2025 Oscar Awards

Another year, another Oscar season wrapped up at the end of a long telecast. It was a little lackluster for me, but there were some bright spots. Let’s get into it!

I liked Anora quite a bit, but it wouldn’t have been my pick for the big winner of the night. It won five of its six nominations, with Mikey Madison winning Best Leading Actress and Sean Baker going 4-for-4 with Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Picture. Definitely more than I would’ve expected.

Besides awards they weren’t eligible for, like Best Documentary or the shorts, nearly all the other Best Picture nominees divvied up the remaining awards, with most of them getting one or two apiece. Conclave, staggeringly, only got Best Adapted Screenplay—well deserved, but I’m floored that that film didn’t make a bigger showing. Wicked was rewarded for Best Costume Design (first Black man to win it!) and Best Production Design, which was cool to see. I was bummed for Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, but fingers crossed that we’ll have a Return of the King situation and Wicked will get more recognition next year for its final installment.

The Brutalist scored Best Leading Actor for Adrien Brody, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score. Dune: Part Two won Best Sound and Best Visual Effects. Zoe Saldaña took home Best Supporting Actress for Emilia Pérez, and the film also got Best Original Song. I’m Still Here won Best International Feature, while The Substance snagged Best Hair & Makeup. And for non-Best Picture nominees, Kieran Culkin held it down for A Real Pain to win Best Supporting Actor, and now I’d really like to see both Flow (Best Animated Feature) and No Other Land (Best Documentary Feature.)

And I don’t know. A lot of the awards shook out like I figured they would, and I wasn’t that excited by the ones that didn’t. I wasn’t appalled or outraged by any of the wins, but a number of them didn’t move me that much.

So what did I enjoy? Well, the ceremony started off with a bang, with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s opening number bringing down the house. I actually love that, rather than doing a full-on Wicked medley, it was an Oz-themed montage. Grande gave us The Wizard of Oz with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Erivo repped The Wiz with “Home,” and they came together for the “unlimited” section of “Defying Gravity” before Erivo blew the roof off with the climax of the song. Chills, I tell you!

I always like Conan O’Brien, and he made for a fun host. His monologue included a “movie so long” joke about The Brutalist that was actually affectionate, saying, “I loved it, and I didn’t want it to end. Luckily, it didn’t.” Threatening to show actors’ old embarrassing headshots in lieu of play-off music was a hoot, and I loved the bit about how A Complete Unknown, A Real Pain, and Nosferatu were “just some of the names [he] was called on the red carpet.” Beyond the jokes, I really liked what O’Brien had to say about the idea of Hollywood throwing itself a big self-congratulatory party so soon after the wildfires, acknowledging the elite navel-gazing while pointing out that the Oscars also uplifts behind-the-scenes technicians and artists who don’t usually get to be in the public eye. Plus, he brought on some L.A. firefighters to deliver a few jokes he wasn’t “brave enough” to tell.

Some nice award presentations. For the supporting acting categories, Robert Downey Jr. and Da’Vine Joy Randolph had individual remarks for each of the nominees, which was lovely. Downey’s especially came across as very personal. Not sure why they didn’t do it for Best Leading Actor and Actress—maybe they wanted to minimize praising Karla Sofía Gascón? Andrew Garfield and Goldie Hawn made for a delightful team-up to present the animated categories, and what they had to say was wonderfully respectful to the medium of animation. And this year’s ceremony took a page from last year’s book with the “one presenter to personally address each nominee” thing, only instead of doing it for the actors, it was for a few of the technical and production categories, with one actor from each nominated film praising their costume designer/cinematographer. I really liked that, and it fit in nicely with O’Brien’s earlier remarks about celebrating the industry’s below-the-line artists.