The New York Film Critics Circle used to represent an elite standard (and by that I don’t mean ingrown and dweeby). It really mattered to win one of their awards because they didn’t suffer fools and only the creme de la creme contenders were considered. Four years ago they gave their Best Picture award to The Social Network…exactly! But they’ve gradually become more easygoing as far as admitting new members were concerned over the last few years and so their choices have begun to feel less and less discriminating, at least as far as Best Picture choices have been concerned.

In my mind the NYFCC shit the bed when they gave their 2011 Best Picture award to The Artist — that was a sign that they could adopt the mindset of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences if so moved. Okay, AMPAS with a vague sheen of East Coast urbanity. From then on I’ve been grimly acknowledging that the NYFCC of legend was no more. Agreeable surprises can still happen, but no longer do they necessarily represent gold-standard honors decided by critics of serious merit. Certainly not in a Best Picture context. The consensus gene has gotten into the bloodstream.

And yet this year is different — more than a bit curious — with Mr. Turner‘s Timothy Spall winning for Best Actor, Marion Cotillard winning for The Immigrant and Two Days, One Night (seriously?) and Darius Khnodji‘s fine but unremarkable work on The Immigrant taking the Best Cinematography award…what? Where did this Immigrant love come from? What cabal of James Gray loyalists got together and rammed this through?

No disagreement at all with Boyhood winning for Best Picture or Richard Linklater winning for Best Director.

But let me explain something very clearly: Nobody has been talking about Marion Cotillard as a Best Actress contender of any consequence. Nobody at all. She’s clearly genuine and stressed-out and crumbling in a non-actressy way in the Dardennes Brothers film but c’mon, going door to door and asking her co-workers for the same consideration in scene after scene after scene? In my book she phoned in her performance in The Immigrant. Quote from my 5.24.13 review: “Cotillard isn’t playing a character named Ewa as much as playing herself playing a character named Ewa. I only know that Ewa/Marion never seems to play her cards with any kind of deception or cleverness, like anyone would. She’s always just surveying the sordid nature of 1921 New York City with those big, watery, guilt-tripping eyes.”

Spall turned in an admirable, authentic-seeming performance in Mr. Turner but many couldn’t understand half his dialogue, or at least I couldn’t when I saw the film in Cannes. Don’t kid yourself — landscape painter J.M.W. Turner was known to speak in a slurry, guttural lower-class accent. Spall reiterated this in a recent phone interview I did with him, and said that he went for his less-than-decipherable quality. I have the screener now so I’m going to re-watch — maybe the dialogue will come through a bit clearer this time.

J.K. Simmons has won Best Supporting Actor award for his performance as an inspired but demanding and at times malevolent Julliard-type music instructor. I would have voted, due respect, for Birdman‘s Edward Norton but I have no quibble with Simmons, who will definitely be AMPAS-nominated and most likely win the Oscar. A totally expected consensus choice but fine.

I don’t know if Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken (Universal, 12.25), which everyone saw Sunday afternoon at the WGA theatre on Doheny, will nab a Best Picture nomination or not, although it could. It’s very well crafted. I can honestly call it admirable, grade-A filmmaking. Anyone would. And it comes straight from Angie’s heart and innards so you can’t call it dispassionate or cynical.

To be honest I began looking at my watch around the 60-minute mark, but I was never dozing or uninterested or bored — I just don’t like being tortured, starved and beaten for 27 months straight, which is what occupies the last 75 minutes.

Unbroken is basically a film about the nobility of long-term suffering, and how that can be (and can be made to seem like) a good thing in a spiritual sense. Or…you know, a good thing if you take the long God’s-eye view.

Because in a close-up view being tortured and beaten and deprived in three Japanese prisoner-of-war camps is a ghastly situation for Jack O’Connell‘s Louis Zamperini, a real-life guy and subject of Laura Hillenbrand‘s best-selling “Unbroken” who passed last July at age 97. And it’s really not that much of a swell picnic for the audience, truth be told. But it delivers a good kind of suffering. One that feels vaguely Christian and conservative on some level. Something tells me the Orange County crowd will find a place in their hearts.

Maybe I’m stupid but I thought The Affair was in the habit of airing new episodes on Sunday. I just turned on Showtime to watch episode 8 only to be confronted with episode 7 again, which I saw a week ago (Sunday, 11.23). An Episode 8 page says it airs next Sunday (12.7) Why did they skip a week? I noticed tonight, by the way, that I’ve become very accustomed to Fiona Apple‘s “The Container,” which plays over the opening credits.

N.Y. Times reporters Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply have posted a story about the Sony hacking, which may or may not be related to North Korea’s ire over The Interview, a forthcoming Sony comedy co-directed, co-written by and co-starring Seth Rogen. The story contains three interesting paragraphs:

Tweeted by Seth Rogen on 11.24.

