Critical Week: Driving home for Christmas

I seen many films this week, largely due to work required prior to the announcement of the London Critics' Circle Film Awards nominations yesterday. This involved compiling my own ballot, then counting all the others that came in, tabulating the results, giving nominees a heads-up, working on a press release and preparing the announcement event, which was hosted by young actors Ellie Bamber (Willow) and Fionn O'Shea (Handsome Devil) at the May Fair Hotel as a low-key Christmas party. The nominations are listed HERE if you're interested in comparing them with all the other awards spiralling around at the moment.

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Now things are calming down for the holidays. Whew! Of the films I saw this past week, the most ambitious was Noah Baumbach's White Noise, a busy and somewhat unfocussed comedy-drama about a family dealing with a range of big issues. The cast is excellent, led by Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, and it ends with a fabulous burst of choreography. Will Smith plays a real-life historical icon in Emancipation, set at the end of the Civil War as an escaped slave faces brutal trackers and ends up fighting on the battlefield. It's ambitious and admirable, but the themes get a bit lost. Christian Bale leads the cast of Scott Cooper's moody period mystery The Pale Blue Eye, playing a detective who works alongside a young Edgar Allan Poe (a superbly wide-eyed Harry Melling) to investigate a murder at West Point in 1830. It's mesmerising but ultimately a bit thin. And the animated adventure The Amazing Maurice, based on the Terry Pratchett novel, has some wonderful thematic depth beneath the usual slapstick wackiness and slick digital imagery.

This coming week I will continue to catch up with movies before writing up my year-end lists. There's quite a pile-up of these, and I have a list of about 10 priority titles, plus eight more if-time ones. A couple of them are forthcoming releases, such as Kore-eda's film Broker and the documentary Wildcat.

39th London Critics' Circle Film Awards: words and pics...

Yes, it was time for the London film critics to hold their annual gala red carpet event. And for the seventh year, I was the chair of the organising committee, which meant that I was involved in every aspect of the day's events. The 39th London Critics' Circle Film Awards, presented by Dover Street Entertainment at The May Fair Hotel, had a distinct tone this year - awash in diversity almost any way you looked at it. We had fewer high-wattage Hollywood stars, but we made up for that with humour, energy and some properly talented guests in attendance. It was a great celebration of film - and a fantastic party. Here are some photos to help tell the story...

Pedro Almodóvar was awarded our top honour, the Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film. Tamsin Greig (left), who starred in the West End production of his classic Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, presented the award to him. At right, Critics' Circle Film Section Chair Anna Smith and I stand on either side of the evening's host, the fabulous British comic Judi Love.

Left to right: Richard E Grant accepts Supporting Actor for Can You Ever Forgive Me; writer-director Michael Pearce wins Breakthrough Filmmaker for Beast; producer Nicolas Celis accepts Film of the Year for Roma.

Pawel Pawlikowski's gorgeous Cold War won both Foreign-Language Film and the Technical Achievement Award for Lukasz Zal's cinematography; Rupert Everett sent his friend and costar Emily Watson to pick up his award for British/Irish Actor for The Happy Prince; Yorgos Lanthimos collects the prize for British/Irish Film of the Year for The Favourite.

One of my jobs was to chase down video thank yous from winners unable to be present (I knew the winners before anyone else). Both of these were shot in dressing rooms: Olivia Colman was on set filming The Crown and gave a witty thank you for Actress of the Year in The Favourite, and Ethan Hawke is in a play on Broadway, and made some clever, thoughtful observations as he collected Actor of the Year for First Reformed.

Alfonso Cuaron sent a video greeting as he won Director of the Year for Roma, while Agnès Varda spoke for herself and co-director JR to accept Documentary of the Year for Faces Places.

Rachel Weisz spoke from her kitchen to accept Supporting Actress for The Favourite, while Jessie Buckley was also stuck on-set on Sunday, offering a heartfelt thank you for British/Irish Actress in Beast, and hoping she'd finish early enough to come join the party (sadly, she couldn't).

Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara were on-hand to collect their award for Screenwriters of the Year for The Favourite, as were director Lara Zeidan and producer John Giordano, who won Short Film of the Year for Three Centimetres.

