Talking with Thelma Schoonmaker recently, it became quickly apparent that I wasn’t even going to scratch the surface of her career’s work with Martin Scorsese in a single piece. I couldn’t help but play the retrospective game with her, and while I of course didn’t address all 19 feature collaborations, I was curious about six films in particular that I think represent a nice cross-section of their work together. Each of them – “Who’s That Knocking At My Door,” “Raging Bull,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “Goodfellas,” “Bringing Out the Dead” and “The Departed” – will get its own space in the next few days.

While Academy members may be tongue-lashing Martin Scorsese for the near-NC-17 nature of his latest film, “The Last Temptation of Christ” remains, unequivocally, his most controversial work to date. An adaptation of the Nikos Kazantzakis novel that surmised a Jesus more human than divine, it was predictably burned in metaphorical effigy upon release in August of 1988.

Not so metaphorical, however, was the actual burning of the Saint Michel theater in Paris with Molotov cocktails by lunatics who severely injured a number of people during a showing of the film. Director Franco Zeffirelli, rather than support the daring of a fellow artist, withdrew his film “Young Toscanini” from the Venice Film Festival when “Last Temptation” was scheduled for the program that year, and some theater chains even refused to screen it due to the uproar.

But before all of that controversy, in her New York editing suite, watching the dailies come in from Morocco, Thelma Schoonmaker wasn’t outraged. She was moved to tears.

“The footage wasn’t even developed yet because there were no labs over there at that point,” she recalls. “At least on ‘Kundun’ it wasn’t quite so bad, also shot in Morocco. But it was quite moving for me because the landscape of Morocco, just the red of the soil, seemed to be about the blood of Christ that is so important in the movie. I started crying in dailies. That hardly ever happens.”

Scorsese was having trouble reaching his editor by phone in those days from his location shoot, eager to know whether he was getting what he needed or not. When he finally got through, Schoonmaker just broke down and wept. “I couldn’t talk to him about it,” she confides. “He said, ‘Well, what’s the matter? Is it ruined?’ And I just kept saying, ‘It’s so moving! It’s so moving!’ And I wasn’t the only person crying in dailies; his development person was also crying. Finally I said, ‘No, no it’s very beautiful.'”

When you look across Scorsese’s filmography (and as noted briefly in yesterday’s “Bringing Out the Dead” piece), religion is a huge part of his work. It goes all the way back to his very first feature, statues of the Virgin Mary permeating the imagery of 1967’s “Who’s That Knocking At My Door.” It’s very clearly something he meditates on as an artist, and it made him the perfect, if in some ways unexpected, candidate to capture Kazantzakis’ thoughtful narrative on film. Alas, that deep-seeded sense of faith and divine consideration was lost on the ignorant.

“It’s such a religious movie,” Schoonmaker says. “And then we were attacked by the fundamentalists. We begged them to come see the movie. Everybody else came. Catholics, Episcopalians, the Bishop of New York supported us completely – the Episcopalian Bishop of New York. But the fundamentalists would not come. We had to have bodyguards for Marty. It was terrible. And we had to rush the movie out to defend itself. Then, you know, it just sort of died.”

Musician Peter Gabriel provided the ethnically influenced original score for the film, and according to Schoonmaker, was incredibly devoted to the process. “He came to New York and he had a studio on the floor below us,” she recalls. “We would go down, Marty and me, and there would be some Indian double electronic violinist playing and Peter singing. He kept re-scoring as we cut the movie down. We said, ‘No, no, no, you have to wait until the end and then score it.’ He was still making changes on the last day we were mixing the sound! But he was wonderful. What a score that is.”

While the release of the film was a difficult experience, the actual production itself was no picnic either. “He had five stuntmen from Italy and they had to play the Romans and the Jews,” Schoonmaker explains. “So he would shoot, first, the Jews jumping down and then he would change them into the Romans. It was horrendous. And when they shot the crucifixion, there were weather problems and wild dogs running around. The guys who were playing the thieves were dancers from Casablanca and they were so grateful to have the part that they kept throwing kisses to Marty as he was trying to shoot the movie. And then they almost didn’t get it because the sun was going down. It was a nightmare.”

But they did get it, and the result was a Best Director Oscar nomination for Scorsese (though nothing else for the film) that Schoonmaker doesn’t even remember today. Perhaps the fog of strife surrounding the movie is too thick in her memory all these years later. But regardless of laurels and trophies, “The Last Temptation of Christ” is one of the most penetrating depictions of faith’s profound and unavoidable foil: doubt. It’s about the yin and yang that the devout understand, whether they want to embrace it or not. And clearly, many weren’t able to embrace it or even consider it here, how moving the idea really is. Of course, I write that as someone without such religious devotion, but as someone who nevertheless finds great power in such poetry.

“Marty just wanted to show that Christ was human and, you know, didn’t want the job,” Schoonmaker says. “I think that’s such a beautiful idea. ‘Not me! No, no, no! Get somebody else!’ And that wonderful moment when he says to Judas, ‘I’m gonna have to die’ – what a realization. It was just a wonderful experience, to watch it all evolve.”

Don’t forget to read our longer interview with Schoonmaker about “The Wolf of Wall Street” and its place in the grander scheme of her career’s work with Scorsese.

“The Wolf of Wall Street” is now playing in theaters everywhere.

Every year, there’s at least one major holiday release that I don’t get round to before, well, the holidays — or, in my case, January — and Ben Stiller’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is that film this year. (I’ll get to it, for sure; “Zoolander” loyalty dies hard.) A lot of my more cynically inclined colleagues would tell me that I passed on the right one: after having Oscar buzz for about a minute and landing a prestigious New York Film Festival slot, the romantic fantasy has landed pretty softly with critics — not that Stiller has ever made films for them anyway. In any event, it looks like audiences will be more charmed by its whimsy: are any of you checking it out this Christmas? Share your thoughts here if so, and be sure to vote in the poll below.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911843036001

And then there were 10. Yesterday, I counted down my first 15 favorites of the year — though to be honest, it was a list that could significantly have changed, both in selections and arrangement, from one day to the next. My top 10 has felt a little firmer to me for some time, but that’s not because these films particularly belong in a league above the rest. Rather, as I mentioned in my intro yesterday, it’s the shape and synthesis of this collective that feels satisfying to me — disparate as the choices may be, they’re unified in my mind by threads both obvious (the list is bookended by the two faces of a single star, for starters) and less immediately apparent until the films are placed side by side.

