The 2025 winners have been everywhere in the map, portending a wide-open awards season.
Traditionally talking, the purpose of the Golden Globes has all the time been two-fold. First: Get some memorable speeches out of a bunch of celebrities packed right into a ballroom and plied with booze on nationwide tv. Second: Give some perception into who’s favored to win on the extra prestigious Academy Awards. For higher and worse, this 12 months’s Globes didn’t actually trouble to do both. Save for Kieran Culkin, not one of the winners appeared too buzzed to talk. In the meantime, the nebulous Hollywood International Press Affiliation of previous has been revamped and reformed with a brand new, broader group that has much more eclectic style. The 2025 winners have been everywhere in the map, clarifying solely {that a} wide-open awards season lies forward.
By comparability, final 12 months’s Oscar race was settled six months earlier than the ceremony, because it simply so occurred that Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer was each one of many 12 months’s most acclaimed and highest-grossing motion pictures. The inevitability of Oppenheimer gave voters the possibility to acknowledge a real theater-packing hit and quickly stave off existential crises about whether or not awards season actually issues anymore—all the time a priority, as crucial tastes have additional diverged from what audiences have a tendency to love.
This 12 months’s race, although, is essentially the most unpredictable in a very long time. Forward of the Oscars, which occur March 2, spiky arthouse initiatives, foreign-language musicals, and brassy blockbusters are all elbowing for consideration. The Globes unfold the wealth to some early favorites, with Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist gaining essentially the most traction. However smaller works reminiscent of I’m Nonetheless Right here and A Totally different Man—which is likely to be fortunate to get any Oscar love in any respect—additionally scored huge.
Emilia Pérez received essentially the most film awards with 4, although apart from Finest Musical or Comedy, its solely different main trophy went to Zoe Saldaña for Supporting Actress. In any other case, a sweep for the Netflix-distributed musical drama a few transsexual cartel chief—which led all motion pictures with 10 nominations—didn’t fairly materialize. Nonetheless, it pointedly nabbed the massive prize over Depraved, a smash hit that has dominated the zeitgeist since Thanksgiving. That movie was as an alternative given the Cinematic and Field Workplace Achievement award, a chintzy pat on the top cooked up for final 12 months’s Globes ceremony. (Barbie, a equally populist hit that didn’t win the highest prizes, acquired it then.)
On the extra severe aspect, the muscular epic The Brutalist received Finest Drama, together with Finest Director for Brady Corbet and Finest Actor in a Drama for its lead, Adrien Brody, who performs a Hungarian architect struggling in post-war America. At 215 minutes, it makes a heftier ask of audiences than most movies, however Corbet’s speech was a passionate entreaty for Hollywood to assist riskier work. “No person was asking for a three-and-a-half-hour movie a few midcentury designer, in 70-millimeter,” he stated. Tonight, it was feted nonetheless. The Globe wins would possibly evenly anoint The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez as Oscar favorites, however each are nonetheless comparatively exterior of the mainstream, and hardly a positive factor. One other film—be it a box-office hit like Depraved, a extra down-the-middle favourite like A Full Unknown, or a crucial fave like Sean Baker’s Anora, which oddsmakers had predicted for 3 Globes however which ended up with none—would possibly simply problem them, come March.
The reconstituted Hollywood International Press additionally took some swings that felt very removed from the Globes of previous, which typically appeared prefer it rewarded initiatives that had despatched one of the best reward baskets to voters. Stream, a tiny, dialogue-free Latvian film a few cat, beat out The Wild Robotic and Inside Out 2 for finest animated movie. Fernanda Torres received Finest Actress in a Drama for the charged Brazilian movie I’m Nonetheless Right here, over celebrities reminiscent of Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman. Sebastian Stan picked up Finest Actor in a Musical or Comedy for A Totally different Man, an acidic although little-seen satire—it grossed below $1 million throughout its U.S. theatrical run.
Possibly the most important shock of the night time was Demi Moore’s upset win for Finest Actress in a Musical or Comedy for The Substance, a spectacular piece of gross-out horror that has managed to remain within the awards dialog regardless of being loaded with gore and nudity. Moore beat out the ostensible favourite Mikey Madison (of Anora), megastar Zendaya (of Challengers) and Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón. Her success very a lot throws a bomb into that Oscar class, and will make stronger a film I had figured was too lurid for historically stuffy awards voters.
All of those surprising wins did come on the expense of high-grossing motion pictures that viewers at dwelling have really seen. The Brutalist is barely now beginning its wider theatrical rollout, whereas confirmed hits reminiscent of Depraved, Dune: Half Two, and Challengers have been largely neglected because the night time dragged on. A crowded Oscar race approaches—and if it seems just like the moneymakers aren’t selecting up steam, business observers will as soon as once more ponder the purpose of an awards season that doesn’t attempt to replicate the general public’s tastes. If that should be the case, at the least Golden Globe voters obtained appreciably bizarre with it.
