Battle for Oscars glory has begun

Awards season comes into focus as Paul Thomas Anderson's film leads a wide field.

- BY JOSH ROTTENBERG

LEONARDO DiCaprio scores an acting nod for "One Battle After Another," one of its nine nominations.

Nominations for the 83rd Golden Globes arrived before dawn Monday, and in a crowded awards season full of early feints and false starts, one film came away having clearly won the morning's skirmish: "One Battle After Another."

Paul Thomas Anderson's ambitious movie — about former political radicals reckoning with middle age, compromise and the ideals they once wore more proudly — showed up nearly everywhere the Globes could put it, leading the field with nine nominations. It landed nods for best motion picture (musical or comedy), director, screenplay and several actors, marking the broadest show of support for any film and giving a still-unsettled Oscar race something resembling a focal point.

"One Battle After Another" has already been on a steady roll with critics, collecting top prizes from the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn., the New York Film Critics Circle, the Gotham Awards and the National Board of Review — an unusually consistent run that has begun to separate it from the pack even before industry groups weigh in.

Elsewhere, the drama picture category underscored just how international— and fluid—the race remains.

The lineup leaned heavily toward filmmakers with strong global followings, including Jafar Panahi’s tightly coiled political drama “It Was Just an Accident,” Kleber Mendonga Filho’s Brazilian espionage thriller “The Secret Agent” and Joachim Trier’s emotionally precise family drama “Sentimental Value.” They were joined by Guillermo del Toro’s long-gestating gothic passion project “Frankenstein,” Chloé Zhao’s literary adaptation “Hamnet” and Ryan Coogler’s muscular, genre-bending period film “Sinners.”