Taken together, the list might say more about me than it does about the year in film — which is how I prefer it. It was a very good year, by agreement, though as festivals keep mushrooming, while methods and means of global distribution keep expanding, no one viewer’s 12 months at the movies looks quite like another’s.

What does my 2013 look like, then? Well, it was a rich year for female narratives, if not female filmmakers: eight of my top 10 films tangle excitingly with the placement and identity of women in worlds past, present and future, as well as in the industry itself. (One that doesn’t, meanwhile, is directed by a woman.) Outsider identity, whether tied to gender, culture, species or sexuality, is also a recurring them in this list; it’s certainly been a sympathetic year for misfit viewers of any persuasion.

Hollywood, meanwhile, sparked to life from its franchise-induced slumber. My countdown already includes “White House Down” and “The Lone Ranger,” two mainstream entertainments that alternatively honor and subvert genre codes and coding; another two multiplex titles in the top 10 do the same to wildly differing effect. World cinema, meanwhile, felt more constrained than usual, but made its festival showcases count, while juries chose astutely: it’s been a few years since the year’s most gilded titles from the European circuit made my list, and here we have two of them. (Maybe next year, Venice.)

Again, though, that’s just from where I’ve been sitting: I’ve read any number of Top 10 lists in the past few weeks by critics who seemed to see a very different cross-section of cinema in 2013, or at least saw very different things in my own. A number of titles in my top 10 proved fiercely divisive among critics and audiences alike, which is always good news as far as I’m concerned: the ensuing conversation can be as cinematically and social illuminating as the film itself, even if I think it has circled a few too many times in one particular case. Everyone may watch the same film, but nobody sees the same one — it’s a line I’ve found myself repeating on a regular basis in 2013.

Before going into the top 10, I should stress one thing: perhaps this year more than ever, the word “best” feels inappropriate to a personal list. There are remarkable films that didn’t make the cut — ones that my more critical instincts would deem more significant, more beautiful, more complete than others that did, but didn’t necessarily delight, move or provoke me to quite the same extent. There is no objectivity in film criticism, but subjectivity isn’t always a clear-cut thing either.

Anyway, enough from me. Here are my 10 films of 2013. Of course I hope at least some of you love at least some them — but more importantly, I hope you understand why I do. (Forgive me, too, if some of these have yet to come your way from the confines of the festival circuit: think of them as bookmarks for the year to come.) If you don’t, well, that’s okay too. Merry Christmas, one and all. Here’s to 2014. 

Tomorrow, because it’s December 25 and nobody typically has much going on that day, I will finally reveal my top 10 films of 2013. And with the final draft of the list having sat in my head for about a week now, I’m pretty happy with it — not just because it’s a fine bunch of films (from one’s own perspective, at least, that should go without saying), but because I’m positive that the 10 I chose are also the right ones in defining and outlining the year I had at the movies; the more I think about them, the more unexpected connections, parallels and complementary differences emerge alongside the intended ones.

Still, list-making is never an entirely satisfying process, and as I mulled over my initial longlist of over 60 titles for consideration,10 came to seem a thoroughly inadequate number — it always is, really, but too many films meant too much to me this year to go by unthanked.

It’s become a standard line in this Top 10 season that 2013 was some kind of banner year, and I suppose this suggests it was — though a lot of the films that resonated most with me did so for reasons more personal and idiosyncratic than universal, or even particularly cinephilic. And I’m not sure how a year is defined anyway: as usual, my list was built on the basis that any new film seen, whether at a festival or a multiplex, was fair game, meaning a number of inclusions here will be 2014 films for others. On this evidence, at least, 2014’s looking pretty damn good too.

Anyway, 25 seemed a more representative number, not to mention a more generous one — it is Christmas, after all. It didn’t exactly ease the selection process; once you’re going as far as 25, there’s little to stop you going to 50 and beyond, and I’m feeling guilty about any number of films that still managed to miss the cut. (I’m not going to do honorable mentions; I’ve been greedy enough as it is.) But I eventually arrived at a fat 2013 playlist that I certainly wouldn’t trade for anyone else’s, and the first 15 films in it are listed in the gallery below.

I’ll reserve a more reflective introduction for tomorrow’s Top 10; for now, check out my picks from #25 to #11, and share your thoughts and favorites in the comments.

Talking with Thelma Schoonmaker recently, it became quickly apparent that I wasn’t even going to scratch the surface of her career’s work with Martin Scorsese in a single piece. I couldn’t help but play the retrospective game with her, and while I of course didn’t address all 19 feature collaborations, I was curious about six films in particular that I think represent a nice cross-section of their work together. Each of them – “Who’s That Knocking At My Door,” “Raging Bull,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “Goodfellas,” “Bringing Out the Dead” and “The Departed” – will get its own space in the next few days.

A confession: “Bringing Out the Dead” is one of my favorite Martin Scorsese films. Comfortably at home amid the great film year that was 1999, it’s a fascinating study, the last of a certain aesthetic for the filmmaker before he would head off into the aughts with large-scale prestige pics like “Gangs of New York” and “The Aviator.” It was almost as if he had one last thing left to say, his way, before the clock ticked down on the millennium.

Indeed, the film’s producer, Scott Rudin, saw it as a reprise of a certain form as well. “I loved the movie when we did it and I love it now,” Rudin tells me. “It felt to me at the time that it was, for Marty, a return to ‘After Hours.’ But when I see it now I think it’s much more like an American Pasolini film.”

The film is rich with an echo of certain thematic and formal tendencies that had come to define Scorsese’s work until that point, not least of them being the eternal struggle with faith. Religion, Schoonmaker says, is something the director is constantly thoughtful of. Imagery of faith litters his filmography and it’s present in a deeply introspective way in “Bringing Out the Dead.”

“If you think of it, ‘Last Temptation,’ ‘Kundun’ and then ‘Silence,’ our next one, will be the sort of trilogy of religiously-based films, and I think ‘Bringing Out the Dead’ is almost in there,” Schoonmaker says. “That is the one that has never gotten recognition. But I can’t tell you how many people talk to me about that movie. There is a ripple that’s going on. Bertrand Tavernier, the really wonderful French director, just wrote a review of it again. I have friends, when they have friends over for dinner, they make them watch it. It never got its due because it’s about compassion. That’s why.”

The film was also marketed poorly, she says. It was sold as a sort of car chase film and likely, therefore, courted a viewership that expected something completely different. “The wrong audience went to it first and that was it,” Schoonmaker says. “We were done.” But that’s something she and Scorsese have become accustomed to, she says: the work not being appreciated in its time.

