On Sunday, March 2nd the 2025 Academy Awards ceremony took place, hosted by Conan O’Brien. This was the second ever Oscar ceremony that I have watched live, and I was very excited to watch it. I wasn’t very familiar with Conan O’Brien, but I was excited to see if his hosting job would be a step up in quality from Jimmy Kimmel’s hosting, and I always look forward to award show opening monologues because as they’re about the nominated movies, it’s just stand up comedy specifically targeted towards me, so that’s always fun.

Overall, Conan O’Brien did a pretty great job hosting. Not every joke and bit hit, but even when the jokes didn’t make me laugh, I found the majority of them at least a little charming. I was kind of shocked to see him make jokes so directly towards Karla Sofía Gascón, the star of Emilia Pérez who has rightfully gotten a lot of backlash because of her numerous horribly racist tweets. She was in attendance, and he made two jokes about her controversy, which were the highlights of his monologue. I liked O’Brien’s sense of humor for the most part. His jokes were so silly and stupid but enjoyable for the most part. I loved his dumb joke about Miles Teller and Miley Cyrus. The Adam Sandler bit was a lot of fun, and I appreciated how much effort Sandler put into it. Most of all, O’Brien showed a genuine love for cinema through his monologue, something that is bizarrely lacking from the majority of award show hosts, and it was awesome to see. I hope O’Brien continues hosting the Oscars in the future. He was great.

There were three musical performances. The best one was definitely the opening where Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, the stars of Wicked, performed Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz, Home from The Wiz, and Defying Gravity from Wicked. Erivo and Grande both have beautiful voices so I enjoyed their performance, but it was nothing super memorable. Defying Gravity is just such a powerful song that their live performance of it made me tear up. The second musical performance was a James Bond tribute from Lisa, Doja Cat, and Raye, and, to be honest, I did not enjoy it at all. It felt very long and was mostly uninteresting. I didn’t understand why instead of performing the original song nominations live we got a musical tribute to a franchise that you can do a tribute to any year, as this wasn’t a milestone anniversary or anything. The final performance was a tribute to the late Quincy Jones with Queen Latifah performing Ease on Down the Road from The Wiz. I enjoyed the choreography of this performance, but I did not think Queen Latifah did a good job with her vocals. Overall, the musical performances were mostly disappointing.

As for the awards themselves, the first one announced Best Supporting Actor which expectedly went to Kieran Culkin for A Real Pain. I think this win is incredibly deserved, but it would have been cool to see Jeremy Strong and Yura Borisov win something along the way for their incredible performances. Culkin’s performance is honestly one of the best acting performances I have ever seen in a movie, so it is truly awesome to see him win an Oscar for it, despite how expected it was. I highly disagree with the criticisms that I have seen of Culkin’s performance that say he is just playing himself or just giving the same performance he gave in Succession. I think saying that really overlooks all of the subtle nuances of his performance. Every facial expression he gives, every line he delivers has so much pain behind it. It is a performance that is so fluid and ever-changing. Culkin is constantly reacting to everything happening around him and you can see it in his mannerisms and his facial expressions. It is an unbelievable performance that should not just be written off as Culkin just “playing himself”. As incredible as his performance in Succession is, I think this performance eclipses it. Also, Culkin’s characters in A Real Pain and Succession are so different and the only reason people are comparing them is that they are both comedic a lot of the time and that they are both played by Kieran Culkin.

Best Animated Feature went to Flow and I do not think was a deserved win. Flow isn’t a bad movie. It’s just a mediocre one in my opinion. I liked it because it had a cute cat in it, but if it wasn’t for my feline bias I don’t think I would have cared about it at all. The story is just very unmemorable and shallow. That being said, it is beautifully animated and it does have one of my favorite final shots of any movie in 2024. Inside Out 2 also has one of my favorite final shots of 2024 and I think it should have won this category. It is a complex and deeply personal feeling story of teenage anxiety that really resonated with me. I expected The Wild Robot to win this category, a movie that I liked more than Flow, but would also have been an undeserving winner.

