As I stated more than a month ago, 2025 was a particularly good year for movies, producing multiple films destined to become classics. The Academy Awards celebrating those films was perhaps not quite reflective of the bombast that might deserve, but that was okay. The Oscars are meant to be a ceremony not a spectacle, and it feels like it has taken some time for them to fully understand that. The spectacle is certainly still there in some respects -hello, grand elaborate performances of “I Lied to You” and “Golden”- but it does feel more earnestly about the honouring of artists itself, if maybe reluctantly so. A few times through the night where the music was cutting off a winner’s speech it soon cut back to them to let them finish. I wonder if the stigma against the show’s producers from the artistic community and the Oscars’ chief viewership might have spooked them? Or maybe it was just Conan O’Brien refusing to play along.
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Conan proved a fantastic host at last years’ Oscars -a natural showman who is surprisingly in-tune with the Oscars’ key demographic of movie nerds while able to poke fun in a way that resonates more broadly and who doesn’t have a smidge of ego or smugness about him. He was the right choice to be brought back this year, and once again delivered very well -starting with a terrific opening wherein (perhaps as compensation for its single nomination), he wore the make-up and wig of Gladys from Weapons and in a reenactment of that movie’s funniest sequence is chased by a horde of children. It starts through the streets of LA and then interacts against footage from the nominated movies. He gets rides in a race car from F1 and in Sensei’s vehicle from One Battle After Another, he interrupts the performance of Hamlet from Hamnet, stops to speak candidly to Stellan Skarsgård in Sentimental Value, and is turned away from the juke joint in Sinners in spite of his rendition of “Danny Boy”. Best of all, he appears in animated form distracting the girls of KPop Demon Hunters. And of course it all ends with Conan being chased by these kids down the steps at the Dolby theatre and on to the stage.
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The production values at the show this year were very good -an earthy aesthetic had been promised and the trees-through-Japanese-window design lived up to it. It looked vibrant, though that might have just been because of Conan in the centre frame throughout the show’s opening -pale, white, and Irish. But starting off the show, it was immediately clear how at home he is in this gig, and if allowed the chance to keep it, might even be one of the greats at it. Certainly he knew well the tone to strike for both his audience in-person and watching from home with his joke about being replaced by a corporate A.I. host next year. It was the start of many a great joke, some a little bit more implicit than others -such as digs at the current situation of potential U.S. war in Iran and Trump’s obsession with naming theatres after himself. Others astonishingly blunt. I had no idea where he was going with that statistic about this being the first year since 2012 with no British nominees in the lead acting categories -but the supposed U.K. response of “we arrest our pedophiles” blew the roof off within the first twenty minutes of the show. Likewise, he noted the Oscars’ eventual move over to YouTube through a gag of ads by Jane Lynch interrupting his monologue at inopportune moments, and blessed us with a hilariously infuriating sketch about vertical-screen cinema, just the worst thing I’ve ever heard of. Somewhat out of obligation he riffed on the dumb ballet and opera controversy surrounding Timothée Chalamet this last week, but it was taken in good fun. Also obligatory is a comment addressing politics at an awards show, which Conan played well by suggesting an alternative Oscars was being hosted by Kid Rock. And as everyone expected, there was a reference to the fact that he was in one of the nominated movies this year, alleging that Rose Byrne had a crush on him while filming in the classiest way possible (Byrne played off it nicely). He even got in a great dig at CBS, and ended his set with his fantasy version of winning an Oscar himself, in a mock gracelessness by having a classy procession with royal finery, a cloak, a crown, the blessing of the Pope, and an eagle delivering the Oscar to his hand. Great stuff!
Pretty much all of his jokes here landed -his one about Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos being in a theatre for the first time only deflated by the fact that Sarandos was indeed there, and tried to show good humour despite just weeks ago having handed the fate of Warner Bros. to Paramount and its Trump buddy CEO. And honestly that was one thing missing from Conan’s monologue, the only space it felt like he was holding back was in his lack of comment on the state of the industry with regards to these mergers and monopoly-building. I was relieved that David Ellison wasn’t in the room, but his name ought to have been dragged through the dirt.