“Everybody hated ‘Casino,'” she reminds. “They would say, ‘It’s not ‘Goodfellas.” That’s right. It’s not. It’s Las Vegas. It’s not ‘Goodfellas.’ And now everybody loves ‘Casino.’ Now it’s a big cult film. ‘Raging Bull’ was a disaster and wasn’t recognized for 10 years. ‘King of Comedy’ was a disaster, now everybody loves ‘King of Comedy.’ This happened to so many of our films. But the one that’s never, ever come back is ‘Bringing Out the Dead.’

“I think when you’re an artist on the cutting edge, you have to expect that, kind of. It’s hard, because if your movies don’t make a certain amount of money – it’s very lucky for us that ‘The Departed’ made so much money because then he doesn’t have to fight quite so hard for the next one.”

Nevertheless, as he has with all of his films that didn’t land immediately, Scorsese took the dismissal of “Bringing Out the Dead” hard, Schoonmaker says. To wait so long for his work to be recognized feels like a brutal sort of torture that almost makes you begin to understand the filmmaker in a different light, full of unbridled passion and artistry, damned to sit back and observe as the status quo glacially finds its way to what he has to offer. But that curse is also a blessing, as it has instilled the fortitude he’s needed to keep stepping up to the plate each and every time.

“You see,” Schoonmaker says, “he learned how to survive in the film business in the struggle between art and commerce much better than my husband [Michael Powell], who never had to learn it and then when he did need it, it was too late. Marty learned right from the beginning how to talk to studio executives, how to bring them along, how to try and make them believe and get them excited, even though they’re terrified, which they usually are with every one of our projects. He walks that tight rope and it’s very dangerous, but he gets away with murder because he’s very effective when he’s talking to them, even though we have to drag them, kicking and screaming.”

Don’t forget to read our longer interview with Schoonmaker about “The Wolf of Wall Street” and its place in the grander scheme of her career’s work with Scorsese.

“The Wolf of Wall Street” opens tomorrow.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911820456001

“American Hustle” star Amy Adams has been recognized by both the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the Broadcast Film Critics Association this season. But in both instances she was relegated to designated comedy categories and it remains to be seen whether she can crack what has for months been a rather tight lead actress Oscar line-up.

With “Hustle” moving out into wider release this past weekend and scoring well at the box office, and as the film continues to find purchase with Academy voters, she might just find a foothold. She has her fans, but she also has her detractors, many of which highlight a flailing English accent as part of the trouble. But that can also be explained away as a character trait, and as the actress told HitFix in a recent interview, it was sort of freeing to not have to be a perfectionist on that particular detail.

“A lot of people I know who are British speak that English that is kind of American, so I listened to them as well, what words would translate and what wouldn’t,” she said. “The way that David works and the way he’s like creating lines in the moment or restructuring scenes in the moment, I couldn’t have been perfect if I wanted to…Only Christian can be perfect! He really is. He’s so good.”

Indeed, Russell’s process is such that he’s consistently discovering the film, during production and all throughout post-production. But Adams embraces that process, which she has experienced with the director for a second time now after her Oscar-nominated work in 2010’s “The Fighter.”

“You can’t get caught up in any frustration,” she said. “You have to surrender and you have to lean in to his process. If you try to fight it you’re not going to accomplish the scene. I think it creates a great intensity between the characters, the way he works.”

Check out the video embedded at the top of this post for more with Adams, including how hair and makeup helped her with building the character and her manifested world.

“American Hustle” is now playing in theaters.

Though not a Christmas movie per se, “Mary Poppins” shows up on TV schedules often enough at this time of year that it’s come to be an unofficial seasonal staple — and with “Saving Mr. Banks” now in theaters, more people than usual will be giving it another spin over the holidays. But does it merits its classic status? I’m firmly in the “yes” camp, but Kyle Buchanan is less convinced: “‘The Sound of Music’ is sturdily structured and well-cast down to its smallest roles; rewatching it now, there’s really not a superfluous scene. Not so much with Mary Poppins, y’all … The good parts are just as good as you remember – it’s just that they’ve been overrun by so many boring parts that it’s shocking. For every spoonful of sugar that Mary Poppins offers, there are two more spoons of medicine you’ve got to take first.” Bah, humbug. [Vulture]

Hans Zimmer, Thomas Newman and Steven Price are among the guests at THR’s composers’ roundtable. [Hollywood Reporter]

Christine Smallwood on why “Her” is something more complicated and unsettling than a love story. [New Yorker]

Jennifer Lawrence — remember her? — is AP’s Entertainer of the Year. [Thompson on Hollywood]

Chiwetel Ejiofor — not such a big draw in Italy. [The Guardian]

Playwrights from Tracy Letts to Aaron Sorkin to Neil LaBute talk about the process of adapting their work for the screen. [New York Times]

Justin Chang, Peter Debruge and Scott Foundas debate the merits of “The Wolf of Wall Street.” [Variety]

Nice Weinstein touch, this: a collection of interviews in which Oscar-nominated costume design Ruth Carter discusses her work on “The Butler.” [TWC Guilds]

Amanda Dobbins weighs up the year in actor/director reunions, from McQueen/Fassbender to, well, Scott/Fassbender. [Vulture]

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911817648001

One of the weaker areas for Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” in the eyes of some is its story and screenplay. They cavalierly dismiss it as a ride without thematic substance, though of course they’re dead wrong. It’s a movie about – as Cuarón has breathlessly said since the beginning – adversity, yes, but also grief and, as cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki noted to me recently, how small we are despite our great personal drama (to steal an idea from Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life”).

As I wrote in my top 10 article, which found “Gravity” far and away the #1 film of the year, “It is one of the great films, an experience among pretenders, an achievement for all time to be cherished not as a bellwether for industry innovation to come, but for the profound thematic virtue it oozes.”

Maybe picking up on the sense that the film could be squeezed out of a hugely competitive Best Original Screenplay category, Warner Bros. has put together a new featurette called “‘Gravity’: From Script to Screen,” focusing quite a bit on the screenplay and story elements. Actor George Clooney fires off a quote about how the script grabbed him so and there’s plenty from Cuarón and son Jonás, who co-wrote the piece with him, concerning their process in crafting the story.

See for yourself in the video embedded at the top of this post. And if you haven’t seen “Gravity” yet, try to scope it out at a second-run theater over the holiday. Those can often be less-than-ideal theatrical circumstances, but anything other than theatrical is, well, less than ideal on this film.

