Another major awards group announced their pick for Best Film this afternoon. And once again, One Battle After Another lands that win. The National Board of Review selected Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic political action comedy as its pick for Best Film today. In addition to Best Film, the film also won 4 other awards from the group including Best Director for Paul Thomas Anderson, Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio, Best Supporting Actor for Benicio del Toro, and Breakthrough Performance for Chase Infiniti. This is One Battle After Another‘s fourth Best Film win this week after wins at Atlanta Film Critics Circle, New York Film Critics Circle, and the Gotham Independent Film Awards. One Battle After Another is starting the awards cycle with a clear lead in the race, but what does this win at the National Board of Review mean for this chances down the line? Like I said yesterday with its wins at NYFCC and Gotham, it is very complicated.

NBR Best Film Winner	Oscar Best Picture Win	Oscar Best Picture Nomination
Good Night, and Good Luck	No	Yes
Letters from Iwo Jima	No	Yes
No Country for Old Men	Yes	Yes
Slumdog Millionaire	Yes	Yes
Up in the Air	No	Yes
The Social Network	No	Yes
Hugo	No	Yes
Zero Dark Thirty	No	Yes
Her	No	Yes
A Most Violent Year	No	No
Mad Max: Fury Road	No	Yes
Manchester by the Sea	No	Yes
The Post	No	Yes
Green Book	Yes	Yes
The Irishman	No	Yes
Da 5 Bloods	No	No
Licorice Pizza	No	Yes
Top Gun Maverick	No	Yes
Killers of the Flower Moon	No	Yes
Wicked	No	Yes
Total Best Picture Wins in 20 years	3
Likelihood Film Wins Best Picture After Winning Award	15%
Total Best Picture Nominations in 20 years	18
Likelihood Film Gets Best Picture Nomination After Winning Award	90%

As you can see in the 20 year sample of National Board of Review winners, 18 of the NBR Best Film winners (90%) were nominated for Best Picture. However, like NYFCC yesterday, only 3 of the 20 winners (15%) ended up winning Best Picture, which means only 16.7% of the NBR Best Film winners that were nominated for Best Picture ultimately won the award. Like I said with my NYFCC analysis yesterday, this is also of one of the bleaker correlation rates for a Best Picture win rate out of all the awards I will cover this week. However, compared to NYFCC, this award had a more recent Best Picture winner back in 2018 with Green Book. In comparison, NYFCC’s last Best Film winner that won Best Picture was all the way back in 2011 with The Artist. So it has been a while for both of these critics groups to align with the Best Picture winner. This year could break the trend considering all of the early accolades it has won, but I am still very wary as of right now and at the moment not swayed that it could avoid the early frontrunner trap that hurt The Social Network 15 years ago, which also won at both NYFCC and NBR. However, there is one caveat that could make me change my mind that I will go over shortly.

But first, I wanted to see if there was alignment between winners of Best Film for Gotham, NYFCC, and NBR. One Battle After Another is the first film to win all three of these awards which marks very unprecedented territory. However, there are 5 films in the past twenty years that won Best Film at both NYFCC and NBR. Those films are 2007’s No Country for Old Men, 2010’s The Social Network, 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty, 2019’s The Irishman, and 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon. No Country for Old Men was the only one of these five to win Best Picture. However, that film also had a dominant awards cycle with wins for Best Picture at the Producers Guild of America, Directors Guild of America, the Critics Choice Awards, AFI Awards, and Best Ensemble at the Screen Actors Guilds (now called the Actors Awards). No Country for Old Men was one of seven Best Picture winners in the past 20 years that won all three major three Guilds making it a consensus frontrunner and made the difference for it to win outside of those winning the early critics awards. The other four had underperforming campaigns. The Social Network won 3 Oscars and famously lost Best Picture to The King’s Speech after being considered by many the early frontrunner in the race. Zero Dark Thirty only won one Oscar for Sound Editing. And finally, both The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon went home empty-handed despite both being heavily nominated films , both coincidentally had 10 nominations their awards seasons. Considering that bleak statistic, I still have a right to be wary on these early awards hurting One Battle After Another.

However, like I said in the paragraph above, its wins at Gotham, NYFCC, and NBR are truly unprecedented territory. This is the first film to win all three of those awards. Two things can be true. The first is that all three are statistically not great for Best Picture winners. The second is I also believe that if it wins Best Film Sunday with the Los Angeles Film Critics Association that it might be a force to reckon with. Out of all the awards I’ve covered this week, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association does not have a great 20 year track record (better than NYFCC and NBR), but has a solid 10 year track record compared to all of these awards. If One Battle After Another wins there Sunday, this is truly a story and I think could be the beginning of a real time streak break. Time will tell though and there is still plenty of race left.

Saying all of that, does One Battle After Another winning Best Film at the National Board of Review bode well for its chances? Truthfully, the track record the past 20 years has not been great for this award. Additionally, films that have won both the NYFCC and National Board of Review Best Film have not had a great go statistically with only one winning Best Picture out of 5 films. But, given that this is the first film to win Gotham, NYFCC, and National Board of Review, this is the beginning of a story. It could be another tragic early frontrunner or the film that defies the historical data and breaks these long streaks. I am excited to see how this unfolds regardless.

Thank you all for reading this and please feel free to comment your thoughts! I look forward to interacting with all of you this awards season and sharing with all of you how The Oscar Code can help determine what will win Best Picture long before the awards begin.