Jin-Won for PARASITE
BEST DOCUMENTARY:
APOLLO 11
BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM:
PARASITE (South Korea)
BEST ANIMATED FILM:
TOY STORY 4
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Roger Deakins for 1917
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:
Thomas Newman for 1917
AFCC Special Award for BEST BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMER:
Kelvin Harrison Jr. for WAVES
AFCC Special Award for BEST FIRST FEATURE FILM:
Olivia Wilde for BOOKSMART
