Widescreen Awards: Director

For the second time in his relatively short career, Bong Joon-ho has taken a familiar genre and crafted a masterpiece (the other being 2005's serial killer drama "Memories of Murder"). Everything that he could possibly get right with Mother, he gets right. He even makes watching spilled water creep across the floor suspenseful. Bong is successful at balancing all the ingredients of his Hitchcockian stew — including truly funny character detail and a heartbreaking mother-son relationship — together for one of the most satisfying and unsettling films of 2010.

More than any film this year, The Social Network feels like it was conceived as one perfect whole. That's due in no small part to David Fincher. Many of his films have been flawlessly executed. Here, you can sense Fincher's fingerprints over every inch of film stock (or megapixel); and that's a good thing. It's one thing to have ratatattat dialogue (courtesy Aaron Sorkin); it's another to translate that into good cinema. All the while, Fincher holds onto the human element inside his story. It's not just about the birth of a new social network, but the new generation of people supporting that network.

Before I Am Love, Luca Guadagnino was a virtual unknown. As best I can tell, none of his previous films and documentaries have received U.S. distribution. Therefore, it's impossible to tell what he brought to the table previously, but "I Am Love" feels like the opening scene in a long and fruitful career. It's so full of life and vitality, and Guadagnino manages to extract natural performances from his actors while surrounding them in a preternaturally beautiful world.

Known foremost for his horror films ("Cure," "Pulse" and 2006's chilling "Retribution"), Kiyoshi Kurosawa has created one of the warmest, most rewarding films of the year with Tokyo Sonata. He's out-Capra'd Capra, but his happy ending is modulated by all the confusion and suffering that came before it. It's the kind of morality tale that only a horror director could conjure. And it works mostly because of how real the family at its center feels. The performances are so uniformly good that, by the time the melodrama kicks into high gear, the audience is too invested to question the strangeness of the film's final act. Finally, Kurosawa gets extra points for the piano recital, which sums up the point of the story with no words.

Eight years after his reprehensible (but awe-inspiring) "Irreversible," Gaspar Noé has returned to do the same thing all over again. This time, however, he (thankfully) upped the humanity quotient. Noé is a cinematic wizard. With Enter the Void, he stretches the bounds of what's possible in film while telling a captivating story. The audience is thrown into the worlds of both the living and the dead; and, like its main character, the viewer has no road map.

Honorable mention to Lee Chang-dong for the subtle beauty and compassion of Secret Sunshine; David Michôd for assembling an unexpectedly complex crime family in Animal Kingdom; and Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger for putting their camera and their audience in the middle of the fight for Korengal Valley in Restrepo.

Tomorrow look for the Widescreen Awards wrap-up, with the winners announcement and links to some of the great films available on Netflix Instant.

Widescreen Award: Actress

Shin-ae's pain never feels like an actor's approximation. Even as the character spins off into concentric circles of grief -- first at the death of her husband and, later, her son -- Jeon Do-yeon never treats her performance in Secret Sunshine like a master's class. Even when Shin-ae truly becomes unmoored in her search for solace, Jeon never devolves into histrionics. Despite the strange places the film takes Shin-ae, it's still a very real depiction of the confusion that comes with such loss.



I've read that Bong Joon-ho picked Kim Hye-ja for the titular Mother because of her television persona as something of a June Cleaver. Not having that cultural context, the irony was lost on me. What wasn't lost in translation are the dark bonds between mother and son. Kim's face is so expressive; it tells you all that's to be said. Watch her face in the train station in the final minutes of the film. The walls all come crashing down and, yet, she's too strong to let them sit in ruin for long.



In Winter's Bone, Jennifer Lawrence disposes of precocious affectation right off the bat. Ree Dolly is deadly serious about finding her no-good father because she knows how daunting she and her young siblings' situation is. She's a force to be reckoned with, but Lawrence also tempers that determination with genuine fear. She is, after all, a kid. It's a delicate balance and the young actress pulls it off.



Even before the psychological torment overtakes Nina, Natalie Portman is a bundle of nerves in Black Swan. You can sense the gears grinding away in her head through cold stares and puffy eyes. The ambition, fear, jealousy, repression and weariness are all there long before the mirrors start summoning her inner demons out into the open. All she needed was that extra push -- a high-pressure role of a lifetime -- to send the whole roiling caldron bubbling to the surface.



