The 73rd Annual Academy Awards - The Critics' Choice

Hans Beerekamp, NL
Peter Brunette, USA
Michel Ciment, France
Klaus Eder, Germany
Howard Feinstein, USA
Alexander Horwath, Austria
Dave Kehr, USA
Derek Malcolm, UK
Peter Rainer, USA
Henry Sheehan, USA

Hans Beerekamp, The Netherlands

Best Picture
Traffic for its well-constructed sound of reason, challenging the hypocrisy of official drug policy in the United States and some other countries.

Best Director
Ang Lee, who in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon proves once more his elegant
ability to cope with culture shocks.

Best Actress
Julia Roberts, who in Erin Brockovich deals intelligently with a character meeting prejudices about her beauty.

Best Actor
Ed Harris, who brings both directorial and an actor's insight to the character of Pollock, an artist as the quintessential outsider.

Best Foreign Film
The Taste of Others (Le gout des autres), a skillful, bright and pleasant mirror of society and Agnès Jaoui's claim to the vacant position as Europe's Woody Allen.

Hans Beerekamp, film critic NRC Handelsblad

Peter Brunette, USA

Best Picture
Erin Brockovich, because it's a workmanlike, classic Oscar-type movie,
over Traffic, which, if somewhat overrated, is still the better film in
an absolute sense.

Best Director
Ang Lee for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a brilliant and innovative blend
of art film and popular genre film, that represented an immense career
risk for him.

Best Actress
Ellen Burstyn for a nuanced, courageous portrait of a woman at her
ugliest and most self-deluded.

Best Actor
Bardem over Harris, by a close margin, because his performance as the
doomed poet Reinaldo Arenas has such tremendous range and subtlety, even
to the level of an eloquent body language..

Best Foreign Film
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon edges out the superb Amores Perros
because of its ability to bring a distant culture and marginal genre
into the mainstream.

Peter Brunette reviews films weekly for Film.com.

Michel Ciment, France

Best Picture
Traffic for the complexity and the maturity of its approach to an important issue.

Best Director
Steven Soderbergh for Traffic: for his total command of the medium of a huge cast of characters and his taking over brilliantly the job of D.P.

Best Actress
Julia Roberts for Erin Brokovich: for extending her range as an actress, her energy and her
inventiveness.

Best Actor
Tom Hanks in Cast Away: for the extraordinary manner in suggesting moral and physical
transformation.

Best Foreign Film
Amores Perros for the discovery of a new director capable of an epic style and of expressing
changes of mood.

Michel Ciment, Director of "Positif", Vice-president of FIPRESCI

Klaus Eder, Germany

Best Picture
Traffic by Steven Soderbergh
Because of its refined structure used to sketch the disastrous world of drugs. With this film (and not with Erin Brockovich), Steven Soderbergh is back as one of the most talented and ambitious directors of nowadays American cinema.

Best Director
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee
For Ang Lee's elegant and weightless direction, carrying us off to the realm of imagination; and for his courage to make a film in China and in Chinese.

Best Actress
Laura Linney - You Can Count On Me
For the passion and modernity of her play, and it's because of her that You Can Count On Me is one of the most interesting films of the season.

Best Actor
Javier Bardem - Before Night Falls
Not an extraordinary movie, but an extraordinary appearance, bringing to life the fate of a homosexual Cuban writer exiled to New York.

Best Foreign Film
Amores Perros
A most surprising and revealing debut of a young filmmaker.

Klaus Eder reviews films for the German daily "Handelsblatt" and for German radio. He is the General Secretary of FIPRESCI.

Howard Feinstein, USA

Best Picture
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Ang Lee, with close assistance of his choregrapher, creates an organic entity that is both entertaining and provocative, links East and West, combines and reinvents several genres, and is a major step in the acceptance of foreign-language films in the United States.

Best Director
Ang Lee
He has overcome incredible obstacles working in rural parts of China with performers who are, in some cases, diva-ish, in others, inexperienced, and has ignited their passions--some repressed, some enacted -- with his perseverance, patience, and humanity. This is a film that no one forgets.

Best Actress
Ellen Burstyn
In Requiem for a Dream Ms. Burstyn undergoes a radical transformation that most professional actresses would not dare to attempt: fat to thin, "normal" to junkie, person with some will power to veritable vegetable. She beautifully captures the Coney Island Jewish mother in Hubert Selby Jr.'s source book. Also, a team player, she has proved herself willing to work with director Darren Aronofksy's hip/modern self-invented machinery to aid in a fusion of style and content: Actors and machines can in fact work in harmony.

