Best Actress

CHICAGO – In a sense of deja vu from the recent Golden Globe Awards, the nominees for the 92nd Academy Awards has been named on January 13th, 2020. This breaks a precedent of the last ten years, with the Oscar ceremony moved up to February 9th from it’s usual position in late February to early March.

CHICAGO – The Chicago International Film Festival is competitive, and the 55th edition presented its awards on October 25th, 2019, at CHEZ venue in Chicago. The winner of the Gold Hugo as Best International Film was “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (France), directed by Céline Sclamma.

CHICAGO – Time to fill out the Oscar prediction ballots! The 91st Academy Awards are on Sunday, February 24th, 2019, and HC film critics Patrick McDonald, Michael “Spike” Walters and Jon Lennon Espino are ready to add their prognosticating powers to eight major categories, plus three wild cards. Let the predicting begin.

CHICAGO – One of the more pleasant surprises of the 2018 film year was the rise of the connectively expressive film “Roma,” written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón. Not only is it nominated for Best Picture, Best Foreign Language Film and Best Director at the 91st Academy Awards, but the two lead actresses – Yalitza Aparicio and Maria de Tavira – are nominated for Best Actress and Supporting Actress. Jon Lennon Espino, contributor at HollywoodChicago.com, interviewed both actresses last October at the 54th Chicago International Film Festival.

CHICAGO – Chicago’s Kartemquin Films continues their winning streak, as director Bing Liu’s “Minding the Gap” scores an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary. The 91st Academy Awards will take place on February 24th, 2019.

CHICAGO – The Chicago International Film Festival is competitive, and the 54th edition presented its awards on October 19th, 2018, at the AMC River East Theatre in Chicago. The winner of the Gold Hugo as Best Film was “Happy as Lazzaro” (Italy/Switzerland/Germany/France), directed by Alice Rohrwacher.

CHICAGO – Time to fill out the Oscar prediction ballots! The 90th Academy Awards are on Sunday, March 4th, 2018, and HC film critics Patrick McDonald, Michael “Spike” Walters and Jon Lennon Espino are ready to add their prognosticating powers to all the major categories, plus three wild cards. Let the predicting begin.

CHICAGO – “Lady Bird,” which is the sensational, authentic and emotional directorial debut of actor Greta Gerwig, was honored as the Best Picture of 2017 as determined by the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) on Dec. 12, 2017. The Best Director was split to Christopher Nolan of “Dunkirk,” the Best Actor was Timothée Chalamet of “Call Me By Your Name” (who also was awarded Most Promising Performer) and the Best Actress was Saoirse Ronan of “Lady Bird.”

CHICAGO – When is comes to Academy Award predictions, HollywoodChicago.com is second to none. That’s right, nobody does it better, even the approximately 100 million other outlets predicting the Big Night awards. HC film critics Patrick McDonald, Michael “Spike” Walters and Jon Lennon Espino “correctly” predict the major categories.

CHICAGO – The photograph of the 2016 movie year is undoubtedbly the iconic shot of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, caught in mid dance, in the musical “La La Land.” The film received 14 nominations for this Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony (Feb. 26th), and the “Unit Still Photographer” who got the shot was Dale Robinette.