Critics Choice Awards 2022: ‘The Power of the Dog’ Wins Best Picture

The Netflix drama also won Critics Choice Awards for cinematography, adapted screenplay and directing, which prompted Campion to reflect on the influence of critics during a career that has included one significant Oscar-nominated breakthrough, “The Piano,” and other films that often challenged their viewers.

“I’ve still got some PTSD from critics going back to earlier in my career,” Campion joked as she took the stage. “Ouch! Some very deep wounds.”

And earlier, when she won the directing award and noticed the tennis stars and presenters Venus and Serena Williams in the crowd, Campion alluded to how difficult it was to succeed in Hollywood, which is often hostile to women.

“Venus and Serena, you’re marvels, but you don’t have to compete against the men like I do,” Campion said.

The Critics Choice Awards had hoped to wield more influence this season by filling the power vacuum left by the Golden Globes, which went untelevised this year after several major controversies. But an attempt to move into the Globes’ early-January berth was scuttled because of the Omicron surge, and the Critics Choice Awards were forced to take March 13, a date when many film nominees would be in London celebrating the EE British Academy Film Awards, or BAFTAs.

Still, BAFTA winners like Troy Kotsur (“CODA”) and Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”) showed up to claim their Critics Choice supporting actor prizes at a satellite ceremony in London that was patched into the main broadcast.

“Two birds, one stone,” Kotsur joked.

The wins for Kotsur, DeBose and Will Smith, who won the lead actor award for “King Richard,” solidify their position as Oscar front-runners — as they have now each taken acting trophies from the Critics Choice, BAFTA and the Screen Actors Guild. And the show provided significant momentum for the best actress winner Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”), who had also earned a SAG win and now leads a very fluid race.

Though Chastain was not present at the ceremony, Smith was and made the most of his big moment, paying emotional tribute to his guests, the Williams sisters, whose father he plays in “King Richard.”

“Thank you for entrusting me with your story,” Smith said. “What you did inspired us all. You define the American dream.”

Please oh please!

See you there!

Everyone’s out of practice after the last two years.

It was a big night for “The Power of the Dog,” which was also named best picture at EE British Academy Film Awards, which are commonly known as the BAFTAs. On Saturday, the Directors Guild of America awarded its top prize to Campion, putting her on course to win the Oscar for feature-film directing.

Based on Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name, “The Power of the Dog” stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons as brothers with polar-opposite personalities who own a Montana ranch in 1925. Kirsten Dunst plays a failed innkeeper and alcoholic with an effeminate son (Kodi Smit-McPhee).

It beat Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” which had won the prize for best ensemble earlier in the night, and the heartwarming “CODA,” which is considered a serious Oscar contender after winning the top Screen Actors Guild Award last month.

As a predictor of what film will triumph at the Oscars, the Critics Choice Awards have a spotty record. They have matched only twice in the last five years, agreeing on “Nomadland” in 2021 and “The Shape of Water” in 2018. Generally speaking, the critics’ group has tended to favor the more conventional choice — selecting Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” over “Parasite” in 2020, for instance.

One exception: Netflix previously won over critics with “Roma,” Alfonso Cuarón’s black-and-white memoir of growing up in Mexico City. It lost the 2019 Academy Award for best picture to “Green Book,” Peter Farrelly’s segretion-era buddy film.

“Oh my God. Thank you, God,” Lee said in his acceptance speech, opting to speak in English, despite having a translator onstage. He went on to thank Netflix, the awards show and everyone who loved and supported “Squid Game.

The Critics Choice Awards come on the heels of an impressive performance for the show at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in February, where Lee and HoYeon Jung picked up the top TV acting prizes.

The nine-episode series revealed that viewers across the world were eager to binge watch a show in which hundreds of desperate, indebted people played deadly children’s games for a chance at an enormous cash prize. “Squid Game” debuted in September and went on to become Netflix’s most watched show ever, according to the streaming platform.

The element of game play combined with memorable wardrobe choices and production design spawned many a Halloween costume and made “Squid Game” a viral meme factory on its way to becoming one of the most popular foreign language shows ever in the United States.

But the show’s themes also tapped into a broad economic unease and concerns about inequality in South Korea, the United States and beyond.

Maya Salam contributed reporting.

