The surprise Director's Guild Award for Tom Hooper and the awards from the Screen Actors Guild -- Best Actor for Colin Firth and Best Ensemble Cast -- pretty much guarantee an Oscar sweep for "The King's Speech," the lush period biopic about King George VI, who, with the help of a non-elitist therapist managed to shake off a debilitating stutter, a toffee-nosed dissolute, Nazi-leaning elder brother, and a paralyzing father complex, and, apparently, go on to win World War II singlehandedly.

Marwencol

After you've attended the Boston Society of Film Critics Annual Awards ceremony, the Oscars might seem anticlimactic. Among those expected at this year's extravaganza is Jeff Malmberg, winner of the society's Best Documentary and Best Newcomer awards for his brilliant, sui generis film Marwencol, which will screen after the event.

The profession of film criticism has fallen on hard times of late, but the Boston Phoenix's own Gerald Peary comes to its defense with his aptly named documentary For the Love of Movies, a brisk and eloquent look at the history and future of film reviewing featuring such eminences as Roger Ebert, Andrew Sarris, and even jolly Harry Knowles.

The '60s officially ended for many baby boomers when they stumbled into a midnight screening of El Topo (1970) and something happened to their minds that was unpleasant and irrevocable. Here's your chance to share the same experience as the Coolidge Corner Theatre presents Alejandro Jodorowsky's ecstatic, nonsensical, visionary psychedelic Western.

The Oscars might showcase the film industry's proudest achievements, but the Found Footage Film Festival - which annually selects the best of old VHS tapes found in dumpsters, Goodwill racks, and padlocked attics - reveals our souls. Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher host their latest selections, including a recorded session with hypnotist Dr.

Since priests and demons frighten me, my colleague Peg Aloi, who in addition to being a fine critic and writer is also a practicing Wiccan, agreed to conduct this interview with the exorcist who inspired the new film "The Rite," which opens Friday.

Here's Peg's story:

Father Gary Thomas is the subject of Matt Baglio's book "The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist" (Doubleday Religion), which was the inspiration for Mikael Hafstrom's film "The Rite," opening in theatres January 28, 2011.

People of every political persuasion are impressed with Tim Pawlenty’s recent campaign promo/book ad on YouTube. But before those on the right get too enthusiastic they might consider the source that clearly inspired the catchy trailer. The rapid fire editing, the manipulative linking of otherwise unrelated images into a blurry ideological impulse, the mind-numbing rhythms inspiring a vague desire to mobilize against or for.

This year I feel less embarrassed than I normally do after the Oscar nominations announcements, getting fewer prognostications wrong - four - than my usual six or more misfires. On the other hand, those I got wrong were really the ones that would have taken any genuine acumen to figure out. So as it stands I got 31 out of 35, around 88%, or a B+ average.

One of the best films about the Vietnam War, Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987) also offers insight into the trauma endured by veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Starring Matthew Modine and Vincent D'Onofrio as Marine recruits, Kubrick's stark masterpiece shows the process of dehumanization, from boot camp to the killing fields.

The few screen appearances made by Saddam Hussein suggest that, had things turned out a little differently, he might have been a screen legend rather than an infamous tyrant and mass murderer.

His small but pivotal role in "Hot Shots Part Deux" (1992) proved he could touch our hearts even as he tickled our funny bones.

I've been waiting for someone to point to Hollywood as a convenient scapegoat for the Arizona shootings.. So far, so good, however, as nobody has yet resorted to that familiar punching bag, so popular with both Democrats and Republicans whenever something awful happens that raises too many tough questions.

We all know this guy - heck, we might be this guy: the one conned into selling pot to an undercover cop, the poor schmuck who gets dumped not only by his girlfriend but by his dog. Played by the sly comic genius Paul Rudd, he's the title hero of Jesse Peretz's My Idiot Brother, whose cast also boasts Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks, and Emily Mortimer.

If you enjoy killing Nazis in Call of Duty: World at War and killing zombies in Resident Evil, and if you especially love killing zombie Nazis in Call of Duty: World at War 2, you must see what may well be the first and only zombie Nazi movie, Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola's Dead Snow (2009), wherein hapless medical students uncover and reanimate a host of the frozen Fascists while on a ski vacation in Switzerland.

So it's time to close the books on 2010 and, like Johnny Hallyday in this still from Johnnie To's "Vengeance" (number 9 in A.S. Hamrah's Ten Best list), and raise a toast to "Another Year" (Number 1 in A.S. Hamrah's Ten Best list). Brett Michel also offers his thoughts and judgments on the past year in film.

A.

If you only see one film by the recently deceased director Blake Edwards, maybe it should be his 1961 adaptation of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's (okay, you might want to include the best in the Pink Panther series, A Shot in the Dark, as well). Audrey Hepburn shines in her signature role as Holly Golightly, the whimsical, elegant waif who fascinates a new tenant (George Peppard) who moves into her Manhattan apartment building.