The New York Film Critics Circle anointed Milk as its Best Picture of Year, recognizing the film as well as two of its stars, Sean Penn and Josh Brolin. Penn joins Penelope Cruz and Sally Hawkins as winners from both the New York and Los Angeles critics groups, which usually go out of their way to disagree with each other. With this win and its strong showing at yesterday’s Critics Choice nominations, Milk has joined The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire as Oscar’s three sure things this year. Meanwhile, the small British comedy Happy-Go-Lucky picked up two awards. Here’s the entire list of honorees:
Best Film: Milk
Best Director: Mike Leigh, Happy-Go-Lucky
Best Actor: Sean Penn, Milk
Best Actress: Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky
Best Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin, Milk
Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Best Screenplay: Jenny Lumet, Rachel Getting Married
Best Animated Film: Wall-E
Best Foreign Film: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Best First Film: Courtney Hunt, Frozen River
Best Cinematographer: Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire
Best Documentary: Man on Wire
Comments (1-6) of 6 Add your comment
Great list; hoping to see Milk this Friday. Glad for Wall-E and Happy-Go-Lucky. Both great films.
Though I do consider Milk one of the better films of the year, I don’t get the love for Brolin. Don’t get me wrong: I like the actor just fine, but found that his performance was of the “perpetually emotionally constipated” variety, and were I to give a Supporting nomination to someone from Milk, I’d sooner go with Hirsch or Franco, whose characters were more fleshed-out, IMO. Despite his crucial role in the story, I don’t feel Brolin was given much to work with…arbitrary drunken moment (“Where’s that Latin man come from”) notwithstanding.
Typo.
“Where’d that Latino man come from?”
I agree. I thought Brolin was fine in the film but I was more impressed with Franco and Hirsch. I’m surprised he is winning so many awards for this. Especially over Heath Ledger. But I do think Milk is the one to beat this year. Fantastic film.
Oh… come one… Rachel Getting Married, a movie WITH NO SCRIPT won best script. Sure…
Anda what’s up with Happy-o-Lucky. It has a great, great trailer, but the movie ends being pretty bad.
I thought 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days was last year, not this year. In any case, I’m so excited that it is getting recognition, because it was a fabulous and heart-breaking movie (though my best foreign movie choice would be A Christmas Tale, and my best picture choice would be Frozen River).