Winners & Losers: Critics’ Choice Awards 2021

Ah yes, the awards ceremonies roll on. But boy did I forget how long this one was! And what’s even crazier is that they don’t really mess around with filler segments, plus they even just skip the song and dance for some categories, like foreign film and soundtrack. Anyways, I’m going to summarize as best I can!

A lot of the category winners turned out the same results as last week’s Golden Globes, so in television we saw the likes of The Crown winning best drama, and Emma Corrin, Josh O’Conner, and Gillian Anderson winning in their respective drama acting categories. The comedy series saw their wins split almost down the middle with Jason Sudeikis and Hannah Waddingham taking actor and supporting, while Dan Levy and Catherine O’ Hara took home the remaining two prizes. Ted Lasso managed to squeak out the win from Schitt’s Creek for best comedy series, and I was glad to see the love for this gem! In the limited television landscape, we saw The Queen’s Gambit and Anya Taylor-Joy’s wins hold over from last week, along with John Boyega for Small Axe.

On the movie front, for whatever reason, there are essentially three “best picture” categories with just slightly different names. For instance, while Nomadland did take home the prize for best picture, The Trial of the Chicago 7 won for best ensemble. And then, because comedies very rarely get any love in the best picture category, they got their own, for which Palm Springs beat out the Borat sequel. It seemed like Andy Samberg was in on the joke, too. Minari took home best foreign language film, and while I’m happy for that, I almost wish it couldn’t be a part of this category so Another Round could get some love! Despite a crap-ton of nominees in all of the acting categories, it seems almost like a given now that Chadwick Boseman and Daniel Kaluuya will be the actor and supporting actor winners from here on out. The same can not be said about the actress and supporting actress categories, because we got two new winners with Carey Mulligan and Maria Bakalova! Promising Young Woman also got some love with Best Original Screenplay – thank goodness!

I loved the continued surprise from Ted Lasso’s Jason Sudeikis on the show’s wins, and Hannah Waddingham’s acceptance speech was downright hilarious! Another adorable moment came from Minari’s Alan Kim, when he cried during his speech for winning best young actor/actress. Donald Sutherland essentially just moved rooms from last week as his wax-figure self accepted the award for best supporting actor in a limited series. Finally, I was cracking up along with Seth Meyers parents in the background of his acceptance speech for taking home the win for best talk show. Perhaps other than the actress categories, none of these wins came as much of a surprise or shock. I think it could be fun to see more variation come out of the SAG Awards, but I’m not holding my breath. Congratulations to all the winners, which you can check out here.