BEST PICTURE
Nominees:
American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, 12 Years a Slave, The Wolf of Wall Street.
BOB THOMPSON:
12 Years a Slave. Gravity may have strong pull but 12 Years a Slave is a harrowing yet compelling (and winning) glimpse into a sad but true story of a free man kidnapped and then enslaved by plantation owners in the pre-Civil War South.
KATHERINE MONK:
12 Years a Slave. Steve McQueen’s stripped-down canvasses juxtaposed pastoral beauty with broken bones and bloody flesh, reaping the dimensions of cruelty in every swath. His ever-poetic gaze captured the slow death of the soul, and forced us to see a reflection of our own complicity through our urge to turn the other way.
JAY STONE:
Gravity. An astonishing journey into space that — even if it gets some of the details wrong — presents a unique vision of our universe that only cinema could provide. Plus, it’s only 91 minutes long and doesn’t have any scenes of people being flogged.