Kicking off the season of putting movies in lists and then having disagreements about those lists, last night’s Gotham Awards began our endless annual task of ranking the best movies of the year, which now officially ends in November. You should do your taxes. Anyway, as we are obligated to point every time the Gotham Awards come up, they a) have nothing to do with Batman, nor are they b) a telling precursor to the Academy Awards, aside from having a history of predicting which indie critical favorite will likely end up in the Best Picture race.
This year the lineage that includes Frozen River, The Hurt Locker, and Winter’s Bone could be joined by two films, as Gotham couldn’t make up its mind between Beginners and The Tree Of Life. Mike Mills’ twee comedy-drama, in which Christopher Plummer has a late-in-life sexual awakening, tied for Best Picture with Terrence Malick’s sprawling, philosophical meditation on the oneness of the universe, which stretches from the dinosaurs to sad Sean Penn, making it somewhat more difficult to guess which one will end up getting the Oscar nod. (Though given the fuzzy math being used to decide that this year, it could be both of them. Or neither of them. Or three-fourths of one and one-eighth of the other. It’s a surprise!)
Other big winners included Like Crazy’s Breakthrough Actor Felicity Jones, Pariah’s Breakthrough Director Dee Rees, and a Best Ensemble win for the entire Beginners cast. Meanwhile, Best Documentary went to Better This World, the Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You award went to Scenes Of A Crime, and Justin Lerner’s Girlfriend took home the Audience Award, because they all did her. Ha ha, no. And thus ends the shortest list of film awards you’re going to see for the next few months. Enjoy it. [via THR]