Pop Smart - Curt’s SEFCA picks
I have to be very, very careful filling out my Southeastern Film Critics Association award ballot every year, lest I devote hours obsessing over which performance is best, and which deserves my support in the voting. I keep my sense of proportion when I remember that I’m one of 46 voting critics representing nine states, and usually my top choices don’t make the final tally. Mostly I’m pleased that SEFCA remembered my No. 3 pick Zodiac, which is brilliant yet has been ignored almost completely in the year-end wrap-ups.
TOP TEN FILMS
1. Ratatouille
2. Sweeney Todd
3. Zodiac
4. The Savages
5. Hot Fuzz
7. Deep Water
8. Atonement
9. There Will Be Blood
10. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
(It was hard excluding Knocked Up, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and In the Shadow of the Moon from my top 10.)
BEST ACTOR
1. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
2. Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
3. Brad Pitt, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
(I almost picked Hoffman twice, for The Savages as well. I also almost picked Simon Pegg from Hot Fuzz.)
BEST ACTRESS
1. Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
2. Laura Linney, The Savages
3. Carice van Houten, Black Book
More categories and obsessive-compulsiveness follows.