The National Society of Film Critics announced their 2022 film awards today, and there’s really only one way to interpret the Best Director trophy going to Aftersun‘s Charlotte Wells.

Aftersun is my idea of a spacey, ethereal mood-trip film. I’m not the only one who feels that it’s just not gripping or engrossing enough to warrant this kind of honor (ask any honest critic). This indicates that Aftersun‘s NSFC supporters voted for Wells as a gesture for feminist recognition and gender tokenism.

Like almost all major-outlet critics, the NSFC is composed of members who live in their own secular little world. In my opinion they’re residents of (a) the Planet Uranus or (b) the Abbey of St. Martin, where they live on chickens, raw lettuce, goat’s milk and goat cheese, and wear brown robes and sandals. As far as the Wells vote is concerned, they are absolutely not of this earth.

It could be argued, in fact, that Aftersun is a borderline infuriating space-out film. This is certainly my own personal opinion, I can tell you.

If Aftersun had been directed by a male, it most certainly wouldn’t have won anything. The NSFC critics know the truth of this, and of course they won’t admit it.

Best Picture / TÁR (61), Aftersun (49), No Bears (32) — HE strongly approves.

Best Director / Charlotte Wells, Aftersun (60), Park Chan-wook, Decision to Leave (47), Jafar Panahi, No Bears (36) — HE strongly disapproves.

Best Actor / Colin Farrell, After Yang & The Banshees of Inisherin (71); Paul Mescal, Aftersun…WHAT??; Bill Nighy, Living (33) — HE approves of Farrell winning.

Best Actress — Cate Blanchett, TÁR (59); Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once (38), (tie) Tilda Swinton – The Eternal Daughter / Michelle Williams – The Fabelmans (27) — HE approves of the Blanchett win.

Best Supporting Actor — Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once (45); Brian Tyree Henry, Causeway (35 — bending-over-backwards tokenism); Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin (27) — HE doesn’t approve of any of these performances.

Best Supporting Actress / Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin (57); Nina Hoss, TÁR (43); Dolly de Leon, Triangle of Sadness (35) — HE heartily approves of Condon’s win.

By HE standards Owen Roizman, who passed today at age 86, was and always will be one of Hollywood’s greatest cinematographers, certainly within the zeitgeist of the ’70s and ’80s. God, the streak Roizman was on between ’71 and ’78 alone! The French Connection, Play It Again, The Heartbreak Kid, The Exorcist, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Three Days of the Condor, Network, Straight Time. Not to mention True Confessions, Tootsie, Havana, Grand Canyon, Wyatt Earp, etc.

Special credit should be given to Roizman for stepping into that surreal episode when a William Friedkin-approved Bluray of The French Connection came out in ’09. Roizman didn’t tippy-toe around the obvious, which was that the ’09 Bluray’s bizarre color scheme (bleachy, desaturated, high contrasty) was an outright desecration. Three years later a properly remastered, Roizman-approved version was issued on a subsequent Bluray, and thank God for gloriously happy endings.

Posted on 3.8.12: “The new, Owen Roizman-approved French Connection Bluray is a blessing…a pure celluloid capturing of a great New York film experience, some of it luscious, some of it spotty and grainy but all it looking true and right. Some of it looks more lab-fresh than I’ve ever seen. Punchy red neons and such. Other parts look…well, the way they did at Leows’ 86th Street when it opened in the fall of ’71, I’m guessing. Raw, wham-bam, high-impact footage all the way.

“No more bluish bleach. No more splotchy colors and monochrome, high-contrast crap. No more creepy-perverse digital fuckwad action. The guy who mucked up the notorious 2009 Bluray version, director William Friedkin, has come to his senses and re-done his masterwork under Roizman’s influience.

“’The nation’s three-year-long, Freidkin-incited French Connection Bluray nightmare is over,’ I tweeted. ‘The bleachy, splotchy ’09 version has been replaced.’

“On 2.24.09 Roizman spoke to Aaron Aradillas on a blog-radio show called “Back By Midnight,” and he called the transfer “atrocious,” “emasculated” and “horrifying.” He said that he “wasn’t consulted” by Freidkin and he “certainly wants to wash my hands of having had anything to do with [it].”

HE’s Manwe Sulimo on BAFTA long lists:

West Coast Friendo: