2012 Women Film Critics Circle Awards - Complete List

The Women Film Critics Circle Awards went to many different films in 2012, although Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty received three awards.  The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of women film critics, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media. Founded in 2004, this group is the first women critics’ organization in the United States.

2012 Women Film Critics Circle Awards:

BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN
A Royal Affair

BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN
Zero Dark Thirty

BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER (Screenwriting Award)
Two Days In NY (Julie Delpy)

BEST ACTRESS
Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

BEST ACTOR
Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

BEST YOUNG ACTRESS
Quvenzhanee Wallis, Beast Of The Southern Wild

BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS
Maggie Smith, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
Where Do We Go Now (from Lebanon with Egypt, France, and Italy)

BEST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Zero Dark Thirty

WORST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE-TIE
Killer Joe
Think Like A Man

BEST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Lincoln

WORST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Killer Joe

BEST THEATRICALLY UNRELEASED MOVIE BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
Hemingway And Gellhorn

BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES
Zero Dark Thirty

BEST ANIMATED FEMALES
Brave

BEST FAMILY FILM-TIE
Life Of Pi
Rise Of The Guardians

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Barbra Streisand

ACTING AND ACTIVISM.AWARD
Sally Field – Field is a dedicated advocate for women's rights. She has served on the Board of Directors of Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international women's NGO, and has co-hosted the Global Leadership Awards. Field suffers from osteoporosis and has become a vocal advocate for women's health issues, encouraging early diagnosis of such conditions through technology, such as bone density scans.

*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women -TIE
Compliance
The Invisible War

*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America
Middle Of Nowhere

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman’s place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity
A Royal Affair (from Denmark)

COURAGE IN ACTING: Taking on unconventional roles that radically redefine the images of women on screen
Helen Hunt, The Sessions

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD: Performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored
Helen Mirren, Hitchcock

BEST DOCUMENTARY BY OR ABOUT A WOMAN
Queen Of Versailles

WOMEN’S WORK: BEST ENSEMBLE
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

BEST SCREEN COUPLE
Moonrise Kingdom: Bill Murray and Frances McDormand

*WFCC HALL OF SHAME*

Bachelorette with Kirsten Dunst, had all sorts of ditzy former high school classmates getting together for the wedding of a girl they used to make fun of. Just stupid on so many levels: male strippers, drinking, general girly silliness.

Ici-Bas (Down Below). Rape romance: A raped nun (Celine Sallette) falls in love with her rapist. The male fantasy horror of 'rape romance' on screen. A WFCC Hall Of Shame pick in tribute to the unnamed Indian student and rape murder victim, in the kind of traditional culture where women and girls are pressured to marry their rapists.

Skyfall: 'Bond Girl' is only on screen long enough to sell trailers and products like OPI's 'Skyfall Collection' of nail polishes, and gets bumped off at the end of Act II; M turns into a cowering incompetent and gets bumped off at the end of Act III; and the female sharp-shooter in Act I loses her nerve and leaves 'Field Operations' to become an office assistant in Act III. I loved the Sean Connery/James Bond films as a kid. Women got to be part of the action; the Bond Girl was always there to celebrate success at the end. But as a 50th anniversary tribute to the Bond series made in 2012, Skyfall truly broke my heart!

MOMMIE DEAREST WORST SCREEN MOM OF THE YEAR AWARD
Helena Bonham Carter, Les Miserables

BEST LINE IN A MOVIE 2012
"...You can't kill the animals in a movie, only the women." - Christopher Walken/Seven Psychopaths

JUST KIDDING AWARD:
Best Male Images In A Movie: Magic Mike

*Please Note: The WFCC Top Ten Hall Of Shame represents the ‘don’t tell me to shut up’ sidebar contribution of individual members, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the entire Circle. Also, members may be objecting to particular characters in a film, and not the entire movie. Clarification: If an aspect of the movie is intentionally negative to make a point, rather than offensive, that is not under consideration for this category.

*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: Adrienne Shelly was a promising actress and filmmaker who was brutally strangled in her apartment in 2006 at the age of forty by a construction worker in the building, after she complained about noise. Her killer tried to cover up his crime by hanging her from a shower20rack in her bathroom, to make it look like a suicide. He later confessed that he was having a “bad day.” Shelly, who left behind a baby daughter, had just completed her film Waitress, which she also starred in, and which was honored at Sundance after her death.

*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: The daughter of a laundress and a musician, Baker overcame being born black, female and poor, and marriage at age fifteen, to become an internationally acclaimed legendary performer, starring in the films Princess Tam Tam, Moulin Rouge and Zou Zou. She also survived the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois as a child, and later expatriated to France to escape US racism. After participating heroically in the underground French Resistance during WWII, Baker returned to the US where she was a crusader for racial equality. Her activism led to attacks against her by reporter Walter Winchell who denounced her as a communist, leading her to wage a battle against him. Baker was instrumental in ending segregation in many theaters and clubs, where she refused to perform unless integration was implemented.

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: Karen Morley was a promising Hollywood star in the 1930s, in such films as Mata Hari and Our Daily Bread. She was driven out of Hollywood for her leftist political convictions by the Blacklist and for refusing to testify against other actors, while Robert Taylor and Sterling Hayden were informants against her. And also for daring to have a child and become a mother, unacceptable for female stars in those days. Morley maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.