2019 Golden Globe Film Awards Predictions -- Page 3 of 3

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Best Director

Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
Bong Joon Ho, Parasite
Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood
Sam Mendes, 1917

Next in line: Greta Gerwig, Little Women; Pedro Almodóvar, Pain and Glory; Clint Eastwood, Richard Jewell; Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit; Todd Phillips, Joker

Presumably, Martin Scorsese will do more than just wave and point from his seat when the Golden Globes give him their Best Director award for the fourth time this century.

Best Director is usually the Globes' way of telling us their top five films of the year. This year, that is likely to include the South Korean thriller Parasite, which as I've said before is ineligible for Best Picture honors here. Industry titans Scorsese and Tarantino will of course feature here. A nod for Baumbach is more of a vote for the film than the New York-based director's understated style. A nomination for Sam Mendes, on the other hand, acknowledges the ambitious technique that drives 1917.

As far as potential surprises, a Greta Gerwig nomination would shoot down a "Hollywood So Male" argument and also set up a head to head competition with her romantic and sometimes creative partner Baumbach. The Globes somehow denied her a directing nomination for Lady Bird. I have a sneaking suspicion that the HFPA will love Pain and Glory so much that Pedro Almodóvar gets nominated here, but I swapped him out for Mendes at the last minute based on the awards conversation at large. It's going to hurt if I miss that one.

Natalie Portman threw shade at the Globes when giving out the Best Director award in 2018's Greta Gerwig-less field.

Clint Eastwood is a big name and Richard Jewell seems like an underrated threat. Its prospects for the season would be greatly aided by a strong showing here. Otherwise, a nod for Jojo Rabbit or Joker's helmers would give a boost, indicating those films are not just the ones that would have been excluded if the Oscars still had only five Best Picture nominees. There's a strange but significant statistical correlation between landing a nomination in this Globes category and Oscar success or failure.

This year, Noah Baumbach won't just be Greta Gerwig's date, as he was here at the 2017 Academy Awards.

Best Screenplay
Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood
Steven Zaillian, The Irishman
Greta Gerwig, Little Women
Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit

Next in line: Lulu Wang, The Farewell; Anthony McCarten, The Two Popes; Bong Joon Ho & Jin Won Han, Parasite; Todd Phillips & Scott Silver, Joker; Pedro Almodóvar, Pain and Glory; Billy Ray, Richard Jewell

Whereas the Oscars have ten screenplay nominations to give (five Original, five Adapted), the Globes pits all the scripts together for a mere five slots. That makes this an extremely tough category to crack. But it's another opportunity to get a Baumbach v. Gerwig showdown, which I think is too good a story to deprive us of. (At the Oscars, they'll be separated into different categories.)

Tarantino seems certain to be back here for his fifth nomination in this category, which he has won twice (for Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained). And if The Irishman is to be the true favorite of the year, then Steven Zaillian is bound to pick up his third Globe nomination (he was previously nominated for Moneyball and won for Schindler's List).

Quentin Tarantino shows off his fine acting chops with this belabored spit take at a past Golden Globes ceremony.

This category gives the voters another chance to recognize the three formidable foreign films that are sidelined from Best Picture contention here, but I foresee them all getting recognized elsewhere, whether in Director or the acting categories, besides the obvious Foreign Lanuage Film nomination coming their way.

That's why I'm guessing the final slot goes to Taika Waititi, whose adaptation of Christine Leunens' novel isn't to everybody's taste, but is essential to this Holocaust comedy being widely recognized as one of the year's best films.

Sadly, Best Animated Feature is a Shrekless competition this year.

Best Animated Feature
Toy Story 4
Frozen II
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
Missing Link
Klaus

Next in line: Abominable, I Lost My Body, The Addams Family, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

I love animation, but this year's crop is probably the weakest we've had since Best Animated Feature awards were introduced at the start of the century. Cynics will be all "ugh, another win for Disney" if either the year's in-house or Pixar blockbuster sequel takes the prize it doesn't need. But I've yet to encounter an animated feature better than those, apart from maybe The Lion King, which Disney is pretending isn't animated and therefore didn't even submit for awards. Not that film lovers would be pleased that a different billion dollar grosser, a photorealistic remake nowhere near as great as the hand-drawn original, was recognized.

