Boyhood and Life Itself - Two of the Finest Films I Have Ever Seen

Richard Linklater has made a version of all of the movies I could ever hope to make, and more. He’s made the joyous backstage theatre drama (Me & Orson Welles), the best romance in recent movie history (the Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight trilogy), the story of the last day of school at an Austin high school (Dazed and Confused) and a dark comedy that explores the peculiarities of East Texas and its local flavor (Bernie).

With Boyhood, his twelve-years-in-the-making portrait of Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from age six to eighteen, Linklater has made his best movie, a masterful epic that brings to mind Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011), both in its ambition and in its Texas setting. Roger Ebert wrote in his review of The Tree of Life that he didn’t “know when a film has connected more immediately with [his] own personal experience.” I suspect many people will feel this way about Boyhood, too.

Oh, how this film will resonate for those who grew up in Texas. Linklater gets everything right – the recitation of the Texas pledge in public schools, the sound of white winged doves calling out over suburban neighborhoods, the Bible given to you at a certain age with your name engraved on the cover. 

Near the end of the film, as she’s sending her son off to college, Mason’s mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette), says, “I just thought there’d be more, you know?” And that’s when the power of the movie hit me.

Though the movie has been lauded for its incredible twelve-year shoot, the greatest achievement of Boyhood is that you don’t really notice the characters (and actors) aging. The movie is so entertaining, the transitions so seamless, and the characters such a genuine pleasure to hang out with, that you lose sight of the fact that they’re growing up and maturing right before your eyes. By not focusing on overly dramatic or seminal moments that other filmmakers might make the focus of their coming-of-age films, Linklater gives the whole movie such a hang-out feeling that the trick is not thinking about the time. And I thought there’d be more. But that’s how it happens. It’s all over too soon, and perhaps the power of the movie doesn’t even fully register until you realize it’s all over.

In the first half of this film, Mason is pulled in many different directions, with adults offering out various ways through life. It’s not until about midway through Boyhood that Mason really emerges and develops a voice. That’s not an arc we see much in cinema, particularly with so much emphasis placed on active characters. But how are we formed? Aren’t we all slowly molded by the world around us? Much of our childhood is spent not thinking about the future and not making active decisions. We’re certainly not thinking about what we’re doing as part of some larger life structure.

Many of the major character changes take place off-screen. The movie is not unlike Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret (2011) in this respect, where characters are allowed to leave a scene and have lives outside the movie. I think of Mason’s father, Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) growing from freewheeling dad in one section of the movie to a slightly more conservative and mature man entering his second marriage a bit later. We see how this change must have taken place. To witness the change itself is not necessary.

The actors in Boyhood are extraordinary, and you’d be hard-pressed to argue that any other film performances this year are really comparable to what Arquette, Coltrane, Hawke and Lorelei Linklater achieve in this movie. In particular, I’d like to see Hawke at the very least get nominated for an Academy Award for his performance – he’s an absolutely fantastic actor, extraordinary in everything from Linklater’s films to Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007) to Training Day (2001).

As Linklater says in an interview, “At some point, you’re no longer growing up, you’re aging. But no one can pinpoint that moment exactly.” I can’t wait to see Boyhood again to see if I can pinpoint exactly where it happens, but I have a feeling I’ll be taken away on Mason’s journey once again and forget about that question altogether, enjoying my time with wonderfully real people.

I’ve had my own boyhood with Mr. Linklater (see the picture to the left). I don’t mean to say he has any idea who I am, but by growing up in Austin and being interested in film, I (along with many others) feel a certain kinship with him.

He is our resident auteur, and more. He’s the friendly patron of the arts, the man sitting behind me at Hyde Park Theatre’s production of Killer Joe. He's the guy enthusiastically talking with cinephiles in between the Summer Classic Film Series screenings of Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990) at the Paramount Theatre. He came to Waterloo Video to sign the newly released Criterion DVD of Slacker back in 2004, and I have my copy proudly placed atop my DVD collection. “To Jack – all the best. Rick Linklater.”

I’ve never been more proud to come from the city of Linklater. The Texas auteurs – Linklater, Terrence Malick, Wes Anderson, David Gordon Green – are responsible for many of the best films of the last few years. Boyhood is certainly the best picture of this year, and I can only hope that by this time next year, we’ll be referring to Linklater as an Academy Award-winning director.

Special Note: In one of the scenes filmed at Austin High School, you can see the 2009 UIL One-Act Play State Champions banner hanging over the Preas Theater (for our production of Over the River and Through the Woods, in which I was one of the six actors). We didn’t just win State – we made it into a Linklater movie! Watch the Boyhood featurette that shows some of the filming at Austin High. And here's a great interview with Linklater - on Boyhood, Bernie and Texas.

How Richard Linklater made me a better film critic

Slacker Geography, 25 Years Later

Life Itself (Steve James)

I often walk out of movies and struggle to articulate the effect they have on me. Roger Ebert was a master at this. He always had a perfect turn of phrase to capture exactly what a certain movie felt like. Who else could write something like, “I was almost hugging myself while I watched it” of Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (2000)? I think of that quote every time I watch Almost Famous, because that’s exactly how the movie makes you feel.

On the opening night of Steve James’s new documentary about Ebert, Life Itself, I was moved to tears, just as I had been the first time I saw the movie in January. Walking out of Austin’s Violet Crown Cinema and seeing the peaceful Austin skyline before me, a banner poster of Boyhood proudly draped over the cinema, I was touched by a tinge of sadness.

Partially because this journey isn’t yet over. Many of us left have yet to enjoy our heyday. Some of us never get there. Roger Ebert did, and the morning after he passes away in Life Itself, Steve James shows us a Chicago infused with sunlight and purpose. Forty years ago, there was Ebert, part of the very fabric of that city, informing the lives of its people. And now, he’s gone.

This is to say I don’t know how to articulate exactly how I felt looking out at the city skyline after this movie ended. Certainly, I was overcome with sadness, knowing that Ebert is gone and not coming back. But I was also filled with joy, knowing that a city – in his case, Chicago – could contain a man such as this, who stood for the right things and whose writing guided so many people to see pictures they may never have seen otherwise.

