Best Picture Nominees 2010

A film with no stars and a dud at the box office, Joel and Ethan Coen's sort-of comedy about a modern Job was perceived by some viewers as too Jewish to achieve popular support. In Hollywood, however, the debate was about whether the movie was the right kind of Jewish; some commentators slammed it as anti-Semitic. The Coen brothers' Oscar éclat (they won Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay for No Country for Old Men) and the new movie's spectacular and disquieting orneriness eventually persuaded enough Academy voters to reward their achievement. But the kudos will probably stop right here.

Read Richard Corliss' review of A Serious Man.