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Thank you all for your patience, I held on as long as I could so that I could get a good sample of ballots for the first round of nominations, and I think we are at a point to draw a line. So, without further adue, the first round of votes are in and we have our nominees for the Reel Society Of Film Critics Awards 2019!

Between now and March 9th you have the opportunity to submit your final round of votes that will reveal the winners of the awards on Sunday March 10th. Remember you will now be voting on a sliding scale of 5-1 in order of preference, other that in the Best Picture category which will follow the same format, but be on a scale of 10-1. 10 would be your first choice, and then sliding down to your least favourite. You do not have to award a score to every movie, and you need only award what you feel necessary (ie. you can vote just three movies if you like, with one movie a 10, another an 8 and another a 3). If you have any queries on this please let me know.

I will also use this opportunity to ask the committee to put themselves forward for a featurette on one of the Best Picture nominees. If you would like to do one, and it need be no more than a couple of sentences if that's all you can think of, that will be great.

So without further ado, here are the nominees for the 2019 Reel Society Of Film Critics Awards:

Best Picture
A Star Is Born
Annihilation
Black Panther
Burning
Cold War
First Reformed
Shoplifters
The Favourite
The Guilty
The Endless

Best Director
Spike Lee, "Blackkklansman"
Pawel Pawilkowski "Cold War"
Debra Granik, "Leave No Trace"
Yorgos Lanthimos "The Favourite"
Lynne Ramsay, "You Were Never Really Here"

Best Actor in a Leading Role
Ethan Hawke, "First Reformed"
Viggo Mortensen, "Green Book"
Ben Foster, "Leave No Trace"
Christian Bale, "Vice"
Joaquin Phoenix, "You Were Never Really Here"

Best Actress in a Leading Role
Melissa McCarthy, "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"
Joanna Kulig, "Cold War"
Toni Collette, "Hereditary"
Thomasin McKenzie, "Leave No Trace"
Olivia Coleman, "The Favourite"

Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Sam Elliot, "A Star Is Born"
Steven Yeun, "Burning"
Richard E Grant, "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"
Mahershala Ali, "Green Book"
Riz Ahmed, "The Sisters Brothers"

Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Rachel McAdams, "Disobedience"
Regina King, "If Beale Street Could Talk"
Jeon Jong-seo, "The Burning"
Emma Stone, "The Favourite"
Rachel Weisz, "The Favourite"

Best Foreign Language Film
Burning
Cold War
Roma
Shoplifters
The Guilty

Best Animated Picture
Isle Of Dogs
Mirai
Ralph Breaks The Internet
Spider-man: Into The Spider-Verse
The Incredibles 2

Best Documentary Feature
Free Solo
Minding The Gap
They Shall Not Grow Old
Three Identical Strangers
Wont You Be My Neighbour?

Best Cast
A Star Is Born
Burning
Green Book
The Favourite
Vice

Breakthrough Performance
Millicent Simmonds, "A Quiet Place"
Joe Cole, "A Prayer Before Dawn"
Elsie Fisher, "Eighth Grade"
Milly Shapiro, "Hereditary"
Thomasin McKenzie, "Leave No Trace"

Best Original Screenplay
Cold War
First Reformed
Shoplifters
The Endless
The Favourite

Best Adapted Screenplay
A Star Is Born
Annihilation
Blackkklansman
Burning
Leave No Trace

Best Cinematography
Annihiliation
If Beale Street Could Talk
Mandy
The Favourite
The Rider

Best Score
A Star Is Born
Annihilation
Halloween
Mandy
You Were Never Really Here

Best Visual Effects
Annihilation
Ant-Man And The Wasp
Avengers: Infinity War
Black Panther
Ready Player One

I'll do The Endless

A Star is Born please

I'll do First Reformed.

Wow.
I'm very surprised by many nominations, including some I had voted for but never thought would get in. So glad to see so much love for Leave no Trace and Burning, notably. I wish Wildlife had at least one nom, but hey that's the game. Glad The Sisters Brothers at least got one nom, for Riz Ahmed, and I nominated him myself so that's good. Really interestsing set of nominees. We have 4 foreign language films in the Best Picture race !! 4 !! Amazing !

AS for the featurette, I'll obvisouly gladly write one for Burning if that's OK with everyone.

I'll do the Annihilation write-up

I'll take Shoplifters.

Gimme The Favourite

An interesting array of nominees, indeed. It always seems so strange to me how we inevitably get directors in our top 5 for movies that didn't make our top 10. Do we have a lot of voters who highlight flashy directorial styles, even when the film as a whole isn't very good? Is this our version of awarding showboat acting instead of more subtle performances?

There are three movies I'd be happy to see win Best Picture, which is probably higher than average for me, so the biggest surprise/disappointment is the lack of acting noms for a character-driven film like Shoplifters.

I wouldn't exactly call Leave No Trace a flashy movie.

JohnErle wrote:An interesting array of nominees, indeed. It always seems so strange to me how we inevitably get directors in our top 5 for movies that didn't make our top 10. Do we have a lot of voters who highlight flashy directorial styles, even when the film as a whole isn't very good? Is this our version of awarding showboat acting instead of more subtle performances?

Although you could make the flashiness argument in some instances, I think it's more of a simple case of people not always having overlapping Best Picture and Best Director ballots. For example last year when I was running the show, Christopher Nolan got nominated for Best Director with 4 votes while Dunkirk received just 1 Best Picture vote. On the other side of the equation, I, Tonya made the Best Picture cut with 3 votes while Craig Gillespie received 0 votes for Best Director. Kathryn Bigelow, Bong Joon-Ho, Ridley Scott and Aaron Sorkin also appeared on Best Director ballots despite Detroit, Okja, All the Money in the World and Molly's Game not receiving a single vote for Best Picture while the inverse happened for The Big Sick, The Disaster Artist, Patti Cake$, Prevenge and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

I guess the fanboy factor can partly explain the Nolan thing, and it's conceivable that someone had a 2-3 films vying for the #5 spot, then decided to award the director for a film that just missed their top 5, but for the most part my best director noms will always go to whoever directed my picks for Best Picture. To quote Billy Crystal from the days when the Oscars still had a host, "Did this movie direct itself?"

Dunkirk was basically a Michael Bay movie but an hour shorter and without all the flag waving.

I tend to agree with John and I usually have the same nominees in my ballot for Best Picture and Best Director. But since thanks to the difference Debra Granik appears as Best Director in our nominees, I'm glad about the differences.

Wow, a lot of foreign and indie nods this year?. Out of our 10 BP nominees, less than half were given wide releases in the US. Are we becoming cultured?!?

I forgot my ballot, so you guys won't have to see me voting The Favourite and Spider-Man completely down the line