It’s true: the HFPA (the Hollywood Foreign Press Association) was a corrupt gang, a hundred journalists whose closed club were able to nominate Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp for the remake of The Tourist, an unfunny antics. That they left the Golden Globes ceremony in the hands of Ricky Gervais, and then washed their hands. That they rewarded series and films with a criterion that could be described as, at the very least, peculiar. But we must admit that it was very fun to beat them, it was fascinating to see such a waste of poison. In that criticism there was a certain satisfaction and vindication from the barrier of “you have no idea, luckily we are still movie buffs in the world.” However, at the gala held this Sunday, the 2025 Golden Globes have vindicated good cinema with The Brutalist y Emilia Perez, They have awarded the best drama actress to a Brazilian performer, they have pointed the way to the Oscar for Zoe Saldaña, Adrien Brody and Demi Moore (her self-affirmation speech will be repeated in numerous installments this season and will garner increasingly greater praise), and they have only left some blots. Thus, they have become a film gala like the dozens that are being held in the United States from the beginning of December until the day of the Oscars, on March 3. With its putrid idiosyncrasy lost, now who are we going to mock?
By parts: in drama he won The Brutalist, by Brady Corbert, a film that draws on the cinema of David Lean. Corbert, as an actor, has filmed with Haneke, Von Trier, Östlund, Assayas, Bonello and Baumbach; Curiously, it has ended up narrating the life after the Second World War of a Hungarian architect in the United States with the epic, the camera movements or even with an intermission in the middle of its footage like the classics, among which Lean was the king. In comedy or musical, Emilia Perez took the statuette, and the Frenchman Jacques Audiard remains the most intriguing and young director at 72 years old: he does not make a single film the same, and in all of them he sniffs out the spirit of the moment. Corbert took the award for best direction—by the way, four men and two women were competing, very far removed from the big names in Hollywood—and Emilia Perez, for best non-English speaking film (at that moment you could see the Iranian exile Mohammad Rasoulof sitting in that lounge of an Angeleno hotel, what a trip). All good. Animation, for the Latvian Flow, another success. Soundtrack, for Rivals, by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross: Nine Inch Nails have been able to strengthen their creativity in cinema, and better song, for the evil, the catchiest of the songs heard on Emilia Perez.
It was a festival of good cinephile taste. Because the 334 journalists from 85 countries who now vote in the Golden Globes (and who live all over the world) are, almost all, festival fodder. The excesses have ended since the awards were bought by Eldridge Industries, a behemoth that houses Dick Parsons Productions (the long-time producer of this gala) and the companies that own the publications. The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline y Rolling Stone. The Golden Globes have whitened its soul, supported by the specialized film media. Everything stays at home… or that’s what neocapitalism is, as Elon Musk would say.
In the six acting awards there were no major errors: Zoe Saldaña (secondary with Emilia Pérez) and Adrien Brody (best actor in a drama with The Brutalist) They have the Oscar almost in their homes. Demi Moore (best actress in a comedy or musical) has become the third way in a career that seemed limited to Karla Sofía Gascón and Mikey Madison. Kieran Culkin (supporting by A Real Pain) is on the right track, and Sebastian Stan (best actor in a comedy or musical with A Different Man) He knows that he will rarely be able to win again.
And then came the two great moments of the night. The first starred the Brazilian Fernanda Torres, who surprisingly won the award for best actress in a drama with I’m still here, of Walter Salles, and recalled how a quarter of a century ago his mother, Fernanda Montenegro, competed there with Brazil Central Station. At the moment Torres’ name was heard, the cameras showed the yin and yang of her competitors: Tilda Swinton stood up to chant the Brazilian, and Angelina Jolie’s face revealed a common thought with that of the spectators: That’s as far as the possibilities of your Maria Callas.
At a gala with sushi dinner from the legendary Nobu (goodbye to chicken canapés) and with diluted jokes – Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s Zumosol cousin, was never mentioned; nor to the elected president; nor much less to the exchange of demands between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, which in Gervais’s mouth would have bled from the eyes; nor was there a testosterone-fueled fight between close enemies Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson, when the former greeted the latter in the middle of the broadcast—the second great moment came with the Golden Globe for best screenplay for Conclave, which is still a mere conversion to a film script of the homonymous best-seller from Robert Harris Airport. He deserved that award much more. Anora, a comedy outside the norm, which unfairly left empty.
While the candidate Javier Bardem did not attend the ceremony, probably because a night of kings with the family tastes better, Hazte Oír and the Christian Lawyers will surely have approached a court to denounce the presenter Nikki Glaser for starting to sing a little song dressed as a pope and in which he joked about a pontiff for a few seconds: mere attempt at evil.
However, the gala ended on a high note, when, celebrating the victory in the last award of the day, that of Emilia Perez For best musical, Audiard gave the stage to Karla Sofía Gascón, with a dress in two shades of orange, the color of Buddhism, and the Madrid native said: “The light always wins over the darkness. You can put us in jail or beat us, but you will not take away our soul, our identity. Raise your voice and say: I am who I am and not who you want me to be.”