The film’s score plays an integral role in this magnificent feeling. The music by Joshua Abrams hits a feeling somewhere between triumphant and mournful. There’s something truly grand about it – as soon as you hear it, it just feels right. It’s the score a life like this deserves. With the aid of that score, those final shots of trains running through Chicago the morning after Ebert’s death give the movie an almost transcendental power. This movie embodies such a specific feeling and attitude toward a man, his life and the city in which he lived.

Watching Life Itself, I understood, in a way, what people mean when they say death is a beautiful thing. The movie’s celebration of life and reconciliation with death took me aback. When I saw the film for the first time in January, I was focused on how well the movie illustrates Mr. Ebert’s impact on cinema and his relationships with many of the filmmakers he championed. But I may have missed the fearless quality of the movie to look at something deeper, going into the unknown and ultimately coming to peace with Ebert’s passing. I felt Ebert’s bravery more this time.

I’ve not seen a movie that treats death with such forthrightness since Sean Penn’s Into the Wild (2007), at least in the sense that death is accepted in both films and shown for what it is.

During one section of the movie, Ebert’s friend Bill Nack recites the last page of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby by heart, and perhaps that’s as good a way as any to reconcile this thing that happens to all of us in the end. Life Itself is one of the best films I’ve seen, not simply because it captures what made Ebert so important and influential to the film community, but because it’s one of the few movies that’s left me with a profound impression about what it means to face death.

So, reflecting after the movie, I thought about this ether space – the space between the old world, where Ebert was alive and influenced how I thought of cinema, and this new world, where recent movies seem almost out-of-balance without his writing and guiding them to their proper alignment. As Ebert goes, so does a whole way of living, a whole time and place for me.  He is more than a part of my childhood. He is sort of the leader, along with Martin Scorsese, of everything I hold sacred and thrilling in movies.

And here was this new city in front of me, full of life and those who may never know what kind of man was here for a time and informed the way we feel and react.

"And it took me years to understand that that’s who I am. And Roger knew that.” - Martin Scorsese

The best films of 2014, at the half-way point.

1. Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
2. Life Itself (Steve James)
3. The Immigrant (James Gray)
4. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)
5. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
6. Noah (Darren Aronofsky)
7. Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski)
8. Joe (David Gordon Green)
9. Night Moves (Kelly Reichardt)
10. Jersey Boys (Clint Eastwood)

With Begin Again, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Edge of Tomorrow, Snowpiercer, Enemy, Muppets Most Wanted and The Lego Movie very close behind. And, of course, Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq, which I'm not including due to my closeness to the movie (but it is truly one of the finest films).

We Can't Be Direct, So We End Up Saying The Weirdest Things

As I finish this latest post, the snowstorm known as Nemo is coming down on the East Coast, and I am taking a moment to catch up on many things from the past year about which I haven't yet written. Forgive the episodic nature of this post - I will be jumping around quite a bit. It was very depressing to make a schedule for my last semester of college at NYU last November, but now that I am already well into my final semester itself, it is a strange feeling. There are so many film shoots on the horizon (I served as Assistant Director for my friend Erica Rose's senior thesis film shoot for two weeks in January, and I have four more shoots, including my own, coming up very quickly) that graduation seems like the least of my concerns at this moment. But, like it or not, it is rapidly approaching.

Over the past year, Kenneth Lonergan's masterpiece Margaret has finally received some of the attention it deserves. Here's a wonderful New York Times piece on Margaret, as well as a link to one of Jim Emerson's essays on the film, where he writes that he's "never before seen a movie that fully recognized what human behavior is like." I was very sad to miss a screening of Lonergan's Director's Cut of the film at the Sunshine Cinema this summer, where Lonergan, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick and Thelma Schoonmaker held a Q&A after the film (I did walk past the Sunshine as the screening ended, and I saw Philip Seymour Hoffman getting on his bicycle and taking off into the night). Thankfully, I now have the Margaret Blu-Ray with both the Director's Cut and the original theatrical cut.

On August 13th, I received tickets to the New York City premiere of David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis at the Museum of Modern Art with Ben and Erica. I sat in the front row, too, which meant being a few feet away from Robert Pattinson, Paul Giamatti and David Cronenberg when they spoke before the film. Stanley Tucci, Judah Friedlander and others were in the audience, as well.

In early September, immediately after my return from Austin and the first day of my senior year, my friends and I obtained tickets to the New York City premiere of Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master in glorious 70mm at the Ziegfeld Theatre. We waited outside of the theatre for our most anticipated film of the year (and, in my mind, one of the best films of 2012). Amy Adams and Harvey Weinstein introduced the film (ironically, Paul Thomas Anderson could not be there, as he was doing a surprise screening of The Master in Austin at the Alamo Drafthouse), and after the screening, many of us were left speechless. I've written about my love for The Master in my post on the best films of the year, but I was immediately eager to see the film again.

That next Friday night, my mother and grandmother flew into New York, along with my friend Bolton Eckert and his family, to stay for the weekend and see the Off-Broadway production of Harrison, TX: Three Plays by Horton Foote (the Eckert family are relatives of the Foote family). After our Advanced Production class on Friday, my friends (including roommates Bobb Barito and Adam Boese) and I met Bolton at the Lincoln Square cinema to see The Master for a second time on opening night - again in beautiful 70mm. It was a packed house, and for the second time in a week, I was treated to a masterpiece of cinema with many by my side.

After the screening, Bolton and I journeyed downtown to meet my mom, grandmother and the Eckert and Foote families at Tavern on Jane, the wonderful West Village restaurant owned by Horton Foote, Jr. (and one of the key locations in my film Jake the Cinephile). As always, I really enjoyed spending time with the Foote family.

The next evening, thanks to Bolton's great family, we enjoyed dinner at the historic 21 Club with many of the great folks from Wharton, Texas. After dinner, we saw Harrison, TX: Three Plays by Horton Foote, in which Mr. Foote's extremely talented daughter, Hallie Foote, and her equally talented husband Devon Abner, both performed. The production, as is typical with any revival of Mr. Foote's work, was exceptional, and being that it was the closing night of the play, we were invited to attend the cast after-party afterward, which was a great amount of fun.

