Critics Awards 2012

Holy Motors with Denis Lavant and Eva Mendes. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Best Foreign Language Film and a double nominee for the Online Film Critics Awards, Leos Carax’s hallucinatory Holy Motors follows a mysterious man (frequent Carax collaborator Denis Lavant) whose equally mysterious tasks range from playing the accordion to kidnapping a model at a cemetery. Besides Lavant and Eva Mendes (in a role originally intended for Kate Moss), the Holy Motors cast includes Kylie Minogue, Élise L’Homeau, Jeanne Disson, and veterans Edith Scob (Eyes Without a Face, Judex) and Michel Piccoli (Contempt, May Fools).

The Sessions with John Hawkes and Helen Hunt.

The Central Park Five 2012. Described by the Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan as “a careful, thoughtful, and devastating new documentary” (see poster), Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon’s New York Film Critics Online Best Documentary The Central Park Five chronicles one of the grossest and most widely publicized miscarriages of justice in the United States in the late 20th century. The Burns, Burns & McMahon film has also been chosen as the year’s Best Documentary by the New York Film Critics Circle.

Critics Awards 2012

Its handful of offbeat nominations notwithstanding – e.g., Leos Carax’s Holy Motors up for Best Film nod for , David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis up for Best Adapted Screenplay – this year’s Online Film Critics winners were, as usual, mostly Hollywood-friendly fare. Argo, Ben Affleck’s imaginative recreation of the rescue of six would-be U.S. hostages in Iran in 1980, was selected as the year’s Best Picture while Chris Terrio’s work on the political thriller earned him the Best Adapted Screenplay mention.

A couple of surprises by way of the Nevada Film Critics: SAG Award and Golden Globe nominee John Hawkes was voted Best Actor for his performance as a disabled man (and virgin) who hires a “sex surrogate” in Ben Lewin’s The Sessions. Besides, Hawkes’ costar, Helen Hunt (Best Actress Oscar winner for As Good as It Gets, 1997), who has been usually shortlisted in the Best Supporting Actress category this awards season, shared Best Actress honors with Jennifer Lawrence for David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook.

The Master with Joaquin Phoenix. Screenwriter-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s psychological drama The Master was supposed to have been one of 2012’s top Oscar contenders. Despite mostly strong reviews, things haven’t quite turned out that way, as The Master flopped in early fall – less than $16 million after about 10 weeks. This awards season, Anderson’s drama has done relatively well only in the acting categories: Joaquin Phoenix was the Best Actor choice of the Los Angeles and San Francisco film critics and is a Golden Globe nominee along with fellow players Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams (the latter also an L.A. Film Critics winner).

Lonely-at-the-top, L. Ron Hubbard-inspired The Master: San Francisco Film Critics surprise

Inspired by the life and times of controversial Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard – with elements from John Steinbeck’s life and other sources mixed in – The Master was the San Francisco Film Critics Circle’s Best Picture of 2012. Directed and written by Paul Thomas Anderson, the psychological drama revolves around the complex relationship between a troubled World War II veteran (Joaquin Phoenix) and the charismatic leader of a philosophical/quasi-religious cult (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Strangely, The Master was a Best Picture winner without accompanying wins in either the Best Director or Best Screenplay categories. Anderson’s drama did, however, earn Joaquin Phoenix the Best Actor award, thus bucking the Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln) trend seen most elsewhere – though not in Los Angeles, where Phoenix also received top honors.

Touted as a likely Oscar contender at the time of its release, The Master lost much of its awards season luster after it flopped in early fall. True, back in 2009 The Hurt Locker fared just as poorly but still went on to become that year’s most frequent awards season Best Picture choice and the eventual Oscar winner. Bear in mind, however, that Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War drama is an exception to the rule.

More ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ wins & controversies

The San Francisco Film Critics’ Best Director was Kathryn Bigelow for the political thriller Zero Dark Thirty, which also earned Mark Boal the Best Original Screenplay award.

Curiously, Zero Dark Thirty coeditor William Goldenberg was singled out for his work on another Hollywood political thriller taking place in a Muslim Asian country: Ben Affleck’s Iran-set Argo. (For the record, Goldenberg’s Zero Dark Thirty collaborator was Dylan Tichenor.)

Of note: following outraged claims that U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration had provided the filmmakers with top-secret information, Zero Dark Thirty has led to another round of controversy as a result of its depiction of Made in U.S.A. torture of prisoners – and how that torture, despite real-life testimonies to the contrary, helped to lead investigators to Osama bin Laden’s hiding place.

Radical Republican Tommy Lee Jones & ‘sex surrogate’ Helen Hunt: More San Francisco Film Critics winners

The Best Adapted Screenplay award went to North American critics’ favorite Tony Kushner for Lincoln. The Steven Spielberg-directed historical/political drama about Abraham Lincoln’s fight to end slavery on American soil also earned Tommy Lee Jones Best Supporting Actor honors for his portrayal of U.S. House of Representatives Radical Republican (i.e., not a radical right-winger, but a radical abolitionist) Thaddeus Stevens.

