"Gravity" soared with a record-setting seven Critics' Choice Awards, but "12 Years a Slave" was named best picture.
The Broadcast Film Critics Association presented its annual awards Thursday in Santa Monica, Calif., honoring many movies that earned Oscar nominations just hours earlier.
Awards for "Gravity" included best actress for Sandra Bullock, best director for Alfonso Cuaron and best sci-fi movie. "American Hustle" won four prizes, including best comedy, best acting ensemble and best actress in a comedy for Amy Adams.
"12 Years a Slave" collected two other awards besides best picture: best supporting actress for Lupita Nyong'o and best adapted screenplay.
Other winners Thursday included Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto for "Dallas Buyers Club" and Cate Blanchett for "Blue Jasmine."
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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