During my family's trip to New York, we also saw the revival of Evita on Broadway, a musical with which I was not very familiar. In October, I was lucky enough to see Him, a new play by Daisy Foote (another of Horton's children) with Will and Leslie Eckert. The play was a beautiful work, and Hallie Foote once again commanded the stage.

Returning to The Master for a moment, I had the chance to see the film in 70mm a third time at Village East Cinema, and again I was struck by the beauty of the film.

On Thursday, October 11th, Mike Cheslik and I went to a screening of Seven Psychopaths at the Cantor Film Center, followed by a Q&A with the film's writer and director, Martin McDonagh. McDonagh is one of my heroes, as his play The Pillowman easily ranks among my all-time favorite plays (after seeing an outstanding production of the play in 2007 at Austin's Hyde Park Theatre, I frequently used monologues from the show for auditions and later directed a scene from the play for my Sight and Sound: Studio final at NYU). McDonagh gave a great Q&A with the students, and the film - starring Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Colin Farrell and Woody Harrelson - is hilarious. McDonagh's first feature film, In Bruges (2008), was a masterpiece, and this is a wonderfully deranged follow-up. I can't wait to see his next film (or play - I had a fantastic time seeing his A Behanding in Spokane on Broadway in 2010).

The next week, the Fusion Film Festival held an advance screening of Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer's film Cloud Atlas at the Cantor Film Center, as the Launch Event for the 2013 Fusion Film Festival. This movie was too much fun, and I really wish it had been a bigger success upon its release - with six different narratives, genre-hopping ambition and an all-star ensemble (including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Hugh Grant) willing to play any role, gender or race, Cloud Atlas is unlike anything I've ever seen attempted onscreen before.

I had another amazing semester with the Tisch Dean's Scholars. In September, for the second year in a row, we received box seats at a New York Mets baseball game at the historic Citi Field. We were treated to fantastic food from Shake Shack, a great game (the Mets beat the Miami Marlins) and quality time with Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell and Tisch faculty. After the game, I enjoyed some late night snacks with a few friends at the San Gennaro Festival in Little Italy.

In late November, the Scholars attended a dance performance titled The Tempest Replica by the group Kidd Pivot at the Joyce Theater. It was a truly outstanding show, with a fascinating dance interpretation of Shakespeare's The Tempest. For our final meeting of the semester, the Dean's Scholars met at Color Me Mine, a popular pottery studio in Tribeca, where we each hand painted a piece of pottery that was then put in the fire and delivered to us (I chose a piggy bank).

Already during this current semester, I went on a tour of 30 Rockefeller Center with the Dean's Scholars group, which was a fascinating opportunity to explore the NBC building. We visited the set of Saturday Night Live and many other shows. Later this semester, we are taking a trip to Washington D.C. over Spring Break, which will be an enormous amount of fun.

I haven't written in great detail about my internship for professional reasons, but suffice to say my time there this past year - and particularly this summer - has been incredible. The opportunities have included meeting Leonardo DiCaprio several times (after shooting one day, he came into the office and recognized me from an earlier encounter and said, "Hey, how's it going?" and I was flabbergasted); being in the same room as Scorsese, DiCaprio, and writer Terence Winter while they work together on the script; being on set for the first day of shooting Scorsese's new film The Wolf of Wall Street; and late nights at the office with the other interns. With this internship, I really can't believe it's my lifelong hero, smiling and nodding his head at me as he walks out the door of the office.

By the way, congratulations are in order for Mr. DiCaprio, after winning the National Board of Review's Best Supporting Actor award last December for his extraordinary work in Django Unchained (as well as receiving a Golden Globe nomination for the performance). Sadly, the Academy once again did not nominate DiCaprio for his work. With brilliant and complex recent performances in Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road (2008), Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010), Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar (2011) and now Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, DiCaprio is unquestionably the best actor of his generation, and I wish the Academy would recognize him.

Congratulations are in order for Mr. Scorsese, as well, for winning two Emmys this fall for Outstanding Nonfiction Special and Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming, for the masterful George Harrison: Living in the Material World, and to Thelma Schoonmaker, for winning the Gucci award for women's achievement in filmmaking in August.

While interning at Sikelia Productions this past semester, I also been worked with acclaimed documentary filmmaker Nancy Buirski with research for her new film, as well as promoting her extraordinary film The Loving Story in advance of its U.S. Theatrical Premiere in December (it was also shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, and played on HBO earlier in 2012). Some of the Sikelia interns and I had a wonderful time attending a screening of The Loving Story at the Maysles Cinema in December, after which Buirski participated in a Q&A with the audience. It was such an honor to be a part of her work.

Speaking of Scorsese, Time Out New York released a list of the 100 Best New York City Films earlier this year that's pretty exceptional (they were wise enough to include films like Margaret and James Gray's Two Lovers, a powerful film that features another great performance from Joaquin Phoenix). They missed quite a few New York classics, though. Where are Gangs of New York (2002), Raging Bull (1980), The Godfather Part II (1974), Prince of the City (1981), Bringing Out The Dead (1999), The Age of Innocence (1993), A Bronx Tale (1993) and New York, New York (1977)? But I can't complain when the list as a whole is so good.

Sight and Sound Magazine announced the results of their very famous Greatest Films Poll this summer, which only comes around every ten years. This year was particularly notable because, for the first time in fifty years, Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) took the place of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) as the greatest film ever made. I have to admit, I think I prefer the Directors Top 100 to the Critics Top 100 for this decade's Sight and Sound Poll. The directors rank many of my personal favorites higher than the critics, with Taxi Driver at #5, Raging Bull at #12, Goodfellas at #48 and Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978) at #91. It's particularly fascinating to read the top ten lists from our finest living filmmakers, including Scorsese, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Mann (who just turned 70 last week) and Quentin Tarantino.

