Golden Globes 2019 takeaways: Oscar trends and overreactions

Bohemian Rhapsody and Green Book gain steam while A Star Is Born fades heading into the final stretch of awards season.

Before we overreact to tonight’s winners and losers, let’s make one thing crystal clear: There is no awards show more meaningless than the Golden Globes.

First and foremost, the voting body for the Globes is the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. This international group brings a very different set of experiences and cultural ideals to their decision-making process than the mostly American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that determine the Oscar winners.

That’s why films that many Americans find problematic — like last year’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and this year’s Green Book — are rewarded handsomely by the Globes, whose voters aren’t as well-versed in cultural intricacies and history of the U.S.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Hollywood Foreign Press is known to nominate certain films and actors purely for the excuse to invite them to the Globes. That sometimes leads to poorly reviewed films sneaking onto the nomination list, one of the more egregious examples being in 2011 when The Tourist was nominated for a few awards presumably just to entice stars Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp to show up.

That said, the one thing we can learn about the Oscars based on the Golden Globes is which movies, actors and more have momentum going into the last few weeks of awards season. It’s the last major event before the Oscars, and like a sports team on a hot or cold streak heading into the playoffs, it can foretell both success and failure in the film world’s postseason.

Let’s figure out which movies are trending up and down based on the mostly arbitrary Golden Globes selections.

Trending Up

Green Book: The controversy around this one aside, Green Book cleaned up last night, winning Globes for best screenplay, best supporting actor (Mahershala Ali) and best picture, comedy or musical. The fact it beat awards-season darling The Favourite may be telling in terms of how at least one voting body views the two Oscar hopefuls.

Bohemian Rhapsody: It may only barely be fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and have been partially directed by the incredibly problematic Bryan Singer, but that didn’t stop the Hollywood Foreign Press from awarding Rami Malek a best actor in a drama statue for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury and making it the 2019 Best Picture – Drama winner.

It’s almost inconceivable that Bohemian Rhapsody could seriously challenge films like The Favourite, If Beale Street Could Talk and Roma for best picture at the Oscars. Recent history corroborates that gut feeling, as last year’s Globes drama winner — the aforementioned Three Billboards — ultimately lost best picture at the Oscars to The Shape of Water.

Roma: Because of an arcane Hollywood Foreign Press rule about subtitles, Roma wasn’t allowed to be nominated for best drama at the Globes. It did, however, earn wins for best foreign film and best director (which Alfonso Cuaron totally deserved).

It’s hard to project those victories onto what will happen when Roma is up against the rest of the English-language field. The Academy has shown a soft spot over the last few years for movies made by Mexican filmmakers, like Birdman and The Shape of Water. Plus, this year’s crop of films is relatively weak compared to even last year’s Oscar contenders. Roma certainly stands a fighting chance.

Olivia Colman and Regina King: The former won best actress in a comedy or musical for her captivating performance in The Favourite, while the latter took home a Globe for best supporting actress in a drama for her steely resolve in If Beale Street Could Talk. Both will be seriously considered as favorites in their respective categories, and any challengers will have to run a tight race.

Trending down

A Star Is Born: The most obvious loser from the Globes was Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, which only received a Globe for best original song (“All the Stars” > “Shallow.” Fight me.). That means it lost two acting awards, best director and best picture, drama. Sorry, everyone who was rooting really hard for a Lady Gaga acceptance speech.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that A Star Is Born won’t pick up the same nominations at the Oscars, but this does feel like a team not firing on all cylinders right before the playoffs starts. A Star Is Born may be too far from the shallow at this point to recover.

Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone: Stone picked up a moral victory by apologizing for her racially insensitive role in Aloha. Both of them, however, lost best supporting actress to Regina King, which isn’t the best sign for their Oscar prospects.

It’s unclear how they’ll be categorized by the Academy, as they could easily be considered leads. But that means going up against Glenn Close, the other presumed best actress front-runner after being given the Globe for her performance in The Wife. So they either have to compete against her, Colman and Lady Gaga for best actress, or King for supporting actress. Not great, Bob.

BlacKkKlansman: Spike Lee’s joint was completely shut out of the four categories for which it was nominated. Its Oscar odds were already slim, but this may have been the nail in the coffin.

Hosts: If anyone was hoping to find an Oscars host or two out of the presenters at the Globes, no one really jumped out. The closest we came to getting a glimpse of who could take on that thankless gig was Maya Rudolph faux-proposing to Amy Poehler, which re-ignited the calls for Rudolph to host the telecast.

The fact that the Oscars are Feb. 24 and there still isn’t a host is troubling, given the immense amount of preparation that goes into Hollywood’s glitziest night. This may be the first post-Golden Globes time period in awards-show history when there’s a clearer picture of who will be nominated for what at the Oscars than who will preside over the ceremony.

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