The 2019 Golden Globe Awards were an unusually tame night filled with shocking winners and many first  time nominees. My only reaction following the conclusion of the show was absolute confusion about how the Hollywood Foreign Press Association chose their winners and how this will influence the upcoming Oscars. Who gave them the right to choose these movies over others? What was the criteria? What will this mean to Hollywood as a whole?

The night featured many exciting moments such as the rise of the infamous ‘Fiji Water Girl’ and when hosts Sandra Oh and Andy Samberg randomly distributed flu shots to the attendees, but the night also included some lows too. These included Jeff Bridges’ extra long speech when he received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement. Although the speech was interesting at first, it began to drag on and seemed to have no real cohesive statement to unify it. It was just lacking compared to Oprah’s powerful words last year when she received the same award. But then again, how do you ever follow and live up to Oprah?

Now on to the actual awards that were distributed. Although I had not seen many of the TV shows nominated this year, the winners came from a diverse group of shows, with no show winning more than two awards apiece. Since there was no show that swept the TV categories this year, that allowed first time nominees such as Richard Madden and Ben Whishaw to shine. Hopefully these wins this year will give viewers more ideas of which binge worthy TV shows to watch in the future.

The film category winners were much less predictable than the television ones at this year’s Golden Globes. This year I made an effort to see as many of the films nominated as I could. I saw all but one of the films nominated for best picture in each category, so I had developed my own opinions on what should be awarded the top honor of the night. Perhaps this is why I was so shocked when Green Book and Bohemian Rhapsody took home the top awards of the night.

Bohemian Rhapsody (drama) and Green Book (comedy) both took home the top awards in their genre

despite receiving mixed critical reviews while at the box office. Bohemian Rhapsody while entertaining and enjoyable purely for the Queen music, was a poorly edited and unfulfilling film that erased Freddie Mercury’s bisexuality instead of taking the opportunity to celebrate it. Rami Malek was absolutely deserving of his award for best actor as tackling the role of Freddie Mercury was not an easy task to pull off, but the movie as a whole should not have won best picture in my opinion. To me, Bohemian Rhapsody was the weakest film in a category that housed such powerhouses as Spike Lee’s Blackkklansman and Bradley Cooper’s remake of A Star is Born. Many others were shocked by this win as well because every critic had basically predicted A Star is Born would win many of these top awards. Moving on to Green Book, this film hoped to accomplish a comedic story line while still shedding light on the racism of the 1960s. While I did find myself laughing at some of the scenes of Dr. Don Shirley and Tony Lip on their road trip across the deep South, the film overall felt like nothing new. I felt like this film didn’t make any particular advances in the film industry or make any powerful statements about racism or increasing diversity that other nominated films, such as Black Panther or Crazy Rich Asians, didn’t already accomplish more successfully. Although films cannot win awards purely based on pop culture success, I just felt like Green Book had similar themes as some of the other nominees and that the other films were more deserving of being awarded for that.

Overall, the Golden Globes this year were… interesting, to say the least. The night left a lot of viewers happy and many others disappointed that their favorites did not win. Despite the results of this awards show though, the most prestigious show in Hollywood for films is still on the horizon, and the wins at the Globes do not always indicate a win at the Oscars. So there is still hope for everyone’s favorite movies of the year! Only 50% of the best picture winners at the Golden Globes also win best picture at The Oscars. Additionally, The Critics Choice Awards had entirely different winners so anything is possible. The Oscar nominations get announced on January 22, and the show airs live on February 24. Be sure to tune in to see how the Oscars compares to the Golden Globes!

Check out all of the nominees and winners here: https://www.goldenglobes.com/winners-nominees/2019/all