The other two acting winners were Best Actress Emmanuelle Riva and, surprisingly, Best Supporting Actress Helen Hunt (Best Actress Oscar winner for As Good as It Gets, 1997).

Riva, a critics’ favorite absurdly (but unsurprisingly) bypassed by both the SAG Awards and the Golden Globes, won for Michael Haneke’s drama – and San Francisco Film Critics Best Foreign Language Film winner – Amour, which deals with the issue of love in times of illness and death.

Helen Hunt, for years gone from the awards season radar, won for her performance as a “sex surrogate” in Ben Lewin’s The Sessions, in which she plays a woman out to help disabled San Francisco poet John Hawkes lose his virginity.

‘The Waiting Room’ & ‘Girl Walk All Day’

The Marlon Riggs Award, given to a Bay Area filmmaker, went to Peter Nicks for the documentary The Waiting Room, which was also chosen as the year’s Best Non-Fiction Film. The Waiting Room chronicles the travails of patients and staff at Oakland’s Highland Hospital, which offers care mostly to uninsured patients.

Ben Affleck: Critics Choice Awards following Oscar ‘snub’

Ben Affleck and his political thriller Argo were the two big winners at the Broadcast Film Critics Association’s Critics Choice Awards held last night at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica. Affleck was the Best Director; Argo was the Best Film. Earlier in the day, Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow, the director of another well-received political thriller, were two of the biggest losers when the nominations for the 2013 Academy Awards were announced. Neither Affleck nor Bigelow, the two critical favorites and most buzzed-about filmmakers this awards season, were bypassed in the Best Director category. (Image: Ben Affleck at the Critics Choice Awards.)

“I would like to thank the Academy … I’m kidding, I’m kidding. This is the one that counts,” Ben Affleck joked while accepting his Best Director Critics Choice Award. He later told Access Hollywood: “It doesn’t feel like [I got robbed by the Oscars]. We got nominated for Best Picture and seven other nominations. I guess I would’ve liked to personally have two, or like three, four or five for myself, but I’ll take whatever we got. It’s a pretty cool thing.” Affleck then added: “If you go into the situation where you think you’re entitled to get nominated, you’re probably in trouble.”

But really, was Ben Affleck less than 100 percent sure he was going to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar? Only if he hadn’t been paying any attention to his other awards-season accolades and to his Directors Guild of America nomination. The fact that both Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow were absent from the Best Director Oscar 2013 line-up is one for the books: one – or rather, two – of the biggest upsets in Oscar history. (Check out: Why Ben Affleck will no longer costar with Kristen Stewart in Focus.)

Ben Affleck’s fellow Critics Choice Awards 2013 winners

Of note: Apart from Best Director and Best Film, Ben Affleck’s Argo was bypassed in every category in which it was nominated. Among the other Critics Choice Awards 2013 winners were Best Actress Jessica Chastain for Zero Dark Thirty, Best Actor Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln, Best Supporting Actress Anne Hathaway for Les Misérables, Best Supporting Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Master, Best Young Actor/Actress Quvenzhané Wallis for Beasts of the Southern Wild, Best Documentary Searching for Sugar Man, and Best Foreign Language Film Amour.

Also: Best Original Screenplay (Quentin Tarantino) for Django Unchained, Best Adapted Screenplay (Tony Kushner) and Best Score (John Williams) for Lincoln, Best Cinematography (Claudio Miranda) and Best Visual Effects for Life of Pi, and Best Art Direction (Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer) and Best Costume Design (Jacqueline Durran) for Anna Karenina.

A couple more: Best Editing for Zero Dark Thirty (William Goldenberg and Dylan Tichenor) and Best Ensemble for Silver Linings Playbook (the cast includes Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, and Jacki Weaver).

Critics Choice Awards: Skyfall, Silver Linings Playbook, Twilight Saga top populist categories

Additionally, the Critics Choice Awards feature a whole array of populist categories – it’s a televised show, after all – such as Best Action Movie and Best Actress in a Comedy. Curiously, there’s no Best Actress (or Actor) in a Tragedy category, which is too bad, really. Anyhow, Sam Mendes’ James Bond flick Skyfall was the Best Action Movie, while David O. Russell’s The Weinstein Company-distributed Silver Linings Playbook dominated the Comedy categories.

Leaving no populist stone unturned, the Critics Choice Awards have opened up their voting to the public in one new category, Best Movie Franchise. Shockingly, the winner was Twilight. The vampire-human-werewolf franchise consists of five movies featuring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner: Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight, Chris Weitz’s New Moon, David Slade’s Eclipse, and Bill Condon’s Breaking Dawn – Part 1 and Breaking Dawn – Part 2. To date, the Twilight movies have grossed a grand total of $3.33 billion at the worldwide box office.

