‘Nightcrawler’ Dominates San Diego Critics with 7 Wins

In what can only be described as a massive sweep, Open Road Films‘s Nightcrawler laid waste to everyone and everything today as the San Diego Film Critics Society gave it a whopping seven wins, including Best Film, Best Director (Dan Gilroy) and Best Actor (Jake Gyllenhaal). The film has done magnificently with critics groups and now with industry awards and is becoming a very likely Best Picture Oscar nominee with Jake Gyllenhaal looking to nab a 2nd career Oscar nomination, this time in Lead.

Nightcrawler also saw the first win this season for Rene Russo in Supporting Actress (besting Patricia Arquette), Original Screenplay (besting Boyhood and Birdman), Best Score and Best Cinematography. It’s the biggest sweep for a single film at a single critics awards we’ve seen so far. Almost the only category it didn’t win that it was legitimately competitive in was Riz Ahmed for Supporting Actor. That win went to Mark Ruffalo for Foxcatcher, his first win of the season as well.

Marion Cotillard gathered yet another win for Best Actress here (for Two Days, One Night) and inches herself closer to being that 5th Oscar nominee. The Grand Budapest Hotel, Birdman and Gone Girl each picked up one award.

The full list:

Best Film: Nightcrawler

Best Director: Dan Gilroy – Nightcrawler

Best Actor: Jake Gyllenhaal – Nightcrawler

Best Actress: Marion Cotillard – Two Days, One Night

Best Supporting Actor: Mark Ruffalo – Foxcatcher

Best Supporting Actress: Rene Russo – Nightcrawler

Best Ensemble: Birdman

Body of Work: Willem Dafoe (John Wick, The Fault in Our Stars, The Grand Budapest Hotel, A Most Wanted Man & Nymphomaniac Part 2)

Best Adapted Screenplay: Gillian Flynn – Gone Girl

Best Original Screenplay: Dan Gilroy – Nightcrawler

Best Editing: James Herbert and Laura Jennings – Edge of Tomorrow

Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit – Nightcrawler

Best Production Design: Adam Stockhausen and Anna Pincock – The Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Score: James Newton Howard – Nightcrawler

Best Foreign Language Film: Force Majeure

Best Animated Film: The Boxtrolls

Best Documentary: Citizenfour

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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