Best Costume Design predictably went to Wicked and I think it was the right choice. Best Original Screenplay went to Anora, my favorite movie of 2024, which gave me hope early in the night that it could possibly win Best Picture. It was the first time we saw Sean Baker win an Oscar, so that was exciting of course. Anora is an absurdly good screenplay that balances comedy and drama pitch perfectly. It is so hilarious, with incredible and very memorable dialogue. It is a screenplay that I think about often and has really stuck with me. Best Adapted Screenplay went to Peter Straughan for Conclave. I believe the screenplay to be the worst aspect of Conclave and I find this win very silly.

The Substance won Best Makeup and Hairstyling which was really exciting to see. Horror movies often have some of the most inventive and interesting makeup and hairstyling, so it’s always cool to see one be recognized in this category, especially a movie that goes as insane with its makeup as The Substance does.

Best Editing was won by Anora and it was one of the most exciting wins of the night for me. Not only did this win cool my worries about Anora possibly losing Best Picture to a movie like Conclave, but I believe Anora to legitimately have the best film editing of 2024. The editing, done by the director Sean Baker himself, adds a lot to the frantic energy and comedic timing of the film. An incredibly deserved win and it was so exciting seeing Sean Baker win his second Oscar of the night.

Zoë Saldaña predictably and unfortunately won Best Supporting Actress. Saldaña gives a good performance in Emilia Pérez, but I did not feel it was a performance anywhere near Oscar-worthy. I was strongly on Team Ariana Grande when it came to the supporting actress race for this season, and I would have at least loved to see her win one award somewhere during the awards season, like the Golden Globe or SAG award. Maybe Ariana Grande can receive Oscar redemption next year for her performance in Wicked: For Good. I also would have preferred Felicity Jones to win for The Brutalist over Saldaña, even though I wasn’t as crazy about Jones’ performance as the majority of people seem to be.

For Best Production Design, Wicked won, which is deserved, although I do think The Brutalist would have been a cool win too. Best Original Song was won by El Mal from Emilia Pérez, and as much as I don’t like that movie, El Mal is a great song that I actively listen to. I believe this to be a good win. I do have to mention how cringe the songwriters Camille and Clément Ducol’s speech was. The speech was fine and normal until the end, where they both began to sing a song that wasn’t even nominated from the film, I guess with the hope that the audience would sing along. The audience did not sing along and it was incredibly uncomfortable.

Dune: Part Two won Best Sound. I personally wasn’t all that impressed by the sound work in that film, but I also watched it at home, so I find it likely that I would appreciate the sound more if I had seen it in a theater. The Wild Robot was my pick for this category. The sound in that movie is so interesting, creative, and fun. I thought it was so mean how they let two of the winners of this award give speeches, and then they cut off the third guy when he began to talk. So unnecessarily cruel. Dune: Part Two also won Best Visual Effects, which I find to be a well-deserved win. Best Cinematography was won by Lol Crawley for The Brutalist, which was awesome to see. The cinematography in that film is unbelievably beautiful. One of the most deserved wins of the night.

I find I’m Still Here’s win in Best International Feature to be fascinating. Emilia Pérez had the most nominations of any film at this ceremony with thirteen, and I’m Still Here only had three nominations, yet it beat Emilia Pérez. I don’t think there is an explanation for this that doesn’t involve the controversy with the lead actress. It’s interesting to see how influenced by the controversy the Oscar voters were. I have not seen I’m Still Here yet unfortunately, but I am very much looking forward to finally seeing it.

Best Original Score was rightfully won by Daniel Blumberg for The Brutalist. If Challengers couldn’t be nominated for some reason, this is the score that deserved to win. It is a score that has such a massive impact on the movie as a whole. It shapes the tone and the experience so greatly. The Brutalist would not be the movie it is without Blumberg’s grand and epic original score. He is very early in his composing career, so I can’t wait to see what Daniel Blumberg does in the future.