It may seem odd, when talking about a director only two films into his career, to describe “The Invisible Woman” as “a very Ralph Fiennes film.” By his own admission, the twice Oscar-nominated actor has yet to forge a recurring directorial stamp; both his films exude the confident curiosity of an artist open to any number of ideas and influences.

Yet if the restrained elegancy and disciplined sexuality of “The Invisible Woman” — a delicate, melancholic costume drama about Nelly Ternan, the historically sidelined mistress of Charles Dickens — seems natural coming from Fiennes, that’s largely because they match his refined, precise qualities as an actor. Those, too, are on display in the film: Fiennes plays Dickens to Felicity Jones’s Ternan, and the two have a quiet but urgent chemistry that makes for one of the year’s most unexpectedly moving screen romances. Though adapted by Emmy-winning screenwriter Abi Morgan (“The Hour,” “The Iron Lady”) from a 1991 biography by Claire Tomalin, the relationship at the film’s center is still far from common knowledge; Fiennes’s film illuminates it with considerable grace.

“I wasn’t a Dickens buff at all going into the project,” he admits. “I had only read ‘Little Dorrit,’ and obviously seen the David Lean adaptations and so on. But I’m glad I wasn’t: the combination of Abi”s screenplay and Claire”s book was like switching on a light. But the thing that led me wasn’t Dickens, but Nelly. It was the story of a woman who had not, or could not, come to terms with a past love that haunts her. That’s the element in the screenplay I loved and wanted to strengthen.”

The script came Fiennes’s way as he was seeking a directorial project to follow up his 2011 debut, a resourcefully modernized yet classically performed adaptation of Shakespeare’s war tragedy “Coriolanus” that earned him the immediate attention of critics — but left him creatively restless. “There was so much I needed to learn, things I had sort of messed up, technical and otherwise, and I was very keen to get back into it,” he says. “I didn”t know what the next one would be, and didn’t for a second think it would be a Victorian drama. But this piece just got under my skin. I couldn”t let go of it.”

Though Fiennes has a natural aptitude, like many actors moving into directing, for “nurturing and exploring” performance, he’s most excited by the possibilities of the camera itself, and saw “The Invisible Woman” as posing fresh challenges in that department. “Photographically, I had chosen a high-intensity way of shooting on ‘Coriolanus,'” he says,”but what I most enjoyed was finding the strong frame of the camera-observed face.”

He cites his work with the Hungarian director Istvan Szabo on the 2000 film “Sunshine” as having particularly inspired him in this department. “I like that classicism, that stillness,” he explains. “There”s one scene in ‘Coriolanus ‘ where Jessica Chastain approaches the bed and and is partly masked by my profile; these two faces come together as one and there”s a moment of tension, something unsaid. It was so well executed by Barry Ackroyd: a complete moment, all the information held within the frame. I wanted to explore that more in the way we shot ‘The Invisible Woman.'”

Working this time with up-and-coming cinematographer Rob Hardy (“Red Riding,” “Broken”), Fiennes incorporated a range of influences into the new film’s serene aesthetic; I observe that many shots in the film seem to echo the lighting and composition of 19th-century English painters, though he adds that more contemporary references came into play: “There’s an American photographer we both admire called Saul Leiter who observes from behind glass or through doorways; he has a lot of shadow and masking in shots, so the eye goes to one particular part of the frame. Rob’s composition is very exciting to me, his decisions over where to put the camera.”

Fiennes still sees filmmaking as a learning curve — “I still feel I miss stuff, and wish I’d gotten shots ofthis or that” — but does believe he’s improved over the course of his sophomore feature: “My technical awareness is sharper, my timing, my sense of letting moments play out before you without cutting too early. I”m still learning so much, but I think I was more confident in communicating with people, sharing the fact that I didn”t know how to solve a problem. The first time around I was so adrenalized and so crazy: I learned a lot in the editing about framing, camera, eye, face, the information you”re getting.”

He credits Nicolas Gaster, his editor on both films, for teaching him about how shots read, and what translates to a strong performance on camera: “I”ve had to sit with Nick for so many hours, challenging the coverage on myself and seeing what”s working and what isn’t. It”s kind of painful and peculiar to sort of put footage of yourself through that process: that”s shit, that”s shit, that might be okay, that”s okay, that”s the best one, the rest is shit. It’s good for you in the way that a cold shower is good for you.”

After taking the title role to forceful effect in “Coriolanus,” Fiennes admits that he was reluctant to star in his own film again. “It”s difficult because you have to go from one headspace to another, while looking after other actors and making choices about their performances, camera moves and everything, and then then suddenly be immersed in Charles Dickens,” he explains.

“I think it”s possible to have your part in reserve and then go and play it. But what makes it hard is the time pressure. You need time to find it, be it and then pursue it,” he continues. “And sometimes it’s the end of the day and the clock is ticking, and if you had just three or four more takes you could have gone into it deeper.”

He initially approached another actor to play Dickens and relieve him of that pressure, but when it didn’t work out, he gave in to his colleagues’ insistence that he take the role himself. “Ultimately, I”m an actor,” he says. “If there”s a role that smells good, it”s hard to resist it. I was working on the screenplay with Abi and reading all the parts, and as we teased other nuances of dialogue and rhythms, she and Claired kept saying I should play him. So in the end, I just said, ‘Fuck it.’ I could see from the first draft that it was a great role: he’s a brilliant, complicated, contrary man.”

Still, he’s less interested in his own performance than that of Felicity Jones as Nelly; reined-in, fragile, playing the character from her teens to early middle age,the young British actress does indeed deliver the most complex work of her career thus far. “She”s amazing,” he raves. “I wanted someone who could inhabit an older Nelly without makeup and stuff, simply through her acting. She can inhabit an interior landscape in a way that”s really mesmerizing and the camera really is drawn. The camera likes her, obviously, but she can write emotion and thought on her face — that”s a great filmmaker gift she has.”

I remark that she has the gift similar to that demonstrated by Abbie Cornish in “Bright Star” — the ability to project contemporary youth and sexuality within the appropriate period register. He agrees, and says that was his intent for the entire film: “I wanted people to be people, for all the bonnets and crinolines and frock coats,” he says, “and Felicity is brilliant in that kind of naturalism. The clothes are the clothes and the sets are the sets, but they’re not the human truth. Social mores and behavior and language may be a little different, but essential, human behavior is not.”

