Awards season ruined cinema, but I no longer care about little gold men

It’s time to ditch the hype and go back to enjoying movies on merit.

February 16, 2026 — 10:35am

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Between the Globes and the Grammys and the Oscars and the ridiculously named Actor Awards, there’s a specific, frantic pressure that settles over the cinematic landscape this time of year. It bubbles up in lines at the cinema and on Letterboxd and in water cooler conversations.

It’s a high-stakes energy that demands we treat every film not as a piece of art but as a contestant in a pageant, and turns casual conversation about what we’ve liked into bigger, more loaded declarations of what’s worthy of winning little gold men.

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