The 24th Critics Choice Awards were held in Santa Monica, California last night, with Roma taking home four awards and Bohemian Rhapsody got 0 awards, like the bad movie it is.
It is well worth paying attention to this awards ceremony – in the last 15 years, it has given Best Picture to 10 films that have gone on to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
This year’s winner was Roma, that black-and-white film you’ve seen all over Netflix, and your mate who pretends to like foreign films says is “really good”
Following its shock defeat to Bohemian Rhapsody at the Golden Globes last week, sanity was restored and Roma won the smart Critics Choice, not the dumb-dumb Golden Globes which is voted on by hacks.
Alfonso Cuaron has picked up yet another Best Director win, and at this stage of awards season all other competitors may as well throw in the towel and go for a pint while that award is being called out.
Cuaron also directed Gravity and Children Of Men so the question now is “why do other directors still bother making movies when Alfonso Cuaron is still knocking around?”
On the acting front, Christian Bale has emerged as the front-runner for Best Actor for his portrayal as Dick Cheney in Vice.
A horrible person plays one of history’s most horrible people, he gained a tonne of weight for the movie, and people liked the director’s previous movie, The Big Short, which overcame the handicap of it being a bad movie to win an Oscar for screenwriting.
Following a win at the Golden Globes last week and last night, this award may as well be as good as Bale’s, with Rami Malek and Ethan Hawke the other main rivals.
In an ideal world, the Oscar would go to Ethan Hawke, but awards shows are too cowardly to give it to Hawke, so they’ll either give it to Malek or Bale, two undeserving winners.
On the actress front, there is a three-way WWE Royal Rumble fight between Glenn Close, Lady Gaga and Olivia Colman.
The smart, pragmatic bet might be to put the money on Close, as she is a six-time nominee and as we all know, the Academy love giving long-time losers the Oscar for the wrong film. (See also: Al Pacino for Scent Of A Woman in 1993, Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant in 2016.)
True Detective Season 3 premiered last night, with Mahershala Ali’s performance getting rave reviews, and by the time the season is over, he may well have a second Oscar on his mantelpiece for Green Book.
In an ideal world, Mahershala Ali would be winning every year, and I think no one would be mad if he broke Hepburn’s record of four Oscars.
Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight follow-up If Beale Street Could Talk has gathered significant critical acclaim but relatively muted commercial success, which is basically a polite way of saying it’s a movie that only film snobs would like.
It won two awards last night – Best Supporting Actress for Regina King and Best Adapted Screenplay, which makes the movie a shoo-in to be a pub quiz trivia question in years to come.
In a twist, long-time Scorcese collaborator Paul Schrader’s film First Reformed has come back into the fold as an awards contender after being snubbed at the Golden Globes, in another example of that show being stupid.
Common sense prevailed as it won Best Original Screenplay, over A Quiet Place, Vice, Green Book, and Eighth Grade, the debut film from comedian Bo Burnham, formerly of Vine. (RIP).
In a surprise development, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse has become the one to watch for Best Animated Feature, after The Incredibles 2 seemed to have had the award sown up since it was seemingly first announced.
It too has pulled the Golden Globes/CCA double, making Best Animated Feature at February’s Oscars one of the tightest races that category has seen in years.
TLDR version – Roma will win Best Picture at the Oscars.
Sorry, Jackson Maine stans, but never bet against the director who made the only good Harry Potter movie.