Next, Best Lead Actor was awarded to Adrien Brody for The Brutalist. This performance has had controversy surrounding it involving AI usage. There has been a lot of misinformation about this. When I first heard about it, I heard that AI was used on Brody’s vocal deliveries the entire film, but in reality, it was only used in the parts of the film where he speaks Hungarian, which is a very, very small amount of the movie. The AI was used to change certain vowel sounds and letters here and there in order to make the Hungarian pronunciations sound completely accurate to native speakers of the language. You can be skeptical about the ethics of AI, which I very much am, but I think it is silly to say that Brody’s performance should have been disqualified from the Oscars just because it was slightly altered in a couple of scenes. This was a great Oscar win. Brody is incredible in The Brutalist. Similar to Culkin’s performance, Brody carries pain within him in every scene and it always feels so authentic. It is an incredibly impressive performance that was definitely deserving of an Oscar, despite it not being my personal pick in the category.

The Oscar for Best Director was presented by Quentin Tarintino and won by Sean Baker for Anora, which was an awesome moment, as it was so cool to see a legendary director hand the Oscar to a director who will surely become a legend in the future. While I personally would have preferred Brady Corbet to win for The Brutalist, this is still a really cool win for a very well-directed movie. It is awesome to see a movie with directing that isn’t super showy or in your face win this award. Because of its unwavering indie sensibilities that many would look over because of how subtle it all is, Anora is a movie that feels like it would win Best Picture without Best Director. This win is also awesome because it means that Sean Baker won a third Oscar. Baker’s acceptance speech for this award was my favorite speech of the night. He talked about his fear of movie theaters dying, what that would mean to the movie industry as a whole, and why we have to fight against the death of movie theaters, a topic I am very passionate about, as I adore the theater experience more than anything in the world.

The award I was most nervous about when it was being announced was Best Lead Actress. This was between Demi Moore for The Substance, a fantastic performance that I would love to see win an Oscar in a different year, and Mikey Madison for Anora, my favorite lead performance of the year by far. I kinda had a feeling Madison would win, as it felt like the tides were very much turning in Anora’s favor, but I was worried she might lose. This was the win that made me the happiest. Madison gives an unbelievable star-making performance in Anora and, just like with Tarantino and Baker earlier, seeing Emma Stone, one of the greatest actors of all time, handing Mikey Madison an Oscar was just so, so awesome.

Going into the Best Picture award being announced, everyone knew who was winning it. There was no suspense. Anora, the best movie of 2024 in my opinion, won Best Picture. My taste in movies is usually so different than the Academy’s taste, that I never expected to see my favorite movie of any year win Best Picture, so seeing Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan reading off its name was such a special moment for me, even if it was very expected. Anora’s victories at the Oscars made me stupidly happy, but I think everyone deserves dumb happiness. Irrational joy. There is no reason a bunch of old people in Hollywood deciding that my favorite movie of the year was the best of the year should bring me joy, but it does, and I think that’s beautiful. Joy is beautiful.

I really enjoyed how Sean Baker highlighted Anora being a truly independent film in his Best Picture acceptance speech. It was a movie made with a budget of six million dollars, which is pretty awesome that it was able to be as successful with the Oscars as it was and Sean Baker was able to win four Oscars for it. The last person to win four Oscars in one night was Walt Disney, and Baker was able to do so for a film this small. It’s so cool to see such a talented indie filmmaker who has been so overlooked by the Oscars in the past win four Oscars in one night. Like Baker said at the end of his speech “Long live independent film!”

I enjoyed this Oscar ceremony, but I have a suspicion that was more so because of the fact that my favorite movie of the year won five Oscars and not because it was a super well-done show. I found the pacing to drag throughout and I was losing interest near the middle of the show. In conclusion, bring Conan back next year, don’t do a weird out of place and overlong musical tribute to a franchise without a milestone anniversary or anything, and uh don’t cut-off the third Dune sound guy next time. Please!