Top Films

Arrival

Hacksaw Ridge

Hail, Caesar!

Hell or High Water

Hidden Figures

La La Land

Moonlight

Patriot’s Day

Silence

Sully

Top 5 Foreign Language Films

Elle

The Handmaiden

Julieta

Land of Mine

Neruda

Top 5 Documentaries

De Palma

The Eagle Huntress

Gleason

Life, Animated

Miss Sharon Jones!

Top 10 Independent Films

20th Century Women

Captain Fantastic

Creative Control

Eye in the Sky

The Fits

Green Room

Hello, My Name is Doris

Krisha

Morris from America

Sing Street

Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight” swept the Gotham Awards tonight. it won best feature, director and screenplay. The film’s Oscar chances have skyrocketed tonight.

Big surprise for famed French actress Isabelle Huppert. She won Best Actress for Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle.” She just arrived from Europe, was jet lagged, had no idea what award this was, and really almost cried. She had no prepared speech. She has a much better chance now to join likely contenders Annette Bening, Emma Stone, Natalie Portman, and Amy Adams– if Viola Davis stays in supporting.

Bening and Portman, each of whom probably thought they would win– with good reason– must have been just as shocked.

Casey Affleck easily walked away with Best Actor for “Manchester by the Sea.” But that movie took a hit tonight from “Moonlight.” I don’t know how this will be interpreted, but “Manchester” hasn’t got one black actor, and “Moonlight” doesn’t have one white actor. Still, they are each Best Picture contenders, probably facing “La La Land,” “Lion,” and maybe Martin Scorsese’s “Silence.”

The Gotham Awards are for independent films, they’re the Spirit Awards of the East Coast. This year they seemed especially upbeat, with lots of great presenters, some socko speeches (Judith Light, Cate Blanchett, and Amy Adams were the winners of oratory), some odd heartfelt ones (Winona Ryder, praising Ethan Hawke, who saved the day with his acknowledgment of his lifetime award).

The best line of the night– Ethan Hawke: “I was already washed up in the business when I was 14.” He recalled a scathing negative review he received at that age for his debut in a movie called  “Explorers.” He had nowhere to go but up.

Many of the presenters were surprises, including Cate Blanchett, Katie Holmes, and Neve Campbell. I got to meet the whole “Moonlight” cast and the writer-director Barry Jenkins. They are close knit group, and definitely in a good position now. In addition to all those awards, they received an Ensemble award. They’ve also been a special ensemble award by the Indie Spirits. Is “Moonlight” the film to beat? We’ll see…

There’s nothing normal about Gay Talese’s “The Voyeur.” When Talese published an except about his book in The New Yorker last spring, Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment scooped it up to make a movie. Right away, “American Beauty” director Sam Mendes was on the case.

Then as the book itself was getting ready for publication, the Washington Post attacked it (Talese is a Hall of Famer for their rival, the New York Times) claiming there all kinds of mistakes and inaccuracies. They ambushed Talese in a phone call. Startled, he disavowed the book. The next day, cooler heads prevailed as Talese reclaimed the book. It was published and did very well.

In August, it was reported that two filmmakers– Myles Kane and Josh Koury– had wrapped a documentary about Talese called “Gay Talese and the Voyeur.” It seemed that Kane, who does video work for the New Yorker (where Talese writes now), had been following the writer around for three years filming him for a documentary about his life and career. Kane followed Talese through his latest adventures with Gerald Foos, owner of the motel in question. Without telling Talese, Kane shifted his focus to that story more than anything else. He just didn’t bother to tell Talese.

Now Mendes tells Deadline.com that he’s so upset about the documentary that he’s junking the project. It seems Dreamworks is out, too, although I don’t know why. Plenty of great narrative films have been based on documentaries including this Oscar season’s “Loving.” Kane’s documentary will at best show on HBO but it wouldn’t have the power of a film starring, say, Kevin Spacey, as Foos spying on his customers’ sexual hijinks.

Talese is philosophical about this latest turn of events. He’s 85, he’s very famous, and has seen it all. He doesn’t hold Kane responsible, he tells me. “I don’t think he thought it would have any affect on the film,” he says.

Mendes is probably heading back to James Bond, anyway, after saying he wouldn’t make another one after “Skyfall” and “Spectre.” (Mendes and Daniel Craig like to play this game with the Bond movies– we’ll never make another one, oh, they paid us, we’re back!)

Frankly, “The Voyeur’s Motel” reads more like HBO’s “The Night Of” than a feature film. Because the lead character, Foos, is not much of a hero, it might be hard to get people into movie theaters. But it’s almost perfect for a limited series like “The Night Of,” with great twists and turns, and a murder mystery as well.  Talese, as he apparently is  in the documentary, could be the protagonist. Al Pacino could play Talese, and Barry Levinson could direct. They’d be perfect. Spacey could still be Foos.

Meanwhile, there’s another subplot here perfect for a Lifetime movie. Since Kane started filming Talese, he required a liver transplant. Kane has a whole other life as a DJ as “MC Kreacher,” so his friends in that world got together and raised $50,000 to pay his insurance deductible.

Here’s our conundrum: Viola Davis entered herself into the 2017 Awards races as a supporting actress in “Fences,” a movie only critics have seen so far.

This is the consensus: Davis’s performance as Rose in Denzel Washington’s adaptation of the August Wilson play may be the best in any category this year. Davis won Best Actress playing Rose on Broadway. But then some argue that when “Fences” first came to Broadway, the exceptional Mary Alice won Best Featured Actress at the Tony Awards.

Every once in a while a situation like this arises. A few years ago, Kate Winslet was in two movies– “Revolutionary Road,” directed by her then husband Sam Mendes, and “The Reader,” from Stephen Frears. Because of her situation with Mendes, she asked that she go lead in “RR” and supporting in “The Reader.”

What happened? “RR” was released first. It’s a wonderful movie but it failed in theaters almost immediately. With Oscar nominations approaching, I asked around about moving Winslet to lead for “The Reader.” She was the lead, she was almost the whole movie. When I found out that the Academy allowed moving actors from their assigned categories I wrote a plea in my column– please move Kate Winslet to lead. To my surprise, that’s what happened. She was nominated in lead– maybe with a little help from my suggestion– and won Best Actress.

This year we have a surfeit of excellent actresses in great lead roles. Emma Stone is a joy in “La La Land.” Annette Bening is a breath of fresh air in “20th Century Women.” Natalie Portman has been wowing critics as “Jackie.” And so on.

But Viola Davis– she is equal to those women and maybe more so. The part of Rose is essential to “Fences.” Davis is not supporting anyone. In the “third act,” she carries the film to its conclusion.

Davis been nominated in supporting before, for “Doubt.” She’s been nominated for Lead in “The Help.” I shudder to think her fans only know her from TV’s “How to Get Away with Murder.” She has two Tony Awards. Viola Davis deserves to play in the lead category with her peers.

If you’ve seen “Fences,” you know what I mean. For the Critics Choice Awards, I’m typing her name into lead. Maybe it won’t work. For Globes and Oscars, Supporting may be her proper designation in the end. But she was one of three names that popped into my head when I saw the ballot. If it works, we can say we got away with “murder.”

PS Here’s a little bit of odd trivia: Mary Alice beat Annette Bening for the 1987 Tony for Featured Actress. It was Bening’s debut in “Coastal Disturbances.” Bening has now been denied the Oscar for performances in The Grifters, Being Julia, The Kids Are All Right, and American Beauty. She will definitely be nominated for “20th Century Women.” It’s maybe her best work yet.