My Award nominations: Picture

*(In hopes of catching one or two more foreign films imminently, I am holding off on that category for just a few more days, but I won't wait any longer to declare my fav five of the year.)

And so we finally reach the big daddy of them all. I've already waxed philosophical at length on how 'connected' I felt to the best films of the year, but the time has come to be a little less general and a little more specific. Without further ado, I present my five candidates for Best Picture of 2013 (plus my five runner-ups, so for all intents and purposes consider this my Top Ten article):

Review - Short Term 12

(This one's up kinda late... sorry!)

“Look into my eyes, tell what it's like,

To live a life not knowing what a normal life's like.”

A sullen African-American teen, Marcus (Keith Stanfield), sits in a small bedroom rapping a cappella to an audience of his youth worker and his goldfish. When we look into his eyes, we can absolutely see that he never has, but has always longed to, know what a “normal” life's like. But for Marcus and the other underprivileged kids living at Short Term 12, the temporary foster care facility that gives this extraordinary little film its title, a normal life seems beyond their reach.

Written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, Short Term 12 centres around Grace (Brie Larson), a young woman who works at the home for at-risk youths with her boyfriend Mason (John Gallagher Jr.). As Grace explains to a rookie staffer, their job is not to play therapist or parent, but simply to “create a safe environment”.

My Award nominations: Adapted Screenplay

I hate to be a downer (the whole reason I blog at all is to celebrate the movies), but I gotta admit: weak year for Adapted Screenplays. I struggled to find five that I felt merited awards consideration. And in a normal year, my "Just missed" titles wouldn't even be third tier contenders.

But it is what it is, and the five that I did decide on are still fine works. Read about them after the cut.