Milk, Gus Van Sant's biopic of the USA's first openly gay elected politician, was yesterday named best film of 2008 by the New York Film Critics Circle, reports Variety.
The New York critics also handed the film's stars, Sean Penn and Josh Brolin, their best actor and best supporting actor prizes. Penn is starting to look like something of a frontrunner for an Oscar, having picked up the same prize from their Los Angeles counterparts earlier this week.
Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, the tale of an endlessly cheery primary school teacher, brought the veteran British film-maker the best director gong, while star Sally Hawkins won best actress, repeating her success with the LA critics.
The New Yorkers also gave Penélope Cruz the best supporting actress gong for her turn as the ex-wife of a Spanish painter in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, in common with the LA critics and the National Board of Review. Best cinematography went to Slumdog Millionaire's Anthony Dod Mantle, while Jenny Lumet won best screenplay for Rachel Getting Married.
WALL-E, Pixar's tale of a lonely robot who inadvertently saves mankind, took the animation prize, while Man On Wire, which told the story of Philippe Petit's 1974 twin-towers high-wire walk as if it was a heist movie, took best documentary. Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, the 2007 Palme d'Or-winning tale of a young woman who helps her friend get an illegal abortion in communist-era Romania, was named best foreign language picture.
The New York critics' prizes are decided by a notoriously complex method, sometimes involving three or four rounds of voting. That seems to have been the case this year, with chair Lisa Schwarzbaum suggesting members had failed to back any one film in great numbers.
"It's been the kind of year where there are three or four or five films you could get behind," she told Variety. "But there's not that one single film that made you so passionate that you throw yourself behind it." The prizes will be handed out on January 5.
The 2009 Academy Awards will take place on February 22.
