It’s been a very unusual awards season so far. Put aside the NY Film Critics Circle Jerk and the Golden Globes “I Made You… You Made Me” lawsuit and the weirdly slow dance to the season that is now in hyper-drive as many see their plans falling apart. But what has been most unusual is how many good movies are in play, while none of them have really jumped out as the clear frontrunner.

The one Academy-pleaser with all the right angles is The Artist, which finally started moving faster down the tracks, embracing the audience that will vote for it instead of the many critics who can’t seem to accept it as worthy, in the last 3 weeks.

And now, War Horse… which is, like The Artist, a tribute to the history of cinema. But in this case, it’s many flavors of cinema, all of which are designed to rip your heart out of your chest, but which are also much more hard core than I expect many critics to want to accept.

Right now, with two serious potential Best Picture winning films left to show themselves – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – the two heart films are really the only two films that can win Best Picture this year.

It’s fascinating, really. This has been one of those years where some very tough, smart movies are in the game. I find this extremely exciting. I think that The Academy could step up to Shame and nominate it for Best Picture. I still feel – though consultants have scared many of the experts out of thinking it’s possible – that the Fincher Dragon Tattoo could be one step tougher than The Departed and win the day. Films from Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, and Spielberg (with Tintin) are pushing older directors to new places. And younger directors, like Jason Reitman, Alexander Payne, Steven Soderbergh, Bennett Miller, and Tomas Alfredson are delivering top-of-career films that audience have and will embrace.

But none of the edge seems to have the sticking power, this season (so far), of the heart tuggers.

Michel Hazanavicius has proven, in just four feature films, to be a magician of movie history. The pair of OSS 117 movies are near-perfect satire of genre, pushing against decades of self-serious spy movies, both in France (where OSS 117 was an earnest Bond competitor in its day) and on the stage… world stage.

Jean Dujardin is one of France’s biggest stars… in many ways their George Clooney, though he is comedy-first and also does some dramatic work while GC works in the opposite direction. It’s all the more ironic that Dujardin will compete with Clooney for what is primarily a dramatic role with some great comedic moments, while Clooney’s nomination will be for a movie that is primarily a comedy role with some great dramatic moments.

Steven Spielberg has, on the other hand, a long history of making stars in films that feel like ensemble pieces. War Horse is his 27th film and with the exception of making Hans Solo into Indiana Jones, the two Tom Cruise movies, the three Tom Hanks movies, and Hook, his 17 other movies have starred many familiar actors… but not major box office stars. And again, reflecting on The Artist, it’s interesting that for American audiences Dujardin is a newcomer… allowing us the pleasure of discovery, much as in a Spielberg film.

War Horse, as many have said before, is an ensemble film, perhaps making it the rare Oscar nominee (and potentially, rarer winner) to go without any acting nomination. There are many beautiful performances, but the horse is the one character we spend the whole movie with. Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Niels Arestrup make, perhaps, the most intense appearances… but they are too brief to really register as must-nominates. (And none have the culminating royal feel of Judi Dench’s 3-minute Shakespeare In Love turn.)

But while in the first act, you may think this is just the most beautiful version of National Velvet you ever saw, things change. A lot. It’s a real war movie, with sequences that rival the landing in Saving Private Ryan. (I’d say 10 is about the starting age for this film… with lots of stuff to discuss afterwards.) It’s a subtle coming-of-the-Holocaust movie with the French hiding things in their attics and Germans being, uh, strict. It’s a beautiful trench warfare movie with enough restraint to keep it from being unbearable, but not inauthentic. And it’s a film about survival, more than anything else.

There is nothing that critics hate more than finding themselves emotionally moved by a movie. And Spielberg has taken the brunt of that for years. If a rising director makes us weep, it’s genius. If Spielberg does it, it’s manipulation. Conversely, there are some critics who see everything through Spielberg-colored glasses and the man can do no wrong.

War Horse is for real. It’s a true epic and an instant classic.

The Artist is a real joy. Undeniable. Surprising. An epic pleasure.

It will be interesting to see how this starts to play out… and whether either of the Final Two can change the game, perhaps as the movie that wins on a split between two more classically styled films.

War Horse will have more detractors. The Artist will be questioned for its smaller scale. War Horse will be a bigger box office success, but will be yoked with expectation while modest grosses for The Artist will be hailed as a miracle. Dujardin will charm voters, while Joey the horse will crap on red carpets all over town.

And so the dance begins…