Best Director

Nominees

Best Sup. Actress

Darren Aronofsky

Black Swan

Aronofsky is adept at personifying what the body can take and what it can't. Each of his films are about a kind of mystical ambition. ... [He] uses cinema to fully inhabit a character's kaleidoscopic ruptures.
– Wesley Morris

Joel and Ethan Coen

True Grit

The Coens ... have declawed themselves. They're playing it straight. ... The sensationalistic wickedness of their most provocative work has, for one movie, been banished. This isn't a rousing movie as much as a reassurance. The brothers prove they can play it straight, but they're preferred, for better and worse, at a sharp angle.
– Wesley Morris

David Fincher

The Social Network

Tom Hooper

The King's Speech

David O. Russell

The Fighter

Ty Burr says ...

Even if the dreams-within-dreams Escherisms of "Inception" threw you for a loop (or didn't strike you as adding up to a whole lot), you can't deny the skill with which its director created whole new worlds and the cinematic rules that govern them. Hooper's very good work on "Speech" is outgunned by the competition, especially Fincher's masterful way of making the topical dramatic.

Will win
David Fincher, The Social Network
Should win
David Fincher, The Social Network

Shouldn't be here
Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
Was robbed
Christopher Nolan, Inception

Wesley Morris says ...

Always dismissed as a kind of pulp stylist, David Fincher has moved closer to a more tasteful center — at least until his Stieg Larsson movie arrives later this year. Thrilling as it is, "The Social Network" is Fincher under the spell of Aaron Sorkin's script. It's quite a spell, but I more love how David O. Russell saw in "The Fighter" a chance to turn Irish tragedy into the Fourth of July.