I still haven't gotten around to the final Dragon movie, but the second one won the Globe in 2014-15 (while the Oscar went to Disney's Big Hero 6), so there's no strong reason to go that route, if the movie isn't any better than the first two.

The Globes' Animated Feature category used to stick to safe, mainstream American fare, which explains why Hotel Transylvania, The Good Dinosaur, Rise of the Guardians, and The Peanuts Movie all got nominated. But the last few years, they've recognized works from other parts of the world and aligned with the Oscars. But I think they'll play it safe this year and let the Academy recognize Netflix's offbeat French 'toon I Lost My Body on its own. But either that or Netflix's American contender Klaus has to make it in here to throw a bone to 2D animation.

Bong Joon Ho's "Parasite" should be headed for at least one Golden Globe that isn't a peach.

Best Foreign Language Film
Parasite (South Korea)
The Farewell (China)
Pain and Glory (Spain)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (France)
Atlantics (Senegal)

Next in line: Les Misérables (France), Invisible Life (Brazil), Out Stealing Horses (Norway)

The Oscars changed the name of their Best Foreign Language Film category to Best International Film. Wonder how long it will take the Globes to do the same and become the Hollywood International Press Assocation! The top three here are all expected to draw nominations in other categories, so you assume that makes them locks here. As for the last two, I'm mostly taking a stab in the dark. I did see and enjoy Atlantics, which recently began streaming on Netflix.

Best Original Song
"Into the Unknown", Frozen II
"(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again", Rocketman
"Beautiful Ghosts", Cats
"Glasgow", Wild Rose
"Spirit", The Lion King

Next in line: "Catchy Song", Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

Songs that are performed by characters in the movie have an immediate leg up on those that aren't. I'm not super familiar with or crazy about any of these, but hey, at least the totally not animated The Lion King (2019) has a shot for the one song that isn't as great as all of the recycled others. If big names have an advantage, the Cats one is from Taylor Swift and Andrew Lloyd Webber, Lion King's number counts Beyoncé as both writer and performer, and "Glasgow" was penned by Mary Steenburgen, who was nominated for three acting Golden Globes over a four-year period in the late '70s and early '80s.

Jokers gotta dance...

Best Original Score
Joker
1917
Little Women
Marriage Story
Avengers: Endgame

Next in line: Ford v Ferrari, Motherless Brookyln, Ad Astra, Waves, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

It could be Newman vs. Newman, as cousins Thomas (1917) and Randy (Marriage Story) square off here, but I think Iceland's Hildur Guðnadóttir, a protégé of the late, great composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (Sicario, Arrival) is well positioned for the win for her Joker score. This is always one of the toughest Globes categories to predict, since the Globes have not established their music tastes (i.e. a love of all things John Williams) as thoroughly and clearly as the Oscars.

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The Globes will announce their nominations on Monday morning at 5 AM Pacific/8 AM Eastern with a press conference you will hopefully be able to stream live right here on Page 1 of this preview. The awards themselves will be hosted by Ricky Gervais and broadcast live on Sunday, January 5th at 8 PM Eastern/5 PM Pacific on NBC, preceded by a one-hour red carpet show.

If my predictions are accurate, and I'd like to think they are, here is the tally of nominations per film:

7 nominations:

Marriage Story

5 nominations:
The Irishman
Little Women
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

3 nominations:
Joker
Knives Out
1917
Rocketman

2 nominations:
Bombshell
Cats
Dolemite Is My Name
The Farewell
Frozen II
Hustlers
Jojo Rabbit
Pain and Glory
Parasite

1 nomination:
Atlantics
Avengers: Endgame
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Booksmart
Ford v Ferrari
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
Judy
Klaus
The Lighthouse
The Lion King
Missing Link
The Peanut Butter Falcon
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Richard Jewell
Toy Story 4
The Two Popes
Us
Wild Rose