‘Air,’ ‘Past Lives’ lead HCA Midseason Movie Awards Nominations with 7 Each

Erik Anderson June 27, 2023

The Hollywood Critics Association has announced today the 2023 HCA Midseason Movie Awards nominees where Amazon Studios’ Air and A24’s Past Lives led the field.

Ben Affleck’s Air received seven nominations include Best Picture, Best Actor for Matt Damon, dual Best Supporting Actor nominations for Chris Messina and Ben Affleck, Best Supporting Actress for Viola Davis, Best Screenplay, and Best Director. Celine Song’s directorial debut Past Lives tied with Air for the most nominations, earning nods for Best Picture, Best Actress (Greta Lee), Best Actor (Teo Yoo), Best Supporting Actor for (John Magaro), Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Indie Film.

Lionsgate’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, adapted from Judy Blume’s beloved book of the same name, received a total of six nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress for newcomer Abby Ryder Fortson. Another Lionsgate film that also did well at the HCA Midseason Movie Awards was John Wick: Chapter 4, with a total of three nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Stunts.

Other films with multiple nominations include Sony Pictures’ box office hit Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse and Paramount Pictures’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, plus the Michael B. Jordan-directed Creed III, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, Matthew Johnson’s BlackBerry, Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, Louis Leterrier’s Fast X, Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings, A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One, and Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid.

Films with single nominations include Netflix’s Extraction 2, Apple TV+’s Tetris, Focus Features’ Polite Society, Searchlight’s Rye Lane, Warner Bros’ Evil Dead Rise, Paramount Pictures Scream VI, and two Universal Horror titles M3GAN and Knock at the Cabin.

For a film to be eligible, a film must have been released between January 1, 2023 and June 30, 2023. Nomination ballots for the HCA Midseason Awards were sent out via email to all 178 members of the Hollywood Critics Association on Tuesday, June 20, 2023, with a deadline of Sunday, June 25, 2023, at 6pm PT.

Final voting for the 2023 HCA Midseason Movie Awards is currently underway with final votes due by midnight on Wednesday, June 28, 2023. The winners of the Midseason Awards will be announced on Friday, June 30, 2023.

Here is the complete list of nominations.

Best Picture

Air (Amazon Studios)
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Lionsgate)
Asteroid City (Focus Features)
BlackBerry (IFC Films)
Creed III (MGM)
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Paramount Pictures)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (Walt Disney Pictures)
John Wick: Chapter 4 (Lionsgate)
Past Lives (A24)
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures)

Best Actor

Joaquin Phoenix – Beau Is Afraid (A24)
Matt Damon – Air (Amazon Studios)
Michael B. Jordan – Creed III (MGM)
Taron Egerton- Tetris (Apple TV+)
Teo Yoo – Past Lives (A24)

Best Actress

Abby Ryder Fortson – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Lionsgate)
Greta Lee – Past Lives (A24)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus – You Hurt My Feelings (A24)
Mia Goth – Infinity Pool (NEON)
Teyana Taylor – A Thousand and One (Focus Features)

Best Supporting Actor

Ben Affleck – Air (Amazon Studios)
Chris Messina – Air (Amazon Studios)
Glenn Howerton – BlackBerry (IFC Films)
Jason Momoa – Fast X (Universal Pictures)
John Magaro – Past Lives (A24)

Best Supporting Actress

Kathy Bates – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Lionsgate)
Patti LuPone – Beau Is Afraid (A24)
Rachel McAdams – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Lionsgate)
Scarlett Johansson – Asteroid City (Focus Features)
Viola Davis – Air (Amazon Studios)

Best Director

Ben Affleck – Air (Amazon Studios)
Celine Song – Past Lives (A24)
Chad Stahelski – John Wick: Chapter 4 (Lionsgate)
Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson – Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures)
Kelly Fremon Craig – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Lionsgate)

Best Stunts

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Paramount Pictures)
Extraction 2 (Netflix)
Fast X (Universal Pictures)
John Wick: Chapter 4 (Lionsgate)
Polite Society (Focus Features)

Best Screenplay

Alex Convery – Air (Amazon Studios)
Celine Song – Past Lives (A24)
Kelly Fremon Craig – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Lionsgate)
Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Dave Callaham – Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures)
Wes Anderson – Asteroid City (Focus Features)

Best Horror Film

Evil Dead Rise (Warner Bros)
Infinity Pool (NEON)
Knock at the Cabin (Universal Pictures)
M3GAN (Universal Pictures)
Scream VI (Paramount Pictures)

Best Indie Film

BlackBerry (IFC Films)
Past Lives (A24)
Rye Lane (Searchlight)
A Thousand and One (Focus Features)
You Hurt My Feelings (A24)

Most Anticipated Film For The Second Half of 2023

Barbie (Warner Bros)
Dune Part Two (Warner Bros)
Killers Of The Flower Moon (Apple TV+)
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Paramount Pictures)
Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.