2015 Best Actress nominees list

The list of nominations for the 2016 Golden Globes:

Best motion picture, drama
“Spotlight”
“Carol”
“The Revenant”
“Mad Max: Fury Road”
“Room”
IMMEDIATE REACTION: Once again, the more stereotypical awards-bait movies — period dramas “Brooklyn, ” “Bridge of Spies” and “The Danish Girl” — were outdone by the stylized violence of “Mad Max: Fury Road.” It’s hard to imagine that George Miller’s actioner has any hope up against frontrunners, “Spotlight, ” “Carol” and “The Revenant.”

Best motion picture comedy/musical
“Joy”
“The Martian”
“Trainwreck”
“The Big Short”
“Spy”
Often the Golden Globe nominations for comedies focus on movies that aren’t so much comedies as less serious dramas. We get a little of that this year with David O. Russell’s “Joy, ” which is hardly a laugh riot. The other nominations are pretty solidly comedic — even “The Martian, ” which provided plenty of humor despite the dire circumstances of an astronaut marooned on Mars. Meanwhile, there’s no question that Amy Schumer’s “Trainwreck” and “Spy, ” with Melissa McCarthy, belong in the humor category.

Best actor in a motion picture, drama
Leonardo DiCaprio, “The Revenant”
Eddie Redmayne, “The Danish Girl”
Michael Fassbender, “Steve Jobs”
Will Smith, “Concussion”
Bryan Cranston, “Trumbo”
IMMEDIATE REACTION: There are a lot of similarities between this list and the SAG’s. The only change? Will Smith, who was considered snubbed yesterday, got his groove back today. Of course, that meant Johnny Depp (who played Whitey Bulger in “Black Mass”) didn’t get a nod.

Best actor in a motion picture comedy/musical
Matt Damon, “The Martian”
Steve Carell, “The Big Short”
Al Pacino, “Danny Collins”
Mark Ruffalo, “Infinitely Polar Bear”
Christian Bale, “The Big Short”
We have blockbuster performances competing with arthouse movies here, and the big surprise is Mark Ruffalo for his role in “Infinitely Polar Bear, ” playing a father dealing with mental-health issues. No huge shock here that Damon got the nomination for his “Martian” tour-de-force, but it’s interesting that the HFPA gave love to two members of the ensemble cast of “The Big Short.”

Best actress in a motion picture, drama
Brie Larson, “Room”
Saoirse Ronan, “Brooklyn”
Cate Blanchett, “Carol”
Alicia Vikander, “The Danish Girl”
Rooney Mara, “Carol”
No huge surprises here other than the double-nomination for “Carol.” It seemed as if Mara might be up for the supporting actress category, but she (appropriately) wound up alongside Blanchett. That meant there was less space for Charlotte Rampling (“45 Years”), Emily Blunt (“Sicario”) and Carey Mulligan (“Suffragette”).

Best actress in a motion picture comedy/musical
Jennifer Lawrence, “Joy”
Amy Schumer, “Trainwreck”
Lily Tomlin, “Grandma”
Melissa McCarthy, “Spy”
Maggie Smith, “The Lady in the Van”
2015 continues to be Schumer’s year with yet another nomination, this time for her acting in “Trainwreck.” And Smith may have missed the nomination for acting in “Downton Abbey, ” but she’s making up for it with her role as a woman who quite literally lives in a van — but not by down the river.

Best director — motion picture
Ridley Scott, “The Martian”
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, “The Revenant”
Tom McCarthy, “Spotlight”
Todd Haynes, “Carol”
George Miller, “Mad Max: Fury Road”
Sorry, Steven Spielberg. With the exception of the well-deserved nominations for McCarthy and Haynes, the HFPA prized flashy movie work over staid dramas. Case in point: Miller’s “Mad Max” reboot (or is it a sequel? Not that it matters…), a two-hour post-apocalyptic action extravaganza.

Best supporting actress in a motion picture
Kate Winslet, “Steve Jobs”
Jennifer Jason Leigh, “The Hateful Eight”
Jane Fonda, “Youth”
Alicia Vikander, “Ex Machina”
Helen Mirren, “Trumbo”
Vikander is coming on strong, especially considering that a year ago she was a complete unknown. In addition to her nomination for “The Danish Girl, ” she picks up a nod here for playing an artificially intelligent robot seductress. She has stiff competition, though, up against a fierce, if brief, performance by Fonda in “Youth” and Leigh’s creepy portrayal of a criminal in the custody of a bounty hunter in Quentin Tarantino’s latest.

Best supporting actor in a motion picture
Sylvester Stallone, “Creed”
Idris Elba, “Beasts of No Nation”
Mark Rylance, “Bridge of Spies”
Michael Shannon, “99 Homes”
Paul Dano, “Love and Mercy”
A day after the Screen Actors Guild delivered a surprising choice for best supporting actor — Michael Shannon in “99 Homes” — the HFPA has done the same thing. There’s a fair amount of overlap between the SAG nominations and today’s announcement, between Shannon, Rylance and Elba. But the nominations for Jacob Tremblay in “Room” and Christian Bale in “The Big Short” (who was nominated instead for a lead actor Golden Globe) were replaced by Dano and the ultra-buzzy turn by Stallone in “Rocky” sequel “Creed.”

Best screenplay — motion picture
“Spotlight”
“Steve Jobs”
“The Hateful Eight”
“Room”
“The Big Short”
One of the big surprises here is that the Hollywood Foreign Press valued a comedy, “The Big Short, ” over some more serious choices, such as “Brooklyn, ” “Carol” or “The Danish Girl.” Admittedly, Adam McKay and Charles Randolph’s screenplay (based on the book by Michael Lewis) made sense of a very complex subject — the subprime housing crisis.

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