Critics Choice Voters All Infected By "Sinners" 
Sunday, December 7, 2025 at 12:00PM
NATHANIEL R in Best Makeup, Blue Moon, Colleen Atwood, Critics Choice Awards, Everett Blunck, Frankenstein, Hacks, One Battle After Another, Sentimental Value, Sinners, TV, Wicked For Good

by Nathaniel R

SINNERS

As a voting member, despite my votes rarely being reflected in nominations, it is my duty to share the annual Critics Choice Award Nominations. As is increasingly the case in modern awards voting, hardly a problem unique to the CCAs, there is far less spread the wealth than there use to be. I believe this is an unintended consequence of expanded Best Picture lists which theoretically narrow voters ideas about a) what they should watch and b) what they should vote for without "wasting" their precious few ballot spots. This year FOUR pictures had double digit nominations with Ryan Coogler's genre hopping vampire picture Sinners scoring 17 (gulp) nominations, just one shy of Barbie's all time record (18). One Battle After Another was in second place with 14 nominations. 

Anyway let's get to the nominations, some commentary, and a few Oscar punditry notes, too.... 

BEST PICTURE 

This reads exactly like my November Best Picture Prediction list with the exception of the inclusion of Bugonia (which I had in 12th place) since i had bet on The Secret Agent. I have since learned the error of my ways Punditry wise. While it's been clear for months that The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, and It Was Just An Accident were the Holy Trinity of 2025/2026 Awards Season International Division (what a mouthful!), it does appear that the Brazilian entry is falling into a distant third.

This is a lot of NETFLIX in Best Picture (three fims) though it's actually Warner Bros who won the "most nominations" awards. Some pessimists (including unfortunately myself) believe that Netflix just bought Warner Bros in order to kill it (and movie theaters). Either way it's terrible news for movie lovers since we all benefit with more competition among major studios (as opposed to less and less "majors" making all movies.) 

BEST ACTOR

Six nominations always makes acting lists feel like they're trying to cover all Oscar bets. I personally don't get the appeal of Michael B Jordan's Sinners performance in terms of "Best" (and I loved the movie!) as previously discussed in the Best Actor volley... but I am only one person. He's been so so much worthier in previous years but it looks like he has his best shot yet despite that. Since Bugonia and Jay Kelly both made the CCA Best Picture list is it reasonable to assume that Clooney and Plemons might not have been far behind?

BEST ACTRESS  

My long scoffed at prediction that Cynthia Erivo was no sure thing in Oscar's forthcoming Best Actress race -- a prediction that was mostly due to the fact that double nods for the same character are uncommon -- may well be vindicated in the end. If even the Critics Choice voters, who regularly try to predict the Oscars with their votes (sigh), didn't include her...

Nevertheless Best Actress is volatile. There are six women nominated at the CCA which is already one too many but that number still doesn't include high profile contenders who are easy to imagine surfacing in either the 10 wide Globe list or the 5 wide SAG list like Erivo, Tessa Thompson, Kate Hudson, and not one but FOUR previous Oscar winners who have their fanbases: Jodie Foster, Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, and Laura Dern. (Thompson feels least likely of that "top 13" which surprises me a little given what a showcase the film is for her and how underappreciated her career has been. Obviously my November prediction optimism now looks quite wrong)

In short: There are numerous avenues which could result in a surprise snub or mildly unexpected inclusion on Oscar nomination day. 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

It's Best Leading Actor, Part Two so congratulations to indisputably "supporting" player Benicio Del Toro who is so wonderful in One Battle After Another.This year's most heartbreaking Category Fraud Victim is now officially Berlinale winner Andrew Scott (Blue Moon) who is even stronger than Ethan Hawke in that intimate drama about a legendary lyricist (Lorenz Hart) on the evening of his former songwriting partner's culture-shaking success. But since it's actually a supporting role (Scott being the former songwriting partner who is the toast of the town just this side of the camera's view) voters are ignoring him. 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Amy Madigan, brilliant in WEAPONS

I remember loving Mosaku when I saw Sinners months and months ago but the individual performances have faded from memory a bit. I'll need to rewatch before the Oscars. I'm all about rejoicing that early voting groups are supporting Amy Madigan. She needs the boost despite being so obviously worthy in a hit film. The sad truth is that she is vulnerable in all awards races way apart from those two points (worthy & hit film). Otherwise she is a true supporting player (oh no!) in genres voters don't care about (Horror!) and in a movie people are not thinking about in terms of the larger awards race (Weapons).

