“The National Society of Film Critics (of which I am a member) might be the last group to vote, but it is usually the most interesting,” writes Peter Keough (via Movie City News). “Composed of some 60 critics nationwide, suspected of arcane rituals and snobby taste (all true!), they invariably buck the trend of every group that precedes them , but usually too late to make a difference…. And the big winner? The Coen Brothers’s Inside Llewyn Davis, which won for best picture, director, actor, and cinematography. Had they considered best animal actor, and I’m kicking myself now for not suggesting the idea, no doubt it would have gotten that, too, for the haunting performance of the big ginger cat who played Ulysses.”
For the record, then, the list of the winners and runners-up, with vote counts from the final round:
BEST PICTURE
*1. Inside Llewyn Davis – 23
2. American Hustle – 17
3. 12 Years a Slave – 16
BEST DIRECTOR
*1. Joel and Ethan Coen (Inside Llewyn Davis) – 25
2. Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity) – 18
3. Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) – 15
BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM
*1. Blue Is the Warmest Color – 27
2. A Touch of Sin – 21
3. The Great Beauty – 15
BEST NON-FICTION FILM
*1. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer) – 20
*1. At Berkeley (Frederick Wiseman) – 20
3. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel) – 18
BEST SCREENPLAY
*1. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke) – 29
2. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen) – 26
3. American Hustle (Eric Singer and David O. Russell) – 18
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
*1. Inside Llewyn Davis (Bruno Delbonnel) – 28
2. Gravity (Emmanuel Lubezki) – 26
3. Nebraska (Phedon Papamichael) – 19
BEST ACTOR
*1. Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis) – 28
2. Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) – 19
3. Robert Redford (All Is Lost) – 12
BEST ACTRESS
*1. Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) – 57
2. Adèle Exarchopoulos (Blue Is the Warmest Color) – 36
3. Julie Delpy (Before Midnight) – 26
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
*1. James Franco (Spring Breakers) – 24
2. Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club) – 20
3. Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips) – 14
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
*1. Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle) – 54
2. Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave) – 38
3. Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine) – 18
3. Léa Seydoux (Blue Is the Warmest Color) – 18
EXPERIMENTAL FILM
Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s Leviathan.
FILM HERITAGE AWARD
• To the Museum of Modern Art, for its wide-ranging retrospective of the films of Allan Dwan.
• Too Much Johnson: the surviving reels from Orson Welles’s first professional film. Discovered by Cinemazero (Pordenone) and Cineteca del Friuli; funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation; and restored by the George Eastman House.
• British Film Institute for restorations of Alfred Hitchcock’s nine silent features.
• To the DVD American Treasures from the New Zealand Film Archive.
BEST FILM STILL AWAITING AMERICAN DISTRIBUTION
• Tsai Ming-liang’s Stray Dogs.
• Daniel Patrick Carbone’s Hide Your Smiling Faces.
DEDICATION: The meeting was dedicated to the memory of two distinguished members of the Society who died in 2013: Roger Ebert and Stanley Kauffmann.
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