Jane Campion acknowledges other women in the room with her, including Halle Berry and Venus and Serena Williams. She says to the Williamses, “However, you do not play against the guys, like I have to.”

Waititi describes his home country of New Zealand as “a place that really you all want to move to, but we don’t want you.” He adds, “We saw what you did to this place.”

Seven of the show’s lead and supporting actors — who starred primarily as members of the cutthroat Roy family — were nominated for acting awards. Kieran Culkin won for best supporting actor (Nicholas Braun and Matthew Macfadyen were also nominated); and Sarah Snook won for best supporting actress (J. Smith-Cameron was also nominated). Brian Cox and Jeremy Strong were nominated for best actor, but were edged out by Lee Jung-jae, the star of Netflix’s hit South Korean dystopian drama “Squid Game.”

Culkin, who hadn’t prepared any remarks, drew laughs, saying: “Thanks. Shut up. Awful. I was just telling Jeremy how I really hope they don’t say my name. I was really looking forward to that relief of not having to say anything.”

The show, which many fans treat as appointment viewing akin to “Game of Thrones” and other past Sunday night HBO hits, drew additional attention toward the end of last season after The New Yorker published a profile of Strong, who plays the troubled Roy son Kendall.

The profile, which included comments from “Succession” cast members like Cox and Culkin, painted a portrait of an incredibly intense, self-serious performer who was not always pleasant to be around. Reaction to the article took on a life of its own, with some celebrities flying to Strong’s defense.

“Succession,” which has been renewed for a fourth season, has won numerous awards, including for top cast at last month’s Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Maya Salam contributed reporting.

“Encanto” lost in best animated movie? What?

I was hoping for “For All Mankind.”

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“And then finally, when the film came out, I got the courage to ask someone what he thought of the movie,” Berry said. “And he said, ‘I have a hard time watching a woman get battered and beaten. It made me feel uncomfortable.’”

“And in that moment, I knew exactly why I had to tell this story. I knew exactly the power of the story,” she continued. “Because I said, ‘If you had a hard time, if it made you uncomfortable watching that story, imagine being that woman living that story.’”

That, she said, was the power of storytelling: It can help people consider others, find compassion and empathy for them. Berry said she used to aspire to roles typically played by white men.

Now, she has realized that “for those roles to work, they would have to be substantially changed,” she said. “It would have to be written with the reality of my journey, in all of its beauty and all of its pain.”

That, the actress and director said, is why she is grateful to be creating in the moment, when women are telling their own stories. She concluded:

“We will use our emotional intelligence and we will tell stories that don’t fit preconceived notions. No, we will tell stories that see us fully in all our multitudes and contradictions, because we are confident and we are scared. We are vulnerable and we are strong. We are beautiful and we are abused. We are everything and all of that, and all at the same time. Because if we deny our complexity, then we deny our humanity.

We won’t always be pretty, and we will never be perfect, but what we will be is honest and true, no matter how uncomfortable that makes you. These are the stories we have to fight to tell, and these are the stories that the world needs to see. So to every little girl who feels unseen and unheard, this is our way of saying to you, ‘We love you and we see you. And you deserve every good thing in this world.’”

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She also very sweetly thanks her nanny.

“We dedicate this award to the mothers out there, because we certainly put you through hell in our show,” Mark Roybal, an executive producer on the show, said in his acceptance speech. “We set out to make our story about the invaluable lessons you mothers have taught us, specifically mercy and compassion, things we need more than ever in the world right now.”

Nicholson, who played Mare’s best friend, and Peters, who plays Mare’s fellow detective, were nominated for a Critics Choice Award on Sunday for their respective roles. Jean Smart, who played Mare’s bitterly comedic mother, again competed against Nicholson for best supporting actress. They lost to Jennifer Coolidge, for her role in HBO’s “The White Lotus,” but Smart won a best actress in a comedy series award for HBO Max’s “Hacks.”

“Mare of Easttown” garnered a sizable following on Sunday evenings last spring, due in part to its hard-boiled portrayal of the people of Delaware County, Pa. Winslet went so far as to request that the director Craig Zobel not cut a “a bulgy bit of belly” in a sex scene with Guy Pearce, and sent the show’s promo poster back twice because it was too retouched.