“What was so very moving about the research and reading of Dickens and Nelly and Wilkie Collins was the sensethat these people had fun and parties and mistresses and desires. The way we receive the Victorian Era through history books, people are always posing stiffly in black and white. Actually, looking at paintings is much more informative – the energy and the color and the brightness of their lives comes through, and I could make the imaginative connection between us and them. That’s what I wanted the film to get: the perspiration under the crinolines.”

After having worn both hats, is it difficult to return simply to acting in another director’s project? “I think it’s a bit of a relief, actually,” he says, “if the director really knows what he or she wants. But once you’ve had the experience making choices from behind the camera, if you sense something”s not quite right, you can”t help but have an opinion about a camera position or lens or something. And you feelyourself getting twitchy to direct again. Then again, when you’re working with Wes Anderson in Germany, it’s a pleasure simply to act.”

The Wes Anderson film in question, of course, is “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” which opens the Berlin Film Festival in February — Fiennes plays the central role in the all-star ensemble comedy, and describes the project with palpable affection: “This script is fantastic, so very funny, and Wes is a very lovely presence to be with,” he enthuses. “He”s very encouraging, everyone’s treated very equally, there’s just a happy atmosphere around him. And of course, there are all those great actors: Harvey Keitel, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Jude Law, Saoirse Ronan, Tilda Swinton. The sense of being so collective, in such a strong company — it’s great.”

He is, meanwhile, already on the lookout for his third directorial project, and after having taken on Shakespeare and Dickens from different angles, he admits he’d like to “move away from the literary route” and take on more contemporary material — “Something very immediate and now, though I don’t know what it is yet,” he admits. One thing, he says, is a given: “I don’t want to be in the next one, for sure. If I’m lucky enough to find something.”

“The Invisible Woman” opens in limited release on Christmas Day.

Talking with Thelma Schoonmaker recently, it became quickly apparent that I wasn’t even going to scratch the surface of her career’s work with Martin Scorsese in a single piece. I couldn’t help but play the retrospective game with her, and while I of course didn’t address all 19 feature collaborations, I was curious about six films in particular that I think represent a nice cross-section of their work together. Each of them – “Who’s That Knocking At My Door,” “Raging Bull,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “Goodfellas,” “Bringing Out the Dead” and “The Departed” – will get its own space in the next few days.

When people force Thelma Schoonmaker to pick a favorite of her collaborations with Martin Scorsese over the years, she always says “Raging Bull.” Indeed, when talking with her about a myriad of other projects, the 1980 Jake LaMotta biopic always finds its way into the conversation. It’s clear the movie changed her life and took her career into a whole new stratosphere. Suddenly she had assistants for the first time ever. She was finally in the union, able to work with Scorsese again after a long hiatus since “Who’s That Knocking At My Door.” And ultimately, she won her first of three Oscars for the boxing film, which is largely considered one of the greatest films ever made.

“When I talk to students, it’s like a textbook,” Schoonmaker says. “You can talk about directing, camerawork, acting, improvisation, costume design, set design. The footage was like gold. I’d never seen anything like it. I couldn’t take my eyes off De Niro when he was in my monitor. It was long and arduous because of the improvisation and waiting for him to gain the weight and all that, but it was a brilliant moment in my life. And when Marty and I saw it for the first time, just the two of us, we said, ‘Who the hell made that?’ I mean it was so strong, even in the first cut, which isn’t usually the case. It was so powerful.”

The movie was as much a milestone in Scorsese’s career and personal life as it was Schoonmaker’s. As recounted in last week’s larger interview with the editor, Scorsese was not interested in making the movie after having had a tough go at things in Hollywood. It took actor Robert De Niro visiting him countless times and encouraging him to, for lack of a better phrase, get back in the ring. And what he had in store was one of his most creatively aggressive accomplishments, the explosion of artistry and command of form that would come to be a hallmark of his greatest work.

“Marty’s use of music is so wonderful, too” Schoonmaker says. “When he scores a movie himself it’s a great joy to work with him as he’s finding the music, trying different things. But when I heard that Mascagni music that is the theme – who would think to do that? It was just so unexpected.”

Paul Schrader had cooked up a marvelous script but there was stripping away to be done. The famous final moment which features an overweight LaMotta commenting with sad levity on his life was actual strewn throughout the story originally, with a running commentary on his various fights and life moments. Schoonmaker says she and Scorsese felt it was more powerful to save that for just the denouement.

And then there was the way Scorsese envisioned the fight scenes. He used different sized rings depending on LaMotta’s psychological state. “The first time he knocks Sugar Ray [Robinson] through the ropes, his great rival, it’s a big wide ring with lights,” Schoonmaker says. “And then when he loses in a decision, which he doesn’t think he should have lost, everything is covered in smoke and Marty booms down into this pit of hell. It’s very hard to be in a ring with two fighters and a referee and do camera moves, because they’re moving all over the place. [Marty] was always in the ring, whereas in ‘Rocky,’ it’s seven cameras from mainly outside the ring. He was committed to being in the ring and that was very hard.”

Many of the shots throughout the film were carefully planned and storyboarded, which made Schoonmaker’s job easy enough, she says. But there were times when something would surprise them. Such as the scene in which Robinson beats LaMotta to a bloody pulp, capped off with LaMotta’s retort, “You never got me down, Ray.” There was something like 90,000 feet of film to go through, which is a massive amount, and they had a structure in mind. But certain elements stuck out, like LaMotta’s wife, Vickie (played by Cathy Moriarty), putting her head down in dismay.

“That became an emotional moment that we built the montage around,” Schoonmaker says. “We spent a long time on that because of the emotional power of it. And Marty wanted to use the original ring announcer voice from the kinescope. It’s the actual original voice because, he said, ‘We’ll never get that kind of poetry from somebody else.'”

It truly seems like we – and for that matter, Mr. LaMotta – would never have gotten the kind of poetry that is “Raging Bull” from anyone else, either.

Don’t forget to read our longer interview with Schoonmaker about “The Wolf of Wall Street” and its place in the grander scheme of her career’s work with Scorsese.

“The Wolf of Wall Street” opens on Christmas Day.

It was business as usual in the Vancouver Film Critics Circle’s announcement of nominees this morning, as Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” led the way with six notices. Bradley Cooper got a bid for his supporting “American Hustle” performance and Greta Gerwig showed up in Best Actress for her work in “Frances Ha.” Matt Johnson’s “The Dirties” led the field of Canadian film nominees. Check out the full list below and remember to keep track of it all at The Circuit.

