SF Film Critics tap ‘Oppenheimer’ as best 2023 movie
“Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s epic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the conflicted father of the atomic bomb, was selected Tuesday as the best film of 2023 by the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle.
Partially shot in the East Bay, including a few scenes on the UC Berkeley campus where Oppenheimer worked as a professor, the film nabbed two other awards — one for Robert Downey Jr.’s supporting turn as Oppenheimer rival Lewis Strauss and for the film’s stunning, at times staggering cinematography.
Nolan’s Oscar-ready box-office sensation, one half of last summer’s “Barbenheimer” phenom, tied with “The Zone of Interest,” Jonathan Glazer’s unique film about Auschwitz death camp commandant Rudolf Hoss (opening Jan. 12 in Bay Area theaters) in receiving the most honors — three — from the critics group.
Other top winners include Jeffrey Wright (best actor) for his tone-perfect performance as a frustrated author in Cord Jefferson’s hilarious but pointed “American Fiction,” and Emma Stone for her daring turn as a revived woman who hits her feminist groove in the wild “Poor Things.”
Here are the winners and runners up by category.
Best Picture
Winner: “Oppenheimer”
Runner-up: “Killers of the Flower Moon
Director
Winner: Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest”
Runner-up: Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer
Actor
Winner: Jeffrey Wright, “American Fiction”
Runners-up: Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer,” and Andrew Scott, “All of Us Strangers” (tie)
Actress
Winner: Emma Stone, “Poor Things”
Runner-up: Sandra Hüller, “Anatomy of a Fall”
Original Screenplay
Winner: Celine Song, “Past Lives”
Runner-up: David Hemingson, “The Holdovers”
Adapted Screenplay
Winner: Cord Jefferson, “American Fiction”
Runner-up: Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”
Supporting actor
Winner: Robert Downey Jr., “Oppenheimer”
Runner-up: Charles Melton, “May December”
Supporting Actress
Winner: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers”
Runner-up: Sandra Hüller, “The Zone of Interest”
Animated Feature
Winner: “The Boy and the Heron”
Runner-up: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”
International Feature
Winner: “The Zone of Interest”
Runner-up: “Anatomy of a Fall”
Documentary
Winner: “20 Days in Mariupol”
Runner-up: “American Symphony”
Cinematography
Winner: Hoyte Van Hoytema, “Oppenheimer”
Runner-up: Robbie Ryan, “Poor Things”
Production Design
Winner: Sarah Greenwood, “Barbie”
Runner-up: James Price and Shona Heath (production designers) and Zsuzsa Mihalek (set decorator)
Film Editing
Winner: Paul Watts, “The Zone of Interest”
Runner-up: Jennifer Lame, “Oppenheimer”
Original Score
Winner: Robbie Robertson, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
Daniel Pemberton, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”
In addition, the group presented the Marlon Riggs Award, given annually to someone who “represents courage and innovation in the world of cinema,” to Area filmmaker and visual storyteller H.P. Mendoza for his boundary-pushing work that includes a multimedia version of his 2021 art installation “Attack, Decay, Release,” and his latest award-winning narrative feature, “The Secret Art of Human Flight.” The Critics Circle also awarded its Special Citation Award for Independent Cinema to the films “Earth Mama” and “Fremont” (in a tie), with “The Blue Caftan” as runner-up.