
The National Society of Film Critics on Saturday, January 8th, 2011, chose The Social Network as Best Picture of the Year 2010. See the following pages for all votes in Best Picture and other categories for outstanding film achievement.
"The King's Speech," the drama about King George VI's attempt to overcome his speech impediment, was rated R for "language," specifically, several moments where the King is instructed by his speech therapist to swear to relieve the pressure of his stammer.
"The Tillman Story," the documentary about the military cover-up of the death of Corporal Pat Tillman in
Afghanistan, was similarly rated R for "language." In the case of that film the offending content is the agitated language of soldiers in combat fearing for their lives."A Film Unfinished," which contains footage taken by the Nazis inside the Warsaw Ghetto, was given an R for “disturbing images of Holocaust atrocities, including graphic nudity.”
In an editorial on the MPAA's web site, Joan Graves, the head of CARA, claims, "These ratings are purely informational."
Another damaging inconsistency is CARA’s record of judging sexual content more harshly than it does violence. We by no means advocate condemning violence in movies, and we do not believe we are doing so by pointing out that there is no equivalence between an R given to the most explicit horror images and the same rating given to a drama in which King George VI utters a four letter word. And certainly no equivalence to a historical document showing the emaciated bodies of dead Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Despite Ms. Graves' contention that CARA decisions are "purely informational," it's clear that the board has become an agency of de facto censorship. There is a difference between giving parents the information they need to make a decision as to which films they want their children to see, and a system whose decisions make it harder for adults — and their children — to see films clearly meant for them.
The National Society of Film Critics believes that CARA has for too long demonstrated these inconsistencies and has refused to explain itself. We would like to believe that the major studios who constitute the membership of the MPAA care enough about the availability of movies to recognize that the ratings system should be open and consistent, not arbitrary and unfair, and that films from independent distributors should be judged by the same criteria as their own releases. It has become a system that enforces the kind of moral policing that, when it was founded in 1968, it was intended to prevent.