On January 8, award season started in full effect with the HFPA’s Golden Globe Awards. Hosted by Jimmy Fallon, the ceremony awarded all films that were released in calendar year 2016. In those short 12 months, the cinemas brought us some very perfectly crafted films. Today, we will go through the major award categories for film and I will give you my reaction to the winners.

Speaking of winners, La La Land, the original Los Angeles set musical not only won every Golden Globe it was nominated for, including Best Picture-Musical or Comedy, Best Actor-Musical or Comedy, Best Actress-Musical or Comedy, and Best Director, but since the film won a total of seven awards, La La Land is now the most praised film in Golden Globe history. And for it being my favorite film of the year, I have no objection to that. If you have not seen La La Land, you should definitely check it out and I guarantee you will have one of the best times you will ever have in a movie theater.

Besides La La Land. the other films nominated either came home empty handed or with only one award. The winner for the Best Picture-Drama award went to Moonlight, beating out hard competition like Hacksaw Ridge and Manchester by the Sea, whose only award for the evening went to Casey Affleck for his stellar performance of Lee Chandler in the beautiful but brutal drama.

A couple of major upsets were in the Best Supporting Actor category, where Aaron Taylor Johnson took the award for his great performance in Nocturnal Animals, over the frontrunner Mahershala Ali for Moonlight. In the Best Screenplay category, La La Land took it over frontrunner Manchester by the Sea, which shocked many since La La Land mostly fills its running time with music. Lastly, in the Best Actress-Drama category, Isabelle Huppert took the award over the projected winner Natalie Portman, who gave one of the best performances of her career in Jackie. Considering this is the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, it would make sense why they would give the award to a foreign language film.

Overall, it was a pretty good ceremony with some great speeches and a wonderful moment by Meryl Streep during her acceptance of the Cecil B. De Mille Lifetime Achievement Award. I look forward to talking about the rest of the award season as the weeks progress.