Year’s best movies: The Artist, Descendants lead critics awards

Boston Society of Film Critics, LA Film Critics Association, NY Film Critics Online all announced their choices.


Reuters December 13, 2011

NEW YORK:


The Artist, a black-and-white silent film about Hollywood, The Descendants, Brad Pitt, Martin Scorsese and Terrence Malick all won big on December 11 among US film critics and industry groups that doled out honours for the year’s best movies.


The Boston Society of Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Online all announced their choices for the best films and performances of 2011, kicking off a pivotal week in Hollywood with both the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild’s announcing nominations. Meanwhile, The American Film Institute (AFI) also issued its list of the year’s 10 best films.

In Boston, critics chose The Artist, set against the backdrop of Hollywood moving from silent films to talkies, as the year’s best film. Meanwhile, the Boston critics named Pitt as best actor (male) for his portrayal of a numbers-crunching baseball man in Moneyball and Michelle Williams as the best female actor for her turn in My Week with Marilyn playing screen siren Marilyn Monroe. Pitt already won the New York Film Critics prize, while Williams’ much-lauded performance scored one of its first major wins.

Meanwhile, LA critics gave top acting honours to Michael Fassbender and Korea’s Yun Jung-hee. Fassbender claimed his best actor win for Shame, which featured his full-frontal depiction of sex-addiction. Yun Jung-hee took the prize for best female actor for her performance in the Korean film Poetry. Martin Scorsese was named best director by the Boston critics for Hugo, about a boy living in a Paris train station, while the LA group chose Terrence Malick for his mystical drama The Tree of Life.

Meanwhile, The New York Online critics also chose The Artist as the year’s best film, and gave its top acting awards to Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady and Michael Shannon for Take Shelter. Michel Hazanavicius was named best director for The Artist while Bridesmaids won the ensemble award.

The AFI top 10 included George Clooney-starring The Descendants, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, Bridesmaids, J Edgar, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Help, Moneyball and The Tree of Life.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 14th, 2011.

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