The critics circles have spoken, and now it’s time for the Golden Globes, which are essentially a critics circle with a TV deal, to make their picks for the best movies and TV shows of 2024.
The Globes have remade themselves over the past few years, going from a model of old-school corruption (bribery, being boorish around celebrities) to a more accountable organization whose corruption now has a friendly modern face. But in between innovating new forms of payola and cozying up to authoritarian regimes, the Globes still found time to vote. Turns out, despite their new look and new format (there are six spots per category now), they still found ways to be ever-so-perfectly Globes-y, privileging big swings and established stars. Read on for the most notable snubs and surprises of the 2025 nominations.
Movies
Voters took the Substance — and loved it.
A balls-to-the-wall French body-horror satire is the exact kind of film you might imagine would play better at the Globes than at more staid precursors. Still, I don’t think anyone could have imagined just how much voters would pump it up. Coralie Fargeat’s film didn’t just land an expected Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy nod for Demi Moore — it was one of four movies this year to score nominations for Picture, Director, and Screenplay. Even more notably, the latter two nods came in categories that aren’t split by genre, as did Margaret Qualley’s surprise nomination in Supporting Actress. I don’t think this gushing reception means we can assume The Substance is now a bona fide Best Picture contender, but it does bode well for Moore’s chances of breaking into a murderously difficult Best Actress lineup.
The Globes came through for Emilia Pérez.
Tastemaker season had been quiet for the Netflix musical, which is not many critics’ cup of tea. (And even those who did like it seem to have been unwilling to push hard for it at critics’ awards.) If Jacques Audiard’s film wanted to maintain its reputation as a major contender, it needed to show up big at the Globes, and it did: Emilia Pérez pulled in a whopping ten nominations, one shy of the all-time record held by Nashville (musicals!). The trans-empowerment opera landed the holy trinity of Picture, Director, and Screenplay with Audiard joining his compatriot Fargeat in some extremely French lineups. But that record-nearing total came courtesy of multiple nominations in Supporting Actress, where Selena Gomez joined Zoe Saldaña, as well as Original Song (again, musicals!). Competition for trophies in the Musical/Comedy field will be tough, but Emilia also landed a nomination for Best Film Not in the English Language, where it should be considered the front-runner. Besides The Substance, no film had a better morning, as the Globes bolstered Emilia Pérez’s case to be considered alongside Anora and The Brutalist — the other two films to score Picture/Director/Screenplay noms — in the race’s top tier.
Hard truths for Marianne Jean-Baptiste.
Since the Globes’ membership features zero overlap with the Academy’s, how can they help us prognosticate the Oscars? One way is by measuring the effectiveness of awards campaigns, which target both groups. But the Globes also function as a measure of the resources of awards campaigns, which is one reason why Netflix projects typically do well. (See above.) That also means that contenders repped by smaller distributors are at a disadvantage. To wit: Despite coming into the week with a pair of Best Actress wins from the New York and Los Angeles critics circles, Marianne Jean-Baptiste was shut out of the Best Actress in a Drama lineup, a fact we may be able to chalk up to the fact that her Mike Leigh reunion, Hard Truths, is being handled by the indie label Bleecker Street. Or perhaps, as Chris Feil suggests, voters simply didn’t know which genre to slot her in? Although Hard Truths ran as a drama, it’s funnier than most of the movies nominated as comedies.
Danielle Deadwyler was left out again.
Two years ago in this column, I noted that Deadwyler, “a recent Gotham winner often mentioned as a potential Best Actress sleeper,” was nevertheless snubbed for Till. Unfortunately, I could write nearly the same sentence again today. Despite being singled out for her standout supporting performance in The Piano Lesson — the film received a tribute award at the Gothams last week — Deadwyler still couldn’t make it in at the Globes. It’s all the more notable because The Piano Lesson did possess the Netflix advantage; that she was shut out alongside Jean-Baptiste anyway is worth a side-eye or two. We’ll have to hope history does not repeat at the Oscars, but if even Deadwyler, who had been a fixture of pundits’ predictions, is looking shaky, the wide-open Supporting Actress category just got even more unpredictable.
This is probably not Saoirse Ronan’s year.
They say that when you have two quarterbacks, you actually have none. The same is not usually true for actors and awards vehicles — this morning, Sebastian Stan managed to sneak into the final spot in both Best Actor categories for A Different Man and The Apprentice — but it may have worked against Saoirse Ronan. Earlier this season, I’d wondered whether her lead role in The Outrun or her supporting turn in Blitz was Ronan’s stronger awards play. The answer appears to be neither, as the Irish actress was left out for both at the Globes. That she missed for The Outrun is not shocking considering the indie drama hadn’t made traction with critics. But her Blitz bid was premised on Ronan being the face of an all-around contender. Instead, Steve McQueen’s film blanked entirely. Maybe the problem was less having two films and more that neither of them has been able to gin up much love.
Pamela Anderson and Kate Winslet joined the Best Actress party.
