Awards Season 2025: Critics Choice Awards Winners

Surprise awards season news! 

This passed me by, until I saw some of the winners announced on social media, but yesterday (Friday 7th February 2025) saw the 30th Critics Choice Awards handed out. 

Hosted by Chelsea Handler for the third year in a row, they honoured the best of film and TV in 2024 across 37 categories. Originally due to be handed out on 14th January, the awards were postponed twice (first to 26th January and then to a TBC date in February) due to the L.A. wildfires. Unsurprisingly, and rightly so, many of the acceptance speeches thanked first responders and emergency service personnel for their hard work. 

Here are a full list of the Critics' Choice Awards movie winners: 

Best Picture: Anora

Best Actor: Adrien Brody (The Brutalist)

Best Actress: Demi Moore (The Substance)

Best Supporting Actor: Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain)

Best Supporting Actress: Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez)

Best Acting Ensemble: Conclave

Best Director: Jon M. Chu (Wicked)

Best Original Screenplay: The Substance

Best Adapted Screenplay: Conclave

Best Comedy: A Real Pain and Deadpool & Wolverine (tie)

Best Foreign Language Film: Emilia Pérez

Best Animated Feature: The Wild Robot

Best Score: Challengers

Best Song: "El Mal" (Emilia Pérez)

Best Production Design: Wicked

Best Editing: Challengers

Best Costume Design: Wicked

Best Hair & Makeup: The Substance

Best Visual Effects: Dune: Part Two

Best Cinematography: Nosferatu

Best Young Actor/Actress: Maisy Stella (My Old Ass)

Emilia Pérez, The Substance, and Wicked were the big winners of the night, each taking three awards apiece; behind them are A Real Pain, Conclave, and Challengers with two each. 

There's a definite feel of "all shall have prizes" this time round; there's no one film dominating the awards chatter. Well, that's not strictly true, given the damage limitation the Emilia Pérez PR team are having to do at the moment... It's worth pointing out, however, the winners of these awards have been in place since 10th/11th January, before Karla Sofía Gascón's previous social media posts came to light. I personally don't think Zoe Saldaña has much to worry about; she's the definite frontrunner for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. But it will be interesting to see if Gascón's previous inflammatory rhetoric dents the film's chances for other categories, most notably Best International/Foreign Language Film and Best Picture. 

I'm pleased to see Conclave getting the Adapted Screenplay and Acting Ensemble awards (it's a stellar cast in a superbly written script). I'm also happy to see Deadpool & Wolverine get a bit of awards love; it was a supremely silly, profane but enjoyable piece of cinema. Jon M. Chu's Best Director win elicited a lot of cheers and applause; I think a lot of people feel he's been unfairly sidelined in the Best Director conversation (in fact, the Critics Choice Awards are his only Best Director nomination in the major movie awards this season). It may be that that gets rectified next year with the release of this year's Wicked: Part 2 (now retitled Wicked: For Good). 

Congratulations to all winners!

Two of the major guilds give out their awards today (Saturday 8th February 2025), so there'll be a post tomorrow with the results of the Directors Guild Awards (DGA) and Producers Guild Awards (PGA). I'm expecting good news for The Brutalist in both sets of awards. Call it a hunch. 

Awards Season 2025: Golden Globes Nominations

Today (Monday 9th December 2024) saw the announcement of the nominees for the 82nd Golden Globe Awards, with Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project. The Office, Inside Out) and Morris Chestnut (Boyz N The Hood, The Best Man, Kick-Ass 2) doing the honours. 

The awards are now administered by Dick Clark Productions and Eldridge Industries, following the disbanding of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) in June 2023. A group of voters consisting of 334 journalists representing 85 countries selected the nominees. Upon taking over from the HFPA, the decision was made to keep the split between drama and musical/comedy categories (as had been the HFPA's tradition). 

