Every year in January, I’m home on a Sunday night, eating popcorn and getting ready for the first big night of the year for movies: the Golden Globes.
The Golden Globes is hosted every year, giving recognition to both movies and TV shows in acting, directing, screenplay, and music. Its movie categories are similar to the ones at the Oscars, but the main difference is the genre split from drama to musical or comedy. With these nominations, the Golden Globes can start to paint a good picture about the nominations for the upcoming Oscars ceremony, which are released in late January.
I’ve always been someone who makes spreadsheets for all the new acclaimed movies of the year, rating them and pitting them against each other in my own predictions. While I mostly care about the Oscars, the Golden Globes are a good start to the movie awards season.
That being said, the only thing I can think about after watching this year’s ceremony was “what just happened?”
Now—it’s not like anything horrendous happened. There were no slaps, no incredibly out of pocket jokes, and I thought that all the awards were supremely deserved with little upsets. It’s just all the little things that stacked up.
The Host
Unfortunately, I thought that Roy Koy was the worst part of the entire ceremony. His monologue fell incredibly flat, and rather than try to shake it off like nothing happened, he started blaming others for the poor jokes. He looked nervous and unconfident in himself, which are both bad traits if you’re trying to be a comedian on one of the biggest award shows.
While I’m not sure if he deserved all of the hate he got after the show (there’s no way I could’ve done any better), I think there are definitely more qualified candidates for this hosting gig. When he complained on stage that his jokes were bad because he only got the job eight days prior, all I could think was “he could’ve said no!”
The Physical Format
The Golden Globes can be nice since there are tables where everyone can sit, eat, drink, and enjoy—but it felt like an extra mess this year. I felt that a lot of nominees were placed quite far from the stage, so there was a lot of dead time for a winner to walk up to the stage to accept their award. It looked cramped and it seemed hard for anyone to get by each other, which slowed the show down. While this wasn’t a huge thing by any means, I thought it did have an effect on the overall show.
The Presenter Jokes
After Roy Koy’s mediocre monologue, there was much less of him for the rest of the show. Instead of making jokes between presenters, it seemed that most of them had some kind of routine or skit prepared for when they walked on. While some of them landed, such as Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell’s dance performance, others didn’t. Though some loved America Ferrera and Kevin Costner’s recreation of a Barbie monologue, I thought it was too played out and a bit awkward.
The Good: The Actual Awards!
My favorite part about the Golden Globes was actually getting to see the awards and hear the acceptance speeches. Usually there’s a speech that goes a little too long or is saying something a little odd, but all of them were either funny or powerful—usually a little of both.
Though I had expected Oppenheimer to dominate the awards this season, I wasn’t expecting it to win so much. I had watched it second during the Barbenehimer weekend and thought it was a bit long, but maybe I need to watch it again to refresh my memory. Barbie won considerably fewer awards than I was expecting: losing screenplay, directing, and both acting awards to other movies.
Poor Things, The Holdovers and Anatomy of a Fall had great runs that night, and the most historic win of the night for Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon was so well deserved. The movies completely left out—Maestro, May December, and Past Lives—were rough losses considering I really liked all of them.
Since the Golden Globes also recognizes television, I should mention that while I haven’t seen Succession, The Bear, or Beef, they all seem like great shows and deserved the sweep of almost all of the awards (even though Ted Lasso not winning anything broke my heart a little).
Overall, the best part about watching the Golden Globes is to see the traction that all of the movies have on their way to the Oscars, and start to predict who might be the winners. Now that it’s happened, I have pretty good thoughts about who’s truly in the running for the award, and who will remain as just a nomination.