Maya Salam contributed reporting.

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Or that we had seen them win for best foreign language series!

Well, at least they didn’t have to wear matching sweatsuits.

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We are also getting the first music play-off of the night …

Is it too much to hope they’re all won by Jason Sudeikis, who is not in attendance?

Sudeikis, Goldstein and Waddingham all nabbed awards at last year’s Emmys for their performances; the show was also crowned best comedy.

In the acceptance speech for best comedy series on Sunday, Waddingham took the opportunity to address the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “It would be remiss of us to not throw the focus to the most important thing that’s happening in the world at the moment — our beautiful brothers and sisters, and for me, more importantly, the babies in the Ukraine that are being utterly decimated at the moment,” she said. “From this putrid, putrid torrent of abuse.”

The Ted Lasso character originated in 2013 in NBC Sports promos that Sudeikis created with his old improv buddies Brendan Hunt and Joe Kelly, who are executive producers on the series. During the show’s 12-episode second season, last summer, Lasso tries to salvage a soccer season in which his team has been relegated to a lower-tier league.

Maya Salam contributed reporting.

After enumerating many of Crystal’s other film and TV accomplishments, Kimmel adds, “He has everything but looks.”

The clips package is really one-of-a-kind. You’ve got Crystal delivering the baby calf in “City Slickers,” being brought out in a Hannibal Lecter mask on the Oscars, and talking inappropriately to a dangling dinner roll in a scene from “Mr. Saturday Night.”

“I’m from Bulgaria, and my home city’s just a few hundred miles away from Ukraine,” Bakalova said. “So as we gather together on this special night, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the bravery of the people of Ukraine who are defending their right to independence and democracy.

“I truly hope that we will come together and usher in a new era of cultural and artistic exchange between Eastern Europe and Hollywood, which has been a foundational force of creativity in the 20th century,” she continued. “So I hope my message goes to the Ukrainian people: We see you. We stand with you. And our hearts are with you.”

Bakalova is from Burgas, the fourth-largest city in Bulgaria, which sits less than 750 miles from Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Earlier on Sunday, Russia launched airstrikes against a military base in western Ukraine, bringing the war 11 miles from the border with Poland.

Billy Crystal, the recipient of a lifetime achievement award, also brought up his roots in the region, explaining that his grandmothers were from Odessa and Kyiv and fled to the United States to escape pogroms. When he was growing up in Long Island, “their laughter — the first laughs I ever got in my life — is the fuel that my engine is still burning today,” he said, and added, “I pray that somehow, some way, there can be laughter and joy in that part of the world once again.”

The “Ted Lasso” star Hannah Waddingham, accepting best comedy series on behalf of the cast, spoke of “the babies in the Ukraine that are being utterly decimated at the moment from this putrid, putrid torrent of abuse. Please, think of them as much as you can, and give as much as you can.”

Before presenting the biggest award of the night, best picture, the Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay handed the mic to his fiancée, a Realtor, Veronika Khomyn, who is from Ukraine. “I proudly stand with my fellow Ukrainians and I admire their strength,” she told the crowd. “They have faced unimaginable adversity with such profound grace and bravery. Their fight and the way they have united the world is truly inspiring. There is no place in our world for this kind of violence, and our prayers go out to all the lives that have been lost.”

There were also a handful of performers — including Jeremy Strong of “Succession” and the “White Lotus” actor Murray Bartlett — bearing blue-and-yellow pins, mirroring the national colors of Ukraine.

Chastain, who was not on hand to accept the prize, has been nominated by the Broadcast Film Critics Association for four previous roles, winning in 2013 for her lead role in Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty.”

She is also an Oscar nominee for best actress this year.

The coming-of-age drama set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles has been well received since it debuted at the Telluride Film Festival earlier this year. The film, both written and directed by Branagh, has grossed $40 million in worldwide box office with close to half of its earnings coming from the U.K. It has been nominated for six Academy Awards, including best picture and best director.

Accepting the prize on behalf of the ensemble was Dornan, who quipped that he was surprised since “critics are usually not very nice to me,” and Jude Hill, who won the best young actor prize for his role in the film.

Dornan went on to say that he believed the film has resonated so well with audiences because it shows the human cost of war, “something we can relate to in this moment with Ukraine.”