My award goes to… our film critics reveal their personal Oscars shortlists

Ahead of the official Academy nominations on Tuesday, Observer film critics pick their own favourites

Amid the hype over her acclaimed performance as Diana, Princess of Wales in Spencer, Kristen Stewart briefly stopped awards pundits dead in their tracks when, upon being asked about her Oscar buzz, she drily admitted, “I don’t give a shit.” Sacrilege! Some of the best films and performances of all time haven’t been considered by the Academy, she continued. “There’s five spots. What the fuck are you going to do?”

Nobody disagrees with Stewart on any of this: just ask our critics, whose ideal Oscar ballots below are knowingly far from the expected reality of next week’s nominations. That the actor’s comments made showbiz headlines anyway speaks to the strange aura the Oscars maintain as a gold standard of cinematic achievement: for several months a year, people fret and discuss and strategise about them, while companies expensively campaign for them, only to spend the rest of the year complaining that they don’t mean anything anyway. Even Stewart’s scepticism emerged while on the campaign trail, being interviewed on a Variety podcast named Awards Circuit. Should she win for Spencer, she’ll doubtless turn up and give a humbly grateful speech anyway. That’s the game. Nobody gives a shit about the Oscars, after all, except when everyone does.

Here, then, are our critics’ picks of who and what should be on those Oscars shortlists. Guy Lodge

PETITE MAMAN

Summer of Soul

The Green Knight

Titane

Censor

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Golden Globes 2022 tries to do better as Lady Gaga brings the outrage

After a year of criticism over diversity, the Golden Globes have come up with a decent slate of nominees, with Gaga surely the favourite for best actress

Full list of 2020 nominations

The Golden Globes nomination list has been announced with a solemn introduction from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s president Helen Hoehne, to the effect that the Globes’ much-criticised controlling body was “trying to be better” and that its constituent membership was more diverse than at any other time in its history. Which is better, I suppose, than being less diverse than at any time in its history.

At any rate, leading the pack are Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s unashamed heartwarmer about the home town of his early childhood, with seven nominations and Jane Campion’s stark, twisty western-Gothic psychodrama The Power of the Dog, set in 1920s Montana with Benedict Cumberbatch as the troubled, angry cattleman who begins a toxic duel with his new sister-in-law played by Kirsten Dunst and her sensitive teenage son, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee.

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Oscars 2022: who might triumph at next year’s ceremony?

After a year of delays, the next 12 months offers a wealth of big, awards-aiming movies from intimate dramas to historical epics

It’s not often that the word unusual gets attached to the Oscars, one of the most staid and predictable nights of the year, as sober as the Golden Globes is drunk. But after an unusual year, the awards season followed suit, extended by two months, films dropping in and out of the race and some that might otherwise have been ignored instead taking centre stage.

Related: And this year’s Oscar for inclusivity goes to … the Academy!

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