All in all, there are so many pictures in the works by many of my heroes - according to a report, Scorsese is going to executive produce a film version of Roger Ebert's memoir, while Al Pacino has been cast as Joe Paterno in a film by Brian De Palma. Meanwhile, Scorsese has all kinds of amazing projects in the works.

Going back into this past summer, it was my first summer in New York, and it was a fantastic one. Most of my time was split between working at my internship at Sikelia Productions and intense pre-production for my film Jake the Cinephile. I like our neighborhood quite a lot. Celebrities are always out and about - I've seen Sam Rockwell walking his dog near our apartment, passed Adam Sandler on Prince Street, watched as Colin Farrell and director Niels Arden Oplev shoot a new picture on my street, and noticed Susan Sarandon at the cinema near my apartment.

I had a wonderful Fourth of July holiday, seeing the new Pixar film Brave with my friend Jess, and then spending time with friends at a rooftop cookout in Brooklyn. Later that evening, I had some homemade pulled pork with friends on a Manhattan rooftop and watched the official city fireworks. The summer was full of fun activities, including a great afternoon picnic in Prospect Park with friends.

The summer was a lot of fun in terms of film, too - three of my favorite filmmakers - Spike Lee, Woody Allen and Oliver Stone - all released terrific movies: Red Hook Summer, To Rome With Love and Savages.

Speaking of Spike Lee, he was kind enough to both ReTweet and reply to some of my Tweets regarding my admiration of his work. I wrote, "Every one of your films has had such an impact on me, ever since I saw 25th Hour at age twelve in cinemas," and "Vulture interview was outstanding. Cannot wait for Red Hook Summer. With love and admiration from a NYU Tisch senior." He replied, "Many Thanks. NYU VIOLETS." He also Re-Tweeted my link to a great interview with him.

Throughout May, June and July, the pre-production on Jake the Cinephile was nonstop. After shooting the promo video for the film with Bobb, I launched my IndieGoGo campaign for the film (to which many of my friends and family so generously contributed). Soon after, actor Tom Corbisiero very kindly drove my cinematographer Ben Dewey and me upstate to scout the Beacon Theater in Beacon, New York, which served as an excellent location for the picture. In preparation for the shoot, I re-watched and took a lot of notes on Scorsese's The Aviator (2004) and Taxi Driver (1976), which both influenced Jake the Cinephile quite a bit (I'm more convinced than ever that The Aviator is one of Scorsese's greatest achievements - it is a masterpiece, flawless in every respect). Later, Ben and I had a pre-production night where we watched scenes from The Aviator, Taxi Driver and Bringing Out the Dead (1999) for reference, as we shot-listed for Jake the Cinephile. The coming weeks were full of meetings with my producers, Erica Rose and Harry Tarre, rehearsals with actress Bethany McHugh and script supervisor Nicole Cobb and a camera test in Queens with the Red Scarlet Camera and anamorphic adapters.

The feedback on the edit of Jake the Cinephile this fall semester has been really fantastic. At the end of the semester, I had a wonderful phone conversation with Ray Hubley, the editor of Dead Man Walking, who expressed his admiration for Jake the Cinephile. He said the film has taken quite a journey over the semester. He applauded the thought and time put into every cut, and encouraged me to never let go of my own compass, finding my own way with the edit of the film. I've never been so proud of a film I did - I feel it's the most fully-realized visualization of my fears and anxieties that I've made so far. Hopefully my senior thesis film, You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory, will go even further. Jake the Cinephile will soon be picture-locked, thanks to the incredible work of my friend and editor Jonah Greenstein.

Speaking of my thesis film, my Advanced Production class with Yemane Demissie has been the best and most rewarding course of my college experience. It is both an intricate production class and an endlessly helpful writing workshop, and I am very lucky to be in the class again this semester as pre-production begins on my new film. The eleven other students who are making their films this spring are such thoughtful and mature filmmakers, and I look forward to all of us making our own pictures this coming year.

I had a very nice Thanksgiving in Austin, and I want to thank my friend Bolton Eckert for filming my late aunt's house over Thanksgiving break and helping me with a small family documentary I wanted to shoot in the wake of her passing (he's studying film in Los Angeles right now). Once back in New York after Thanksgiving, I continued preparing for my advanced film. Adam, Bobb and I received a Christmas care package from my mom, complete with nerf guns, Christmas decorations and candy, food galore, and slug zombies.

For our final Advanced Production class, we watched Michael Haneke’s devastating new film Amour, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. It appeared near the top of many end-of-year top ten lists, and deservedly so. After a long two day ordeal at LaGuardia Airport attempting to get back to Austin, I finally returned for winter break, just in time to catch the Austin press screening of Tom Hooper's outstanding Les Miserables a little more than a week before it opened.

I'm late on congratulating my heroes, but I want to acknowledge that Robert De Niro, my all-time favorite actor, has had quite a wonderful year. He gave one of his best performances in David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook, and he received his seventh Oscar nomination for his work earlier this month (he deserves to win the award). He has been ignored for so many powerful performances (this is only his seventh nomination). His work in Mean Streets (1973), The King of Comedy (1983), Once Upon A Time in America (1984), Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995), Heat (1995), A Bronx Tale (1993), Wag the Dog (1997), Jackie Brown (1997), New York New York (1977), The Good Shepherd (2006), Everybody's Fine (2009) and Stone (2010), among many others, was overlooked by the Academy. He was also excellent in Paul Weitz's Being Flynn earlier this year. He received the Hollywood Supporting Actor Award for his performance in Silver Linings Playbook, and later won the Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. In Roger Ebert's review of Silver Linings Playbook, he writes that he's "been on an almost lifelong journey with Robert De Niro, and [feels] intimately familiar with him as an actor." "Here," Ebert writes, "his work unobtrusively charmed my socks off." Congratulations to cinema's finest actor and my hero on an outstanding year.

