How good are the New York Film Critics Circle Awards at predicting the Oscars?
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The New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) announced its 89th annual awardees on November 30. As usual, no one title dominated the final win tally, as three ended up with two prizes apiece. Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” was named Best Picture and achieved its second victory thanks to Lily Gladstone’s lead performance.
The other films that showed up twice on this year’s roster were “May December” (Best Supporting Actor, Charles Melton; Best Screenplay) and “Oppenheimer” (Best Director, Christopher Nolan; Best Cinematography). Lead actor Franz Rogowski (“Passages”) and supporting actress Da’Vine Joy Randolph (“The Holdovers”) took the remaining performance awards.
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Since 2001, this organization (which presently consists of 43 reviewers) has consistently given out 10 yearly awards that directly correspond to Oscar categories, plus a single writing prize for which original and adapted scripts are both considered. Counting all 11 areas of merit, the NYFCC and the film academy have chosen the same winners 27.3% of the time within the last 22 years and in 30.5% of cases during the critics circle’s entire existence.
Factoring in the newspaper strike-induced scrapping of the 1962 NYFCC Awards, a total of 30 (or 34.5%) of the group’s first 87 Best Picture selections went on to achieve the same top academy honor. While this is much higher than the corresponding 48-year lifetime rate of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (25%), the West and East Coasters’ respective 10-year Best Picture prediction percentages conversely and more widely diverge at 40% and 0%. Indeed, the Empire State gang and the academy have not agreed upon a top film choice since 2012 (“The Artist”) and have only matched three other times in the last three decades (“Schindler’s List,” 1994; “No Country for Old Men,” 2008; “The Hurt Locker,” 2010).
Prior to the 21st century, the largest Best Picture alignment gap between these two organizations lasted 10 years, from 1968 (“In the Heat of the Night”) to 1978 (“Annie Hall”). The beginning of that string of variances marked the end of a 59.4% agreement rate that could be traced back to both voting bodies lauding 1937’s “The Life of Emile Zola.” Most recently, NYFCC picks “Drive My Car” (2022) and “Tár” (2023) came up short in the main Oscar race against “CODA” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
A total of 97 NYFCC Award-winning performances have subsequently earned Oscars, making for a success rate of 34.4% when considering that these critics did not honor supporting players until 1969. The last leads to translate were Cate Blanchett (“Blue Jasmine,” 2014) and Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea,” 2017), while the most recent featured carryovers were Laura Dern (“Marriage Story,” 2020) and Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once,” 2023).
It’s not uncommon for there to be no alignment at all between the Oscar and NYFCC Award-winning acting quartets, as was the case in 2018, 2021, and 2022. As it happens, 13 of the last 40 NYFCC performance champs weren’t even nominated at the Oscars. This includes “Da 5 Bloods” costars Delroy Lindo and Chadwick Boseman as well as Lady Gaga (“House of Gucci”), Ethan Hawke (“First Reformed”), and Keke Palmer (“Nope”).
20 recipients of the NYFCC Award for Best Screenplay have also won the academy’s favor, with 13 having been subsequently deemed original and seven adapted. The latest victories of each kind occurred in 2017 (“Manchester by the Sea”) and 2008 (“No Country for Old Men”). “May December,” which would belong to the former subset, could benefit from the fact that well over half of all winners in this NYFCC category have at least been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.
Overall, the NYFCC is strongest at forecasting Best Actor Oscar winners (39.1%) and least accurate when it comes to Best Documentary Feature (15.8%). Narrowing the scope to this century alone, their highest and lowest match rates apply to Best Director (41.7%) and Best Picture (12.5%), signaling a dual advantage for “Oppenheimer” and bad news for its competitors, especially “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
The winners of this year’s NYFCC Awards will be honored in person during a ceremony on Wednesday, January 3. Nominations for the 96th Oscars will be revealed 20 days later.
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