Best Film
“12 Years a Slave”
“Gravity”
“Inside Llewyn Davis”

Best Director
Joel and Ethan Coen, “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Alfonso Cuarón, “Gravity”
Steve McQueen, “12 Years a Slave”

Best Actor
Chiwetel Ejiofor, “12 Years a Slave”
Oscar Isaac, “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”
Sandra Bullock, “Gravity”
Greta Gerwig, “Frances Ha”

Best Supporting Actor
Bradley Cooper, “American Hustle”
Michael Fassbender, “12 Years a Slave”
Jared Leto, “Dallas Buyers Club”

Best Supporting Actress
Jennifer Lawrence, “American Hustle”
Lupita Nyong’o, “12 Years a Slave”
June Squibb, “Nebraska”

Best Screenplay
Joel and Ethan Coen, “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Spike Jonze, “Her”
John Ridley, “12 Years a Slave”

Best Foreign Language Film
“Blancanieves”
“Blue is the Warmest Color”
“The Hunt”

Best Documentary
“The Act of Killing”
“Blackfish”
“West of Memphis”

(Click over to the next page for the full list of Canadian film nominees.)

CANADIAN FILM AWARDS

Best Canadian Film
“The Dirties”
“Gabrielle”
“Watermark”

Best Director of a Canadian Film
Louise Archambault, “Gabrielle”
Jeff Barnaby, “Rhymes for Young Ghouls”
Matt Johnson, “The Dirties”

Best Actor in a Canadian Film
Thomas Haden Church, “Whitewash”
Matt Johnson, “The Dirties”
Tom Scholte, “The Dick Knost Show”

Best Actress in a Canadian Film
Michelle Giroux, “Blood Pressure”
Tatiana Maslany, “Picture Day”
Sophie Desmarais, “Sarah Prefers to Run”

Best Supporting Actor in a Canadian Film
Marc Labrèche, “Whitewash”
Alexandre Landry, “Gabrielle”
Owen Williams, “The Dirties”

Best Supporting Actress in a Canadian Film
Romane Bohringer, “Vic + Flo Saw a Bear”
Gabrielle Rose, “The Dick Knost Show”
Lise Roy, “Tom at the Farm”?

Best Canadian Documentary
“My Prairie Home”
“Oil Sands Karaoke”
“Watermark”

Best First Film by a Canadian Director
“The Dirties”
“Rhymes for Young Ghouls”
“Sarah Prefers to Run”

Best British Columbia Film
“Down River”
“Oil Sands Karaoke”
“When I Walk”?

Ian Caddell Award for Achievement
Al Sens (animation pioneer)

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911843038001

If we’ve spent the last few weeks reviewing the best in entertainment, we now inevitably turn to the worst.  2013 was not a godawful year for bad movies, but Hollywood absolutely had its share of clunkers and misfires. A number were part of a larger trend (“Grown Ups 2”), some were big disappointments (“The Lone Ranger”) and more than a few were still big hits (“Identity Thief”).

You can watch a very entertaining video countdown of our top 10 worst films embedded at the top of this post or enjoy the 25 worst of the year in the story gallery below.

Agree? Disagree? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

With a massive wave of precursor announcements behind us, a consensus – that may or may not match the Academy’s ultimate perspective on the year – has formed: “12 Years a Slave,” Steve McQueen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cate Blanchett, Jared Leto and Lupita Nyong’o. That’s obviously profoundly “12 Years”-heavy, and the film has managed the most adapted screenplay wins so far, too. But we’ll have to see if that’s how it plays out on March 2.

We’ve defended the consistent updating of The Circuit already, but to reiterate, consensus matters. In the various regional assessments, you begin to see what is the most generally agreeable choice, notable in a system like the Academy’s that uses preferential balloting. And McQueen’s landmark drama could absolutely qualify at the end of the season. But frankly, it could be that a film that takes the edge off finds more traction, and while once upon a time I surmised that it might be Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” it could actually be that David O. Russell’s “American Hustle” is the broad play to beat.

“Hustle” is a crowd-pleaser. It’s full of contemporary Hollywood legends. It’s just the right amount of introspective and character-driven to posture as art, while its entertainment credentials are beyond reproach (very successful expansion this weekend at the box office with nine figures domestic not out of the question). I’m not calling it for “Hustle” because a) I still think “Gravity” becomes the obvious choice when the dust has settled (while Warner Bros. won’t likely screw up the campaign by calling for worship), and b) it’s silly to get hung up on potential Best Picture winners in December, even if all the cards on the table.

I liked the movie just fine but didn’t see it connecting on an awards level, particularly when the filmmaker it borrows from had a massive zeitgeist play coming down the pike behind it. But I was wrong. The film is playing with many voters and its low stakes make it, again, a crowd-pleaser. I don’t mean that at all as a backhanded compliment; I’ve said it’s an entertaining piece ever since I walked out of that first screening, albeit one that doesn’t to me feel at home in the Oscar season. Yet here it is, a BFCA-nominations co-leader, a possible consensus choice that could catch its stride at the perfect time.

But first thing’s first. Academy members get their ballots on Thursday and have the remainder of the holiday to settle on nominations before it’s pencils down on Jan. 8, 2014. We’ll all find out what they were thinking on Jan. 16, and any of those three films – “12 Years a Slave,” “Gravity” and “American Hustle” – could end up leading the tally. But don’t sleep on “Saving Mr. Banks,” which may have turned out a weak showing on the circuit so far but could easily spark in various craft categories that could help bring its number up to eight or nine.

I’ll be very interested to see how the (presumed) lower portions of the ballot fill out. I don’t know, for instance, whether “Her” is going to play for the Academy like it has for critics. I don’t know how much support that SAG ensemble nomination really indicates for “Dallas Buyers Club.” I haven’t had the “Inside Llewyn Davis” and “Wolf of Wall Street” conversations with a lot of voters because most of them are just getting around to the movies.

On the flip side, I wonder if “Before Midnight” has enough early-year residue to “surprise.” I wonder if evident love for “Fruitvale Station” pans out on the ballot, and frankly how Harvey Weinstein’s entire slate will end up represented. And I’m curious where a late-comer like “Lone Survivor” that plays well to the “meat and potatoes” crowd could land.

