Critics Choice Awards: How good are these prizes at predicting the Oscars?

The Critics Choice Awards is renowned as one of the best barometers for predicting the Oscars. Over its 28-year history, these kudos have previewed 16 Best Picture Oscar winners as well as 23 Best Director, 19 Best Actor, 15 Best Actress, 18 Supporting Actor and 19 Supporting Actress champs. Let’s take a closer look at the results of the last seven awards seasons to see if the Critics Choice Awards are still a good luck charm to have in hand when making your 2024 Oscar predictions.

Last year, these kudos foresaw three of the five big Oscar wins for “Everything Everywhere All at Once”: Best Picture, Director (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) and Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan). However, the CCA went with Cate Blanchett (“TAR”) for Best Actress over Michelle Yeoh and Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) for Supporting Actress rather than Jamie Lee Curtis. The critics and academy concurred on Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”) for Best Actor.

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In 2022, these awards previewed all four acting winners: leads Will Smith (“King Richard”) and Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”) plus featured players Troy Kotsur (“CODA”) and Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”). The critics crowned eventual Oscar winner Jane Campion for helming “The Power of the Dog.” However, they went with her film instead of “CODA,” which went on to pull off a Best Picture upset at the Academy Awards.

In 2021, the CCA predicted the Oscars when they named “Nomadland” as Best Picture and its helmer, Chloe Zhao, as Best Director. But it only went one for four in the acting categories: Best Supporting Actor Daniel Kaluuya (“Judas and the Black Messiah”). The Critics Choice lead winners were Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) and Carey Mulligan (“Promising Young Woman”) but the Oscars went to past champs Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”) and Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”). And the two groups also differed on Best Supporting Actress with the CCA picking Maria Bakalova (“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”) but AMPAS preferring Youn Yuh-jung (“Minari”).

In 2020, the critics were won over by “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” but the academy went with “Parasite.” The CCA did preview the Oscar win for “Parasite” director Boon Jong Ho (he tied here with “1917” helmer Sam Mendes) and all four of the acting champs: leads Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker”) and Renee Zellweger (“Judy”) and supporting players Brad Pitt (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) and Laura Dern (“Marriage Story”).

Likewise in 2019, the CCA didn’t align with the academy on the pic for best pic opting for “Roma” over “Green Book” but did agree on the top helmer – Alfonso Cuaron for “Roma.” It aced the supporting races with wins for Mahershala Ali (“Green Book”) and Regina King (“If Beale Street Could Talk”). But it failed to predict the lead winners, going for Christian Bale (“Vice”) over Rami Malek (“Bohemian Rhapsody”) and two of the Oscar also-rans — Glenn Close (“The Wife”) and Lady Gaga (“A Star is Born”) — over Olivia Colman (“The Favourite”).

SEE 2023 Critics Choice Awards nominations list:

In 2018, this group of journos foresaw the outcome in all of those Academy Awards races. “The Shape of Water” took the top prize here and Guillermo del Toro had a chance to practice the acceptance speech he would give at the Oscars. Likewise for the four acting winners: Gary Oldman (“Darkest Hour”), Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”) and Allison Janney (“I, Tonya”).

In 2017, the Critics’ Choice Awards were handed out on Dec. 11. That early date could have worked against these prizes as a precursor. “La La Land” won a whopping eight Critics’ Choice Awards, including Best Picture where it contended against seven of its eight Oscar rivals (only “HIdden Figures” was missing). “La La Land” repeated at the Oscars for Director (Damien Chazelle) as well as cinematography, production design, score and song. While Emma Stone lost here to Natalie Portman (“Jackie”), she bested her at the Oscars. Eventual Oscar champs Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea”) and Mahershala Ali (“Moonlight”) solidified their frontrunner status in the lead and supporting acting races with wins here as did featured player Viola Davis (“Fences”) on the distaff side.

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