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Conan continued to show class and good judgement throughout the show though. Perhaps his best moment wasn’t even a joke but was his well-played awkwardness at the camera cutting to him after appearing to cut off the speech of one of the Best Live-Action Short winners, Alexandre Singh. Though he was expected to get on with the show he just stood chuckling with his hand over his eyes, forcing the camera and the show itself to bring attention back to what wound up being one of the most significant speeches of the evening. He would turn up on occasion with other jokes, and had a clever line for most of the presenters. In one moment he even tried speaking to the kids with a slew of modern teen slang, before following it up with the fantastic kicker of sarcastically noting all of the teens out there watching broadcast television. Another beat saw him and Sterling K. Brown reenact a scene from Casablanca under the Netflix model of repeating exposition for audiences not paying attention -a fun way to ruin my favourite movie. Conan in general was a lot of fun -contributing vastly to the energy of the evening. And yet on a couple occasions where he needed to make a statement of sincerity about the role and power of movies in the modern world, it was nicely done and genuine. At the end of this monologue I expected a joke to come and it didn’t.
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On the interstitial and presentational side of things, not everything was a knockout though there were certainly highlights. Will Arnett and Channing Tatum made for a surprisingly good double act in the animation awards (I was very happy to hear BoJack Horseman name-dropped at the Oscars), and Anne Hathaway and Anna Wintour (author of The Devil Wears Prada -the trailer of the sequel to which got a lot of airtime during commercials) did great by a very meagre routine purely out of timing. Sigourney Weaver got a fun moment roasting Grogu when presenting with Pedro Pascal -the little puppet sitting in a seat next to Kate Hudson. Lionel Ritchie presenting Original Song was charismatic, Adrien Brody had a nice bit mocking his long speech from last year, and Javier Bardem pulled no punches by immediately exclaiming “no war and free Palestine” the moment the mike was in front of him. However Bill and Lewis Pullman were perhaps a touch stiff, mostly there subtly promoting their first on-screen collaboration in an upcoming Spaceballs 2, and the reunions of the evening weren’t particularly strong. Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans came out as a nod to the fourteenth anniversary of The Avengers (why they didn’t wait until next year I’m not sure), and while they have easy chemistry their banter here wasn’t well-written.
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Worse was the cast of Bridesmaids reading off supposedly offensive notes from people in the audience (Skarsgård and Leonardo DiCaprio playing along a bit awkwardly). Like Bridesmaids itself, the remarks felt written by a man and not so punchy as they should have been. Worse, Kristin Wiig even lampshaded the bit’s length and lack of humour, dragging it out even further. Bridesmaids has always been overrated for its reputation and this routine -which may only have existed because Byrne and Maya Rudolph (Paul Thomas Anderson’s partner) were there tonight anyway- reminded me why. Fortunately the last one, a Moulin Rouge reunion between Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, presenting Best Picture, was the right side of sweet.
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And so too were the tributes during the In Memoriam, the section of the show I imagine will get the most push-back for dragging the show out, but I largely appreciated. The reality is that 2025 was a hard year for celebrity deaths -you could argue Robert Duvall, Val Kilmer and Catherine O’Hara deserved the treatments that Rob Reiner, Diane Keaton, and Robert Redford got. Billy Crystal spoke wonderfully about his departed friend, whom he met on All in the Family, and ran through Reiner’s immaculate run of films from Spinal Tap to All the President’s Men before being joined on stage by a host of veterans of Reiner films including Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, John Cusack, Daphne Zuniga, Wil Wheaton, Cary Elwes, Meg Ryan, Kathy Bates, and Annette Bening. Halfway through the In Memoriam -scored to Mark Knopfler’s theme from The Princess Bride, Rachel McAdams gave a lovely tribute to Keaton and her profound effect on actresses, and then at the end Barbra Streisand eulogized Redford, his impact, his principles, and their relationship (which she spoke of with almost a suspicious degree of warmth) before singing the last notes of “The Way We Were”. There will be complaints of exclusions but I think they chose well the individuals to highlight, and each tribute was lovely and heartfelt.
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Perhaps it was felt there was room for this given the Academy cut down the performance of Original Song nominees controversially from five to two. And it was somewhat unfair to those movies nominated that weren’t Sinners and KPop Demon Hunters, signaling a clear preference and likely winner and based mostly on those two films’ respective popularity. That said, much more was put into both performances and they were really excellent. I liked a lot how they were both these bastions of culture -African and African-American for Sinners, Asian for KPop. “I Lied to You” brought forth Miles Caton and his sensational voice, alongside several actors from the movie performing -including his older self Buddy Guy. And the camera at the Dolby was clearly trying to replicate what Ryan Coogler and his team had done in the movie. It wasn’t as impressive but it went off without a hitch and the song still captured that glorious vibe of cultural magic. “Golden” had a similar effect in encapsulating the bombast and spirit of that sequence in the movie, with the trio of singers -Ejae, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami- giving it their all.
