A great year for movies, as 2023 was, means a lot to look forward to as awards season begins. Things get started tonight with the Golden Globes ceremony, and later this week it’s on to nominations for the Screen Actors Guild and Producers Guild of America Awards. The big one — the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — will announce its nominations for the 96th Oscars on Jan. 23.To get you ready, we’ve put together a guide to the movies, directors and performances that The Times’s critics think the Academy should recognize this year. And although the Globes have a mixed record of predicting which movies will win Oscars, tonight’s ceremony is a good excuse to look back on some of the year’s best films.
The contenders
The competition for the best picture Oscar is so fierce this year that Kyle Buchanan, The Times’s awards season columnist, decided to discuss 13 possible nominees rather than his usual 10.“Oppenheimer,” a three-hour biopic about the father of the atomic bomb directed by Christopher Nolan, tops Kyle’s list. Pitted against it, and favored by the Times critics Manohla Dargis and Alissa Wilkinson, is another historical epic: “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Martin Scorsese’s study of a murderous campaign targeting members of the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma. Manohla and Alissa are also rooting for Todd Haynes’s “May December,” a tale of two eerily synced women and the anguished man they manipulate. All three films are up for Golden Globes.
But, as Kyle notes, “recent best-picture winners tend to tug more at the heart than at the head.” That could augur an upset win for “Past Lives,” a romantic indie film; “American Fiction,” a dramedy; or “Barbie,” which leads the Golden Globes pack with nine nominations. Alissa would also like to see Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron,” which is about coming of age in World War II Japan, in the running — though no animated feature has ever won best picture.
Nolan, for “Oppenheimer,” made all three of our critics’ lists of potential best directors. Manohla also likes Wes Anderson for the wry “Asteroid City,” while Alissa is championing Scorsese and Greta Gerwig, for “Barbie.”
Kyle has profiled a top contender for best actress: Lily Gladstone, who portrays an Osage woman whose relatives are systematically murdered in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” If nominated, Gladstone would become the first Native American up for the award. And if our critics have their way, she could face Sandra Hüller for “Anatomy of a Fall,” a courtroom drama about an aspiring writer’s mysterious death.
One potential nominee for best actor is Paul Giamatti. His performance as an irritable New England schoolteacher in “The Holdovers” drew on “a deep well of melancholy and thinly disguised tenderness,” my colleague Reggie Ugwu writes. Alissa also shouts out Cillian Murphy, whose craggy, haunted visage captured J. Robert Oppenheimer’s angst. But Colman Domingo — who powers “Rustin,” a biopic about a gay civil rights activist — is Alissa’s and Manohla’s leading candidate.
We’ll find out which of our critics’ darlings ended up in contention when Oscar nominations are released later this month. And if all of this sounds like a lot to watch, the good news is that you’ll have until March, when the Academy Awards ceremony will take place, to catch up.