Critical Week: The crowd goes wild

Awards season is in full swing, with everyone announcing nominees, winners and top 10s of 2011. Indeed, just this morning the London Critics' Circle announced its 32nd film awards nominations. As secretary of the London film critics, my job was to count ballots and tabulate the nominees over the weekend, so it's great to get feedback today. Our best film nominees are: The Artist, Drive, A Separation, 
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Tree of Life - and the other categories are just as strong (See the full list of nominees HERE). Casting final votes will be tricky. I'm voting this week for the Online Film Critics Society awards - those nominations are out next week.

Meanwhile, I've had a few final films to catch up with this past week, including David Fincher's astonishing remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which is possibly a better film than the original. it's certainly sleeker and more eye-catching. There were two January releases: the thoroughly enjoyable Canadian hockey comedy Goon, starring Seann William Scott, and the Chemical Brothers' energetic concert movie Don't Think (that's their crowd pictured above). Finally, I caught up with three thoroughly awards-worthy films: Mexico's striking drama Miss Bala, the emotionally wrenching American soldier doc Hell and Back Again and the gorgeously made horse-whisperer doc Buck.

There are no press screenings now until the new year, so I'll spend the next two weeks re-watching some favourites on screener disc and catching up on old movies and other things I want to see. It'll of course be rather fabulous to watch movies for pure enjoyment for a change.