#1: “One person with knowledge of the situation said a Hollywood executive from a company other than Sony had contacted Homeland Security to suggest that the attack might be related to a piracy investigation involving a movie that was not even made by Sony. But the department was not mobilized as a result of the query.”

Repeating: “A somber, colorful period drama…Peter Weir-ish, handsomely shot, assured direction…what’s not to like? Four years after the slaughter of Australian soldiers in Gallipoli, an Australian farmer (Russell Crowe) travels to Istanbul to discover the fate of his sons who may have been killed in battle. On top of which Crowe apparently falls in love (i.e., has it off) with Olga Kurylenko, playing a Turkish woman owns the hotel in which he stays. Directed by Crowe, written by Andrew Anastasios and Andrew Knight. Cinematography by Andrew Lesnie, the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit dp who won an Oscar in ’02 for The Fellowship of the Ring. Opening in Australia and New Zealand on 12.26.14. The only dicey thing is the title.”

Wells to Cinefamily: “As a longtime fan of Robert Downey, Sr., I was hoping to cover your fundraiser screening of the restored Greaser’s Palace, to be hosted by Paul Thomas Anderson, on Saturday, December 6th. I would be happy to pay $100 in order to do this, but the sign says SOLD OUT. Can you let me slip in? Not a tragedy if you can’t.” Cinefamily’s Downey series runs from 12.5 through 12.8. Minor anecdote: I once starred in a cruddy little short film [after the jump] in which I stole the flasher-raincoat gag from Downey’s Putney Swope.

Beginning with its debut at the Telluride Film Festival three months ago, The Imitation Game has consistently played well among upmarket mainstreamers. It was much more popular at Telluride than Birdman, due in large part, I suspect, to female fans of Benedict Cumberbatch. And now it’s tallied the second-highest per-screen average of the year in limited release, earning $482 grand in just four New York and Los Angeles screens since Friday. A Variety report mentions that big per-screen averages are sometimes “met with indifference when they expanded beyond urban areas,” but I don’t see that happening here. Game plays right to the sweet spot of urban, well-educated over-35 types, and I think that this commercial success will counter-balance quibbling reviews and carry it aloft into serious Oscar contention. Opinions from those who saw it this weekend? How much independent male support will manifest on top of the “Cumberbitches“?

The first punch-up begins at 2:25. The big finale starts around 6:35.

Alan Parker‘s Mississippi Burning gets an awful lot wrong about the way things really were in Mississippi in 1964. I’ve read, for example, that African Americans did a lot more than sing hymns and watch their churches burn. We all know that Parker and screenwriter Chris Gerolmo mangled the history of the FBI’s hunt for the killers of three Civil Rights workers (Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman). Their coup de grace was having the FBI agent heroes, played by Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, turn into Dirty Harry-style vigilantes in Act Three, bringing the guilty yokels to justice by playing rough games and faking them out. Pauline Kael called it “a Charles Bronson movie.”

And I’ve never cared that much. Very few have, I suspect. I’ve always had a soft spot for Mississippi Burning for various reasons — the polish of it, Hackman’s performance (particularly his scenes with Frances McDormand), Peter Biziou‘s cinematography, Gerry Hambling‘s editing, the percussive rumble of Trevor Jones‘ music, da coolness. But especially Parker and Gerolmo’s bullshit plot. Because the lies they came up with are emotionally satisfying, and that’s always the bottom line.

It’s only speculation with no proof, but it’s an instant urban legend that has launched and will probably remain in the blogosphere until proved incorrect. I’m speaking of reports that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un (or some North Korean guys doing his bidding) may have arranged for Chinese hackers to hack into Sony Pictures Entertainment’s web network five days ago and gum things up beyond belief. Nobody knows anything but the possibility is being looked into. The theory is that North Korea may have trojan-ed Sony’s network as payback for The Interview (Columbia, 12.25), the upcoming Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy about a CIA plot to assassinate Kim Jong-Un. North Korean propaganda outlets have threatened “merciless retaliation” against the U.S. and other concerns if the film is released.

Cedric Jimenez‘s The Connection “is a Gallic take on the French Connection-related, Marseille-based heroin drug trade, [and yet it] doesn’t even start its narrative until years after William Friedkin‘s 1971 classic hit cinemas. Beginning in 1975, it pits Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche against each other as a real-life Marseille judge and an elusive kingpin, distilling actual events into a procedural epic whose complicated narrative is propelled by visceral action sequences and an unusually thrilling soundtrack. The big-budget film should be a hit in its native land (where it opens on 12.3), while considerable theatrical appeal in English-language territories is boosted by both its art house-approved cast and the thematic tie-in to Friedkin’s evergreen cop film.” — from John DeFore‘s Hollywood Reporter review, filed from the Toronto Film Festival on 9.10.14.