The 2025 winners had been all around 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 Overseas Press Affiliation of previous has been revamped and reformed with a brand new, broader group that has way more eclectic style. The 2025 winners had been all around 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 films. 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 happen 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 akin to I’m Nonetheless Right here and A Totally different Man—which could be fortunate to get any Oscar love in any respect—additionally scored huge.
Emilia Pérez gained essentially the most film awards with 4, although moreover Greatest 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 films 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 pinnacle 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 critical aspect, the muscular epic The Brutalist gained Greatest Drama, together with Greatest Director for Brady Corbet and Greatest 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 may calmly anoint The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez as Oscar favorites, however each are nonetheless comparatively exterior of the mainstream, and hardly a certain 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—may simply problem them, come March.
The reconstituted Hollywood Overseas Press additionally took some swings that felt very removed from the Globes of previous, which typically appeared prefer it rewarded initiatives that had despatched the perfect present baskets to voters. Stream, a tiny, dialogue-free Latvian film a few cat, beat out The Wild Robotic and Inside Out 2 for greatest animated movie. Fernanda Torres gained Greatest Actress in a Drama for the charged Brazilian movie I’m Nonetheless Right here, over celebrities akin to Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman. Sebastian Stan picked up Greatest 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 Greatest 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 may toughen a film I had figured was too lurid for historically stuffy awards voters.
All of those sudden wins did come on the expense of high-grossing films that viewers at residence have truly seen. The Brutalist is simply now beginning its wider theatrical rollout, whereas confirmed hits akin to Depraved, Dune: Half Two, and Challengers had been largely ignored because the night time dragged on. A crowded Oscar race approaches—and if it appears to be like just like the moneymakers aren’t choosing up steam, trade observers will as soon as once more ponder the purpose of an awards season that doesn’t attempt to mirror the general public’s tastes. If that should be the case, not less than Golden Globe voters obtained appreciably bizarre with it.