Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) chooses ‘ROMA’ as Best Picture of 2018

The diverse members of the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) have spoken, and their votes have allowed the best cinematic effort of 2018 to surface.

“It was a tight and tense race for sure, and after tallying the votes we have found the brightest among 2018’s gems,” said Nguyen Le, who alongside Bavner Donaldo and Wesley Lovell, forms the organization’s Governing Committee.

“Roma,” director Alfonso Cuarón’s reportedly autobiographical film, produced by Participant Media and Esperanto Filmoj, is going home with the Best Picture award, winning over other potent nominees such as the heartfelt “If Beale Street Could Talk” adaptation, topical “First Reformed,” and dynamite period piece “The Favourite.” The film follows a middle-class family’s maid named Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) through one year of her life.

On top of this, “Roma” also wins the following awards: Best Film Not in the English Language, Best Director, and Best Cinematography.

The film is warmly received by OFCS members. Writing for DC Filmdom, Eddie Pasa said “Aparicio is a revelation;” CineSnob’s film writer Kiko Martinez said the film is “as close to cinematic poetry as you can get;” for Culturess, Kristen Lopez said it was “beautifully composed and aesthetically brilliant;” and Susan Granger considers Cuarón’s feature “sensitively written, insightfully directed and vibrantly photographed.”

Among other notable wins are three for “If Beale Street Could Talk” (for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Score); two for “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” (for Best Editing and a Technical Achievement Award for Best Stunt Coordination); and one for “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (for Best Animated Feature).

Members of the OFCS also handed out Lifetime Achievement Awards to five candidates, among them actress Rita Moreno and director Spike Lee, and two Special Achievement Awards.

“With another successful year in the history books, our members have clearly stepped up to the task of selecting the year’s best,” Lovell said. “The diverse selections our membership has made reflect the bountiful and broad-ranging experiences of our members and that will always be our biggest and brightest victory.”

The Online Film Critics Society, composed of 283 film critics whose work appears mainly on the internet, was founded in 1997 to support online critics and provide them a unified voice in the dominant culture of print journalism.

BEST PICTURE
Roma

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

BEST DIRECTOR
Alfonso Cuarón – Roma

BEST LEAD ACTOR
Ethan Hawke – First Reformed

BEST LEAD ACTRESS
Toni Collette – Hereditary

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Michael B. Jordan – Black Panther

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Regina King – If Beale Street Could Talk

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Paul Schrader – First Reformed

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Barry Jenkins – If Beale Street Could Talk

BEST EDITING
Eddie Hamilton – Mission: Impossible – Fallout

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Alfonso Cuarón – Roma

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Nicholas Britell – If Beale Street Could Talk

BEST DEBUT FEATURE
Ari Aster – Hereditary

BEST FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Roma

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
Annihilation – Best Visual Effects
Black Panther – Best Costume Design
Mission: Impossible – Fallout – Best Stunt Coordination
A Quiet Place – Best Sound Design
A Star Is Born – Best Original Songs

ONLINE FILM CRITICS SOCIETY’S BEST OF THE YEAR
1. Roma
2. BlacKkKlansman
3. If Beale Street Could Talk
4. First Reformed
5. The Favourite
6. You Were Never Really Here
7. Annihilation
8. Eighth Grade
9. Hereditary
10. A Star Is Born
11. Suspiria

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
Roger Deakins
Spike Lee
Rita Moreno
Robert Redford
Agnès Varda

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
To Ryan Coogler, for Black Panther’s distinctive critical and box office appeal.
To the city of Oakland, CA, for hosting 2018’s most socially and artistically compelling films about racism, “Sorry to Bother You” and “Blindspotting.”

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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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