In other reaction news I predicted both Fanning & Lilleaas in my April Foolish predictions and then it felt like wishful thinking. Now maybe the tide turns back to Sentimental Value doubling up? Still, I wonder if the Academy is ready to nominate Fanning yet. I'm not so sure they are though this role will obviously help that come to pass in the future, by way of momentum building. 

BEST YOUNG ACTOR / ACTRESS

Everett Blunck in THE PLAGUE

True fact: We voters get just three choices in all categories beyond Best Picture and all of mine made it: Blunck, Jupe, and Ye... though I can't recall if I voted for Blunck in The Plague or in Griffin in Summer (either way DESERVED!). I love this category because it cannot be used to "predict" so you are sort of getting a sense of which performances voters actually loved which is rare these days when everyone wants to influence the Oscars instead of screaming "these are the movies / performances, I love." That said this category has produced some clunkers in the past when voters have defaulted to high profile films just because they were right there.

Meanwhile, I love Paul Mescal with all my heart but it's so obnoxious that he's campaigning supporting for Hamnet and thereby blocking his tiny co-star Jacobi Jupe who is memorable as his doomed child. 

 

BEST DIRECTOR

I remain annoyed that Del Toro is taking up so much space this season. If he keeps Zhao or Trier or Coogler or anyone really out of the eventual Oscar lineup I am going to be furious. Visible passion does not equal good directing. It can but they aren't the same thing. I could probably name 15 worthier directors this season off the top of my head without even consulting my Film Bitch Awards consideration spreadsheet.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY  

There were a lot of interesting originals screenplays this year (though your mileage might vary on any one of them) so pouring one out for the films that werent nominated including: Twinless, It Was Just An Accident, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Blue Moon, Eternity, Roofman, The Plague, A Private Live... I could keep going! 

 

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY 

NO OTHER CHOICE

Thrilled for Park Chan Wook since he feels like a longshot for Oscar love and can use every boost. The screenplays to Pillion, Heddia, Mickey 17, to name just a few off the top of my head run circles around Frankenstein (not a good screenplay even if some of the visuals are noteworthy) so I'm a little annoyed... not that I should keep flogging that reanimated corpse. I don't mean to be so grumpy today.

 

BEST CASTING AND ENSEMBLE

With no precedent we still don't know how the new Oscar category will turn out but it will be so disappointing if it's just the top 5 Best Picture candidates. We're hoping the actual Academy voters are not as dumb as anyone who would nominate  Wicked For Good since THE CASTING WAS ALREADY DONE FOR A PREVIOUS MOVIE AND SHOULDN'T BE ELIGIBLE. THERE ARE NO NEW CHARACTERS! I mean come on, now. 

Also Casting is not the same as Ensemble. Ensemble is how the actors execute their performances, collectively. Casting is picking these particular people to star in the movie and pull off the screenplay. Different achievements and even different (should be) eligibility factors... particularly when it comes to franchises in which the casting was done long ago. 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Not a surprising list but at least most of these films are beautiful in their own ways. I'm a little disappointed that Sinners and Frankenstein are going to be mainstays in this category as Cinematography is not their strongest visual elements (lighting actors and good color grading being important) but award season will award season. Happy but not at all surprised to see Train Dreams in the mix which is a classic case of traditional but phenomenally executed cinematography.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS's retro-futuristic utopia

This year in the craft categories they added a step wherein a Below the Line Nominating Committee  narrowed down all the crafts to around a dozen finalists. This was agonizing for me as a devotee of film crafts as it immediately eliminated several things I had hoped to vote for. Nevertheless the new step was interesting in that sometimes a dozen options agreed upon by a group can reveal passion votes in a way that an even larger group picking only three options will tend to homogenize any result. There were one or two surprising inclusions in each shortlist but almost none of them made it to the actual nomination. So I'm happy to see that The Fantastic Four landed this single nominations since it is a rare Marvel movie with its own visual point of view. 

