2. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master
I have stared at the list of nominees for this year's Academy Awards for hours trying to figure out why people keep on insisting that Paul Thomas Anderson's name starts with a David and ends in an O. Russell. In his sixth and most complex film, one of America's greatest auteurs manages to weave together three of the most unlikable protagonists of the year with a haunting Johnny Greenwood score, gorgeous cinematography and an almost nonsensical script to create one of the most challenging and beautiful films of the century so far. Anderson, who also wrote the screenplay, has managed to craft two movies in the last five years that film students in the future will be writing their theses on.