At present, the mantelpiece of Paul Thomas Anderson remains strikingly light on major trophies. Despite being responsible for some of the films widely acknowledged to be the best of the century so far, including There Will Be Blood, The Master and Phantom Thread, the writer-director is yet to win an Oscar, Golden Globe or more than one Bafta (original screenplay for 2021’s Licorice Pizza).
This year’s Golden Globe nominations suggest this is about to change, with his counterculture epic One Battle After Another leading the pack of nominees with nine mentions on the shortlist, including for best comedy or musical, best director, best original screenplay, leading actor for Leonardo DiCaprio, leading actor for Chase Infiniti, supporting actress for Teyana Taylor and two chances to scoop supporting actor – for Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro. Jonny Greenwood’s score was also recognised.
Anderson, 55, has been here before, of course – he already has 11 Oscar nominations, one of the highest totals for someone who is yet to win – yet the season so far indicates One Battle After Another, in which DiCaprio plays a flailing freedom fighter facing off against Penn’s white supremacist, is the film to beat. Last week it won both the Gotham awards and New York Film Critics Circle, while on Sunday it also triumphed at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards.
The film best placed to manage an upset seems set to be Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s Mississippi-set ghost thriller which reunites him with Fruitvale Station and Creed star Michael B Jordan and was a major box office hit when it opened last spring. Sinners took seven Globe nominations, including best drama, director and actor. Coogler made history in 2018, when his Marvel film, Black Panther, took $1.3bn – the most grossed by a film directed by an African American man – and became the first superhero film to be nominated for best picture.
No Black director has yet won either the main Golden Globe or Academy Award for best director, although several – including Steve McQueen and Barry Jenkins – have directed films that have won best picture.
Both Sinners and One Battle After Another are made by the studio Warner Bros, currently the subject of a proposed buyout by Netflix. Although any deal is unlikely to go through by mid January, when the Globes take place, if it completes by 15 March it would bolster the streaming giant’s chances of securing their first, and highly coveted, best picture win.
Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value performed considerably better than expected, with eight nominations including best female actor for Renate Reinsve, and supporting female actor for both Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning, supporting male actor for Stellan Skarsgård, plus recognition for the film’s original screenplay and direction.
It is one of six contenders for best non-English language motion picture, including Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident. The Palme d’Or winner was put forward by France for the award as its director – whose experiences in prison inspired the film – is out of favour with his country’s government, which last week sentenced him to a further year in prison. His film is also up for best drama, best screenplay and best director.
The healthy showing for both films, as well as for Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent – each of which picked up three nominations – are testament to both the Globes’ uptick in internationalism and a year in cinema that has been both relatively soft for Hollywood critical hits while non-English language films have thrived.
Wagner Moura’s nomination for best male actor in a drama, for The Secret Agent, makes him the first Brazilian to compete in the category, while actors such as Brendan Fraser (Rental Family) and Robert Pattinson (Die My Love) were excluded.
Other significant snubs include Kathryn Bigelow, whose nuclear thriller A House of Dynamite failed to pick up a single nomination despite its rapturous reception at the Venice film festival; Alex Garland’s Warfare; and the highly acclaimed Taiwanese film Left-Handed Girl, written and directed by Tsou Shih-Ching, the longterm collaborator of Sean Baker, whose Anora swept the Oscars earlier this year.
Sydney Sweeney’s committed performance as boxer Christy Martin also failed to translate to an expected nomination, while Bradley Cooper’s standup dramedy Is This Thing On? also failed to land any names in the hat.
A number of hopefuls also only scored a single nomination for their stars, including Song Sung Blue (Kate Hudson), Springsteen biopic Deliver Me from Nowhere (Jeremy Allen White), Shaker story The Testament of Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried), Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt (Julia Roberts) and Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love (Jennifer Lawrence).
There was also some confusion among pundits as to how Superman (total takings: $616m) failed to land a cinematic and box office achievement mention, while KPop Demon Hunters – released on Netflix with a brief singalong release – did.
Meanwhile Hamnet, Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of the Maggie O’Farrell novel, took six nominations for best drama and director as well as adapted screenplay and nods for its stars, Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. In 2021, Zhao became the second woman ever to win the best director Oscar, for Nomadland.
Scoring slightly softer than expected was Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie’s madcap story of a table tennis hustler played by Timothée Chalamet, which is up for three awards: leading actor in a comedy or musical, original screenplay and director. Gwyneth Paltrow missed out on a supporting actress nomination for a performance many perceived as her career comeback.
Chalamet, who turns 30 later this month, is perceived by many to have been last season’s runner-up in the best actor race, with his turn as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown losing every award save the Screen Actors Guild prize to The Brutalist’s Adrien Brody.
With Wicked: For Good, Jon M Chu bested the four nominations earned last year by his first instalment, taking five nods, including best comedy or musical, best actress for Cynthia Erivo and best supporting actress for Ariana Grande. Erivo’s nod makes her the first Black woman to be nominated twice in that category.
This year’s TV nominations were dominated by HBO/Sky’s envelope-pushing drama The White Lotus and Netflix’s audacious single-shot series Adolescence, which took six and five nominations respectively.
Stephen Graham, Ashley Walters, Owen Cooper and Erin Doherty are all up for acting awards for Adolescence, while the show will compete against All Her Fault, The Beast in Me, Black Mirror, Dying for Sex and The Girlfriend for best limited series.
The White Lotus, meanwhile, scores nods for Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Carrie Coon, Parker Posey, Aimee Lou Wood, as well as for best drama series.
Previously announced were the winners of the lifetime achievement awards, Helen Mirren and Sarah Jessica Parker who will receive the Cecil B DeMille and Carol Burnett awards, respectively, at a ceremony on 8 January.
Last year’s best film Golden Globes were won by The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez for drama and musical/comedy respectively, while the lead acting prizes were taken by Brody, Demi Moore, Fernanda Torres and Sebastian Stan. The ceremony was hosted by Nikki Glaser, who returns for this year’s ceremony on 11 January. The Oscar nominations are unveiled on 22 January, ahead of the 15 March ceremony.
