The Boston Society of Film Critics met earlier today and gave Martin Scorsese‘s The Departed their Best Picture prize, with Scorsese named as Best Director. And — this is awesome — Paul Greengrass‘s United 93 was named first runner-up. Total agreement! I wasn’t expecting United 93 to rank as a last-minute punch-through — I thought it had done a fade. United 93 also placed as one of the American Film Institute’s just-announced top ten.

The Beantown guys also chose The Last King of Scotland‘s Forest Whitaker for Best Actor (with Half Nelson‘s Ryan Gosling named runner-up). The Queen‘s Helen Mirren took the Best Actress prize (runner: Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal),
The Best Supporting Actor prize went to The Departed‘s Mark Wahlberg (the guy gave a great scrappy performance but this comes as a bit of a surprise!…could this be a regional-loyalty thing, Wahlberg being from the Boston area?). The e-mail I received about this from one of the Boston critics says the Supporting Actor runners-up were The Queen‘s Michael Sheen and The Departed‘s Alec Baldwin….but it was written confusingly.
The Best Supporting Actress trophy went to Half Nelson‘s Shareeka Epps, with Meryl Streep‘s The Devil Wears Prada performance taking the runner-up distinction.
The Best Ensemble Cast went to the United 93 team, with The Departed crew taking first runner-up. The Best Screenplay award went to The Departed‘s William Monahan, with Peter Morgan named runner-up for his screenplay for The Queen.
Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinth was named Best Foreign Language Film. (Runner-up: Pedro Almodovar‘s Volver.)

The Best Documentary prize was a tie between Deliver Us From Evil and Shut Up & Sing. (Runner-up: 51 Birch Street.)
The Best New Filmmaker award went to Half Nelson director Ryan Fleck. (Runners-up: Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris for Little Miss Sunshine.) The Best Cinematography award went to Pan’s Labyrinth‘s Guillermo Navarro. (I must take exception — as sublime as Navarro’s work is, it isn’t in the same realm as Emmanuel Lubezki’s for Children of Men.)
The tied Best Cinematography runners-up were The Painted Veil‘s Stuart Dryburgh and Curse of the Golden Flower‘s Xiaoding Zhao.