And Adrien Brody‘s performance as Lászlo Tóth, the period film’s profusely weeping, cigarette-smoking, heroin-shooting protagonist, has won the New York Film Critics Circle’s Best Actor prize.

I’ve only seen the first half of The Brutalist (really couldn’t stand it) but I know what this performance primarily is, and this is an outrageous decision.

Virtuoso Nickel Boys auteurist RaMell Ross won for Best Director. If Ross had been handed some kind of Best Audacious First Film trophy, fine. But Nickel Boys doesn’t work and actually becomes quite tiresome. This was a broad consensus view at Telluride so don’t tell me.

I haven’t seen Mike Leigh‘s Hard Truths so no opinion about Marianne Jean-Baptiste winning for Best Actress…congrats.

A Real Pain‘s Kieran Culkin won the Best Supporting Actor trophy — the only NYFCC decision I wholly agree with.

Carol Kane was named Best Supporting Actress for playing music teacher Carla Kessler in Nathan Silver‘s Between the Temples. Call me superficial, but I didn’t see it because I didn’t want to invest in the once-svelte Jason Schwartzman playing a chunky-bod. (He’s even fatter in Queer.)

Sean Baker won a Best Screenplay awards for Anora….he should have won for Best Director, and Anora should have won Best Film….the NYFCC are really a bunch of eccentric assholes this year!