“Oppenheimer” continued its explosive awards campaign at the Critics Choice Awards on Sunday night, earning eight top trophies including best picture, best director for Christopher Nolan and best supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr.
That caps a hot week for the period drama, which also dominated last Sunday’s Golden Globes and has since picked up key nominations from the actors, producers and directors guilds. If it wasn’t already clear, we’ve got a formidable Oscar front-runner on our hands.
An appreciative Nolan used his speech to thank “all the critics who helped with convincing mainstream audiences that a film about quantum physics and apocalypse could be worth their time.”
Though “Oppenheimer” won in the biggest categories at the Critics Choice Awards, it was the film’s box office frenemy, “Barbie,” that entered the night as the most nominated movie, with a record-breaking 18 citations. Greta Gerwig’s hit comedy managed six wins, including trophies for its costumes, production design and song (“I’m Just Ken”), but since most of those awards were announced in the margins before a commercial break, host Chelsea Handler went rogue near the end of the show and brought up Gerwig and star Margot Robbie to make a speech anyway.
Robbie was genuinely taken aback by the gesture. “When everyone is like, ‘Oh, this is so unexpected,’ this is actually unexpected and was not a part of the show,” she said.
The night’s quartet of film acting trophies went to performers who had already picked up Golden Globes, though the lead wins still came in very competitive categories.
Emma Stone acknowledged as much when she picked up her best-actress trophy for “Poor Things,” admitting, “I’m going to be honest, I’m in full-blown shock,” before shouting out her fellow nominees, including “Killers of the Flower Moon” actress Lily Gladstone. “I didn’t have anything that I was going to say because this is completely crazy.”
The lead-actor award went to Paul Giamatti for his portrayal of a dyspeptic history teacher in “The Holdovers.” The actor gave a moving speech in honor of his late father (A. Bartlett Giamatti, a president of Yale and later the commissioner of Major League Baseball), but not before joking about his much-snapped trip to the California burger joint In N Out after winning his Golden Globe: “I didn’t think my week could go any better than going viral for eating a cheeseburger.”
The supporting trophies were awarded to Giamatti’s co-star Da’Vine Joy Randolph and “Oppenheimer” foil Downey, the latter of whom took the opportunity to read some of the most withering reviews he’s received in his career. But one of the night’s buzziest moments came early in the show when Handler alluded to the dismally received Golden Globes monologue delivered by her ex-boyfriend, Jo Koy, who threw his writers under the bus at that awards show when his jokes went sour.
After cracking wise about her crush on Martin Scorsese, Handler told the crowd with a smirk, “Thank you for laughing at that. My writers wrote it.”
Here is the full list of winners:
Film
Best Picture
“Oppenheimer”
Best Actor
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