Since receiving his seventh Oscar nomination, De Niro has deservedly been celebrated around Hollywood. The American Cinematheque, in association with The Actors Studio, held a retrospective of De Niro's work, billed as an In-Person Tribute to Robert De Niro at the Aero Theatre in Los Angeles, screening Silver Linings Playbook (with De Niro in attendance), as well as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Cape Fear (1991) and Awakenings (1990). With more and more talk building around De Niro's ninth collaboration with Martin Scorsese, The Irishman, as well as De Niro getting his footprints in cement in Hollywood, thankfully people are recognizing the greatest film actor of all time for his consistently extraordinary work. And in one of the most moving interviews I've ever seen, De Niro gets particularly emotional when discussing his work in Silver Linings Playbook. It's very exciting to see my all-time favorite actor receive such recognition (if only I had been alive to see him win Best Actor for Raging Bull in 1981). And, thankfully, in a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, De Niro said he'd like to do "at least two [more films with Scorsese]" to "make it an even number - ten," adding that that's his "obsessive-compulsiveness." There is no actor I love and respect more than Robert De Niro.

In late January, I went to see Scorsese's Mean Streets at Film Forum with Ben, Jonah and Spencer. The film was screening as part of Film Forum's New Yawk New Wave film series, and although I've seen Mean Streets an endless number of times (it is one of my top ten films of all time), it was extraordinary getting to see the picture on the big screen, particularly in advance of shooting my senior thesis film in April (my film draws a lot of inspiration thematically, stylistically and visually from Mean Streets). There are few films that shake, enthrall and move me as deeply as this one - one day, I'll get around to writing a full essay on what the picture means to me.

Although I released my end-of-year Top Ten List of 2012 exactly a month ago, I need to revisit the list and update it with several films I saw in early January, including Gus Van Sant's outstanding Promised Land, David Chase's Not Fade Away, Michael Haneke's Amour (I needed to see the film on the big screen, at Film Forum, before putting it on my list) and especially Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty. Looking back on the year in film, I have to admit that the most affecting piece of cinema, for me, was unquestionably Silver Linings Playbook. Last month, I ranked the film at #2 on my Top Ten (just behind The Master), but I really do feel that Russell's film is the best picture of the year. No other movie had such deep understanding and care for its characters, and, in my opinion, a stronger directorial vision. Without my realizing it, the film sort of shifted my attitude last semester - Russell's movie hears the call of a misunderstood man (boy, does this film accurately capture the feeling of having so much going on inside your head), but without ever losing the darkness, Russell answers that call with love and warmth. The film acknowledges the pain and delusions of every character in its sight, and it's downright kinetic in the way it keeps up with the whims and obsessions of these same characters. The lifelike way in which the film changes course in the middle of any given scene reminds me, actually, of Margaret.

Every time I go back to see this film, I am reminded of how movies can make you feel and come to define an entire section of your life. For the past few months, I've been living with Silver Linings Playbook, and I think it should win the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director (here's an excellent video essay on why Press Play thinks the film should win, as well). Of course, to talk about the year in film as a competition seems inappropriate. All nine Best Picture nominees are extraordinary films, and having seen a large number of them more than once, I feel deeply tied to many of these pictures. When you look back on 2012, it will be the year of Silver Linings Playbook, Django Unchained, Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Amour, as well as other masterpieces that weren't nominated, such as The Master, Moonrise Kingdom and Flight. I spend a lot of time in cinemas, and I've come to understand many things from this year's great films. 2013 will have a tough time matching 2012 in terms of movie quality.

There were an overwhelming amount of tragic deaths in 2012 (as there are any year, but perhaps this year seemed worse with the passing of my aunt). Gangster Henry Hill, the subject of Scorsese's Goodfellas, died this summer. Mr. Hill's story was first told in the outstanding nonfiction book Wiseguy by Nick Pileggi. Not only is Goodfellas my all-time favorite film, I've probably seen it more times than any other movie, so I have a certain love for Mr. Hill's life story and background. Here is a great interview with Mr. Hill. His death brings to mind one of the saddest scenes in Goodfellas, when Joe Pesci kisses his mother goodbye before he is about to get "made," and Hill (Ray Liotta) says in voiceover, "You know, we always called each other goodfellas. Like you said to somebody, you're gonna like this guy. He's all right. He's a good fella. He's one of us. You understand? We were goodfellas. Wiseguys."

This summer, the great writer and director Nora Ephron also tragically passed away. I saw many of her films theatrically at a young age, including Michael (1996), Hanging Up (2000) and particularly You've Got Mail (1998), which I'll never forget seeing on Christmas Eve of 1998 with my mom and aunt. Oddly enough, 1990's My Blue Heaven (always a favorite of mine, starring Steve Martin and written by Ephron) was also loosely based on the life of Henry Hill, and Ephron's husband was Nick Pileggi, the brilliant author of Wiseguy and co-screenwriter of Goodfellas and Casino (1995).

The list of names goes on - Frank Pierson, screenwriter of Dog Day Afternoon and Cool Hand Luke; author Gore Vidal; the wonderful film critic Andrew Sarris; the incredible cinematographer Harry Savides, who shot Zodiac (2007), Milk (2008), Greenberg (2010), Elephant (2003) and American Gangster (2007); and NYU's own Time Keeper, who passed away in October.

I wrote earlier that I'd like to devote an entire post or essay to Mean Streets. The same can easily be said for Goodfellas and The Departed. Re-watching both films recently, I was reminded of how so many choices I make in my work as a filmmaker come from these movies. But that's not simply because I want to pay homage to them - it's because these films have influenced much more than just the way I think about films. The Departed and Goodfellas are such instrumental parts of my life that they influence how I experience and remember things. Both movies are tied strongly to so many events in my life - watching these movies, I'm transported to a different time and place, to memories that exist far outside the film itself. Yes, I would love to write long essays about all of these films and what their various parts mean to me, but time just slips away.

There are many more things to write about, but it's the most hectic semester yet, and I can never seem to write about all of the things I wish I could. One day.

On your way out of this post, check out this Gentleman Party sketch directed by Mike Cheslik! It briefly features my voice talent near the end, but more importantly, it's very funny.

