The Hollywood Critics Association held their annual Midseason Awards over the weekend, and the indie darling Everything Everywhere All At Once swept the awards ceremony.

The Hollywood Critics Association is a major organization of film critics based in Los Angeles, California. Like other critics organizations, such as the St. Louis Film Critics Association, they present a film awards ceremony every year that serves as a bellwether for future Academy Award winners. The Hollywood Critics Association in particular presents their Midseason Awards, which award films halfway through the year.

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On July 1, the HCA held their 5th Annual Midseason Awards. The biggest takeaway was that Everything Everywhere All At Once utterly swept the awards ceremony. The film was nominated for 7 awards (out of 10 total) and won all 7, including Best Picture, Best Director (for the Daniels), Best Actress (for Michelle Yeoh), Best Supporting Actor (for Ke Huy Quan), Best Supporting Actress (for Stephanie Hsu), Best Screenplay (for the Daniels), and Best Indie Film. The only awards it didn’t win were ones it wasn’t eligible for: Best Horror, Most Anticipated Film, and Best Actor (since there was no male lead). Another major story was Austin Butler securing Best Actor for his electric performance in Elvis. This is not a big surprise, as Butler's performance has risen far above the rest of the competition and become one of the major actor performances of the year. Finally, Most Anticipated film went to Jordan Peele's upcoming Nope and Best Horror went to Fresh, the directorial debut of Mimi Cave.

Elvis Austin Butler Tom Hanks

The HCA also listed their runners-up for each award, and the most notable of these was India's revolutionary-era blockbuster RRR receiving runner-up for Best Picture. Although a foreign film, RRR has become a cult hit since its release on Netflix, and this is a major, likely unexpected, result for the film. Although the film is certainly an underdog, this result indicates that RRR may show up again at the Academy Awards, at the very least in the Best International Feature Film category and possibly in other categories such as Best Original Score or Best Original Song.

Ke Huy Quan's win for Best Supporting Actor in Everything Everywhere All At Once is especially poignant and much deserved. Quan, best known for playing Short Round at 13 years old in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), struggled for years with the lack of roles for Asian actors and eventually left acting to become a fight choreographer instead. After seeing the success of Crazy Rich Asians (2018) in the United States, he decided to try acting once again. Everything Everywhere All At Once is Quan's first role in 20 years, but you would never guess it from the breathtaking and devastating quality of his performance.

Because of recency bias, the Academy Awards tends to nominate films from later in the year. As a result, Hollywood builds its entire release schedule around this. Tilms expected to have Oscar potential are almost always released late in the year to increase their odds. Everything Everywhere All At Once, released in March 2022, will need to stay strong in critics’ minds for a full year if it hopes to win the Oscar. If any movie can do it, though, it might be this one. Everything Everywhere All at Once's gargantuan critical momentum is not yet slowing down.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is now available on digital platforms.

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Source: Hollywood Critics Association