The National Board of Review selected Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods as his best film of 2020 on Tuesday, giving Netflix drama three overall honors in his annual vote for best film of the year. Lee won the best director, and the film also received the ensemble award.
Chadwick Boseman was posthumously honored with the NBR Icon Award. He appeared in Da 5 Bloods in one of his final roles alongside a cast that included Delroy Lindo, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis and Jonathan Majors. The photo centers on a united group of Vietnam veterans who return to find the remains of their fallen squad leader and the buried treasure they hid there.
“Da 5 Bloods it is not only a unique portrait of the experience and persistent trauma of black Vietnam War veterans, but also a moving story of enduring friendship, a suspense jungle treasure hunt and a powerful reckoning with the American dream ”, said NBR President Annie Schulhof. “We are also honored to present the posthumous NBR Icon Award to Chadwick Boseman, an extraordinary talent that represented the best that an actor could be, no matter what the role.”
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It is the second consecutive year that NBR has awarded a Netflix film its top award. Last year, he honored Martin Scorsese’s The Irish before that photo it reached 10 Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture. In the previous year, the group chose the eventual Oscar winner for best film Green Paper.
Riz Ahmed (Metal sound) and Carey Mulligan (Promising young woman) took the awards for best actor and actress today. Metal sound also won by Paul Raci as a supporting actor; other films with multiple winners included Minari, who won the supporting actress for Youn Yuh-jun and Lee Isaac Chung’s original screenplay.
Da 5 Bloods now joins a list of photos on the hotlist thanks to the main groups of critics who weighed in this award season. The New York Film Critics Circle has already named A24’s First cow Kelly Reichardt as her best film, while the Los Angeles Film Critics Association voted for Steve McQueen’s Amazon mini-film anthology for TV Small Ax your best photo.
Here is the complete list of NBR winners:
Best movie
DA 5 BLOOD
Best director
Spike Lee, DA 5 BLOODS
Best actor
Riz Ahmed, METAL SOUND
Best actress
Carey Mulligan, PROMISING YOUNG PEOPLE
Best Supporting Actor
Paul Raci, METAL SOUND
Best supporting actress
Youn Yuh-jung, MINARI
Best Adapted Screenplay
Paul Greengrass and Luke Davies, WORLD NEWS
Best Original Screenplay
Lee Isaac Chung, MINARI
Innovative performance
Sidney Flanigan, NEVER RARELY TIMES EVER
Best directorial debut
Channing Godfrey Peoples, LADY JUNETEENTH
Best Animation
SOUL
Best Foreign Film
LA LLORONA
Best Documentary
TIME
NBR Icon Award
Chadwick Boseman
NBR Freedom of Expression Award
ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI
NBR Spotlight Award
Radha Blank for writing, directing, producing and starring THE FORTY-YEAR VERSION
Best Set
DA 5 BLOOD
Notable achievement in cinematography
Joshua James Richards, NOMADLAND
Best movies
(in alphabetic order)
First cow
The forty-year-old version
Judas and the Black Messiah
The Midnight Sky
Minari
World News
Nomadland
Promising young woman
Soul
Metal sound
The top 5 foreign language films
(in alphabetic order)
Apples
Collective
Dear Comrades
The Mole Agent
Night of kings
5 best documentaries
(in alphabetic order)
All In: The struggle for democracy
Boys State
Dick Johnson is dead
American Miss
The Truffle Hunters
The 10 best independent films
(in alphabetic order)
The climb
Sidewalks
Goodbye Love
Miss Juneteenth
The nest
Never seldom sometimes always
The Outpost
Relic
San Francisco
Wolfwalkers
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