The Best Films of 2011

Every year, when I compile my best-of-the-year list, people ask me, when did you find the time to see all of these films? The answer is, Thursday. Nearly every weekend this semester, I was working on a film shoot. Somehow, I ended up with a small window of time on Thursday afternoons, and so I carefully tried to take advantage of that time to catch up with the new releases. 2011 was an incredible year for films. For the first time in ages, I can honestly say that every single movie in my top twenty-five were considered at some point for the final top ten list.

1. Hugo (Martin Scorsese)

When watching Martin Scorsese’s new film Hugo, it’s as if my love for Scorsese has come full circle. I first fell in love with him – in obsession with him, really – when I was eleven years old, when I watched VHS copies of Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990) and Taxi Driver (1976) almost back-to-back. On a visceral and emotional level, I had never seen anything like these pictures. These first encounters with Scorsese occurred only a few months after the death of my father, and in a way, the events are forever linked in my mind. My eyes were opened to a different kind of world – a place where pain, obsession and guilt were always present, and the only way to express this pain was through cinema.

Although every one of Scorsese’s pictures is extremely personal – after all, that’s what’s so effective about his films – Hugo may be Scorsese’s most personal film of all. Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), a young boy living in the walls of a Parisian train station in the 1930s, discovers that an automaton left for him by his recently deceased father (Jude Law) may unlock the mystery behind George Méliès (Ben Kingsley), an unhappy elderly man who owns a toy shop in the train station. What Hugo and his newfound friend Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), Méliès’ goddaughter, gradually discover is that Méliès is one of the original pioneers of cinema, the director of over five hundred pictures and a revolutionary filmmaker. However, most of his films are believed to have been destroyed and melted at the rise of World War I, and Méliès, a broken machine without a purpose, resigns from life and fades into obscurity – until Hugo, who understands the pain of having one’s hopes and dreams disintegrate into flames – sets out to restore Méliès’ work.

Ah, film preservation – Scorsese’s most passionate cause, and the real subject of Hugo. The film is all about time, cruel time that batters away at celluloid. As the clocks tick-tock away in Hugo, the memories of our lives are slowly dying, the celluloid burning into ash and the preservation of our past decaying. But how can we let time destroy the magic and power of the cinema, of our memories?

The film gets you caught up in the magic of moviemaking, to the point where the audience gasps in astonishment at the beautiful remaining print of Méliès’ film A Trip to the Moon (1902), screened by film scholar Rene Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg), who worships Méliès, but, like many, believes him to be dead – until Hugo and Isabelle prove otherwise. Watching Hugo with an audience, there were further gasps of awe when Méliès – in one of the most visually arresting and beautiful flashback sequences I have ever seen – splices together a cut in one of his early films. It had never occurred to me that so many people would not have known the process behind film editing, but there you go.

To say that Hugo is the finest use of 3D technology that I’ve ever seen doesn’t do justice to what Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson achieve with this picture. I don’t particularly like 3D, and yet the visual bravura of Hugo has convinced me that, when utilized by a master filmmaker and treated as an artistic device, it is a major cinematic innovation, on par with the innovations of Méliès and the Lumière Brothers.

This movie is so rich – not just visually, but emotionally – that even after four viewings I am still overwhelmed by it. The performances, from the brilliant and hilarious physical comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Station Inspector, to Kingsley’s nuanced, powerful portrayal of Méliès, are superb. The editing, by the wonderful and loyal Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker, is as crisp and exciting as ever.

But in the end, if Scorsese is Hugo, the film preservationist – the boy who restores the magic in a broken machine – then Méliès can be seen as a stand-in for any one of Scorsese’s filmmaking influences whose work he has restored through his Film Foundation, including Michael Powell, Elia Kazan, Luchino Visconti and, of course, Méliès himself. But surely Scorsese knows that, by the end of Hugo, when Méliès takes the stage and tearfully acknowledges Hugo before a screening of his restored work, that it’s impossible for someone like me to look at Méliès, the great innovator of cinema, without thinking of Scorsese, the wise master of filmmaking who influenced me.

This is the work of a master at the height of his cinematic powers. People who truly love film have, picture after picture, said this exact same thing about Scorsese many times. We said it when The Aviator (2004) soared as the most ambitious, energetic and entertaining Hollywood biopic in years. We said it when The Departed (2006) was no less than the great American tragedy of the 2000s, a masterful return to the gangster picture that held us captivated in our seats. And we’re saying it again for Hugo, a movie that has been surrounded by so much negativity from the first announcement that Scorsese would direct a 3D picture – as if the world’s finest filmmaker, who has never made anything short of a great film, wouldn’t find a way to discover the art in 3D technology and take it to an entirely new level – and not only that, but do it with his most passionate cause as his subject material.

My loyalty to Scorsese is boundless, and I’ve suffered through the lows – throwing things at the television when he unfairly lost Best Director Academy Awards for Gangs of New York and The Aviator to inferior films, listening to pseudo-intellectual hipsters knock on the brilliance of Shutter Island (2010) – and I’ve been with him through the highs. And let me tell you, there is nothing that feels as wonderful as watching the artist you love and defend your entire life receive the praise and admiration he so richly deserves, squashing the cynicism of those who feel his time has past. This is his time. George Méliès, step aside for another master of cinema. Martin Scorsese, take a bow.

2. The Descendants (Alexander Payne)

The Descendants is as moving, funny and poignant a film as I've ever seen. It might be writer/director Alexander Payne's best movie, and that's high praise, considering his Sideways (2004) and About Schmidt (2002) are two of the reasons I want to be a filmmaker (with these three masterpieces, Payne has also found the beauty in the road trip movie). His films move so effortlessly from great tragedy to human comedy, and The Descendants is no exception. George Clooney gives the best performance of his career (topping his extraordinary work in 2009’s Up in the Air) as Matt King, a Hawaiian landowner left to look after his two daughters (Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller, both magnificent) and deal with his family after his wife falls into a coma.

Nick Pinkerton, in his interview with Payne in the Village Voice, best articulates the originality of Payne’s remarkably human and distinct voice as a filmmaker:

The viewer sees [his family and cousins] at first as King does: just more burden to bear. Eventually we come to realize, through Clooney’s artfully withholding reaction shots, that they are people with private fortitude and sadness all their own.

