New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Next up, it's the New York Film Critics, who also awarded The Hurt Locker as their Best Picture, and gave Kathryn Bigelow the award for Best Director. Other major winners are George Clooney as Best Actor, for Up in the Air and Fantastic Mr. Fox; Meryl Streep as Best Actress, for Julie and Julia; Mo'Nique as Best Supporting Actress, for Precious; Christoph Waltz as Best Supporting Actor, for Inglourious Basterds; and In The Loop, for Best Screenplay. Before we get any further into analyzing this group, let's also look at the big winners from the Los Angeles Film Critics awards, as these two major critics' groups can sometimes overlap.

The Los Angeles Film Critics also awarded The Hurt Locker as Best Picture, and Kathryn Bigelow as Best Director. They also overlapped with the New York Film Critics with Best Supporting Actor and Actress, as Mo'Nique and Waltz both took the top prizes. Their Best Actor and Actress awards, though, were completely different; for Best Actor, Jeff Bridges won as the lead of Crazy Heart, and for Best Actress, Yolande Moreau won as the lead of Seraphine. Both groups, though, did share the winner for Best Animated Feature; instead of the more popular Up, the groups gave the award to Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson's latest comedy-drama. The overlap among the Best Picture and Director awards is a precursor, but is it a potential direction to Oscar gold?

Well...listen, I love The Hurt Locker, and would put it right behind Up if I was making my top-ten list of 2009. But if we're going to sift through the tea leaves here, The Hurt Locker will get nominated for Best Picture and lose. Though the LA and NYC groups don't always overlap, when they do, it's rarely a good indicator for the winner. The last time the groups' shared winner won Best Picture at the Oscars, it was 1993, and the film was Schindler's List. Before that, only 1983's Terms of Endearment had the same trajectory. Other winners in LA and New York to not win Oscar are Goodfellas, Saving Private Ryan, L.A. Confidential, Brokeback Mountain, Sideways, and Hannah and her Sisters. Of course, The Hurt Locker could break the tide, but it would seem highly unlikely.

Another reason why The Hurt Locker has a less-than-solid chance is its lack of popularity. Here's a movie that everyone who is able to should see; though it is set during the Iraq War, the movie is one of the best action movies I've seen, which is all the more impressive because it may be one of the rarest films in the genre; in this movie, the main characters want very badly to have explosive devices not go off. If the action is meant to be more contained, The Hurt Locker succeeds, as it's also incredibly, unbearably tense. But it hasn't even made $20 million domestically. Chalk it up to not having any major stars (though such actors as Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, David Morse, and "Lost" actress Evangeline Lilly all have supporting roles) and an unpopular topic. But if movies such as Avatar or Up in the Air get Oscar nods, they'll likely have more popular backing. I and the other 12 people who saw The Hurt Locker can hope that pessimism is the wrong attitude.

Continued:       1       2       3       4