The precursors are in full swing for the best films of 2024. Ahead of next week’s Golden Globe nominations, this week saw the Gotham Awards on Monday, New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) announce their award winners on Tuesday, along with top ten lists and awards from the National Board of Review (NBR) on Wednesday and the top ten films of the year from the American Film Institute (AFI) yesterday. Each of these awards bodies has its own unique quirks and sensibilities, but they help paint us a picture of the possible direction the race may move in. While NYFCC always has some major surprises, NBR and AFI’s lists align more with what we can expect as we draw nearer to the Oscar nominations on January 17th, 2025.
Six films overlapped, showing up on both lists from NBR and AFI: “Anora,” “A Complete Unknown,” “Conclave,” “A Real Pain,” “Sing Sing,” and “Wicked.” That’s a solid boost for each of these movies, proving that they’ve got momentum as this phase of the season heats up. “A Complete Unknown” is the biggest wildcard of the bunch, having only just started screenings recently. The Bob Dylan biopic also scored a Best Supporting Actress win at NBR for Elle Fanning, an interesting development as most critics have highlighted Monica Barbaro’s performance ahead of Fanning’s. Nevertheless, showing up on both lists helps jumpstart the Searchlight Pictures film’s late arrival to the race.
NBR also showed plenty of love for Part One of “Wicked.” Jon M. Chu’s musical took home the Best Picture prize from NBR, along with Best Director for Chu. While this boosts the box office sensation, winning Best Picture from NBR isn’t great news for anyone hoping “Wicked” might be our Best Picture winner. In the Academy’s expanded Best Picture era, only one NBR winner, “Green Book,” eventually won the Academy Award. On the flip side, all but two winners of the category, “A Most Violent Year” and “Da 5 Bloods,” scored Best Picture nominations, meaning it’s looking good for “Wicked” to get a nomination as well.
Of the rest of the films to show up on both lists, there aren’t any real surprises. “Anora” and “Conclave,” two strong contenders for Best Picture, showed up as expected. All season long, “Sing Sing” has been a bit of a question mark. Ever since its TIFF 2023 premiere, the reviews have been unquestionably strong, but A24’s questionable limited platform release this summer did the film no favors as it struggled to find an audience outside of critics. Fans of the film hoped that it could regain momentum this fall to keep its Oscar hopes alive. That momentum certainly rebounded last week. The Gotham Awards gave Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor awards on Monday night, then two days later, NBR awarded “Sing Sing” with Best Adapted Screenplay, and then the next day, it showed up on the AFI’s Top 10 list for 2024. It’s been a strong start to the slow burn of an awards run, but it looks like “Sing Sing” is here to stay.
Both NBR and NYFCC had some outliers among their winners that are unlikely to show up much in the rest of the season. “Juror #2,” Clint Eastwood’s latest, landed at NBR but hasn’t made much of a cultural dent in the weeks since release. While “Babygirl” star Nicole Kidman is likely a player in Best Actress, a category she won at NBR, the film is unlikely to place in many Best Picture lineups outside of NBR. The same goes for Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” which won Best Actor from NBR for Daniel Craig’s searingly hopeless romantic performance. NYFCC gave Best Supporting Actress to Carol Kane for “Between The Temples,” a rarely discussed, small film this season. Don’t expect that to happen anywhere else, as it feels like a very niche New York pick compared to anything else.
NYFCC did award Best Film to “The Brutalist,” which also appeared on AFI’s list. This is exactly the type of winner NYFCC always leans toward: films from visionary directors, often with serious subject matter. While “The Brutalist” is undoubtedly a top contender to win Best Picture, NYFCC hasn’t matched the Academy for Best Picture since 2011’s “The Artist.” Still, don’t count it out too soon. Adrien Brody also won Best Actor there for “The Brutalist,” while “Hard Truths” lead Marianne Jean-Baptiste scored the Best Actress win. Hailing from Bleeker Street, “Hard Truths” needs boosts like these to keep Jean-Baptiste in the race, so this was a good get along with its Original Screenplay win at NBR.
Netflix’s biggest contender, “Emilia Pérez,” had a bit of whiplash this week. The movie missed NBR entirely, not even landing among their nominees for Best International Film. Yet, AFI, whose awards are exclusively limited to American productions, inexplicably gave “Emilia Pérez” a slot on their Top Ten list. Typically, AFI will give a special award, outside of their Top Ten, to a non-American film, where many expected “Emilia Pérez” to show up. It’s a strange sign of confidence in Jacques Audiard’s film and likely a show of power from Netflix’s mighty campaign machine. As far as missing NBR’s lists entirely, the same fate befell “Drive My Car” in 2021, which not only won Best International Feature at the Oscars but scored nominations for Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay. There’s still hope for “Emilia Pérez” to do the same and then some for its performances, crafts, and songs.
After AFI released their Top Ten, the consensus among prognosticators was that there was no surprise. In fact, most agree that this list of ten could be our eventual Best Picture lineup. However, a ten-for-ten match hasn’t happened since 2010, and even then, eventual Best Picture winner “The King’s Speech” wasn’t technically in the AFI ten (“The Town” was instead) as it managed to get the “Special Mention” award. But technically, all ten Best Picture-nominated films were indeed mentioned by AFI to some degree or another. AFI often saves a spot for an animated film, which many hoped would be “The Wild Robot” this year, but alas, the list played it safe.
Could this truly be our Best Picture lineup? There’s little reason to doubt it because there are no glaring omissions. What else could even break in if AFI doesn’t match up? “The Wild Robot” was always a long shot for Universal, but given the success of “Wicked,” I’m sure they’re feeling quite content regardless. Horror films “The Substance” and “Nosferatu” were also always long shots here but could see a surge in momentum in the coming days. NEON’s Best International Feature Film contender, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” still feels possible, but it needs strong support, and NEON is preoccupied with pushing Palme d’Or winner “Anora” as hard as they can to a Best Picture win. There’s also still time for “All We Imagine As Light” to pick up steam and find its way into the Best Picture ten after it was looked over as an International submission by all its submitting countries, something “Anatomy Of A Fall” was able to accomplish last year. If any of those films did break in, what would they kick out? “A Complete Unknown” and “Nickel Boys” seem to be the films with the least heat as of this writing, but even so, finding reasons for weakness in either film is a tough challenge. “A Complete Unknown” is right up the Academy’s alley, capturing the essence of a standard music biopic while still avoiding the cliches of a cradle-to-grave story. Chalamet is still in the hunt for a Best Actor win, which would only strengthen the Best Picture nomination. “Nickel Boys” is much more experimental, something often more appreciated by the Directors and Cinematographers branches than in Best Picture, which makes it feel like the most vulnerable film of this bunch. Even so, if something as strikingly bold as “The Zone Of Interest” could get in last year, then “Nickel Boys” should be able to ride the wave of its recent wins at Gotham and NYFCC to the Oscars (with Los Angeles Film Critics Association still set to announce this Sunday).
In just a few short days, the Golden Globe nominations will tell us even more about the state of the Oscar race. Which films will get a big boost from the Globes? Chances are there will be plenty of overlap between these lists. Will anything shake us from predicting AFI’s top ten in the end? Only a short period of time will tell, with the Oscar shortlist voting starting on December 9th and then nomination voting taking place on January 8th.
What were your biggest surprises from the Gotham Awards, NBR, AFI, and NYFCC this week? Will you be predicting the AFI list ten-for-ten for Best Picture at the Osars? Which film do you think is the most vulnerable? Please let us know in the comments below or on Next Best Picture’s X account, and be sure to check out Next Best Picture’s latest Oscar predictions here.
