The Women Film Critics Circle Award Nominations 2014

The Women Film Critics Circle has announced its 2O14 unique nominations for the best movies this year by and about women. And outstanding achievements by women, who rarely get to be honored historically in the film world.

The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of 65 women film critics and scholars from around the country and internationally, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media.

They came together in 2004 to form the first women critics’ organization in the United States, in the belief that women’s perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully. And WFCC is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. WFCC also prides itself on being the most culturally and racially diverse critics group in the country by far, and best reflecting the diversity of movie audiences.

Critical Women On Film, a presentation of The Women Film Critics Circle, is their journal of discussion and theory. And a gathering of women’s voices expressing a fresh and differently experienced perspective from the primarily male dominated film criticism world.

BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN

Camp X-Ray

The Homesman

Still Alice

Two Days, One Night

BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN

Belle

Selma

The Babadook

The Pretty One

BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER [Screenwriting Award]

Belle: Misan Sagay

Ida: Rebecca Lenkiewicz

Obvious Child: Gillian Robespierre

The Babadook: Jennifer Kent

BEST ACTRESS

Marion Cotillard: Two Days, One Night

Carol Kane: Clutter

Julianne Moore: Still Alice

Kristen Stewart: Camp X-Ray

BEST ACTOR

Tom Hardy: Locke

Tommy Lee Jones: The Homesman

Eddie Redmayne: The Theory Of Everything

Jeremy Renner: Kill The Messenger

BEST YOUNG ACTRESS

Mira Grosin: We Are The Best

Lorelei Linklater: Boyhood

Saoirse Ronan: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Quvenzhane Wallis; Annie

BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS

Anna Kendrick: Happy Christmas

Helen Mirren: The Hundred-Foot Journey

Jenny Slate: Obvious Child

Kristen Wiig: Skeleton Twins

BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN

Ida

Two Days, one Night

We Are The Best

Zero Motivation

BEST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE

Belle

Lucky Them

Obvious Child

1,000 Times Good Night

WORST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE

Gone Girl

Nymphomaniac

Sex Tape

Sin City: A Dame To Kill For

BEST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE

Cesar Chavez

Kill The Messenger

Love Is Strange

The Homesman

WORST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE

Bad Words

Big Eyes

Dumb And Dumber To

Listen Up Philip

BEST THEATRICALLY UNRELEASED MOVIE BY OR ABOUT WOMEN

Girlhood

Ukraine Is Not A Brothel

WOMEN’S WORK/BEST ENSEMBLE

The Homesman

Two Days, One Night

We’re The Best

Zero Motivation

SPECIAL MENTION AWARDS

COURAGE IN FILMMAKING:

CitizenFour

ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women

Frontera

Private Violence

JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America

Anita: Speaking Truth To Power

The Maid’s Room

KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman’s place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity

Belle

Big Eyes

COURAGE IN ACTING [Taking on unconventional roles that radically redefine the images of women on screen]

Carla Juri: Wetlands

Julianne Moore: Still Alice

Hilary Swank: The Homesman

Reese Witherspoon: Wild

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD: [Performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored]

Amy Adams: Big Eyes

Patricia Arquette: Boyhood

Felicity Jones: The Theory Of Everything

Hilary Swank: The Homesman

BEST DOCUMENTARY BY OR ABOUT WOMEN

Anita: Speaking Truth To Power

CitizenFour

Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry

MOMMIE DEAREST WORST SCREEN MOM OF THE YEAR AWARD

Charlotte Gainsbourg: Nymphomaniac

BEST SCREEN COUPLE

Boyhood

Elsa & Fred

Obvious Child

Skeleton Twins

BEST LINE IN A MOVIE

Big Hero 6: “Stop whining. Woman up!”

A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO MALE ROLES IN MOVIES

Jessica Chastain: Interstellar

JUST KIDDING AWARDS:

Forty-Plus Female Empowerment Award: For the producers who give women over forty meaningful roles in movies on a regular basis, in an industry where forty is the new ninety-five – and as other than maniacs and witches.

Merry Macho Award: Seth Rogen and James Franco: For advancing the cause of world peace with their presidential assassination comedy, The Interview, and for further extending Hollywood as a wing of the US military and the CIA. And, while possibly mulling the Interview II sequel comedy – the assassination of President Obama.

ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: Adrienne Shelly was a promising actress and filmmaker who was brutally strangled in her apartment in 2006 at the age of forty by a construction worker in the building, after she complained about noise. Her killer tried to cover up his crime by hanging her from a shower20rack in her bathroom, to make it look like a suicide. He later confessed that he was having a “bad day.” Shelly, who left behind a baby daughter, had just completed her film Waitress, which she also starred in, and which was honored at Sundance after her death.

JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: The daughter of a laundress and a musician, Baker overcame being born black, female and poor, and marriage at age fifteen, to become an internationally acclaimed legendary performer, starring in the films Princess Tam Tam, Moulin Rouge and Zou Zou. She also survived the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois as a child, and later expatriated to France to escape US racism. After participating heroically in the underground French Resistance during WWII, Baker returned to the US where she was a crusader for racial equality. Her activism led to attacks against her by reporter Walter Winchell who denounced her as a communist, leading her to wage a battle against him. Baker was instrumental in ending segregation in many theaters and clubs, where she refused to perform unless integration was implemented.

KAREN MORLEY AWARD: Karen Morley was a promising Hollywood star in the 1930s, in such films as Mata Hari and Our Daily Bread. She was driven out of Hollywood for her leftist political convictions by the Blacklist and for refusing to testify against other actors, while Robert Taylor and Sterling Hayden were informants against her. And also for daring to have a child and become a mother, unacceptable for female stars in those days. Morley maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.

Prairie Miller is a New York multimedia journalist online, in print and radio, who reviews movies and conducts in-depth interviews. She can also be heard on WBAI/Pacifica National Radio Network’s Arts Express.