No other Bafta best picture was possible. Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave was the worthiest of winners – despite, incidentally, a smidgen of ill-informed punditry here and there in the last few weeks about its alleged "worthiness" as code for dullness. It is a magnificent, thrilling and uplifting movie, and this award, along with the best actor prize for its male star Chiwetel Ejiofor, partly soothed my feeling that there were some exasperating misjudgments amid the good choices at this year's Baftas. 12 Years a Slave could – and should – have been better rewarded than this.
I also share the widespread feeling that Jennifer Lawrence's stock price has now peaked. Lovable though Lawrence is on- and off-screen, it isn't at all clear that she deserved a best supporting actress prize for her role in David O Russell's American Hustle, ahead of contenders including Lupita Nyong'o and Sally Hawkins.
These Bafta awards turned out to be the event where the sci-fi thriller Gravity, like Mo Farah, triumphantly asserted its British status, winning best British film, in spite of some mutterings about its passport. Given that its remarkable technology and effects were magicked up in the UK, probably only a curmudgeon would object too vehemently. Along with the award for original music and sound, Gravity also picked up a supremely deserved Bafta for best visual effects. The cinematography prize for Emmanuel Lubezki, meanwhile, was fitting, because Gravity was such a thrillingly immersive visual spectacle – although I thought Sean Bobbitt, the director of photography for 12 Years a Slave, was by a whisker the better choice.
But for me, Alfonso Cuarón's best director Bafta for Gravity was, to put it delicately, a surprise. It is a really terrific film – almost sensually pure entertainment in the truest, most old-fashioned sense of Hollywood cinema. I don't retract a word of my five-star rave. Yet I didn't think the direction was absolutely the best thing about it, and at the risk of churlishness, Steve McQueen was the better choice to win as director.
As for Paul Greengrass's Captain Phillips, newcomer Barkhad Abdi made a brilliant impression as the desperate Somali pirate who boards Tom Hanks's colossal container ship, a symbol of Western prosperity under attack. But even the film's fans, of whom I am one, might be bemused that this is what has earned it a Bafta, and Abdi's performance is considered better than Michael Fassbender's in 12 Years a Slave.
One thing was resoundingly right: Cate Blanchett's best actress Bafta for Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine – a brilliantly detailed and muscular performance, theatrically vehement when it needed to be and subtly shaded at the right times, too.
American Hustle is such an enjoyable film, and it's great to see a comedy do well in awards ceremonies that traditionally reward seriousness and solemnity. Its award for best original screenplay is, in many ways, an exhilarating choice, as this was a film which seemed almost like free-form jazz – thumbing its nose at the verities of three-act screenplays and surmounting obstacles and having sympathetic characters. This was a film populated by chaotic, self-obsessed and entirely unsympathetic people. But the writing was great and the comedy was great. And the Bafta for best makeup and hair could have gone to no one else.
Elsewhere, Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope's Philomena came away with best adapted screenplay, which was a pleasing event: the film is a heartfelt and candid true story to which Coogan and Pope brought a sure touch, creating a great role for Judi Dench, and a thoroughly engaging odd-couple relationship with its producer-actor Coogan.
Best documentary and best foreign film went to The Act of Killing and The Great Beauty respectively, which look to me like impeccable choices. And it is great to see the outstanding debut Bafta go to Kieran Evans for the excellent movie Kelly + Victor.
So: some mixed feelings at this year's Baftas. Gravity is an outstanding film and 12 Years a Slave partisans like me should be wary of sore-loser-ism, but there is always the possibility of a disconnect between the view of critics and those of awards voters. But I am still hoping for a big win, including best picture and best director, for Steve McQueen's masterly 12 Years a Slave at the Oscars.
• Xan Brooks's ceremony live blog
• Full list of winners
