The nominees for the 81st Golden Globe Awards were announced on Monday 11th December, with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie the most-nominated of the films chosen by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Warner Bros’ Barbie was nominated across 7 categories, including Best Director, Best Screenplay, Lead Actress and Supporting Actor, with 3 nominations in the Original Song category for “Dance the Night Away”, “I’m Just Ken” and “What Was I Made For?”.

Justine Triet’s multi-time European Film Awards winner and the recipient of the 2023 Cannes Palme d’Or, Anatomy of a Fall, was nominated in both the Best Motion Picture – Drama category as well as the Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language category, as was Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. The latter was also nominated in the Best Original Score – Motion Picture category alongside The Boy and the Heron, which is a leading name in the Best Motion Picture – Animated category beside Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

The 2024 Golden Globes will take place on 7th January 2024, and will be broadcast in the CBS in the US and in the UK on Paramount+.

The nominees for the 81st edition of the Golden Globe Awards (2024) are as follows:

Best Motion Picture – Drama
Anatomy of a Fall
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Past Lives
The Zone of Interest

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Air
American Fiction
Barbie
The Holdovers
May December
Poor Things

Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language
Anatomy of a Fall
Fallen Leaves
Io Capitano
Past Lives
Society of the Snow
The Zone of Interest

Best Motion Picture – Animated
The Boy and the Heron
Elemental
Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Suzume
Wish

Best Director – Motion Picture
Bradley Cooper (Maestro)
Greta Gerwig (Barbie)
Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things)
Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer)
Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Celine Song (Past Lives)

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama
Annette Bening (Nyad)
Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall)
Greta Lee (Past Lives)
Carey Mulligan (Maestro)
Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla)

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Fantasia Barrino (The Color Purple)
Jennifer Lawrence (No Hard Feelings)
Natalie Portman (May December)
Alma Pöysti (Fallen Leaves)
Margot Robbie (Barbie)
Emma Stone (Poor Things)

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture
Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer)
Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple)
Jodie Foster (Nyad)
Julianne Moore (May December)
Rosamund Pike (Saltburn)
Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama
Bradley Cooper (Maestro)
Leonardo DiCaprio (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Colman Domingo (Rustin)
Barry Keoghan (Saltburn)
Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)
Andrew Scott (All of Us Strangers)

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Nicolas Cage (Dream Scenario)
Timothée Chalamet (Wonka)
Matt Damon (Air)
Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers)
Joaquin Phoenix (Beau Is Afraid)
Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction)

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture
Willem Dafoe (Poor Things)
Robert De Niro (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Robert Downey Jr. (Oppenheimer)
Ryan Gosling (Barbie)
Charles Melton (May December)
Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things)

Best Screenplay – Motion Picture
Justine Triet, Arthur Harari (Anatomy of a Fall)
Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach (Barbie)
Eric Roth, Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer)
Celine Song (Past Lives)
Tony McNamara (Poor Things)

Best Original Score – Motion Picture
Jerskin Fendrix (Poor Things)
Ludwig Göransson (Oppenheimer)
Joe Hisaishi (The Boy and the Heron)
Micachu (The Zone of Interest)
Daniel Pemberton (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse)
Robbie Robertson (Killers of the Flower Moon)

Best Original Song – Motion Picture
“Addicted to Romance” by Bruce Springsteen
“Dance the Night” by Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt, Caroline Ailin, Dua Lipa
“I’m Just Ken” by Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt
“Peaches” by Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, Eric Osmond, John Spiker, Jack Black
“Road to Freedom” by Lenny Kravitz
“What Was I Made For?” by Finneas O’Connell, Billie Eilish

Cinematic and Box Office Achievement
Barbie
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
John Wick: Chapter 4
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1
Oppenheimer
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour

For the full list of television nominees, please visit the Golden Globes website.

Poor Things (2023) 
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Screenwriter: Tony McNamara
Starring: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, Jarrod Carmichael, Margaret Qualley, Kathryn Hunter, Suzy Bemba, Hanna Schygulla, Vicki Pepperdine

Poor Things, adapted from Scottish author Alasdair Gray’s award-winning 1992 novel, is probably Yorgos Lanthimos’ most enjoyable film to date. The maverick director of such distressing work as Dogtooth and The Killing of a Sacred Deer might still be an acquired taste for many, and he has certainly lost none of his instinctive weirdness here, but this is definitely the most nakedly emotional and laugh-out-loud funny release of his two decade career. 