Rather than nominating Jean-Baptiste or Ronan, the Globes used their final two spots in Best Actress in a Drama to make a pair of Globe-tacular picks. First, Pamela Anderson for The Last Showgirl, a comeback bid that has spent the season being overshadowed by The Substance, which is working a similar narrative with Demi Moore. And then — just as my colleague Joe Reid predicted — Kate Winslet for Lee, a biopic that has enjoyed a muted reception since debuting at last year’s TIFF. However, awards obsessives know that Lee has recently become a pet project for actress Frances Fisher, who spearheaded the notorious To Leslie social-media campaign. So maybe we shouldn’t write Winslet off quite yet.
Sing Sing met with scattered applause.
Sing Sing had been one of the big winners of tastemaker season so far, enjoying an effusive reaction whenever anyone from its cast took the stage at the Gothams. The Globes took some wind out of its sails, handing the film only a de rigueur Best Actor in a Drama nod for Colman Domingo. (Considering how thin the actor field is this year, it was literally the least they could do.) That the film couldn’t break into Picture is painful, if not unexpected; that Clarence Maclin’s scene-stealing work was not recognized in a six-strong Supporting Actor field was more regrettable, especially in light of Deadwyler and Jean-Baptiste also missing out.
Dune is not doin’ great.
In its second year, the Globes’ award for Cinematic and Box-Office Achievement remains baffling, leaving out both record-breaking grossers like Moana 2 and high-quality blockbusters like Dune: Part Two in favor of films that were neither, like Alien: Romulus. But this is a silly award that’s not worth making much fuss over. Worse for Dune is the fact that Denis Villeneuve’s film managed only two nominations: One for Score, where it will be ineligible at the Oscars, and the other for Best Drama, which feels like something voters penciled in at the last minute when they remembered they’d forgotten about it. The sequel still feels locked in for a Best Picture spot at the Oscars, but with more tentpoles in the race this year, it may struggle to repeat the crafts dominance of the original’s.
Love for Challengers!
The good thing about a spring release like Challengers is that it’s not burdened with awards-season expectations. Any nominations it does get are gravy. The Globes gave fans of the steamy tennis romance four occasions to cheer: a nod in Best Musical/Comedy (light category fraud as the movie is not especially funny, but we’ll take it), another for Zendaya in Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy (a.k.a. the “Please Show Up” Nom), a well-deserved Best Score spot, and a totally unexpected nod for “Compress/Repress” in Best Original Song. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Television
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association cannot resist a hot rabbi. Nobody Wants This, the Netflix rom-com about the potential relationship between a man of deep Jewish faith and a shiksa who has no familiarity with that term, did very well at the Globes. It got nominations for its two leads, Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, as well as one in the Best TV Comedy category. Perhaps this bodes well for the series’ Emmy prospects, even though those nominations are still several months and many more FYC screeners away.
The Globes really love Kate Winslet. Counting this year’s nominations for her filmwork in Lee and, on the television side, her role in The Regime, the Oscar winner has amassed 15 Golden Globe nominations and five wins so far. If anyone should have gotten nominated for The Regime, it’s Andrea Riseborough, whose more subtle and wrenching performance gives the political satire more of a pulse. But since Winslet gets a nod every time she shows up onscreen and sneezes, here we are.
Squid Game’s second season gets a Globes boost before its debut. It won’t land on Netflix until the day after Christmas, but the follow-up to the South Korean Hunger Games–esque thriller already landed a nomination for Best TV Drama. (Advance screeners have been circulated to voters and critics.)
The supporting actors on Abbott Elementary got crowded out. The only time that Abbott co-stars Tyler James Williams, Janelle James, and Sheryl Lee Ralph got nominated in the supporting category was two years ago, when the Globes put the drama and comedy actors in one category and performers from limited series in their own. Now that all the genres are condensed again, it seems that some of the limited-series performances — in Baby Reindeer, Ripley, and Monsters — may have taken up their spaces.
Disclaimer does surprisingly well. The reactions to Alfonso Cuarón’s series about a woman who receives a copy of a novel based on a past secret have been pretty polarized. Some people were totally drawn in by it, while others found it dull and tedious. The voters were clearly in camp one, nominating it for Best Limited Series and the performances by Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline. If the Globes actually rewarded television directors, Cuarón surely would have been included. But the HFPA recognizes that, unlike movies — excuse me, films — TV just directs itself. Writes itself, too, which is why there are no prizes for TV writing.
Robert Downey Jr. and Meryl Streep were also overlooked. Given the HFPA’s established reputation for fawning over big stars (see the Disclaimer noms), it’s a bit surprising that it ignored Downey’s work on The Sympathizer (which scored him an Emmy nod and title of presumed front-runner — until he wasn’t) as well as Streep’s turn on Only Murders in the Building. (She was nominated last year for her work on season three.)
Why didn’t these people nominate Somebody Somewhere? This seems like an especially egregious error since its exquisite series finale aired last night. But it’s not surprising. Somebody Somewhere is a wonderful but not terribly buzzy series, and when the Globes nominate an unexpected series, they tend to go with buzzy. (Oh, hello, Eddie Redmayne’s nomination for The Day of the Jackal.)