This time of year, voters are just staring down that daunting stack of screeners and looking at the crib sheet the early conversation influencers have whittled down for them. But there are some films I’d like to speak up for, that are lingering on down the stack and deserve to be seen now, not way after the fact with a, “Man, I wish I had gotten to that sooner.”

Like Jeff Nichols’ “Mud,” for instance. I know it was seen early enough in the season by most (it was the first official Academy screener of the year) and that it has fans in people like Robert Duvall and Martin Scorsese. It was certainly part of the conversation at Telluride, where a number of Academy members turned out to kick off the season with screenings of movies like “12 Years a Slave” and “Gravity” that would ultimately box little guys like “Mud” out of the conversation. But it’s one of 2013’s gems and Nichols is going places. Academy members could do a lot worse than to find a place for him in the original screenplay field or in fact the film on the Best Picture list.

All of that, too, could be said for “Before Midnight” and “The Place Beyond the Pines,” but then there’s “Out of the Furnace.” The critics have done a real disservice in dismissing this film, in my humble opinion, and Bale’s performance seems almost objectively better than his work in “American Hustle” (which is to take nothing away from his “Hustle” turn, which almost seems like it’s in another movie, or that it wants to be). Really, everyone in the “Furnace” cast is firing on all cylinders, and because of the critics, Academy members might not see it as a priority. But ask anyone from William Friedkin to Owen Moverman, Bennett Miller to Martin Scorsese; indeed, it appears to be a filmmaker’s film, if not one for the pontificating class.

I don’t dare hold out a hope for consideration of “This is the End” as more than a mere summer comedy, but I would love for “All is Lost” to be seen as more than a Robert Redford one-man show. I will be truly heartbroken if the sound branch doesn’t speak up for it, and I would love to see the cinematographers or the directors spark to it as well. It’s going to be remembered, eventually, as a cinematic buoy for our times. I would also love to see the actors take to James Franco’s work in “Spring Breakers,” which some critics have supported and perhaps, thankfully, legitimized for more than a few voters. But I won’t hold my breath on that, either.

Those are just humble suggestions, of course. This is their party and it’s best to just make peace with that.

So with that all squared away, the Contenders section has been updated and tidied just in time for the holiday. We won’t bother addressing it again until the new year so look for another assessment of the season at the start of 2014 after the PGA and WGA have added to the equation.

Sony Pictures Classics is putting together a nice push in the lead-up to Oscar nominations on behalf of “Before Midnight” by spotlighting the film’s place in a trilogy of films that mark a true landmark progression for the medium. Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke seem like good bets for Best Adapted Screenplay recognition, but with the placement the film is receiving on year-end top 10 lists and superlatives announcements, it has a strong foothold to register in other categories, too, perhaps even Best Picture.

A few weeks back, the studio sent out DVD combos of the first two films in the series, “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset.” Soon after it was announced by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York that all three films would screen in a program called “Celine and Jesse Forever” in January.

“Each of the ‘Before’ movies is a window onto a stage of life, revealing the possibilities and disappointments of one”s 20s, 30s and 40s,” said Film Society’s Director of Cinematheque Programming, Dennis Lim, at the time. “Taken together, they have become something much larger and altogether more amazing: an ongoing collective experiment in embodying the passage of time.”

The program will also feature screenings of Linklater’s 2001 rotoscoped animated feature “Waking Life,” which features a sequence with Celine and Jesse that kick-started the idea between the three collaborators to pursue a sequel to the 1994 original film.

Now comes news that the Santa Barbara International Film Festival will screen the trilogy at an all-afternoon event at the Lobero Theatre on the last day of the fest, Feb. 9, 2014. Linklater, Delpy and Hawke will be on hand for an in-depth conversation about the series.

“This trilogy creates one of the most authentic portrayals of love on the screen,” SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling said, “and it’s an undeniable gift to be able to experience all three movies in one day as well as to host its three talented creators.”

Thus far on the critics circuit “Before Midnight” – my #4 film of the year – has managed a lot of screenplay wins and nominations, though perhaps not enough for other elements, particularly the performances. Delpy was nominated for Best Female Lead at the Independent Spirit Awards and the film received a screenplay notice, but nothing else. The film landed a Best Film nomination with the Gotham Awards (where Linklater was feted with a tribute), but Delpy was passed over. She was, however, nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical at the Golden Globes (dubious category placement but, let’s face it, probably the only way to get the film any notice with that group). Hawke, meanwhile, remains in a thankless position with these films; I don’t think he’s been recognized anywhere so far.

So it’s been quite the up and down season for what countless critics view as one of the year’s best films. I’d like to think the Academy will see fit to honor it in more than just the adapted screenplay category, though. It deserves nominations for that, Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress, maybe even Best Actor. Perhaps these bicoastal events, along with continued top 10 presence, will help revive the May release. One can only hope.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for an interview with Linklater, Delpy and Hawke about the films in this truly unique series.

“Celine and Jesse Forever” will run at New York’s Lincoln Center Jan. 3-9, 2014. The Santa Barbara International Film Festival runs Jan. 30 – Feb. 9, 2014.

“Before Midnight,” meanwhile, is currently available on DVD/Blu-ray.

Well, we knew that Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” wasn’t going to be to the taste of certain Academy members, and a couple of them made that abundantly clear at a screening over the weekend. Actress Hope Holiday — who herself declares the film “three hours of torture” — reports that an unnamed screenwriter accosted Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio after the screening, exclaiming, “Shame on you!” Some Academy members were vocally unimpressed by “The Wolf of Wall Street” at a screening over the weekend. Can’t win ’em all, of course — though is this an isolated incident or indicative of larger resistance the film might encounter from more conservative Oscar voters? [The Wrap]

James Schamus will receive the Writers’ Guild of America East’s Evelyn F. Burkey award for bringing “honor and dignity” to writers. [Variety]

Nathaniel Rogers on the would-be “inspirational” films up for the Heartland Moving Picture Award. (I  get that people may find “Saving Mr. Banks” touching, but inspiring?) [The Film Experience]

Will the retro-futurism of “Her” get us wearing high-waisted trousers again? I can dig it. [Vulture]

Pawel Pawlikowski’s comeback film “Ida” won Best Film and Best Actress at the “Les Arcs European Film Festival”; Jack O’Connell took Best Actor for “Starred Up.” [Screen Daily] 

From “All is Lost” to “Inside Llewyn Davis,” the top 10 soundtracks of 2013. [Variety]

The Hollywood Reporter’s list of 2013’s rule-breakers in arts and media includes Matthew McConaughey, the “Breaking Bad” team and “Frozen” director Jennifer Lee. [THR] 

