Consensus Forms On Feature Animation Oscar Race After Critics Choice Awards Announce Nominees

The Critics Choice Awards (CCA) announced nominations today for their 28th annual edition. The awards are presented by the Critics Choice Association, a group of over 600 critics and entertainment reporters.

The CCA’s feature animation nominees are nearly the same as the Golden Globes nominees, announced earlier this week. Four of the same five films are nominated in both award shows: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Turning Red.

The only difference is that the CCA nominated Henry Selick’s Netflix feature Wendell & Wild whereas the Golden Globes picked Masaaki Yuasa’s Inu-Oh as their fifth nominee.

Both the Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes are reliable bellwethers for the Oscars. In the last 12 years of each ceremony, they’ve each picked the eventual Oscar animation winner (usually a Disney or Pixar feature) nine out of twelve times.

The fact that four of the same films have now been nominated in the CCA and Golden Globes suggests that a consensus may have also formed about this year’s Oscar nominees. It’s not a bad slate either with more diversity than usual – two stop motion and two cg films, as well as four different distributors/producers: Netflix (Pinocchio), A24 (Marcel the Shell with Shoes On), Universal/Dreamworks Animation (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish), and Disney-Pixar (Turning Red).

The fifth slot remains a wide open race. At this point, it could be Wendell & Wild or Inu-Oh or any number of other Oscar-qualified films, such as Charlotte, Eternal Spring, Little Nicholas – Happy as Can Be, Mad God, Minions: The Rise of Gru, or The Sea Beast.

Here are the CCA animation and vfx nominees:

Best Animated Feature

• Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix)
• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (A24)
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (DreamWorks Animation)
• Turning Red (Pixar)
• Wendell & Wild (Netflix)

Best Visual Effects

• Avatar: The Way of Water (20th Century Studios)
• The Batman (Warner Bros.)
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Marvel Studios)
• Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24)
• RRR (Variance Films)
• Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount Pictures)>

Del Toro’s Pinocchio picked up two additional nominations at the CCA: best song (“Ciao Papa”) and best score (Alexandre Desplat). It earned those same nominations at the Golden Globes, too.

The winners of the CCA will be announced at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles on Sunday, January 15, 2023. The awards will be broadcast live on The CW.