Below is a selected list of the film nominees:

Best Picture - Drama

The Brutalist

A Complete Unknown

Conclave

Dune Part 2

Nickel Boys

September 5

Best Picture - Musical or Comedy

Anora

Challengers

Emilia Pérez

A Real Pain

The Substance

Wicked

Best Director

Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez)

Sean Baker (Anora)

Edward Berger (Conclave)

Brady Corbet (The Brutalist)

Coralie Fargeat (The Substance)

Payal Kapadia (All We Imagine As Light)

Best Actor - Drama

Adrien Brody (The Brutalist)

Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown)

Daniel Craig (Queer)

Colman Domingo (Sing Sing)

Ralph Fiennes (Conclave)

Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice)

 

Best Actor - Musical or Comedy

Jesse Eisenberg (A Real Pain)

Hugh Grant (Heretic)

Gabriel LaBelle (Saturday Night)

Jesse Plemons (Kinds Of Kindness)

Glen Powell (Hit Man)

Sebastian Stan (A Different Man)

Best Actress - Drama

Pamela Anderson (The Last Showgirl)

Angelina Jolie (Maria)

Nicole Kidman (Babygirl)

Tilda Swinton (The Room Next Door)

Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here)

Kate Winslet (Lee)

Best Actress - Musical or Comedy

Amy Adams (Nightbitch)

Cynthia Erivo (Wicked)

Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez)

Mikey Madison (Anora)

Demi Moore (The Substance)

Zendaya (Challengers)

Best Supporting Actor

Yura Borisov (Anora)

Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain)

Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown)

Guy Pearce (The Brutalist)

Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice)

Denzel Washington (Gladiator II)

Best Supporting Actress

Selena Gomez (Emilia Pérez)

Ariana Grande-Butera (Wicked)

Felicity Jones (The Brutalist)

Margaret Qualley (The Substance)

Isabella Rossellini (Conclave)

Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez)

A full list of nominations can be found here.

OK, before I get too far into it, I just want to point out one thing. There may be a new team heading the Golden Globes but the HFPA's naughty little habit of category fraud is still alive and well. Whilst I am pleased to see both Hugh Grant and Demi Moore recognised for their bravura performances (you can file this directly under "don't hate the player, hate the game"), I would argue that neither Heretic (thriller and psychological horror) nor The Substance (body horror and psychological drama) are musicals or comedies; you could maybe get away with an argument that The Substance (and possibly Nightbitch) could be classed as "black comedy". I don't get the thinking behind it at all. It's giving off The Tourist and The Martian vibes for those who remember those years. 

I'm really pleased to see both Daniel Craig and Ralph Fiennes recognised. I was initially unsure whether Queer (on its title alone, let alone its content) would figure, but I'm glad it did. Similarly, I'm chuffed that Conclave has got as much love as it has; it's a well-made film, expertly acted and beautiful to look at. This year's Cinematic and Box Office Achievement award nominees include Deadpool & Wolverine, Twisters, Wicked, and (surprisingly) Alien: Romulus. Also, in case anyone is wondering what September 5 is ('cause I sure was), it's a historical thriller which follows the ABC Sports broadcast team who find themselves covering the hostage crisis which unfolded at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics.

Emilia Pérez leads the way with an amazing 10 nominations; The Brutalist (a biopic of architect László Toth) is second with seven, and Conclave has six. 

It was also announced that the brilliant Viola Davis will be the recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award (for "outstanding achievement" in film), whilst Ted Danson would be getting the television equivalent with the Carol Burnett Award. 

The Golden Globes will be handed out in a ceremony on Sunday 5th January 2025, to be broadcast live on CBS with Nikki Glaser (Trainwreck, I Feel Pretty, Good Clean Filth) taking up hosting duties. 

Congratulations to all nominees!

So, next up on the awards season trail, and our last stop before the Christmas holidays, will be the Critics' Choice Awards who will announce their nominees this coming Thursday (12th December 2024).