When brilliant but reclusive surgeon Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) “creates” the remarkable Bella (Emma Stone), a reanimated corpse with the mind of a child, his attempts to gradually teach her about the world in a controlled environment are stymied by the sudden arrival of caddish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). Wedderburn elopes with Bella on a journey around the world where an influx of countless new sensations and experiences allows for the emancipation of her mind and body from the men who would control every aspect of her newfound life. 

The unique tone to be found in all Lanthimos films is something you have to get used to. From the unexplained sci-fi mechanisms of The Lobster to the intentional anachronisms of The Favourite, his worlds don’t quite operate by the same rules as our reality and the sooner you get comfortable with the absurdity of every situation and the darkly surreal turns most character interactions will inevitably take the better time you will have. If you don’t get on with the film’s monochrome first act, which is all queasy fish-eye lenses, gags involving the body and its myriad disgusting functions (including Dr Baxter’s biological need to burp expanding gastric bubbles), and creatures made up of two mismatched animals sewn together leisurely wandering from room to room in Godwin’s mansion, you probably won’t be brought on side by the bizarre sex montages, hallucinatory imagery and gallows humour that follows.

This is a heightened reality that incorporates formal social attitudes typical of the Victorian era the film is set in but also borrows much of its visual language from romantic painting and the carnivalesque films from the birth of cinema. Much like, of all things, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (coincidentally another film about liberation from expectations of your gender) this has a delightfully hand-crafted, sometimes deliberately unreal feel to it with tactile, eye-catching sets representing fantasy versions of different places and cultures with radiant projected backgrounds, like a Georges Méliès extravaganza made with a decent budget and sophisticated modern techniques.

Divided into distinct chapters that mark stages of Bella’s journey across Europe and beyond, each with a unique colour palette and subtly different style of cinematography from Ken Loach regular DOP Robbie Ryan, the film becomes a little more grounded, more magical-realist than surrealist as she gains some understanding about society and her place in it. As Bella’s sexuality is awakened, almost simultaneously her world is thrown wide open and new stimuli rapidly accelerates her from puberty into adulthood and independence.

It’s a nice inversion of the usual tropes established in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” to have the mad scientist be disfigured and his creation be perfect. As full of gravitas as Willem Dafoe is under impressive prosthetics and as entertainingly foul-mouthed as Mark Ruffalo can be with his slightly wobbly accent, this is Emma Stone’s world and everyone else just lives in it. She really is one of the most fearless and versatile actors of her generation, able to perfectly modulate the inherent uncanniness of her character while always remaining sympathetic, funny and heartbreaking. What is acceptable behaviour in the man’s world Bella Baxter is re-born into puts her at odds with how she expresses and enjoys herself. Fatherly authority Dr Baxter (or “God” as she refers to him), his protégé and Bella’s pushover fiancé Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), and the frankly grotesque Duncan Wedderburn all represent points on the scale of patriarchal abuse who all have their own agendas and all – maliciously or not – seek to exert their authority over Bella. 

One theme Lanthimos comes back to time and time again in his work, notably in Dogtooth and The Favourite, is control. Who has the power and the authority over another and when and how can that balance shift? For all that Duncan Wedderburn preaches the joy of dismissing the restrictions of “polite society”, as soon as Bella is embarrassing him in public by talking brazenly about his bedroom antics and refusing to submit to his every whim, he becomes just as much of an oppressor of her freedoms. He also begins to turn against her as her mental faculties catch up and eventually overtake his, threatening his dominance and his need to feel like he needs to protect her. 

From a decidedly unconventional breakfast table masturbation scene onwards, Bella becomes a joyfully sexual and uninhibited creature, always voicing her wants in the moment whether appropriate or not, gorging on the most delectable food and dancing with wild abandon. She is a big fan of “Furious jumping” as much as possible to the extent that on her arrival in Paris she sees the prospect of sex work to pay her way an opportunity rather than an indignity. Lanthimos is unabashed at portraying Bella’s sometimes elaborate sex scenes but they are usually joyous, sex-positive affairs that never feel exploitative. 

Poor Things is a gloriously against-the-grain comic fantasy that skewers 19th Century sexual politics and particularly the inequalities and prudish attitudes that persist to this day. We need a few more Bella Baxters in this world; curious, resilient and determined to break free from the limitations still imposed by our lingeringly patriarchal society. Yorgos Lanthimos and his creative collaborators have together crafted a strange and wonderful twisted fairy tale that makes us question our limitations, our hangups and our treatment of others.

Score: 23/24