Though our TV editor, Matt Taylor, and I have been talking Oscars for months on our Way Too Early Oscar Podcast, this morning’s announcement of the Golden Globe nominations marks the true beginning of awards season. The Globes are a weird affair. The attendees can eat and drink and they’re often pretty drunk by the time they get on stage to say their thank you’s.
While the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s membership has no overlap with any Oscar voters (and some would argue, any overlap with sane human beings), it’s still considered an indicator of how the Academy will vote in major categories and it’s often where eventual winners get to try out their speeches. If that holds true this year, the 91st Academy Awards will be remembered as indicative of an industry in transition—from predominantly older, male and white to something more diverse.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. These are just the Golden Globes and they’re supposed to be fun and crazy. So, let’s take a look at the hits, the misses and the things that make absolutely no sense.
Literally Anything Could Win Best Picture
The Globes split their Best Motion Picture categories between Drama and Comedy and while it’s totally possible that the ten films the HFPA chose will make up the Oscar nominees, it’s pretty unlikely. Still, the Oscars could do a lot worse.
While the HFPA is absolutely nuts for nominating Green Book for Comedy or Musical over Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and Paddington 2 the other nominees are solid. Crazy Rich Asians is the best rom-com in years and feels like a throwback to classical Hollywood cinema—not to mention a diverse and talented cast. The Favourite is a brilliant political satire that’s driven by three of the best female performances (we’ll get to that later) of the year and I’d be shocked if Mary Poppins Returns is anything but wonderful. I suppose I can’t dismiss Vice until I’ve seen it, but let’s just say this The Big Short hater is hoping this is the only awards buzz it gets.
The Drama category is perhaps even more exciting. Black Panther‘s nomination marks Marvel’s first true Best Picture contender and while it probably won’t be able to beat A Star is Born even here, it’s truly just an honor to be nominated. I was doubtful BlackKklansman would be able to sustain its initial awards buzz after its release this summer, but I’m glad to see it here as well as director Barry Jenkins’s follow-up to 2016’s Moonlight, which didn’t move me as much as I’d hoped, but is possibly the best-looking and best-scored movie of the year. The only fly in the ointment is the Bryan Singer-directed Bohemian Rhapsody. With accusations of erasing Freddie Mercury’s queerness and a director who was embroiled in scandals long before #MeToo, this would be the only embarrassing winner. Thankfully, there’s simply no way A Star is Born loses this category.
Roma in Foreign?
Matt and I have been debating this for weeks, but if the Globes are any indicator, it looks like director Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma is going to sweep the Foreign Film categories but get shut out of Best Picture. I haven’t seen it yet, but everything I’ve heard indicates it’s the best film of the year full stop. My guess is that Cuaron (who won an Oscar for Gravity not long ago) is a serious contender for Best Director, but it’s anyone’s game with Bradley Cooper giving an incredible debut with A Star is Born and Spike Lee being overdue for a career Oscar.
The Best Actress categories are great
It’s been a little over a year since #MeToo changed Hollywood and the actresses nominated in both leading and supporting categories gave some career-best performances. Though the actual women nominated in the drama category may not be diverse, their roles are. Some of them are difficult like Glenn Close in The Wife or Rosamund Pike in A Private War. Some are twists on a traditional archetype like Lady Gaga in A Star is Born and Nicole Kidman in Destroyer and Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me? have their respective actresses departing from their usual personas. Any one of these would be a great win, but Glenn Close would have to straight up murder Lady Gaga to keep her from sweeping the night and possibly the whole awards season.
Much more exciting are the Comedy nominees. While Elsie Fisher for Eighth Grade, Charlize Theron for her incredible work in Tully and Constance Wu in Crazy Rich Asians are all welcome surprises, Colman gave possibly the best performance in any acting category all year. She deserves this.
As for supporting, I can’t believe anything would ever make me root against Amy Adams, but here we are. Regina King’s performance in If Beale Street Could Talk has been sweeping the early awards and she’s so beloved that there’s no way she loses this. That said, if Emma Stone hadn’t won Best Actress a few years ago, this conversation might be a little different.
The Best Actor Categories Are…Nuts
Listen, I don’t really know what’s going on here. From nominating Viggo Mortensen’s performance as a formerly-racist plate of spaghetti and meatballs in Green Book to Sam Rockwell as Will Ferrell as George W. Bush in Vice, these nominations are whack. I mean, I haven’t seen Mary Poppins Returns, but Lin-Manuel Miranda in lead? For the spiritual ancestor of the Dick Van Dyke role? I love Timothee Chalamet, but he is a walking plot device in Beautiful Boy. Sure, for every John C. Reilly in something other than that Sherlock Holmes parody there’s a John David Washington in BlackKklansman, but Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody could win the whole season in Lead and that’s just not a world I want to live in.
That said, here’s hoping Lucas Hedges can pull a win for his layered performance in Boy Erased, Robert Redford can get a career capping win for The Old Man and the Gun and Richard E. Grant gets recognized for his perfect performance in Can You Ever Forgive Me?
The Animated film category is a nightmare minefield
This is one of the few categories that can be transplanted wholesale to the Oscars and if that’s the case, then Mirai and Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse are the only responsible winners. I’ve picked apart Incredibles 2 and Ralph Breaks the Internet on various podcasts and a win for either would feel like rewarding Disney for still misunderstanding the proper way to write lead female characters. Isle of Dogs was rightly accused of cultural appropriation upon release and while the incredible stop motion certainly deserves recognition, a win for Wes Anderson’s latest would feel like Hollywood aggressively ignoring all the criticisms against it. I haven’t seen Mirai or the upcoming Spider-verse, but as long as they’re inoffensive and fun, I’m pulling for either.
Best Original Song Should Be Changed to Legends Only
What a category. Original Song used to be the category I’d get up during to make a snack, but with nominees including Dolly Parton and Annie Lennox, it might just be the most exciting category of the night. It seems insane that Parton has never won an Oscar or a Golden Globe for her songwriting and this probably won’t be her year either. It’s hard to imagine Gaga won’t win for “Shallow,” but it’s a shame Lamar won’t be commended for curating one of the best soundtracks of the year. That said, I wouldn’t mind a surprise for Troye Sivan’s “Revelation.” Boy Erased isn’t a perfect movie, but Sivan’s song and Hedges’s performance are the best things to come out of it.
A Quiet Place Had a Score?
I’m sure there was some music in director John Krasinski’s breakout horror hit, but I don’t remember it and neither do you. I’ll be posting an article on my picks for the year’s best scores soon and let me tell you, the Globes’ nominees are mostly garbage. If Black Panther or Marry Poppins Returns don’t win, then they have to cancel this category forever.
And None for First Reformed
Here’s hoping its absence in the screenplay category here is a bellwether for the Oscars too. The Favourite all the way.
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