Two British films — Amma Asante’s “Belle” and Roger Michell’s “Le Week-end” — will bookend the Palm Springs Film Festival next month. [PSIFF]

Adam Boult picks the five best performances of Christian Bale’s career. [The Guardian]

Jennifer Lawrence, Julie Delpy, Jehane Noujaim and other women who made an impact on the industry this year. [Film.com]

I like “American Hustle” and don’t have much to add past what I said in the first SAG screening report. A NYFCC Best Film prize feels excessive, but it’s a crowd-pleaser. And it could do as well with the Academy, but I’ll get into that in Monday’s Oscar column. The SAG ensemble nomination has some pretty stellar performances across the board and it seems the kind of thing where everyone will have their favorites (mine are Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence). But I’ll be interested to hear how it lands with the readership, so whenever you get around to the film, do let us know your feelings in the comments section below and feel free to vote in our poll.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4911969914001

After recognition from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Broadcast Film Critics Association and, most importantly, the Screen Actors Guild, “August: Osage County” star Julia Roberts seems primed for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination next month. As Barbara Weston, daughter of matriarch Violet (and a role originated by Tony-nominated actress Amy Morton), Roberts holds her own on screen opposite the steaming locomotive that is Meryl Streep.

There must have been plenty of intimidation, all things considered, but the actress is used to it. And indeed, seems to thrive on it. “Everything has its level of intimidation,” Roberts told HitFix. “I think that’s what’s appealing. This certainly had more places of being terrifying.”

Indeed, being the cinema stewards of Tracey Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning work had to weigh heavy on the entire cast. “I had nightmares about it,” Roberts confides. But interesting here is that Letts adapted his own work for the screen, and according to Roberts, no one could have been better suited.

“What’s interesting is the play is so long – it’s such a complex house of cards that I think only Tracy could have dismantled it and put it back together in this film version,” Roberts said. “We were so lucky that he did.”

The playwright was busy with his other gig, acting for the stage (in a revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”), but he did find time to make himself available to the cast and crew one day during shooting. Roberts said it was the perfect opportunity to ask any and all questions and pick his brain before he had to go back to New York and the play and, Roberts adds, “win a Tony.“

Check out our full chat with Roberts in the video embedded at the top of this post.

“August: Osage County” opens in limited release on Dec. 27.

It seems a long time ago that many breathless journos in Telluride and Toronto were predicting one film to rule them all when it came to year-end accolades: “12 Years a Slave,” we were told, was such a cast-iron critical phenomenon that every other film would have to consider itself unlucky to be released in its shadow. As we now know, things didn’t quite pan out that way: Steve McQueen’s formidable historical drama may have gobbled up an enviable amount of awards on the US critical circuit thus far, and is poised for a leading haul of Oscar nods, but the year-end discussion of the year’s best films has, happily, been far more malleable and wide-ranging than initially predicted.

I’m not referring mrely to the major-league critics’ awards, which have been democratically spread between the likes of “Her,” “Gravity” and “American Hustle.” But the proliferation of year-end polls and surveys, too, has revealed several other films for which critical passions run similarly deep.

This particularly came to my attention when, earlier this week, one film topped not just the prestigious Film Comment critics’ poll, but the similarly established and estimable Village Voice poll: Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Inside Llewyn Davis.” The film has, of course, been vastly acclaimed since its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, but arguably not to the breathless extent of “12 Years a Slave” at Toronto, or even “Gravity” at Venice: it found hardly any detractors, but other films on the Croisette caused more of a sensation, eventual Palme d’Or winner “Blue is the Warmest Color” foremost among them.

Yet the Coens’ melancholy folk rumination has quietly endured in critics’ affections, getting second and third winds on the fall festival circuit, and yet another upon its opening in December. Perhaps the directors’ reliability was a factor at Cannes: few are surprised by another strong Coen Brothers film, so it doesn’t generate quite the level of chatter as other, more revelatory, highlights. Or maybe its plays best at home: it’s hardly surprising that the Village Voice crowd, to whom the film is essentially a bittersweet valentine, would name it the year’s best, or that another bastion of New York-based cinephilia, Film Comment, would do the same. (Coincidentally or otherwise, “Inside Llewyn Davis” tied for 22nd place in Sight & Sound’s more European-accented critics’ poll.) 

Cross-referencing the Film Comment, Sight & Sound and Village Voice polls, with the more inclusive Indiewire critics’ poll for good measure, I was interested to see which films emerged as consensus favorites between them — and they weren’t necessarily the ones I expected. Differing release schedules may play a role, of course. I remain surprised that “12 Years a Slave” — ranked first, second and third by Indiewire, Film Comment and the Voice respectively — only tied for 14th with the Sight & Sound voters, and am sure an earlier UK release (it’s out next month) and more extensive press screenings might have bumped it up a few places.

I think it’s indicative, however, of the wealth of worthy releases this year, and the varied nature of the critical, conversation, that only four films placed in the top 10 of all four of those polls: Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity,” Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Act of Killing” (which topped the S&S poll), Shane Carruth’s “Upstream Color” and Noah Baumbach’s “Frances Ha.” (Again, worth noting that all four of these films had been widely released in multiple regions by the beginning of November.)

Of those, only “Gravity” has received the kind of festival hype and headlines that, among other things, traditionally mints an awards contender. The others have been lower, slower burners: “The Act of Killing” and “Frances Ha” both debuted rather modestly on the festival circuit last year to approving but non-exclamatory notices, “Upstream Color” was an admiringly but quizzically received Sundance baby, and all three have been tirelessly championed by specialist critics and Twitterati ever since, without making much ofa dent on popular culture.  

Of these four, of course, only “Gravity” shall receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination; “The Act of Killing” will receive documentary recognition if it’s lucky, “Frances Ha” can thank its lucky stars for a surprise Golden Globe nod and “Upstream Color” isn’t even eligible for the whole shebang. It goes without saying that critics and Academy voters live in very different worlds, but that’d be to imply that critics live in the same world. And given that “Frances Ha” and “Upstream Color” — consensus favorites if you believe the polls — have mostly been non-factors on the critics’ award circuit so far, that’s hardly true.

Meanwhile, add the equally prestigious but defiantly singular Cahiers du Cinema poll to the equation, and that list of four common Top 10 titles is reduced to just one: “Gravity.” What does it all mean? Not much, except that a good year for filmis ending with precisely as little consensus as it deserves.