This year’s Golden Globes was quite a mixed bag. On the one hand, it appears to finally be time for the HFPA to end their Ricky Gervais experiment. On the other hand, the winners were overall much better than last year. As I have written at length about what the Globes are and the nuances of this year’s races in all 25 categories, I will dive right in to my recap. I start with discussing the winners and then move on to reviewing the highs and lows of the telecast.
FIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM THE FILM WINNERS
- 1917 is now a major player. Sam Mendes’s WWI epic doesn’t even get officially released in theaters until this coming Friday and it was one of the final films to be screened for critics and Hollywood insiders. Although it has been in the award conversations from early on due to its pedigreed cast and crew and its strong buzz, it was largely a question mark until recently. Now it has thrust itself into frontrunner status with big wins for Best Motion Picture — Drama and Best Director (Sam Mendes). This is especially impressive given how stacked the Best Director category was, with legends like Martin Scorcese and Quentin Tarantino and red hot Korean auteur Bong Joon-Ho. It will be interesting to see if the Academy follows the Globes in going gaga for 1917.
- The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, and The Two Popes had a really bad night … and Parasite and Marriage Story didn’t fare much better. The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, and The Two Popes combined had 11 nominations (including Best Picture nominations for each) yet went home entirely empty handed. That doesn’t bode well for their Oscar chances. If The Irishman gets similarly shut out at the Screen Actors Guild Awards it looks like it will be an Oscar also-ran (although it will surely get a bevy of nominations). Jojo Rabbit and The Two Popes, however, are on the fence and a win or two here could have gone a long way to raising their profile for Oscar voters (who are on their fourth day of their six-day voting period). The night’s nomination leader, Marriage Story, didn’t have a particularly great night, either. It went 1-for-6, winning only Best Supporting Actress for Laura Dern. And although Parasite won Best Foreign Language Film it lost the Best Director and Best Screenplay awards that could have raised its profile at a critical time.