BEST EDITING

I have always found it fascinating when any group gives an Editing nomination or even a trophy to something they didn't honor otherwise. i am absolutely NOT against it, don't misunderstand me, since all crafts deserve to be evaluated on their own, but given that voters usually just name their favourite Best Picture hopefuls over and over again it's something of a suprise when they stump for something in Editing thats not honored elsewhere (see the inclusion of A House of Dynamite & The Perfect Neighbor here).

 

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

This could well be the Oscar list (minus one) and I don't hate it even if it won't line up exactly with mine. I'm very happy to be enthusiastic about Colleen Atwood again (it's been a long time) since her work on both Kiss of the Spider-Woman and One Battle After Another is fantastic. What's more they don't feel derivative of her past achievements and she had been getting a little predictable in the 2010s.

 

BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP

28 YEARS LATER

The CCA loves to brag about how well they predict the Oscars -- so I think a little ribbing is due. They used to be very very bad at predicting the Oscar lineup in this particular... even with six guesses to the Academy's three nominees, they never once foresaw all of the nominees. They've gotten a little closer in recent years with 3 or 4 nominees repeating at the Oscars. This is a long way of saying that the peculiar passions and aversions of the Academy's makeup branch have always been a little unreadable. 

An interesting piece of trivia for you in regards to 28 Years Later. Oscar voters have never nominated a zombie picture in Best Makeup -- despite that genre being such a consistent staple of both cinema and of Makeup Effects work. The closest they've come is arguably those undead sailors from Pirates of the Caribbean but does anyone really think of that as a zombie franchise? 

 

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

I am mystified by this list but I do not expect that it will repeat at the Oscars. Oscar voters are not fans of DC movies in visual effects so Superman's future prospects feel dicey. Sinners, despite its Best Picture heat, also feels like something of a longshot in that it's more of a "supporting visual effects" movie which Oscar's visual effects branch tend to ignore.  It'll be interesting to see what that branch goes for but I think it's embarrassing that the CCA didn't nominated Mickey 17 which has easily superior visual effects to most of these.

BEST STUNT DESIGN   

I'm happy that SAG and CCA have stunt categories (even if one or two choices at either each year are head-scratching) and it's one of the dumbest things about Oscar history that they never thought it was important enough to have as a category. If anything it was MORE important in Oscar's heyday (i.e. the 20th Century) since digital artists behind computers weren't doing most of the riskiest and most spectacular stunts yet. 

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE  

LITTLE AMELIE OR THE CHARACTER OR RAIN

I'm just here to say that Little Amelie and Arco are both really good and I hope moviegoers actually have access to them before Oscar nominations arrive. 

 

BEST COMEDY   

I voted for Eternity. Go see it. 

 

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Weird not to see Sentimental Value here but it made the Best Picture list. Remember months ago when I said 'what if all of Oscar's Best International nominees are distributed by Neon?' They really decided "this category is ours!" in 2025.

Weird anecdote: When the CCA released their list Belen was tacked on at the end out of the alphabetical order. What was that about?  Whether you arrange the list by film name, studio name, or country... it remains alphabetically first. 

BEST SONG  

"Girl in the Bubble" is a highpoint in WICKED FOR GOOD

 

Sadly, we have to knock out a couple of these come Oscar time to include Diane Warren's forthcoming obligatory nomination for whatever ditty she wrote this year. Will the eventual Oscar winner be a nailbiter between "Golden" and "I Lied To You" or will a clear take all prizes frontrunner emerge? 

