NEW YORK: The National Society of Film Critics on Saturday named Jean-Luc Godard's 3-D film Goodbye to Language the best picture of the year, narrowly choosing it over Richard Linklater's acclaimed Boyhood, for which Linklater won best director.

The group, made up of 59 prominent movie critics from newspapers, magazines and other media outlets, chose Timothy Spall as best actor for Mr Turner, about 19th-century British artist J.M.W. Turner.

Marion Cotillard won best actress for Two Days, One Night, a Belgian drama about a factory worker who must lobby co-workers in order to keep her job, as well as for her work in The Immigrant, in which she plays a Polish woman who faces hardships upon arriving in New York in 1921.

Best supporting actress went to Patricia Arquette for Boyhood, which chronicles 12 years in the life of a boy and which was filmed with the same actor over 12 years. J.K. Simmons won best supporting actor forWhiplash, playing a hard-driving music teacher.