Will the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards predict the Oscars again?

Matthew Stewart
·4 min read
1
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) revealed its 49th annual award winners on Sunday, December 10. It was a great day for “The Zone of Interest,” which was showered with four prizes: Best Picture, Best Director (Jonathan Glazer), Best Lead Performance (Sandra Hüller), and Best Score (Mica Levi).

Hüller’s win was in fact a body-of-work one that simultaneously came in recognition of her turn in “Anatomy of a Fall.” That French production was also given Best Editing and Best Film Not in the English Language. The only other multi-award winner was “Poor Things,” which shared in Best Lead Performance (Emma Stone) and Best Cinematography. The two supporting acting honorees were Rachel McAdams (“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”) and Da’Vine Joy Randolph (“The Holdovers”).

More from GoldDerby

This group of 60 California reviewers were preceded in announcing their newest honorees by the New York Film Critics Circle, who chose “Killers of the Flower Moon” as Best Picture on November 30. Almost every year since LAFCA formed (save only 1989 and 1992), at least two of its choices have gone on to Academy Award triumphs, with the most matches (nine) having occurred in 1984. Judging where 2024 will land on that scale when the Oscars are handed out on March 10 requires analysis of the organizations’ shared categories.

Over the last 48 years, LAFCA has only predicted the Best Picture Oscar winner a dozen times, but four of those instances happened within the last eight years alone. Last year, both sets of voters went with “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (which tied in the LAFCA category with “Tár”) after having recently agreed upon “Spotlight” (2016), “Moonlight” (2017), and “Parasite” (2020). Not including “Tár,” the regional and international groups were last at variance over “Drive My Car” and “CODA” in 2022 and “Small Axe” and “Nomadland” in 2021.

The remaining eight films that earned both the top LAFCA and film academy honors are “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1976), “Rocky” (1977), “Kramer vs. Kramer” (1980), “Terms of Endearment” (1984), “Amadeus” (1985), “Unforgiven” (1993), “Schindler’s List” (1994), and “The Hurt Locker” (2010). The first two shared their critics successes with “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Network,” respectively.

SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions

Of the 192 acting performances that won Oscars between 1976 and 2023, 70 (or 36.5%) had already merited LAFCA victories. This includes those of 2020s supporting champs Youn Yuh-jung (“Minari”), Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”), and Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”). The last time multiple LAFCA acting winners translated over was 2019 (Olivia Colman, “The Favourite”; Regina King, “If Beale Street Could Talk”), while the latest zero-for-four case occurred one year after that.

A total of 17 recipients of the catch-all LAFCA Award for Best Screenplay (which just went to “All of Us Strangers”) have been lauded with Oscars, with nine having been classified by the academy as original and eight as adapted. The most recent instances of each type involved “Promising Young Woman” (2021) and “Argo” (2013).

Overall, LAFCA is best at forecasting Best Production Design Oscar winners (46.7%) and least accurate when it comes to Best International (or Non-English Language) Film (14.6%). This time, the latter statistic is irrelevant since “Anatomy of a Fall” was not chosen as France’s single entry in the Oscar race, but the former does give LAFCA victor “Barbie” a boost over its strongest production design competitor, “Poor Things.”

The winners of this year’s LAFCA Awards will be celebrated in person during a banquet on Saturday, January 13. Nominations for the 96th Oscars are scheduled to be announced 10 days later.

Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?

Best of GoldDerby

Sign up for Gold Derby's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.