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 everpoetic 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.