Molly Wright was wonderfully surprised when she won Young Performer of the Year for Apostasy (she also helped read out our nominations when they were announced last month); her director Daniel Kokotajlo was a nominee for Breakthrough Filmmaker; while Liv Hill was up for Young Performer for The Little Stranger.

Fionn Whitehead was nominated for Young Performer for the second year running, this time for The Children Act; Anya Taylor-Joy was also up for that award for her work in Thoroughbreds; and writer-director Deborah Haywood was up for Breakthrough for Pin Cushion. (She was one of three women we nominated for directing, along with Debra Granik and Lynne Ramsay in the Director category.)

Other guests included Gonzalo Maza, screenwriter of Foreign-Language Film nominee A Fantastic Woman; actress Muna Utaru (The Keeping Room); and filmmakers and diversity activists Hannah and Jake Graf.

I have spent the last six months working on this event, and it has completely taken over my life over the last six weeks (with a bit of a breather when all the publicists' offices closed over the holidays!). After we have a debrief and work out what we can do even better next year, we'll be able to forget about all the chaos until it begins cranking up again next summer. The 2020 event will be our 40th anniversary, so I think we need to plan something unexpected.

37th Critics' Circle Film Awards: words and pictures...

These three ladies were the stars of Sunday night's 37th London Critics' Circle Film Awards, held at the May Fair Hotel. I'm the chair of the event, so spend most of the year organising it with a hard-working committee, lots of helpers and some great sponsors. And we spread the winners around this year. Above: Kate Beckinsale won British/Irish Actress, Isabelle Huppert won both Actress of the Year for Things to Come and the Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film, and Naomie Harris won Supporting Actress for Moonlight.

Here's the team: me, our actor-filmmaker hosts Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, and Critics' Circle President Anna Smith.

When Isabelle Huppert was presented with the Dilys Powell Award - an honour we have wanted to bestow on her for years - the audience rose for a standing ovation.

Tom Bennett won Supporting Actor for Love & Friendship, Ken Loach won British/Irish Film of the Year for I, Daniel Blake.

Lewis MacDougall won Young British/Irish Performer for his work in A Monster Calls, while writer-director Babak Anvari won Breakthrough British/Irish Filmmaker for Under the Shadow.

Naomie Harris poses with her award alongside her Moonlight costar Alex Hibbert, who accepted the Supporting Actor award for Mahershala Ali. And on the right, director Brady Hood with his lead actress Jessica Barden - winners of British/Irish Short Film of the Year for Sweet Maddie Stone.

Accepting the Documentary prize for Fire at Sea were editor Jacopo Quadri and producer Donatella Palermo. And here's an intriguing couple: will we see Isabelle starring in Ken's next movie?

Some winners who couldn't be with us recorded video messages. These included Casey Affleck, who won Actor of the Year for Manchester by the Sea, and Andrew Garfield, who was named British/Irish Actor of the Year. Two winners sent written messages: Kenneth Lonergan for Screenplay accepting Manchester by the Sea, and Maren Ade accepting Foreign-Language Film for Toni Erdmann.

Damien Chazelle recorded his video to accept Film of the Year for La La Land on his phone just after landing on a flight to China. Laszlo Nemes sent thanks for Director of the Year for Son of Saul from the middle of pre-production on his new film in Hungary. And cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grovlen thanked the critics for his Technical Achievement Award for Victoria from Montserrat.

Nominees celebrating with us for the evening included Dave Johns (I, Daniel Blake), Sennia Nanua (The Girl With All the Gifts) and Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (Sing Street).

More nominees: writer-director Mia Hansen-Love (Things to Come), filmmaker Otto Bell (The Eagle Huntress) and composer Mica Levi (Jackie).

Special guests with us included Love & Friendship costars Morfyd Clark and Emma Greenwell, as well as George MacKay.

And finally, here are a couple of snaps of me - on the left with Kristina Rihanoff and Ben Cohen, and on the right with Kate Beckinsale. The Sun ran this photo hinting that I was her "dapper" date for the evening. Hmmm!