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It was no surprise that they won the Oscar almost immediately afterwards, Ejae giving a nice sentimental speech for the first KPop hit to win that award. It is a shame that one of her co-writers was the only person successfully cut off from his speech through the evening. For the most part the Oscars gave people their time, starting with the first award of the night for Best Supporting Actress. This had been an unusually unpredictable Oscars race, where three of the four acting categories were legitimately up in the air over who would win. In the end, Amy Madigan did beat out four better performances to get that award -forty years after her last nomination. She was very frank and down to earth in her speech, noting that the names she spotlighted were people that really mattered to her -including of course her husband of forty-three years Ed Harris. Clearly she hadn’t been fully prepared, and noted the loneliness of this awards season where she was the only representative from Weapons. It was cute and honest.
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The first sweeping movie of the night was Frankenstein, which deservedly won Oscars for its Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, and Production Design. It was wonderful how each time the camera cut to a jubilant Guillermo del Toro -the most positive man alive- and multiple winners hugging the towering Jacob Elordi in the front row (who apparently sat for four hundred hours in makeup) before making it to the stage. In other minor categories, F1 managed to get a somewhat surprising win for Best Sound and Andy Jurgensen of One Battle After Another beat Marty Supreme to the Best Editing Oscar -a canary it turned out for what was to come. And Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman to ever win Best Cinematography for her work on Sinners, a feat she was clearly aware of, summoning all the women in the audience to stand up during her acceptance. Representation was also on display with KPop Demon Hunters predictably winning Best Animated Feature early and director Maggie Kang noting the importance of diverse stories getting the chance that her film was given. Kang is Canadian, and so too were the directors of the winning Animated Short The Girl Who Cried Pearls, who praised their community in Montreal and Canada more broadly.
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It was indeed in the short categories where some of the night’s greatest drama came. Kumail Nanjiani announced to the surprise of everyone, but doing a great job to keep things calm and stress the honesty of the situation, that Best Live-Action Short was a tie -only the seventh time such a thing has happened and the first time in twelve years. The Singers, a musical comedy on Netflix, was the first and the winners were a little bit perplexed by the situation. The winners for the second, Two People Exchanging Saliva -were just happy to be part of history. And they were the ones who were nearly cut off, but luckily once Natalie Musteata got the basic thanks out of the way, her husband and co-director Alexandre Singh took the time to note the cultural and national diversity of the team that made the film and the power of art to change people’s souls. It was a beautiful moment. On the flip-side, the short Documentary winner All the Empty Rooms, a film about the parents of kids lost to school shootings, made for a moment of sombreness when one of the subjects Gloria Cazares, whose daughter was killed in Uvalde, emphasized the statistics of gun violence towards youth in America and the ever-urgent necessity to do something about it.
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A feature of this year’s Oscars was the novelty of a brand new category -Best Casting, presented appropriately by an actor from each nominated film spotlighting their casting director. It was Cassandra Kulukundis of One Battle After Another to get this distinction -the highlight of her speech pointing out that in thirty years working together she couldn’t believe she won an Oscar before Paul Thomas Anderson. Well, he wouldn’t have long to catch up. About midway through the show an unusual but not unheard of thing happened when Sean Penn won Best Supporting Actor for One Battle After Another in absentia. He has often skipped the Academy Awards -except on the two previous occasions where he has won- and so it wasn’t much a surprise. He doesn’t think highly of winning Oscars anymore -one of his is currently on loan to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In lieu of getting a speech and press about this win though, Penn does join an exclusive club consisting of Daniel Day-Lewis, Jack Nicholson, and Walter Brennan of actors who have won three Oscars. I don’t know how to feel about Penn being in such company -though I would say this performance is better than his previous wins. He would have been happy though that the Best Documentary award went to Mr. Nobody Against Putin, a film about a teacher in Russia covertly documenting the propaganda machine in that country during the early war on Ukraine before fleeing. Director David Borenstein gave an inspired speech about the dangers of losing one’s country through propaganda and failures to speak out, a timely theme; before the subject Pavel Talankin made a plea through his translator to end all wars.
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Avatar: Fire and Ash won Best Visual Effects and Ludwig Goransson took home his third Oscar for Best Original Score for Sinners. Sentimental Value, despite its many nominations, netted just a single win ultimately for Best International Film -though a first for Norway- where Joachim Trier’s beautiful speech that ended in a reference to James Baldwin and the need to avoid politicians who don’t take seriously the welfare of all children around the world, was upended a little by a minor wardrobe malfunction of Renate Reinsve behind him. In a night of political references, it was unexpected from the soft-spoken Trier, and it better not be the last time he gets to speak from that stage.
