Luca Guadagnino’s rapturous coming-of-age romance “Call Me by Your Name” has been named the best film of 2017 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, which announced its annual awards on Sunday.
Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project” was runner-up.
Timothée Chalamet and Sally Hawkins were named best actor and actress for their performances in “Call Me by Your Name” and “The Shape of Water,” respectively, with James Franco the runner-up to Chalamet for “The Disaster Artist” and Frances McDormand runner-up to Hawkins for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”
Guadagnino and Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water”) tied in the best-director category.
“The Shape of Water” won the most awards from LAFCA, with three first-place awards (actress, director and cinematography) and another two runner-up finishes.
Willem Dafoe was named the best supporting actor for “The Florida Project” and Laurie Metcalf won best supporting actress for “Lady Bird.” Sam Rockwell was the supporting actor runner-up for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” with Mary J. Blige finishing second in the supporting-actress category for “Mudbound.”
Agnes Varda and JR’s “Faces Places” was named the year’s best nonfiction film, the foreign-language category ended in a tie between “BPM (Beats Per Minute)” and “Loveless” and GKIDS’ “The Breadwinner” beat Pixar’s “Coco” for best animated film.
Jordan Peele received the screenplay award for “Get Out,” with Martin McDonagh the runner-up for “Three Billboards.”
“Dunkirk” won for editing, “Phantom Thread” for music and “Blade Runner 2049” for production design.
“Lady Bird” writer-director Greta Gerwig won the Next Generation Award.
Founded in 1975, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association is made up of nearly 60 critics based in Southern California.
Particularly in the acting categories, the LAFCA is known to make more idiosyncratic choices than most awards bodies. This year, though, their acting choices were picks that had already received significant support on the awards circuit, particularly Dafoe and Metcalf.
Overall, this was one of the most mainstream slates of awards the Los Angeles critics has given out in years, spreading the love among a number of this year’s top contenders: “Call Me by Your Name,” “The Shape of Water,” “The Florida Project,” “Three Billboards,” “Dunkirk,” “Lady Bird,” “Mudbound” and “Phantom Thread.”
Conspicuously missing in action was Steven Spielberg’s “The Post,” which swept three top awards from the National Board of Review but was then shut out by the two top regional critics groups, the New York Film Critics Circle and Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
The LAFCA best film winner has gone on to win the Oscar for Best Picture only three times in the last 20 years, but two of those came in the last two years with “Spotlight” and “Moonlight.” (The other was “The Hurt Locker” in 2009.) Other recent winners include “Boyhood,” “Amour,” “The Descendants,” “The Social Network” and “WALL-E.”
But despite the lack of overlap in the top category, about a half-dozen of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association winners typically go on to win the Oscar in other categories.
The Los Angeles Film Critics previously voted a Career Achievement Award to actor Max Von Sydow. All the awards will be handed out at the LAFCA’s annual awards dinner on Sunday, January 12, 2017.
The winners:
Best Film: “Call me by Your Name”
Runner-up: “The Florida Project”
Best Director: (TIE) Guillermo del Toro, “The Shape of Water” and Luca Guadagnino, “Call Me by Your Name”
Best Actor: Timothée Chalamet, “Call Me by Your Name”
Runner-up: James Franco, “The Disaster Artist”
Best Actress: Sally Hawkins, “The Shape of Water”
Runner-up: Frances McDormand, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Best Supporting Actor: Willem Dafoe, “The Florida Project”
Runner-up: Sam Rockwell, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Best Supporting Actress: Laurie Metcalf, “Lady Bird”
Runner-up: Mary J. Blige, “Mudbound”
Best Foreign-Language Film: (TIE) “BPM (Beats Per Minute)” and “Loveless”
Best Documentary/Nonfiction Film: “Faces Places”
Runner-up: “Jane”
Best Animated Film: “The Breadwinner”
Runner-up: “Coco”
Best Screenplay: Jordan Peele, “Get Out”
Runner-up: Martin McDonagh, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Best Cinematography: Dan Laustsen, “The Shape of Water”
Runner-up: Roger Deakins, “Blade Runner 2049”
Best Editing: Lee Smith, “Dunkirk”
Runner-up: Tatiana S. Riegel, “I, Tonya”
Best Music/Score: Jonny Greenwood, “Phantom Thread”
Runner-up: Alexander Desplat, “The Shape of Water”
Best Production Design: Dennis Gassner, “Blade Runner 2049”
Runner-up: Paul D. Austerberry, “The Shape of Water”
Next Generation Award: Greta Gerwig
Douglas Edwards Experimental Film Award: Lee Anne Schmitt, “Purge This Land”