Critics Choice. Nominations for Everything Everywhere and for Everyone!
Wednesday, December 14, 2022 at 12:29PM
NATHANIEL R in Babylon, Critics Choice, Critics Choice Awards, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Punditry, precursor awards

by Nathaniel R

The Critics Choice Award Nominations have been announced for the 2022 film and television year with Everything Everywhere All At Once (14 nods), The Fabelmans (11 nods), and Babylon (10 nods) leading the pack. (They said "long movies only!"). I have yet to meet any critics who were totally wild for Babylon though I do know one industry person that is. The CCA have not heard our moans and groans that if you nominate everything, nominations aren't that special or exciting. They've taken their mode of choosing one more than the Oscars or SAG or Guilds do in their categories (to help them with their predictions... sigh) and applied it even to the now ten wide field of Oscar's Best Picture race by choosing 11 titles. (double sigh).

Here are the nominations...

BEST PICTURE

 

Somehow there are 11 nominees. Yikes. That is too many to take seriously other than as an attempt to sum up the Oscar race. (Some longer shot Best Picture possibilities that didn't land here are Triangle of Sadness, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Whale, A Man Called Otto, The Woman King, She Said, and Living... but none of them should give up hope yet since there's no overlap in voters and Oscar nomination balloting is a month away still (January 12th). Academy members are voting this week, but only on the specialty categories that have multiple rounds or "bake-offs". 

 

BEST DIRECTOR

 

Same list as the too-wide Best Picture race except for booting Rian Johnson (Glass Onion) and Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun Maverick) in favor of Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Woman King) since there are only 10 nominees here rather than 11. 

 

BEST ACTRESS

 

There's never enough drama to these things when you do more nominations than Oscar eventually will. Like, who did the groups actually LOVE? Still, one supposes it is interesting that Olivia Colman Empire of Light is missing and horrible that with six spots there's no Emma Thompson in the mix for her genius in Good Luck To You Leo Grande. 

 

BEST ACTOR

 

Bad news for Diego Calva and Jeremy Pope but then Oscar has trouble with younger leading men so they were always going to have trouble gaining traction and at least they're both up at the Golden Globes! The other  Globe nominee missing here is Hugh Jackman. 

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

 

Passing over Dolly De Leon for Triangle of Sadness, who got in and the star-obsessed Globes despite not being famous, is not a good look.

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

 

Interesting that Ben Whishaw for Women Talking doesn't seem to be panning out (he also missed at the Globes)

 

BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ ACTRESS

 

Forgot to do our annual list of "who is eligible in this category" since it gets no pre-announcement press. Whoops. Nevertheless Critics Choice always goes for whoever was in the major movies here without thinking about the performances, per se. I mean how do you nominated Close for Best International Feature, for example, and NOT nominate its leading actor when so much of the movie is about looking at his face trying to process emotions (or not) that he cant' deal with? 

 

BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE

 

Given that they gave individual nominations to all the principal players in both Banshees of Inisherin and Everything Everywhere All At Once, this category feels redundant. 

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

 

Suddenly we're down to five nominees... what's the message there?

 

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

 

 

CINEMATOGRAPHY

 

 

And we're back to six nominees.

PRODUCTION DESIGN

 

 

EDITING

 

 

 

COSTUME DESIGN 

Really proud of CCA for once for thinking outside of the box a bit here and picking a contemporary film (Glass Onion). 

 MAKEUP AND HAIR

 

VISUAL EFFECTS

Black Panther Wakanda Forever's underwater visual vfx are looking extremely shoddy in retrospect given Avatar's arrival. We wonder if that might matter to the Oscar branch when they vote on these awards.

COMEDY

 

 

And the first total surprise. Was not expecting to see Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent there. Thought it would be something more recent like The Menu. 

ANIMATED FEATURE

 

 

Back down to five nominees. The Critics Choice nominations in this category should never be taken that seriously since they almost always ignore the international animated films. EFA nominee Little Nicholas and Globe nominee Inu-Oh are possibilities with Oscar still. 

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM

 

 

And back up to six... it's like a see-saw with no rhyme or reason! RRR is not eligible for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars but sometimes not being eligible for that prize helps you in other Oscar races (see the Oscar fates of famous films like Talk to Her and Three Colors: Red for proof)

This list is the same as the Globes list plus Bardo... which is a very weird inclusion for a "critics" group given the somewhat harsh reviews the movie has received. It's also the six subtitled features with the highest profiles this year in the US. Oscar might get friskier since they require members to watch a certain percentage of the contenders before voting. So dont count out Pakistan's Joyland, Denmark's Holy Spider, and more...

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

 

 

This is the exact same list at the Globes plus "New Body Rhumba" which is a great choice and the best scene in White Noise. Expect Oscars list to be different because this group and the Globes are not good at predicting Oscar's taste in songs (though they do, sadly, try!)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

 

 

 

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THESE NOMINATIONS? ANY QUICK OBSERVATIONS? 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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