Mark Millar, comic book author and screenwriter, on ATONEMENTI'm starting to hate all the best films. Why? Because I've been working in Hollywood this week and it's impossible to open up a magazine or a newspaper or switch on a t
elevision set without the words "For Your Consideration" mugging your eyeballs. Everyone I'm eating and drinking with can talk of little else than the Oscars.
That said, I genuinely liked all the main contenders this year. Are the Oscars getting cooler or is this a sign that middle-age begins at 38? Whatever, Atonement is my pick of the batch. Not just because it's a great adaptation of a very good book with beautiful direction by Joe Wright, but because this was the moment Keira Knightley and James McAvoy made that leap from terrific actors to bona fide movie stars. They're the two most accomplished performances I've seen in years, and McAvoy, who stars in my forthcoming film, Wanted, has established himself as the best British actor since Daniel Day-Lewis.
I tend to hate British films: they're often lottery-funded tat about transvestites down coal-mines in Thatcher's Britain, but the scale and heart of this picture really blew me away.
Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton
What impresses me about George Clooney is that he uses his status and charisma to get really intelligent films made. Michael Clayton isn't as overtly political as Syriana but it's an intelligent, character-led thriller with really strong performances. It makes it easier for the rest of us who are trying to make intelligent, accessible and entertaining films.
Tilda Swinton is fantastic. I'm really pleased she won the Bafta and I voted for her. She could have been the stock evil corporate woman, but there is a scene when she's getting ready to give a presentation and you really see her humanity and vulnerability.
In the Fifties and Seventies you could make really intelligent dramas like this. These films are more successful with hindsight than they were at the time, but in the end people are really glad they're around. If it was purely about box office returns, they wouldn't get made, yet they go on to be classics.
Alison Forsyth, director of Bafta Scotland, on JUNOThe opening scenes had me thinking: "No, not another American teen flick" I couldn't stand that. But then you see that it is easily ahead of other teen movies.
I was extremely interested in the language used in the film. I mean, there are probably a lot of young people who talk like that or use words like that, but it's interesting to see where English can take you and still be so expressive.
I thought Ellen Page's performance was extremely good for being such a young girl. I mean she's only 21. The fact that she has been nominated at all is a great honour at her age.
Michael Cera's performance was also terrific, so understated. The lovely thing about the story was that the parents weren't horrible to her, they were a bit eccentric, it kind of hit the whole "middle of the road" family scenario that everyone can relate to. Then of course the brilliant characters of the husband and wife who intend to adopt the baby were perfectly drawn; Jennifer Garner did a brilliant job as the wife – that was a very hard role to play convincingly.
Juno herself may have been a bit eccentric, but her eccentricity was exaggerated to make a good film; I don't think it would be easy to do what she did at all.
Hannah McGill, Edinburgh Film Festival director, on THERE WILL BE BLOODSometimes, the Oscars seem to be nothing but scale: the biggest stars being rewarded for the most showy performances in the films with the most jaw-dropping budgets. Then there will come a year now and again when the opposite extreme kicks in, and every eligible film is a subtle, intense little personality study that seems too small for the event.
What I love about There Will Be Blood is that it presents a rare combination: scale plus subtlety. It somehow manages to combine a dizzying sense of vastness from its shimmering oil-rush desert vistas, to Daniel Day-Lewis's thunderous lead turn with penetrating attention to emotional detail. The consequence is a film that feels epic without being in any sense manipulative or wedded to clichés: I'm not even sure what genre it belongs in. That's not to say that it doesn't tackle the big, important human issues: it's a film about the origins of irrationality and cruelty; the ultimate wages of greed; and the ever-pivotal relationship between blood and fossil fuels. But it looks at all of this sidelong, with such a jumpy, unexpected energy and such a fierce commitment to its characters that it's never hollow spectacle.
Most of all, it's a real movie, by which I mean that it's not a TV series mis-pitched, a photographic exhibition with extraneous dialogue, or a novel too loyally adapted. (Indeed, the source novel, Upton Sinclair's Oil!, provided only setting and imaginative spark.) It's a story made to be told in a large-scale visual medium. It's pure, thrilling cinema, and it's one of the most exciting things I saw last year.
Annie Griffin, director, on NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MENIt's been an amazing year for movies and for the first time in ages they are all pictures I have seen more than once. No Country For Old Men is a real turning point for the Coen Brothers. It has all of their stylishness but there is a seriousness that hasn't been there before. I first watched it at Christmas with my family. It's amazing, because there is so little dialogue, but we were all absolutely gripped, especially in those scenes where Javier Bardem's character is tossing coins to see whether someone is going to live or die. The performances are incredible, and the casting of the small roles is exceptional. You feel so much compassion for people you only encounter for a moment.
The fact that it's about a man who doesn't want to be the hero is fascinating. Tommy Lee Jones's anti-hero is afraid, and that notion of being scared of violent people is something never normally acknowledged in American movies. It's a disturbing movie, and though there are funny moments, the humour only comes as relief. It's as if the Coen Brothers suddenly started taking their subject matter seriously, a tone that has been missing from their work until now.
Like There Will Be Blood, this film is about America having become the bad guy. I'm guessing the contest for Best Picture will be between the two.
• The Oscars screen live on Sky Movies Premiere tonight at 1am
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The full article contains 1168 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
