_{Image by: The Associated Press respectfully – January 8, 2026}

The New York Film Critics Circle celebrated its 91^st anniversary this week, at TAO Downtown. As celebrations go, this one was tame, not raucous, until Isaac Misrahi, presenting the screenwriting award to Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein, likened performing his cameo in MARTY SUPREME as having his cock sucked by . . . I didn’t get the name. 

Just as well. An actors’ night, many presenters and winners spoke about the craft of acting. Ben Stiller, calling the NYFCC’s Best Supporting Actor choice Benicio del Toro mesmerizing, recounted a time when the actor was asked to cross the road, which he did but not before putting his ear to the ground in an unscripted hilarious gesture. Ethan Hawke, presenting Rose Byrne the Best Actress award for her outrageous “woman on the verge” in IF I HAD LEGS I WOULD KICK YOU, noted how the “Bridesmaids” actress was asked to use all her powers at once in the role created by writer/ director Mary Bronstein. It is rare for disturbed/ disturbing women to be at the forefront of films. 

In an adoring tribute to Amy Madigan, who pulls off a terrifying “Aunt Gladys” in the movie WEAPONS, Gabby Hoffman said they had actually met when they worked together in FIELD OF DREAMS and UNCLE BUCK, when Hoffman was six. Women are a force behind the camera as well. Filmmaker Ellen Kuras, off to Budapest to film the next “Dune,” presented the Best Cinematographer winner Autumn Durald Arkapaw for her work on SINNERS. 

Wagner Moura won Best Actor for his role in THE SECRET AGENT which brings up another important theme for this celebration, politics. Brazil’s era of disappearances, subject of films by Walter Salles, for example, can also be written as a crime thriller. On the run, Moura’s character navigates tricky moves while maintaining the film’s moral center in Kleber Mendonca Filho’s movie, awarded for Best International Film. Expect the film to contend with Jafar Panahi’s IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT for the Foreign Film Oscar. Panahi was here awarded Best Director, and while he is working the awards season in the U.S., as has been widely reported, he faces prison when he returns home in Iran.

Political activity is at the forefront of the NYFCC’s pick for Best Film, Paul Thomas Anderson’s ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, based on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, set in the politics of 1984. PTA said he did tweak the timeframe to more closely resonate for today’s political moment. “One Battle” features a stellar cast including Chase Infiniti, who presented the award to PTA; he agreed, the film’s star Leonardo DiCaprio remains under-recognized. PTA said in an after-ceremony chat, “He’s like Tom Hanks, and Jimmy Stewart, taken for granted.”