The Critics Choice Awards membership did not disrupt the Best Picture Oscar narrative, if anything it reinforced what we already knew: that Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” is probably winning Best Picture.
Nolan’s film was, again, the big victor of the night taking Best Picture, Acting Ensemble, Director (Nolan), Supporting Actor (Robert Downey, Jr.), Editing (Jennifer Lame), Score (Ludwig Göransson), Cinematography (Hoyte van Hoytema) and Visual Effects.
Can anything stop this film? At this point, it’ll have to take an upset at the PGA for that happen, but I wouldn’t bet on it. No other film has gained momentum on Nolan’s film this awards season. It’s a train that keeps on rolling, and it’ll continue to steam ahead come Oscar night.
The acting races are more interesting. Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers” won three awards including Best Actor (Paul Giamatti), Supporting Actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), and Best Young Actor/Actress (Dominic Sessa).
The Oscar for Best Actor seems to be between Giamatti and Cillian Murphy, and, as much as I admired Murphy’s turn as Robert J. Oppenheimer, it’s very hard not to root for Giamatti whose pitch perfect performance in ‘Holdovers’ deserves to win.
How about Best Actress? You can call Emma Stone (“Poor Things”) winning the CC award last night an “upset,” but was it really? Many pundits have Lily Gladstone a lock to win the Oscar, but going against her is my firm belief that her role is a supporting turn, and that might lose her some votes — it doesn’t help that Stone’s performance is so damn brilliant.
“Barbie” took six honors including Best Comedy, Best Original Song (“I’m Just Ken”) and Original Screenplay (Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach). At this point, Gerwig’s film will get nominated for plenty of Oscars, but THR’s Scott Feinberg claiming that it’s the Best Picture frontrunner is all kinds of crazy.
Foreign Language Film went to “Anatomy of a Fall”while Best Animated Feature was rewarded to “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”