Best Actor
Javier Bardem
Mr. Bardem has completely lost himself in the role of the exiled, gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas. A very handsome, imposing man, Bardem has the humility to place himself second to a character he truly loves. He changes his posture and language as needed (to adapt to political climate). He is not afraid of playing a gay character that better known names refused
to consider. He is not afraid of letting himself rot, both in Cuba and in New York. This is a tour-de-force.

Best Foreign Film
tie
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
(if doesn't win Best Picture): for reasons above
Amores Perros
This is a daring triptych with interwoven story lines and characters by the gifted Mexican director Alejandro Inarittu. He has the courage to flaunt convention when he needs to show angry dogs fighting if necessary for the narrative (no animals were, however, harmed during production). He shows a lot of compassion for his humans, even if some are like animals himself. Subtly, he has built in a class analysis of the highly stratified Mexican social system. His pacing is excellent, his outcome unpredictable--and very humanistic.

Howard Feinstein writes about film for such publications as the Daily News, Time Out New York and London, and The Guardian, and is a programmer for the Sarajevo Film Festival (Bosnia) and the Hamptons International Film Festival (New York).

Alexander Horwath, Austria

Best Picture
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee
This film renews all the pleasures and passions which made me (and I guess many people of many generations before me) fall in love with the movies in the first place.

Best Director
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee
In this case, the term "best director" should be extended to the astounding work of the film's unofficial co-creator - Yuen Woo-ping, master of "wired" martial arts mise-en-scene.

Best Actress
Joan Allen - The Contender
Not because it's a good film (it certainly is not), but because of all the actresses nominated, Ms. Allen most deserves to be honored: for her consistently intelligent and highly underrated work in the past few years.

Best Actor
Javier Bardem - Before Night Falls
Not because it's a great film (it's a pretty good one, though), but because Mr. Bardem made all my critical thoughts and the problematic aspects of this film almost immediately go away through the pure and heartbreaking presence of his mind and flesh.

Best Foreign Film
The Taste Of Others
What a rarity: a crowdpleasing, endlessly moving and endlessly funny movie that never compromises (or slides past) the subtle cracks and shifts in its characters' lives, emotions, ambitions - if Renoir were still around, he'd love this film.

Alexander Horwath is a freelance writer, curator and festival consultant in
the fields of film and visual arts. He is based in Vienna.

Dave Kehr, USA

Best Picture
Traffic

Best Director
Steven Soderbergh

Best Actress
Laura Linney

Best Actress
Tom Hanks

Best Foreign Film
Amores Perros

Dave Kehr, Senior Film Critic of Citysearch.com.

Derek Malcolm, UK

Best Picture
Traffic, as one of the few Hollywood films of some weight made last year.

Best Director
Ang Lee, for elevating a martial arts film into martial art.

Best Actress
Laura Linney, as one of America's most sensitive, if underused, film actresses.

Best Actor
Ed Harris, for his fine portrayal of Jackson Pollock in a film he also directed himself.

Best Foreign Film
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, for its capacity to draw worldwide audiences to a film in Mandarin without compromising its quality.

Derek Malcolm
President of FIPRESCI and film critic, The Guardian, London.

Peter Rainer, USA

Best Picture
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon because it is the most wondrous of the five nominees and also I think it would be symbolically important to have the best picture go to a subtitled film for the first time.

Best Director
Ang Lee for the same reasons as stated above for best picture.

Best Actor
Javier Bardem because it was the performance with the most colorations and the most life.

Best Actress
Laura Linney, not showy, just a remarkably subtle and intelligent piece of acting.

Best Foreign Film
Amores Perros
Significant artistry is happening now in the Mexican cinema and this film is one of the best from that country (or anywhere else) right now.

Peter Rainer, Film critic, President of the National Society of Film Critics

Henry Sheehan, USA

Best Picture
Traffic by Steven Soderbergh
A film which manages to fuse together a traditional Hollywood fondness for genre and action along with innovative story-telling techniques.

Best Director
Traffic by Steven Soderbergh
Over the last few years, Soderebergh has been one of a handful of filmmakers who have pointed out ways of reviving Hollywood filmmaking.

Best Actress
Laura Linney - You Can Count On Me
A convincing, moving portrayal of an idiosyncratic character.

Best Actor
Tom Hanks - Cast Away
The only nominee this year who was content to let his character simply exist, rather than demonstrate.

Best Foreign Film
Amores Perros
I haven't seen Divided We Fall or Everybody Famous. I think this category overlooks far too many worthy films in general and this year in particular. Finally, I think Amores Perros has a lot of faults. However, it is energetic and has the sheen, if maybe not the depth of passion.

Henry Sheehan, Film critic for the Orange County Register and for the national radio show Fresh Air. Past president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.