Writer/director Alexander Payne, the darkly comic mind behind Election and Sideway, returns after a seven-year hiatus with The Descendants, which easily ranks as his most heartwarming feature to date. It's also his least provocative and prickly, but hey, we all get a little sentimental in our old age. And because this is the guy who made Election after all, his version of "sentimental" isn't the usual gooey Hollywood treacle like The Bucket List or The Help. The Descendants still has a certain bite to it, dwelling, as it does, on the characters' all-too-human foibles and frailties. It's the kind of movie where no one is beyond reproach... even the woman that's lying in the hospital in a coma from which she'll never wake up.

No kids allowed...

Why is this man smiling?

Television Without Pity is a voting member of the New York Film Critics Online, an organization of New York-based online critics, which convened yesterday to hand out their annual awards honoring the best in film for 2011. The silent-film homage The Artist proved to be the big winner, going home with three awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. (We weren't alone in giving that film top honors -- The Artist has also been named Best Picture by the New York Film Critics Circle, Boston Society of Film Critics and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics. It's also currently the closest to what resembles a frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar.) NYFCO departed from the mainstream consensus with two less expected picks -- Michael Shannon was named Best Actor for his searing work in Take Shelter, while Joe Cornish picked up Debut Director honors for his terrific alien invasion movie, Attack the Block. For a full list of winners, along with links to our original coverage of those films, click below.

The 49th edition of the New York Film Festival kicks off tonight with a gala screening of the Oscar hopeful Carnage, directed by Roman Polanski and starring a powerhouse cast that includes three Academy Award winners (Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster and Christoph Waltz) and one nominee and respected character actor (John C. Reilly). Although it comes at the tail end of the festival season, following the higher-profile Toronto and Venice media circuses, the NYFF has its fair share of big premieres and A-list attendees jostling for awards attention. Here are the five biggest stories to keep an eye on during this year's festival, which runs from September 30 to October 6.