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The screenplay wins are often a bellwether of how the big awards will go, and they were naturally split between the front-runners. Anderson finally got to that Oscar stage with Best Adapted Screenplay, where he talked briefly of the inspiration of Thomas Pynchon and how he wrote his film for his children as a way of reckoning with the world his generation screwed up for theirs. It was nicely moving. And Ryan Coogler followed him with a Best Original Screenplay win, shouting out his collaborators and significant figures in his personal life in rapid succession and embodying his characteristic cool. However, it was Best Director that sealed the envelope on who was emerging triumphant with the show’s top prize. It seems to have come his time at last -Paul Thomas Anderson got to claim Best Director. “They make a guy work hard for these” he said, dedicating the win to his longtime collaborator Adam Somner and uplifting his fellow directing nominees.
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Going into the last batch of awards and of course past the ceremony’s end-time, Coogler got to see his long-time creative partner rewarded when Michael B. Jordan did in fact pull off that upset and won Best Actor over Chalamet and Wagner Moura. Jordan quoted Denzel Washington’s famous speech at the start of his and name-dropped all of the black lead acting winners in Oscar history -sadly a short list. He referenced his parents, including a father who came to the show from Ghana, and his supportive mother, all of his co-stars in Sinners, and of course that partnership with Coogler that has gotten him to this point. His win was followed by the only truly predictable outcome of the night -Jessie Buckley taking home Best Actress for Hamnet -that film’s sole win of the evening. The first Irish winner of the Best Actress Oscar, Buckley imbued her speech with that characteristic spirit, acknowledging her family who were flown out by Ireland for the show, her husband whom she “wants to have 20,000 more babies with”, and her eight-month old daughter. Maybe the cutest speech of the night.
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Best Picture came with a little less shock than it might have, after McGregor and Kidman’s bit, it was shortly proclaimed that One Battle After Another had secured the pivotal gong. Nobody seemed more enthusiastic than Teyana Taylor on the heels of Anderson as they came to the stage, hugging both presenters before the rest of the cast and producers joined them. Anderson took the time to acknowledge his cast, whom he hadn’t done previously -though he gave most of his time over generously to producing partner Sara Murphy. Another triumphant team and a truly deserving win to cap off a night of broadly-speaking deserved wins all around, if not always the perfect pick for the category. Marty Supreme and The Secret Agent sadly went home empty-handed -but I guess Josh Safdie knows now what Anderson himself must have been through when he had to go up against the Coen Brothers in 2008. One Battle After Another was just in the air, and it doesn’t take anything away from Marty Supreme, or from its more serious competition Sinners -all are films that will be watched and celebrated for years to come. I do suspect that recent events that have a parallel in One Battle After Another are responsible for its win. A lot of people just feel the catharsis of a movie that is so firmly and unashamedly anti-fascist in a distinctly contemporary sense. The movie’s supremacy was one more time cemented by the fact that the show ended on a sketch recreating the ending of that movie where Conan is made permanent Oscar host by Jim Downey -the actor from that original scene who also happens to be a long-time colleague of Conan’s from their time together at Saturday Night Live- before gassing him in his new office; Conan being cremated with a smile on his face as his office is implied to be given to Mr. Beast. A thought too horrible to comprehend.
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With this show, it feels like the Oscars have attained a groove that is very healthy. After years of trying too hard to appeal to an audience the ceremony is simply never getting back, it is like the people in charge are finally understanding the purpose of the Oscars. We’ve had a few good years in a row now, and Conan and the general cinephilic vibe of the whole affair has contributed to that a lot -and I won’t deny that a richer, better crop of winners has had an effect as well. It’s a nice thing to see, especially coming so close to the 100th, which ought to be a very big deal. The disaster of 2022 wasn’t so long ago, but it feels ages ago in sensibility. The Academy President in her usual appearance noted the vastness of the Academy’s membership and we have really seen the fruits of it in both who the winners are and how the show is put on. And I am glad to see that isn’t changing any time soon, that the Academy Awards are growing rather than shrinking. It’s got it’s act together, and that may not be exciting or dramatic -though this night was so in charming ways- but it is satisfying. This was a normal Academy Awards of a positive new normal. It is does not equate to the grandiosity of 2025 in cinema, but it does a fine job honouring it, and staking a decent claim to the importance and power of cinematic art even in this chaotic and challenging world. I was proud of being a movie fan, and I think the Oscars have done a good job exporting that sentimental value.
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