Boston Society of Film Critics

Best Picture: Zero Dark Thirty

Best Foreign Language Film: Amour

Best Actress: Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Best Supporting Actress: Sally Field, Lincoln

Best Supporting Actor: Ezra Miller, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Best Ensemble Cast: Seven Psychopaths.

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty

Best Screenplay: Lincoln – Tony Kushner

Best Cinematography: The Master – Mihai Malaimare Jr.

Best Documentary: How to Survive a Plague.

Best Animated Film: Frankenweenie – Dir.: Tim Burton.

Best Film Editing (awarded in memory of Karen Schmeer): Zero Dark Thirty – William Goldenberg & Dylan Tichenor

Best New Filmmaker (awarded in memory of David Brudnoy): David France, How to Survive a Plague.

Best Use of Music in a Film: Moonrise Kingdom (score: Alexandre Desplat).

---

Nevada Film Critics Society

Best Film: Argo

Best Actor: John Hawkes – The Sessions

Best Actress (tie): Helen Hunt – The Sessions; Jennifer Lawrence – Silver Linings Playbook

Best Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones – Lincoln

Best Supporting Actress: Sally Field – Lincoln

Best Director (tie): Ben Affleck – Argo; Kathryn Bigelow – Zero Dark Thirty

Best Ensemble Cast: Lincoln

Best Cinematography: Life of Pi

Best Production Design: Les Misérables

Best Animated Movie: Frankenweenie

Best Visual Effects: Life of Pi

Best Youth Performance: Tom Holland, The Impossible

---

New York Film Critics Online

Best Picture: Zero Dark Thirty.

Best Foreign Language Film: Amour.

Best Actress: Emmanuelle Riva, Amour.

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln.

Best Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln.

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables.

Best Ensemble Cast: Argo.

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty.

Best Screenplay: Zero Dark Thirty, Mark Boal.

Best Cinematography: Life of Pi, Claudio Miranda.

Best Use of Music: Django Unchained, Mary Ramos.

Best Documentary: The Central Park Five.

Best Animated Feature: Chico & Rita – Dir.: Tono Errando, Javier Mariscal, and Fernando Trueba.

Best Debut Director: Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Breakthrough Performance: Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild.

---

Online Film Critics Society

Best Film: Argo

Best Foreign Language Film: Holy Motors

Best Actress: Jessica Chastain – Zero Dark Thirty

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis – Lincoln

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway – Les Misérables

Best Supporting Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman – The Master

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson – The Master

Best Original Screenplay: Moonrise Kingdom – Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola

Best Adapted Screenplay: Argo – Chris Terrio

Best Cinematography: Skyfall – Roger Deakins

Best Film Editing: Cloud Atlas – Alexander Berner

Best Documentary: This Is Not a Film – Dir.: Jafar Panahi

Best Animated Feature: ParaNorman

Special Award: Mojtaba Mirtahmasb & Jafar Panahi’s This Is Not a Film

Career Achievement: Ennio Morricone

---

San Francisco Film Critics winners

Best Picture: The Master

Best Foreign Language Film: Amour

Best Actress: Emmanuelle Riva – Amour

Best Actor: Joaquin Phoenix – The Master

Best Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones – Lincoln

Best Supporting Actress: Helen Hunt – The Sessions

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow – Zero Dark Thirty

Best Adapted Screenplay: Lincoln – Tony Kushner

Best Original Screenplay: Zero Dark Thirty – Mark Boal

Best Cinematography: Life of Pi – Claudio Miranda

Best Film Editing: Argo – William Goldenberg

Best Production Design: Moonrise Kingdom – Adam Stockhausen

Best Animated Feature: ParaNorman

Marlon Riggs Award (for a Bay Area Filmmaker): The Waiting Room

Special Citation: Girl Walk All Day

---

Washington D.C. Film Critics Association

Best Film: Zero Dark Thirty.

Best Foreign Language Film: Amour.

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty.

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln.

Best Actress: Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty.

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables.

Best Supporting Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master.

Best Acting Ensemble: Les Misérables.

Best Original Screenplay: Rian Johnson, Looper.

Best Adapted Screenplay: David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook.

Best Documentary: Bully.

Best Animated Feature: ParaNorman – Dir.: Chris Butler and Sam Fell.

Best Cinematography: Claudio Miranda, Life of Pi.

Best Score: Jonny Greenwood, The Master.

Best Art Direction: Production Designers Uli Hanisch & Hugh Bateup; Set Decorators Peter Walpole & Rebecca Alleway, Cloud Atlas.

The Joe Barber Award for Best Youth Performance: Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild.

“Critics Awards 2012” notes

Online Film Critics Society website.

Nevada Film Critics Society website.

Boston Society of Film Critics website.

San Francisco Film Critics Circle website.

Denis Lavant and Eva Mendes Holy Motors image: Les Films du Losange.

John Hawkes and Helen Hunt The Sessions image: Fox Searchlight Pictures.

The Central Park Five poster: Sundance Selects.

Joaquin Phoenix The Master image: The Weinstein Company.

*last modified in June 2025.