“To say something bad about someone, to caricaturize someone, but then to go, ‘Yeah, but God love ’em,’ that might be something particularly Midwestern,” Payne says. The harsh initial judgment, followed by the recall of the same judgment, is a signature of Payne’s films…

What makes The Descendants perfect isn’t simply the masterful screenplay, or the incredible ensemble acting from an inspired cast (including Beau Bridges, Matthew Lillard and Judy Greer) – it’s Payne’s unmistakably Midwestern attitude toward the material and the characters. With subject matter ripe for easy laughs and easy tears, Payne opts for neither. In the best closing credit sequence of the year, he leaves us not with an emotional epiphany, nor with a heartwarming close-up – but with a picture of the banal, everyday life that the King family will face in the years to come.

3. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is a miracle, a picture consumed by the wonder, amazement and beauty of life. Watching the film on opening night in Austin with a packed audience (many of whom worked in some capacity on the film, which was shot in Smithville), it was not unlike taking in the grand spectacle of The Lion King on Broadway for the first time as a young child. It is an overwhelmingly emotional experience.

How many people will see this film and watch in awe as memories of their own childhood flash before their eyes? I know I did. The story concerns Jack, an eleven year-old boy raised in Texas in the 1950s whose wondrous and carefree childhood slowly gives way to a more troubling, complicated understanding of human nature as he loses his innocence. You can see where I might find some similarities (as long as we’re swapping the 1950s for the 1990s). As he grows into a disillusioned adult (Sean Penn), he struggles to come to terms with the two ways through life: the way of human nature, fierce will and determination, epitomized by his father (Brad Pitt, in a hauntingly understated performance); and the way of love, compassion and grace, epitomized by his mother (Jessica Chastain).

But Malick’s movie extends back to the beginning of time, offering us beautiful sequences depicting the creation of the world that call to mind similar scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). This is a film that requires patience and respect for Malick’s vision. I left The Tree of Life full of hope – not just spiritual hope, or the hope of someday understanding all things – but hope for the future of cinema.

4. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher)

The films of David Fincher have appeared near the front of my top ten lists in recent years. Last year, he released The Social Network, still the best movie of this new decade (not that the Academy rewarded Fincher with a deserved Best Director Oscar, mind you). His films are fascinating because they are the work of an obsessive. Zodiac (2007), Fincher’s finest film, was a story about three men whose lives were consumed by their obsession with the unsolved Zodiac murders in the late 1960s. Fincher now returns to the serial killer genre with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, a masterful film with bold and fearless lead performances from Daniel Craig and especially recent NYU graduate Rooney Mara (Mark Zuckerberg’s girlfriend in The Social Network) as anti-heroine Lisbeth Salander.

You may have read the book by Stieg Larsson. I have not, but I did love the Swedish film adaptation of the novel released last year. However – although I think it’s unfair to label Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo a remake (it’s an English-language adaptation of the original novel) – this is a case where the ‘American version,’ as it were, is largely superior to the ‘original’ movie. In one of the most haunting scenes of the year, Fincher makes extraordinarily creepy use of Enya’s song Orinoco Flow (similar to his disturbing and brilliant use of Donovan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man in Zodiac).

There’s a bitter irony that the actress who represented the source of Mark Zuckerberg’s loneliness at the end of The Social Network – Erica Albright (Mara) – is on the receiving end of the rejection at the end of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, left alone in a man’s world. It’s a powerful and grim closing chapter to a new Fincher masterpiece.

5. Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan)

Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret is a stunning masterpiece. I can't remember the last time I saw such a brilliant film go completely unnoticed by the film community (although, in recent weeks, a movement petitioning Fox Searchlight Pictures to screen the film for end-of-year awards consideration has started online). The film, shot in 2005, has been in legal battles for years, stemming from post-production clashes between the producers, the studio and Lonergan.

Lonergan, a master playwright and writer/director of the outstanding You Can Count On Me (2000), even solicited the help of Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker to edit a final cut of the film (Lonergan co-wrote Scorsese’s Gangs of New York and Scorsese was an executive producer on You Can Count on Me), which was rumored to be a masterpiece. Unfortunately, Fox Searchlight Pictures rejected the cut and ordered a maximum length of two-and-a-half hours. Six years after production on the film wrapped, the two-and-a-half hour Margaret was half-heartedly released in select cities for no more than two weeks, and then disappeared from the film scene. I count myself among the lucky few who caught Margaret in New York City before it vanished.

New York City teenager Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin), having seen a horrible bus accident right before her eyes, is fighting against a world where she seems to be the only person willing to admit her culpability in the accident. But Margaret is not only the story of a teenager trying to make sense of a tragedy and assign blame accordingly – the movie is a passionate and raw portrait of New York City in the wake of 9/11.

This movie has so many ideas and burning questions, and Paquin’s extraordinary performance is full of the tumultuous adolescent anxiety so rarely explored honestly onscreen. The movie’s dramatic ambitions and scope exceed those of any recent film I can recall – even in this studio-cut version, decidedly not approved by Lonergan, the picture has a dramatic power missing from nearly all of today's cinema. Margaret is perhaps the most important film release of 2011 – even if it is six years too late.

6. We Need To Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay)

We Need To Talk About Kevin is as perfect as any movie I've seen this year. Director Lynne Ramsay asks audacious and challenging questions in this disturbing and powerful film. Eva (Tilda Swinton) raises the son from hell – a malicious, dark and cold piece of work named Kevin. Is the mother responsible for the cruel and sadistic behavior of her son? Is Eva an unfit mother, or is she simply cursed with a demonic child? And, perhaps most disturbingly, is she somehow complicit in the violent actions of her son? We Need To Talk About Kevin doesn’t give easy answers. Ramsay’s bold visual approach and her extraordinarily powerful use of music (both Jonny Greenwood's haunting score and pop music, ranging from Buddy Holly to The Beach Boys, create an atmosphere of dread) results in one of the year's best pictures. Swinton should be the frontrunner for the Best Actress Academy Award, and John C. Reilly and Ezra Miller are terrific in supporting roles.

7. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson)

The complexity of Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Solder Spy demands that you see the film twice – not necessarily because the movie is tough to understand (although pay attention, because it is a bit of a labyrinth), but in order to fully appreciate the subtle and wonderful character work occurring throughout the film. Everything about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is remarkably subtle, from its depiction of loyalty among cold men who are forced to abandon their every attachment in sight, to the masterful lead performance by Gary Oldman as British Intelligence Agent George Smiley.

It’s also a story of revitalization – watching Smiley, fresh from retirement, slowly outsmart the current agents at the center of the Circus and, by the film’s rousing coda, take the seat at the head of British Intelligence is an exciting cinematic lesson in controlled, disciplined filmmaking. This is the sort of complex and moody thriller you would expect from the cinema of the 1970s. The pacing is perfect, the cinematography is breathtaking and Oldman is so damn good, that to not nominate the man for an Academy Award would be an egregious oversight.

8. George Harrison: Living in the Material World (Martin Scorsese)

Martin Scorsese’s documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World runs just shy of four hours – but as far as I’m concerned, the film could have lasted another four hours and I wouldn't have budged. I sat in awe, enveloped and entranced, during its one-week run at the Village East Cinema. A fascinating and moving portrait of Harrison from his early days with The Beatles through the end of his life, Scorsese places great emphasis on the material world combating against the spiritual world – a struggle that resonated heavily with Harrison. It’s rare to see a complete portrait of such a fascinating human being. By the time All Things Must Pass plays over the last days of Harrison’s life, it’s hard to hold back the tears. George Harrison: Living in the Material World is every bit as compelling as Scorsese’s best music documentaries, including No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005), The Last Waltz (1978) and Shine A Light (2008).

9. Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols)

Is Take Shelter an exploration of mental illness or a tale of modern-day anxiety as experienced by a common man? Either way, the film deals with its subject matter more maturely than any film I can recall. Michael Shannon is astounding as the tortured Curtis LaForche, a small-town family man in Ohio who builds a storm shelter in his backyard as an uneasy dread comes over him. This is a powerful and wrenching film, written and directed with such understanding by one of the great new filmmakers, Jeff Nichols. Take Shelter also features two of the year’s best performances from Shannon and Jessica Chastain, as Curtis’ wife – their scenes together represent the finest screen acting of the year.

10. J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood)

I can't remember the last time I've been at such odds with the major critics over a film as extraordinary as Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar – in my mind, it's the best work Eastwood has done since Letters From Iwo Jima (2006), every bit as great as his one-two punch of Mystic River (2003) and Million Dollar Baby (2004) - and this comes from someone who had endless adoration for Hereafter (2010), solid respect but some qualms with Invictus (2009), and just couldn't get on the Gran Torino (2008) train.

The cynicism of online bloggers and their passionate disdain for Eastwood be damned - J. Edgar is a great movie, shot in Eastwood's typically muted color palette and hauntingly staged in the deep shadows that so many of Eastwood's characters occupy. As Roger Ebert notes, "few films span seven decades this comfortably." It's true, and the transitions between the later years of J. Edgar Hoover's life and his glory days in the 1930s are seamless. If the first hour is a study in the evolution of fingerprint profiling (and other criminal investigation techniques revolutionized by Hoover), then the second hour concerns the personal repressions and demons that haunt Hoover for his entire life.

For the last decade, Eastwood's films have taken a revolutionary approach to the subject of masculinity, and our understanding of Eastwood - the quintessential tough guy - has evolved with his meditations on the afterlife (Hereafter), racial barriers (Invictus), World War II from both an American viewpoint and from the perspective of the 'enemy' (Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima) and now on the most powerful (supposedly) homosexual man of the twentieth century with J. Edgar. What we see from Eastwood in these films is an enormous amount of compassion, a deeper understanding of the human experience and a total re-assessment of everything Eastwood has stood for in the minds of moviegoers for decades. The films work individually on their own, but they are even stronger taken in the context of Eastwood's larger body of work.

There are individual scenes with enormous power and sadness, with strong work from Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts and Judi Dench. But Leonardo DiCaprio is beyond outstanding as Hoover. In a career marked by outstanding performances (The Departed, The Aviator, Revolutionary Road, Shutter Island), this is one of his finest.

I will write about the other films I loved this year - The Best of the Rest, if you will - in an upcoming post. It was heartbreaking to leave so many extraordinary movies - including Midnight in Paris, Shame, Moneyball, Beginners, Young Adult and Drive - off of this top ten list. If I picked the winners of this year's awards, here's how I would vote:

Best Picture: Hugo

Runner-Ups: The Descendants, The Tree of Life, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Margaret, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, We Need To Talk About Kevin

Best Director: Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Runner-Ups: Alexander Payne, The Descendants; Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life; Tomas Alfredson, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; David Fincher, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo; Kenneth Lonergan, Margaret; Lynne Ramsay, We Need To Talk About Kevin

Best Actor: George Clooney, The Descendants

Runner-Ups: Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life and Moneyball; Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar; Michael Shannon, Take Shelter; Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Michael Fassbender, Shame; Woody Harrelson, Rampart

Best Actress: Anna Paquin, Margaret

Runner-Ups: Tilda Swinton, We Need To Talk About Kevin; Rooney Mara, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo; Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene; Keira Knightley, A Dangerous Method; Charlize Theron, Young Adult; Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn and Meek's Cutoff

Best Supporting Actor: Ben Kingsley, Hugo

Runner-Ups: Christopher Plummer, Beginners; Nick Nolte, Warrior; Kevin Spacey, Margin Call; Viggo Mortensen, A Dangerous Method; Albert Brooks, Drive

Best Supporting Actress: Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life and Take Shelter

Runner-Ups: Shailene Woodley, The Descendants; Berenice Bejo, The Artist; Carey Mulligan, Shame; Melanie Laurent, Beginners

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Descendants

Runner-Ups: Hugo, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Moneyball, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Original Screenplay: Midnight in Paris

Runner-Ups: Margaret, Margin Call, 50/50, The Tree of Life, Young Adult