CCA nominations kick off awards season

 

The Critics Choice Association (I'm a member) kicked off the awards season with its announcement of nominations for its 31st annual Critics Choice awards. The awards ceremony will be handed out on Sunday Jan. 4, 2026. Sinners lead the field with 17 nominations. One Battle After Another earned second place with 14 nominations. Frankenstein and Hamnet garnered 11 nominations each. So let's get the awards merry-go-round spinning with this year's CCA nominations:

BEST PICTURE  

Bugonia 
Frankenstein 
Hamnet 
Jay Kelly 
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another 
Sentimental Value 
Sinners 
Train Dreams 
Wicked: For Good

BEST ACTOR 

Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another 
Joel Edgerton,  Train Dreams 
Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon 
Michael B. Jordan, Sinners 
Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

BEST ACTRESS  

Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You 
Chase Infiniti, One Battle After Another 
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Amanda Seyfried, The Testament of Ann Lee 
Emma Stone, Bugonia 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR 

Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another 
Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein 
Paul Mescal, Hamnet 
Sean Penn, One Battle After Another 
Adam Sandler, Jay Kelly 
Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS 

Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value
Ariana Grande, Wicked: For Good
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value
Amy Madigan, Weapons 
Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners 
Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another 

BEST YOUNG ACTOR / ACTRESS 

Everett Blunck, The Plague 
Miles Caton, Sinners 
Cary Christopher, Weapons
Shannon Mahina Gorman, Rental Family 
Jacobi Jupe, Hamnet 
Nina Ye,  Left-Handed Girl '

BEST DIRECTOR

Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another 
Ryan Coogler, Sinners
Guillermo del Toro, Frankenstein 
Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value 
Chloé Zhao,  Hamnet

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY  

One Battle After Another 
Train Dreams 
No Other Choice 
Frankenstein 
Bugonia 
Hamnet

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY  

Jay Kelly 
Marty Supreme 
Sinners 
Weapons 
Sorry, Baby 
Sentimental Value 

BEST CASTING AND ENSEMBLE

Nina Gold,  Hamnet
Douglas Aibel, Nina Gold, Jay Kelly
Jennifer Venditti,  Marty Supreme
Cassandra Kulukundis,  One Battle After Another 
Francine Maisler,  Sinners 
Tiffany Little Canfield, Bernard Telsey, Wicked: For Good

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY 

Claudio Miranda, F1 
Dan Laustsen, Frankenstein 
Łukasz Żal,  Hamnet 
Michael Bauman,  One Battle After Another 
Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Sinners 
Adolpho Veloso, Train Dreams 
 

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN 

The Fantastic Four: First Steps 
Frankenstein 
Hamnet 
Marty Supreme 
Sinners 
Wicked: For Good

BEST EDITING 

A House of Dynamite 
F1 
Marty Supreme 
One Battle After Another 
The Perfect Neighbor 
Sinners 

BEST COSTUME DESIGN 

Frankenstein 
Malgosia Turzanska, Hamnet 
Lindsay Pugh,  Hedda 

Kiss of the Spider Woman 

Sinners

Wicked: For Good 

BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP 

28 Years Later 

Frankenstein 
Sinners 
The Smashing Machine 

Weapons
Wicked: For Good 

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Avatar: Fire and Ash 
F1 
Frankenstein 
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning
Sinners
Superman

BEST STUNT DESIGN  

Ballerina 
F1

Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning

One Battle After Another
Sinners

Warfare

BEST COMEDY  

The Ballad of Wallis Island 
Eternity 
Friendship
The Naked Gun 
The Phoenician Scheme 
Splitsville 

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM 

It Was Just an Accident 
Left-Handed Girl
No Other Choice 
The Secret Agent 
Sirāt 
Belén  

BEST SONG  

“Drive,” F1 
“Golden,” KPop Demon Hunters 
“I Lied to You," The Testament of Ann Lee 
“Train Dreams," Train Dreams
“The Girl in the Bubble:" Wicked: For Good (Universal Pictures)

BEST SCORE  

Hans Zimmer,  F1 
Alexandre Desplat,  Frankenstein 
Max Richter, Hamnet 
Daniel Lopatin, Marty Supreme 
Jonny Greenwood,  One Battle After Another
Ludwig Göransson, Sinners 

BEST SOUND  

F1 
Frankenstein 
One Battle After Another

Sinners 

Sirāt 
Warfare 

 

 

A Sondheim musical rolls on screen

 

Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along premiered on Broadway in 1981. The show ran for a mere 16 performances, a shocking failure for any Sondheim work. The musical evidently evolved through the years, returning to the Broadway stage in 2023. In its new incarnation, Merrily received strongly positive reviews, earned four Tony Awards, and ran at Broadway's Hudson Theater for about a year. Now, the show's director, Maria Friedman, has offered a filmed version of the revamped musical. Still best known as the original Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe boosts name recognition in an energetic production. Radcliffe plays half of a showbiz duo, a lyricist whose career is linked to a successful composer played by Jonathan Groff. Based on a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, Merrily tells its story in backward order, focusing mainly on Groff's character and two friends who have been with him from the start. In addition to Radcliffe, the trio of pals includes Lindsay Mendez, a critic who harbors a not-so-secret love for Groff’s Frank.  Aside from employing close-ups, Friedman highlights the energy of the stage production, filmed with an audience that can be heard applauding at the appropriate times. Friedman obtains strong performances from the principal cast and from Krystal Joy Brown, as the Broadway star who breaks up Groff's marriage to Beth (an equally good Katie Rose Clarke). Serving mostly as a filmed record of the Broadway hit, Merrily We Roll Along should appeal to Sondheim fans. Others may find its two-and-a-half-hour run time a bit taxing, and a segment that tries for political satire seems dated. Had Merrily We Roll Along not been made into a film, I probably never would have seen it. For people such as me that may be the film’s biggest virtue. 

Bob's Cinema Notebook: 'Jay Kelly' and 'Left-handed Girl'

A movie star with problems 

When I first read about Jay Kelly, I thought, “Who better to play aging movie star Jay Kelly than George Clooney? And for seasoning, why not cast Adam Sandler as Ron, Jay's devoted manager and longtime fixer? If the movie assesses the cost of stardom, so much the better.  But for me, director Noah Baumbach's latest proved a disappointing immersion in the life of a big-time star whose ambitions have marred the lives of others. Following a run-in with a roommate (Billy Crudup) from his early days in LA, Jay decides to bail on an upcoming feature and follow his college-bound daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards) to Europe. After years of prioritizing his career, Jay wants to strengthen his bond with Daisy, even if she’s not all that eager to reciprocate. Jay uses the offer of a career tribute in Tuscany as an excuse to make the trip. Jay's entourage (Laura Dern and Emily Mortimer are part of his traveling circus) dutifully tags along — until they've had enough. Clooney's relaxed, low-key stardom is outdone by Sandler, who scores as a devoted, slightly sad guy who realizes that his loyalty is a one-way street. Ron isn't entirely ungrateful, though: He knows that he’s built a life taking 15 percent of Jay’s earnings. Jay's oldest daughter (Riley Keough) turns up in scenes that expose the actor's parenting failures. When a star plays a star, it can put an unfair burden on both actor and audience to figure out where one begins and the other leaves off. That aside, I never felt as if I were being taken inside Hollywood but inside an idea for a movie that didn't match Baumbach's best work: For me, that would be  Marriage Story (2019), The Squid and the Whale (2005), and Frances Ha (2012).

Left-Handed Girl Gets it Right

Set in Taipei, Left-Handed Girl, a family drama full of twists and hidden agendas, operates on a welcome human scale. Single mom She-Fen (Janel Tsai) returns to Taipei with her two daughters after a long absence. The teenage I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) bristles with adolescent anger. I-Jing (Nina Ye) --a cute five-year-old --  has already learned how to win others over. Mom works in a night market and struggles to make ends meet. To help with expenses, I-Ann dresses in a sexy outfit to hawk betel nuts for her young boss -- with whom she'll have a disastrous fling. Among I-Ann’s complaints: She fumes because her mother has agreed to pay for her ailing husband's funeral. He deserted the family a decade ago, leaving Mom with piles of debt. For her part, I-Jing begins a stealth career as a shoplifter, blaming her larceny on her cursed left hand. Her sourpuss of a grandfather (Akio Chen) filled her head with superstitions: The left hand is evil, he thinks. Almost everyone in the film hustles. Grandma (Xin-Yan Chao), for example, is caught up in a scheme involving immigrants. Just when it looks as if the plot will resolve neatly, director Shih-Ching Ching brings the characters to Grandma's 60th birthday party. There, emotional storms erupt, and shocking revelations emerge. Shot with iPhones, Left-Handed Girl teems with city life: You finish feeling as though you've learned something about how people -- especially those who struggle -- live in a bustling city where keeping one's head above water isn't easy.

An additional note:

*I love movies full of characters that feel as if they might exist off screen. Equally important, I admire movies that provide a real sense of how life is lived in a specific place. I'd put Left-Handed Girl in this category. The film has a plot, which, by necessity, means contrivance can’t totally be avoided. But the plot never overpowers the characters; the story feels like something they're living. To be clear, films such as this aren't the only kind that move me. But films that effectively embrace both individual and social realities hold a special place in my heart.