Out of all the performances last year, Tilda Swinton's Emma in I Am Love has perhaps the most interesting arc. She starts the film as cold steel, too lost in the goings on of her home to register as a human being with emotions. And then the floodgates open. It'd be very easy to lose the performance among all the beauty of Luca Guadgnino's film. But Swinton is too good an actress to play window dressing. When her character feels pleasure, as in the prawn sampling, her whole body joins in the rapture. At the same time, there's a great continuity between Emma at the beginning and at the end. She's the same person, now set free.

And finally, a shout-out to some of the wonderful performances that couldn't possibly fit into five slots in such a rich year for lead actresses. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore have a natural chemistry in The Kids Are All Right that transcends sexual orientation. Geena Davis' potty-mouthed divorcee was one of the saving graces of the uneven Accidents Happen. Kyōko Koizumi brings tremendous warmth to Tokyo Sonata, standing strong for her sons as the world disintegrates around her. Sarah Polley, known for her subtle touch, is all ablaze with the spirit of discovery in Splice. As stupidly provocative as the film tries to be, Noomi Rapace is fearless and fascinating in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Widescreen Awards: Cinematography

All of David Fincher’s films have had a distinct visual style, whether he’s working with Darius Khondji (“Se7en”) or Harris Savides (“Zodiac”). The same can be said of The Social Network, but Jeff Cronenweth has tempered the Fincher-isms with a real sense of the technocentric world we’re living in. From the orange gaze of Connecticut streetlights to the white-out offices of Facebook’s California headquarters, the cinematography adds to both the drama and the reality of what’s on screen.

Benoît Debie unleashes some truly awe-inspiring images in Enter the Void. Long, seamless tracking shots follow characters down stairwells and through Tokyo streets, and tiny apartments illuminated by vivid, pulsing neon lights. Although some of the most impressive shots in the film are the work of computer programmers and graphic artists, everything between the pixels is no less fantastic.

Hong Kyeong-pyo does a great job providing the requisite deep, dark shadows, but he's equally adept at capturing Mother's human drama. The surreal moments that bookend the film's central mystery — both of the protagonist dancing away her pain — are critical to the success of the film. The first, a meticulously framed and lit scene through a field of tall grass, and the second, a chaotic shot that loses its character amidst the other dancers, are executed perfectly.

It's one thing to capture beauty on film. It's another to have that beauty stand for something. In I Am Love, Yorick Le Saux uses everything in his toolbox to craft breathtaking scenes of rekindled passion. The impassive sculptures of industrial Milan serve as a striking counterpoint to the glowing warmth of Antonio's food and the source of his inspiration, the Italian countryside. There are two types of beauty in "I Am Love;" one that inspires and one that stifles. Le Saux expertly captures both.

Beyond the threadbare plot and low-key acting, the true star of The American is Martin Ruhe's cinematography. The film, very much like director Anton Corbijn's previous "Control" (also lensed by Ruhe), feels as if it were conceived as a series of still photographs. No surprise then that Corbijn started his career as a photographer. There's a depth and breadth to the imagery here that's difficult to top and, most importantly, contributes to the atmosphere Corbijn's tried to cultivate.

Widescreen Awards: Musical Score

Cobbled together from the back catalog of American minimalist composer John Adams, the score for I Am Love feels tailored to fit this story of reignited passion. The music lends a giddy anticipation to the film's early scenes that rises to soaring heights of ecstasy and dizzying lows of uncertainty over the course of the film.

Lee Byung-woo's score for Mother is an eclectic mix of different styles. But it's the main theme, which is most effective during Bong Joon-ho's emotional punch of an ending, that stays with you. Its ingratiating guitar seems right at home on a Thank-You-Parents bus tour, but when the twang of regret kicks in, you too will be reaching for the acupuncture needles.

Taking its cues from Tchaikovsky's ballet, Clint Mansell's score for Black Swan is perfect accompaniment for the unraveling of Nina Sayer. The themes are all familiar, even if you've never seen "Swan Lake," but Mansell finds and accentuates the melodrama and terror behind the sheet music.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score for The Social Network does what every good score should. It complements the emotional undercurrents of the film, sets the tempo for the plot and, most importantly, stays out the way. The first time I saw the film, I paid almost no attention to the score. It was almost as if it didn't exist. You only recognize Reznor's work if you're looking for it, but it contributes immeasurably to what Fincher was trying to accomplish.

It almost feels like cheating, calling attention to Hans Zimmer's already universally-recognizable Inception score. But there's so much more there beyond foghorn blasts that have rattled subwoofers all over the world. Despite a plot that always felt too structured (very much like a video game, right down to the "dream levels"), the film has a lot of complex emotion wrapped up in its subplot of a man coping with his own subconscious. Zimmer's score helps flesh that out, as well.