Photo: Lionsgate

I know it's a little early to harp about Academy Awards, but when I see that Jennifer Lawrence is currently the Oscar front-runner for "Silver Linings Playbook," my critical side wants to shout "B.S.!" I've seen that movie. It's terrific and, OK, Oscar-worthy. And Lawrence's Tiffany is vibrant, sexy, and funny, and that kind of manic-pixie-dream dame that brings the hero, in this case Bradley Cooper, to the come-to-Jesus moment that climaxes the film. She's great. But she's a (plot) tool. No one would dare call Katniss Everdeen a tool. She's a weapon: the bow and arrow that unleashed "The Hunger Games" phenomena. And Lawrence owns that character with a ring of truth and hard-won dignity.

But she has three strikes against her when it comes to winning the Oscar as Katniss:

Helen Hunt in 'The Sessions' (Photo: Fox Searchlight)

The surprise guest at last week's Manhattan dinner for "The Sessions" at Circo on West 55th Street was Cheryl Cohen Greene, the real-life sexual surrogate played by Helen Hunt in the Oscar-bound indie. The 68-year-old Massachusetts native and Berkeley resident had a glow about her, an open and unaffected sexiness. This joy in life went beyond the obvious happiness she expressed at being portrayed in such a positive light in the movie about the six sessions that transformed Mark O'Brien, a journalist and poet from California who was a polio victim, from virgin to man of the world.

How did Cohen Greene feel about the movie? "I laughed. I cried," she gushed as she sat with her brother, sister-in-law, and supporters. Clearly, the movie experience also validated an unusual profession that, perhaps, had always been giggled about. Oh, you know, she lives in Berkeley.

John Hawkes in 'The Sessions' (Photo: Fox Searchlight)

When I first heard the plot of "The Surrogate," now called "The Sessions," it sounded like a parody of a Sundance movie from "The Onion." A polio survivor in an iron lung (John Hawkes) turns to a sexual surrogate (Helen Hunt) to lose his virginity after consulting his priest (William H. Macy). Really?

The surprise was that Hawkes, best known as the threatening meth-maker in "Winter's Bone" and the ominous cult leader in "Martha Marcy May Marlene," breathed life and humor into the erotic adventures. Based on the real-life experience of California journalist and poet Mark O'Brien, the result was a crowd-pleaser that broke out of Sundance, traveled the festival circuit and launched Oscar buzz for Hawkes even before its theatrical premiere today. And as for those sex scenes with Hunt, Hawkes had one word to describe them: "awkward," but in a good way.

Photo: Music Box PicturesAs we enter the awards season — look there's "Argo" and "Lincoln" and, oops, there goes "The Paperboy" — the tendency is to start predicting winners. But wait! What a dull activity that would be if we didn't first look under rocks for the movies that have been overlooked and that must be seen, and recognize performances in underperforming films that have astonished us so far in 2012, like those of Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams, and Mira Sorvino.

Photo: Sony Picture Classics

Actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead has a massive fan base from roles in "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," "The Thing," and "Final Destination 3." She has more than 52,000 Twitter followers and counting. Just check out @M_E_Winstead. But the North Carolina-born brunette, 27, was thirsting for a greater challenge than scream queen or love object. She found it playing a co-dependent alcoholic first-grade teacher in James Ponsoldt's Sundance hit "Smashed" opposite "Breaking Bad's" Aaron Paul. Her performance is so contemporary, raw, and fresh, there could be a best-actress Oscar nomination in the wings. Hint, hint.

Photo: Jason Kempin: Getty Images

"Do what I tell you to do and everything will be fine," Ben Affleck answered when I asked how Affleck the director and Affleck the actor get along during the making of his Oscar-bound "Argo." Affleck warmed to the topic and continued, "I am in great sync with myself. But the actor in me wants the next part, and first we have to promote this film."

And promote Affleck did, at a star-crammed Peggy Siegal-produced double dinner and screening at Manhattan's Porter House Steakhouse. I saw the film over the weekend at the Hamptons International Film Festival and was wowed. Affleck's third picture as a director is a humor-laced, fact-based drama about the daring rescue of six American foreign-service workers stranded in the house of the Canadian ambassador during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979-80. Affleck plays a CIA extraction expert who pretends to be scouting locations for a cheesy Hollywood sci-fi film called "Argo" as a cover to remove the Americans posing as a film crew.