BEST SCORE  

I was FURIOUS that I was not allowed to vote for The Fantastic Four First Steps which is Michael Giacchino's Best Score since his Oscar winning work on Pixar's UP. 

BEST SOUND   

And that's that for the movies.

The CCA also have Television Categories so I'll present those with only very limited commentary since I do not vote on those (who has enough time to see ALL the movies and ALL the television?). 

TELEVISION

BEST DRAMA SERIES 

ALIEN EARTH

Huge fan of Alien Earth which honestly felt like the very first time since Sigourney Weaver's exit 28 years ago that the franchise bothered to come up with any new ideas.  (Prometheus tried in 2012 but still...)  Not only was it unpredictable and fresh, it was actually scary. 

BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES

Disappointed to see Sydney Chandler skipped here given Alien Earth's presence in Series; she handles the demands of being convincingly synthetic but also human but also an extroadinarily intellivent child in an adult body very well. And she has a coming of age and into power / loss of innocence character arc that she manages superbly, too.

I love Carrie Coon (in general) but I do not understand acting nominations for The Gilded Age in any category. The quality of that show in nearly every arena is hit and miss at best. At times I imagine that the set is run more like a soap opera factory than a traditional prestige drama production and they all get their lines and their costumes are being sewn or glued on seconds before the cameras role; are they only allowed one take before it's time to move on to the next set-up where the sets are still being constructed? 


BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

 Remember when Ato Essandoh was a guest on our podcast for Supporting Actress Smackdown during the pandemic?

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES 

I am sad for Emilia Jones who was so tuned in and heartbreaking in Task.

BEST COMEDY SERIES

I finally stopped watching Only Murders... was so fun for a few years but eventually all shows start feeling like chores a few years in unless they really keep the creative fires burning. Rooting for Nobody Wants This which I couldn't possibly love more. 

BEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES

Yay Skarsgård. Murderbot was underappreciated.

BEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES

This list is a perfect example of why Category Fraud is often dumb even when it works out. It would be so easy for Hacks (which is very very popular) to get Hannah Einbinder nominated alongside Smart (as pristinely obvious co-lead situation as f***ing Thelma & Louise)  and if she were the overall quality of the nominee lists for Comedy Series Leads would improve. What's more there is evidence in television awards history that you can get Emmys for each of your leads of the same gender: See Golden Girls which resulted in one win each for White, McClanahan, and Arthur. 

I firmly believe that if they had not pulled such a manipulative tactic they could have still have managed wins for both Einbinder and Smart. And, even better for awards watchers, it would mean more variety in winners too and we wouldn't need to see Smart win as often as Julia Louis Dreyfus once did (I'm projecting but that JLD years felt like they would never end)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES 

 Will Perfetti ever get Emmy nominated for Abbott Elementary? Of the seven main characters, only four have been nominated but all seven perfectly serve the show.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES

 Rebecca Wisocky and Asher Grodman are the MVP ghosts in GHOSTS

Very happy for Rebecca Wisocky who is 1000% the standout of Ghosts which can range from cringe to good but is only occassionally great/hilarious and it's rare when the latter isn't achieved via Wisocky's gleefully wicked line readings as Hetty Woodstone, the long dead, shamelessly horny, cocaine-loving lady of the manor. 

 

BEST LIMITED SERIES

BEST MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

 

BEST ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

BEST ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION 

 Furious to not see Jenny Slate here for Dying for Sex. That performance and her chemistry with the ever-brilliant Michelle Williams killed me; I am dead. I frankly don't see how Julianne Moore (who y'all know I adore) is even remotely as worthy. 

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE SERIES

BEST ANIMATED SERIES

 Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is surprisingly wonderful.

BEST TALK SHOW 

BEST VARIETY SERIES

BEST COMEDY SPECIAL 

What do you think of the CCA Awards Nominations this year? 

The winners will be revealed at the Critics Choice Awards gala hosted by Chelsea Handler, which will broadcast LIVE on E! and USA Network on Sunday, January 4, 2026 from 7:00-10:00 p.m. ET/PT. 

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