The critics have spoken.
The 28th annual Critics Choice Awards, which were held on Sunday 15 January at the The Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, unveiled their favourite film and television picks for 2022.
Everything Everywhere All At Once led the nominations with 14 nods and went home with five trophies, including Best Director for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Best Supporting Actor for Ke Huy Quan – who continues his well-earned awards season dominance in the category – and the top award of the night, the Best Picture award.
This confirms once again the film’s status as one of the most beloved movies of the season and one of the frontrunners for the Oscars in March.
Brendan Fraser won Best Actor for The Whale, Angela Bassett took the Supporting Actress prize for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Cate Blanchett rightfully won Best Actress for her towering and career-best performance in Tár.
These distinctions seem like the beginning of a blueprint for the upcoming Oscars, with one caveat: Everything Everywhere All At Once will face tough competition from The Banshees of Inisherin – which won Best Motion Picture Comedy or Musical at the Golden Globes – and Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical family drama The Fabelmans, which also won big at last week’s Golden Globes by taking the Best Motion Picture Drama award.
Elsewhere, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio from Netflix took Best Animated Feature (like it did at the Globes), Netflix’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery nabbed the Acting Ensemble and Best Comedy prizes, and S.S. Rajamouli’s Indian smash RRR won Best Foreign Language Film and Best Song ('Naatu Naatu').
Glass Onion star Janelle Monáe earned the seventh annual SeeHer Award, an award that honours women whose character portrayals eschew stereotypes and push boundaries, while Jeff Bridges was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by his The Big Lebowski co-star John Goodman.
On the TV side, Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul won Best Drama Series for its sixth and final season, and its star Bob Odenkirk won Best Actor in a Drama.
ABC’s Abbott Elementary, which scored the most nominations with a total of six, followed its Golden Globe win with the Critics Choice Award for Best Comedy Series, while both Zendaya and Jeremy Allen White also added an extra trophy to their ever-growing awards chest following their Globe wins with, respectively, Best Actress for Euphoria and Best Actor for The Bear.
Jean Smart could not pick up her Best Actress in a Comedy Series for Hacks because of Covid, and several other stars could not make it to the Critics Choice because of positive Covid tests. Jamie Lee Curtis, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson were all absent for the big night.
At the end of the evening, A24 and HBO/HBO Max topped all networks and distributors with six trophies each, followed by Netflix with five. Disney and AMC got three each.
Here are the winners of the 28th annual Critics Choice Awards:
FILM:
BEST PICTURE: Everything Everywhere All at Once
BEST DIRECTOR: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert – Everything Everywhere All at Once
BEST ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett – Tár
BEST ACTOR: Brendan Fraser – The Whale
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Angela Bassett – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Ke Huy Quan – Everything Everywhere All at Once
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: RRR
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert – Everything Everywhere All at Once
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Sarah Polley – Women Talking
BEST COMEDY: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS: Gabriel LaBelle – The Fabelmans
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Claudio Miranda – Top Gun: Maverick
BEST EDITING: Paul Rogers – Everything Everywhere All at Once
BEST SCORE: Hildur Guðnadóttir – Tár
BEST SONG: Naatu Naatu – RRR
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: Florencia Martin, Anthony Carlino – Babylon
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Ruth E. Carter – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP: Elvis
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Avatar: The Way of Water
TV:
BEST DRAMA SERIES: Better Call Saul (AMC)
BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES: Zendaya – Euphoria (HBO)
BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES: Bob Odenkirk – Better Call Saul (AMC)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES: Jennifer Coolidge – The White Lotus (HBO)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES: Giancarlo Esposito – Better Call Saul (AMC)
BEST COMEDY SERIES: Abbott Elementary (ABC)
BEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES: Jean Smart – Hacks (HBO Max)
BEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES: Jeremy Allen White – The Bear (FX)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES: Sheryl Lee Ralph – Abbott Elementary (ABC)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES: Henry Winkler – Barry (HBO)
BEST LIMITED SERIES: The Dropout (Hulu)
BEST MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (The Roku Channel)
BEST ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION: Amanda Seyfried – The Dropout (Hulu)
BEST ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION: Daniel Radcliffe – Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (The Roku Channel)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION: Niecy Nash-Betts – Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (Netflix)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION: Paul Walter Hauser – Black Bird (Apple TV+)
BEST ANIMATED SERIES: Harley Quinn (HBO Max)
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE SERIES: Pachinko (Apple TV+)
BEST TALK SHOW: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
BEST COMEDY SPECIAL: Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special (Netflix)
