From Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland to Promising Young Woman, our critic casts an eye over this year’s nominees
This year’s Golden Globes will be the first film awards season event to unfold in the grim and globally buzzkilled new world of Covid restrictions, but some traditions are sacrosanct: the world of snubs. Christopher Nolan’s colossal metaphysical thriller Tenet was lauded by many in the business, but was sent away almost empty-handed in nominations (one nod for Ludwig Göransson’s score). It is also disappointing that the overwhelmingly moving and mysterious Pixar animation Soul gets only two nominations – animation and score. Surely it deserved best film musical or comedy?
In terms of diversity, the Globes have not disgraced themselves, with three out of the five director nominees being women: Emerald Fennell for the brilliant rape-revenge satire Promising Young Woman, Regina King for the true-life 60s encounter One Night in Miami and Chloé Zhao for the docudrama Nomadland – although some will be disappointed to see the relative failure in the best film categories of the big black-ensemble pictures such as One Night in Miami, Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods and Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah.
Of course, the streaming giants are crowding out the rest. Netflix has 22 film nominations in total, way ahead of the next contender Amazon Studios, with seven. Disney must content itself with joint third place with a mere five.
