San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards - 2006 Winners
December 14th, 2006 by Andre Soares
This year’s most interesting pick by the San Francisco Film Critics Circle was Little Children as the Best Film of 2006.
Little Children, an adult drama about suburban social repression and sexual hysteria, received generally positive reviews upon its limited release but has failed to catch on with the U.S. moviegoing public. (Little Children could have been a good movie, but there are quite a few missteps along the way, while the dishonest finale just about destroys its impact.)
Among the other winners were Best Actor Sacha Baron Cohen for Borat (a victory that raised a few eyebrows within the SF Circle), Best Supporting Actor Jackie Earle Haley for his sexually dysfunctional character in Little Children, Best Supporting Actress Adriana Barraza as the immigrant nanny in Babel, and Best Director Paul Greengrass for United 93. Helen Mirren’s The Queen continues to rule in the Best Actress category.
With three wins among U.S. film critics’ groups (Washington D.C. and Boston were the others), Guillermo del Toro’s dark fantasy El Laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth is no longer a surprising pick.
Cristi Puiu’s three-hour-long Romanian comedy-drama Moartea domnului Lazarescu / The Death of Mr. Lazarescu received a special citation.
Ennio Morricone to Receive Honorary Academy Award
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards - 2006
Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Awards - 2006
Poster Exhibition of Oscar-Winning Foreign Language Films
W. C. Fields Exhibit in Beverly Hills
2 Responses to “San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards - 2006 Winners”
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Your assesment of Little Children is off-the-mark. You write that Little Children “received mixed reviews upon its limited release.” Go to Rotten Tomatoes. The film has a 91 ating in “cream of the crop.” The film is also on every major pub’s Top Ten including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle etc.
You go on to write “… has failed to catch on with the U.S. moviegoing public.”
Little Children has never played on more than 35 screens. That is known in movie parlance as a platform release. The film has played in the same NY/LA houses for over 12 weeks, and its per screen averages are remarkable. I suggest you wait and see what happens with Little Children when it expands before you make such a wrong-headed remark.
John,
First of all, thanks for writing.
I’ll correct the “mixed reviews” remark. I’ve checked a number of reviews by U.S. critics, and “Little Children” did indeed receive mostly positive reviews — even if some of those weren’t out-and-out raves.
Now, I don’t trust the Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer — or whatever that’s called. With them, it’s either “fresh” or “rotten” — no “half-fresh,” or “too green,” or “overripe,” and so on. That sort of simplification — a movie is either all good or all bad — distorts the actual value critics place on a film.
As for the platform release, I understand quite well what that is. I’m also aware that a film that’s been in platform release for about 3 months is probably in box-office trouble.
Even after having received a number of top-ten mentions and assorted critical awards, and even though it’s playing in a mere 42 theaters in the U.S./Canada, “Little Children” has an unimpressive $3,263 per theater (as per the Rotten Tomatoes chart). That doesn’t sound very promising. (Compare that to “Volver,” with surprisingly few U.S. critical awards or honorable mentions, on week 8, with $5,511 per theater while playing in no less than 115 theaters. Not bad at all.)
When a movie opens wide, per theater grosses fall dramatically. For instance, when it went from five theaters to 32 — of course, without all the end-of-year award hoopla — “Little Children” lost more than half its per theater take.
Chances are that, unless it receives loads of Academy Award nominations, “Little Children” will remain stuck on platforms of differents sizes and shapes until it comes out on DVD.