Sinners may be heading for a shutout
The biggest backlash brewing concerns Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, lauded by critics and embraced – especially in the US – by audiences as one of 2025’s key cultural landmarks. The thriller did win two Globes – for cinematic and box office achievement and original score – but both wound up not really counting. The first is the Globes’s consolation prize (it was won by Barbie in 2023 and Wicked last year); the second wasn’t even broadcast on the telecast. Coogler missing out on screenplay to One Battle After Another was perceived by some as a slap in the face – the Oscars and Baftas separate the category into original and adapted, however, so a corrective could come.
Stellan Skarsgård could sneak in
The Globes had no love for meta-comedy Jay Kelly, about an ageing film star trying to connect with his daughters – and on the face of it, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value (about an ailing film director trying to connect with his daughters) looked to have suffered the same fate. But its sole win was a big one, and the 72-year-old now edges ahead of the slightly underpowered pack (Mescal, Penn, Sandler, Del Toro, Elordi). His speech about the primacy of cinema will also help.
Wicked flails
One takeaway from last year’s awards season was that Jon M Chu’s upcoming sequel could only capitalise on the wins it racked up. Yet that doesn’t seem to be happening yet, and the major prizes for which it’s currently in contention look ever more likely to go elsewhere. Teyana Taylor’s supporting actress win for One Battle means she’s strong favourite – with Weapons’s Amy Madison the only real competition – and so likely to shut out Ariana Grande. Meanwhile, Jessie Buckley is a lock for best actress (for Hamnet), so this won’t be Cynthia Erivo’s year either – particularly as Rose Byrne managed to come out on top in the comedy/musical category (for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You).
Chalamet a smash
Just as Buckley’s name may as well be etched on the Oscar already, there’s little sense that even Leonardo DiCaprio can unseat Timothée Chalamet’s march to the podium to pick up best actor. His turn in Marty Supreme has so far taken him every actor gong there is going; add to that the momentum of his previous losses and the headline-friendly speech shoutouts to his girlfriend, Kylie Jenner, and victory seems certain.
The Globes overhaul has worked – sort of
Only a couple of years ago, the Globes were still mired in scandal and discredit, but the light rebrand and voter overhaul appears to have done the trick. Films without substantial lobbying budgets delivered winners as well as nominees, and the focus was admirably international. And just as last year Fernanda Torres scooped a surprise best actress in a drama win for I’m Still Here, so this year her countryman Wagner Moura did the same in the best actor category for The Secret Agent. It’s hard to see him progressing further in the Oscars race, but the win does as much for the Globes’ reputation as it does for his. The international film win for The Secret Agent also adds weight to the suggestion that the new influx of Brazilian voters have some serious muscle.
That said, aspects of the ceremony itself could clearly do with some of the production expertise represented in the room. No film clips were shown for the first hour, the inaugural podcast prize was actively positioned as an alternative to cinema, and some of the music cues seemed inopportune. Buckley’s raw and howling performance in Hamnet was what won her the trophy; something slightly at odds with the choice of her walk-on music (Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely).
Hamnet is One Battle’s only real competition
The actress win is a given, but the campaign hopes for Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of the Maggie O’Farrell book clearly don’t end there. Steven Spielberg took to the stage to cheerlead for the movie and its director, who – accepting the best drama award – quoted Paul Mescal as telling her earlier that day that making the movie “made him realise that the most important thing about making the film was learning to be vulnerable enough to allow ourselves to be seen for who we are, for who we ought to be, and to give ourselves fully to the world even the parts of ourselves we are ashamed of, that we are afraid of, that are imperfect, so that the people that we speak to they can fully accept themselves for who they are,” she said.
She also shouted out the industry inroads achieved by Coogler – which may remind some Oscar voters of the potential queasiness of shutting out both she and the Sinners director for big awards in March. Nonetheless the momentum now built up by One Battle may be unstoppable. And Paul Thomas Anderson’s own record of being overlooked at the Academy Awards is also unhappily impeccable.
Biopics might just be on the way out
Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen, Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing Machine, Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee, Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon – all stars (and movies) shut out entirely from this year’s Globes winners (while Sydney Sweeney’s boxing biopic Christy didn’t even get a nomination). Meanwhile creative adaptations of chewy literature (One Battle is another Anderson take on Thomas Pynchon) hoovered up the glory, while Marty Supreme is only a biopic of Marty Reisman in the loosest possible sense. Awards bait commissioning is still going strong, but studios can’t help but notice the most historically reliable genre seems to be having a wobble.
