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Boston film critics speak

Print | Comments () Posted by Wesley Morris December 13, 2009 05:03 PM

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The Boston Society of Film Critics named “The Hurt Locker,” an independent war drama about an eccentric soldier in the Army’s bomb squad, the year’s best film. Its maker, Kathryn Bigelow, was named best director. Jeremy Renner, who played the soldier, was voted best actor. The movie also won the editing and cinematography prizes, making it the biggest winner in the group’s 28 years.

Meryl Streep was named best actress for playing Julia Child in “Julia and Julie.” The runner-up was Gabourey Sidibe for her performance as abused Harlem teenager in “Precious.” Christian McKay, who played a young Orson Welles in “Me and Orson Welles” was the runner-up in the actor category.

Christoph Waltz was named best supporting actor for his charismatic Nazi in “Inglorious Basterds.” Mo’Nique won the supporting actress prize for her work as the inventively abusive mother in “Precious” The runners up were Stanley Tucci, as Julia Child’s supportive husband, Paul, in ”Julie and Julia”; and Anna Kendrick, who plays a fast-talking junior executive, opposite George Clooney, in “Up in the Air.”

The critic’s group voted Joel and Ethan Coen’s “A Serious Man” best screenplay. The comedy, about a put-upon physics professor and the toll of Judaism, was the runner-up in the best picture category, as well as those for editing, cinematography, and ensemble, where it lost to a tie between “Precious” and “Star Trek.” (Don’t worry, the critics in attendance laughed at the irony, too.

Best foreign-language film went to Olivier Assayas’s family drama “Summer Hours.” “The Cove,” about a group of environmental activists’ attempt to stop Japanese fishermen from slaughtering dolphins, won the documentary prize. The animation award went to Pixar’s “Up,” in which an old widower and a young scout go on an adventure. Neill Blomkamp was awarded the best new filmmaker prize for his science-fiction apartheid allegory, “District 9.” “Crazy Heart,” a country-music drama with Jeff Bridges that opens here early next year, won the new prize for best use of music in a film.

The group also recognized the year’s best revivals as well as the area’s best film series: the Complete Elia Kazan; Gordon Willis, the Man who Shot the Godfather; James Whale: Of Monsters, Melodrama, and the Production Code; Kathryn Bigelow – Filmmaking at the Dark Edge of Exhilaration; and Stanley Donen, Hollywood Showman. All five were put on by the Harvard Film Archive, whose programmers and staff received a special commendation for their “extraordinary year.”

Also receiving commendations were David Bramante, who recently opened an independent movie theater, and Gerald Peary and Amy Geller for their film-critic documentary, “For the Love of Movies.”

The awards were selected by 18 or so film critics from the Boston area and will be handed out locally at a show early in 2010.