For what it's worth: 2010 Awards special (Part 2)

Best Director

1. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
An artist, a mystic, a magician - there's no-one else quite like him working in cinema. You need to put yourself in the same room as this truly remarkable film to see exactly why - but he deserves recognition at the very least for making a sex scene between a human princess and a talking catfish more charmingly persuasive, and less laughable, than it really ought to be.

2. Sylvain Chomet, The Illusionist
A very different kind of artist - an artist in the more traditional sense, acutely aware of the subtleties of light, mood and movement - here adding an extra human dimension to his already considerable portfolio. Chomet's animated interpretation of Edinburgh at sundown is more evocative than many live-action directors have managed.

3. Li Chuan, City of Life and Death
For putting us in the very middle of the Rape of Nanking, and forcing our eyes open - to witness not just the inevitable horrors, but the flickers of hope and humanity that somehow survived these atrocities.

4. Marco Bellocchio, Vincere
No film was more prominently DIRECTED this year - and Bellocchio's boldness of form was crucial to our understanding of the imposition of will central to the Mussolini regime.

5. Xavier Beauvois, Of Gods and Men
A suitably disciplined, minimalist approach that pays off in the final "Last Supper" sequence.



Best British Director

1. Mike Leigh, Another Year
Wiser in his storytelling than ever before - and for once, the generosity he traditionally extends to his actors didn't get in the way of his generosity towards his characters. A beautifully observed and structured work.

2. Gareth Edwards, Monsters
An astonishing achievement on a limited budget, yes - but also a great act of exploration for a young director to have made, and it's this sense of wonder at the world that lifts the film far beyond its humble creature-feature origins.

3. Danny Boyle, 127 Hours
Not all Boyle's choices pay off in his relentless pursuit of all-action, all-American adrenalin junkie Aron Ralston, but you can't fault the energy he channels into what becomes a tale of extreme stasis. A welcome return to something like wisened form after the slapdash naivety of Slumdog Millionaire.

4. Philip Ridley, Heartless
Still one of our most underrated filmmakers - his photographer's eye, his way with mood, and his ability to inject even the most outlandish of conceits with real human emotion make this much more than just standard genre fare.

5. Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
The connoisseur's choice - although Hooper's fondness for unusual angles lends what might have been conventional costume-drama awards bait a wholly fresh perspective.



Screenwriter

1. Mia Hansen-Løve, Father of My Children
For loving all the right things: people and movies, in precisely that order. The film is so delicate, so subtly dramatised, you scarcely notice such things watching it, but she really wants her characters to make the right connections and move forward, and is willing to forgive them the odd human indiscretion in the pursuit of the great art and/or fulfilling relationships they seek to create.

2. Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network
Because it gets it. And for granting every last one of its characters their reasons.

3. David Seidler, The King's Speech
Amazing to think something so probing and critical came from the man whose previous credits include The Magic Sword: Quest for Camelot and Whose Child Is This? The War for Baby Jessica - but, then again, imagine what a terminal arse-lick the movie would have been as written by Julian Fellowes.

4. Sebastian Silva, The Maid
One of those scripts notable for what it doesn't do. Silva sees a very funny idea - domestic goes vaguely nutzoid - through to its proper low-key conclusion, without melodrama or preaching or a disproportionate bodycount. (A grazed elbow is the worst that happens, which is a very funny idea in itself.)

5. Bert V. Royal, Easy A
This throwback to the teen-lit cycle of the late 90s was probably the most cherishable revival of the year: smart while open-minded about adolescent sexual mores, and consistently wry with it. A script too good to be left to teenagers.



Young British Performer

1. Eros Vlahos, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang
2. Thomas Turgoose, The Scouting Book for Boys
3. Kyle Ward, A Boy Called Dad
4. Chloe Jayne Wilkinson, In Our Name
5. Asa Butterfield, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang

Not - to these eyes - an especially competitive field this year, and it strikes me the London Film Critics Circle would do better replacing the category with one recognising the truly thriving fields of animation or documentary instead. (Which would also have the secondary merit of allowing the young nominees we've been inviting along to the ceremony all these years to get to bed at a decent hour of a school night.)




British Breakthrough Filmmaker:

1. Gareth Edwards, Monsters
(See Best British Director.)

2. Nick Whitfield, Skeletons
A film that really did tickle me, taking an inventively singular conceit and seeing it through with sensitivity and a real eye for the English countryside - and the pathos that lurks therein.

3. Clio Barnard, The Arbor
Another one of a kind, vividly returning the life and works of playwright Andrea Dunbar to our consciousness, at a moment when the scrappy single mothers the writer was dramatising face an even greater fight to get by. Barnard gives us both a work of artistry, and a punch in the face - and you suspect her subject wouldn't have had it any other way.

4. Ben Wheatley, Down Terrace
Not technically a breakthrough, as those of us in the know have for years been championing Wheatley's fine work in helping BBC3's Johnny Vegas sitcom Ideal remain the repository of wild comic invention it has been. Nevertheless, a fine, untroubled transfer of the Wheatley eye to a bigger canvas - and a darkly funny addition to the ranks of British crime pictures.

5. Jez Lewis, Shed Your Tears and Walk Away
As with The Arbor, a pertinent story - growing rates of drinking and depression among the residents of picturesque Hebden Bridge - handled with genuine sensitivity. Lewis achieves the documentarist's ultimate objective: you can't easily forget these individuals.