'Hugo' Named Best Film of 2011 by the National Board of Review

Martin Scorsese‘s Hugo has just earned a bump in the awards season race after being named by the National Board of Review as the Best Film of 2011. The Scorsese love didn’t end there either as he was also named Best Director and his documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World was named one of the top five docs of the year.

However, for those of you that like to predict the Oscars, while this certainly gives Hugo a better chance at a nomination, the National Board of Review doesn’t tend to match up with the Academy Awards when it comes to winners as only 11 of their last 29 Best Film winners have gone on to win Oscar’s Best Picture and only two of their last ten, which would be Slumdog Millionaire and No Country for Old Men. Last year The Social Network topped their list only to watch The King’s Speech take home the Oscar.

After The Artist was named the Best Feature by the New York Film Critics Circle yesterday and last year saw The Social Network taking home virtually all of the critics groups awards, this may signal the first sign of an eclectic and diverse selection of winners this year from critics groups, which will certainly be refreshing, considering how much people seem to enjoy other films such as The Descendants and with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo largely unseen. There is still a chance for a lot of variety.

Speaking of The Descendants, it fared quite well with the NBR as well, naming George Clooney for Best Actor, Shailene Woodley for Best Supporting Actress and Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash‘s script winning for Best Adapted Screenplay.

It’s also nice to see Tilda Swinton get a little notoriety for her performance in We Need to Talk about Kevin as she was named Best Actress and Christopher Plummer continues his current run taking home Best Supporting Actor for Beginners.

In addition to naming Best Film, the NBR also lists an alternate top ten outside of the Best Film as well as their top five foreign language films, top five documentaries and top five independent films, giving the list a wide variety of winners, all of which I have included below and I have updated my “Oscar Overture” section with Hugo‘s NBR win.

The next notable critics awards to be handed out come on Sunday, December 11 when the Boston Film Critics and Los Angeles Film Critics will name their winners. Stay tuned.

Best Film