So before I get to some of the highlights, let’s talk about the relentless weirdness that was last night’s show, using my trusty new weirdness scale: 1 to 5 Terrence Howards.

Melanie Griffith and Dakota Johnson’s Mother-Daughter Spat

These two set the tone for the evening on the red carpet when ABC’s Lara Spencer asked Melanie if she had seen her daughter’s racy new film, Fifty Shades of Grey.

“I don’t need to see it,” Melanie said.
“Maybe one day,” Dakota replied.
“I think it would be strange,” Melanie pointed out.
“I think one day you can see it,” Dakota said.
“She’s a really good actress,” Melanie told Spencer diplomatically. “I don’t need to see that to know.”
“Alright! You don’t have to see it,” Dakota said, practically stomping her foot. And for a brief moment, all the world was afraid that she was about to be grounded.

Weirdness Factor: 2 Terrence Howards

Neil Patrick Harris’s Opening Song

“Moving Pictures” was a ill-advised mixture of corny, earnest, and occasionally cheeky, that—much like the entire broadcast—never found its rhythm. Anna Kendrick came out in her Cinderella costume, fueling my theory that she is basically the Anne Hathaway everyone likes; in an unfair cut, Benedict Cumberbatch was forced to be the face of Oscar’s whiteness problem; and Clint Eastwood clearly didn’t know who Kanye was. Jack Black burst onto stage and added a bit of much-needed energy toward the end of the song (and made me suddenly really want to see him on Broadway), but by then it was too late—the number was a certifiable dud.

Weirdness factor: 3 Terrence Howards

Neil Patrick Harris’s lock-box Joke

Here’s the thing: Everyone in the theater knew Neil’s opening number was a non-starter, including Neil. From that point, he seemed a little tense—his normally winning quips had a distinct edge. And then, to make matters worse, his “I wrote all my Oscar predictions and placed them in a locked box” shtick was also DOA, especially since Octavia Spencer—assigned by Harris to be the guardian of the box—didn’t seem especially keen to play along. A joke bombs, you move on to the next one, right? Except this was a running gag that Neil was forced to revisit over and over again throughout the night. By the time the punchline came—Neil hadn’t been predicting winners, but specific moments from the ceremony—it was too late to be salvaged. (It didn’t help that when jokingly mocking his own mispronunciation of Chiwetel Ejiofor’s name he …mispronounced Chiwetel Ejiofor’s name.) All in all, this was not Neil’s night.

Weirdness factor: 2 Terrence Howards

The Oscar Orchestra Kept Trying to Play People Off the Stage

Everyone knows the rules: You pick up your award, do your spiel, and when the music starts playing, it’s time to skedaddle. Except last night, Ida director Pawel Pawlikowski, charmingly, refused to be played off. Then he mentioned his late wife and parents and the orchestra was shamed into silence. A version of this awkward scenario played out two more times during the show. Dana Perry, co-director of winning short documentary Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1, was getting played off just as she mentioned her son, who had committed suicide. That shut up the orchestra real fast. By the time Imitation Game writer Graham Moore shared the fact that, as a young man, he had tried to commit suicide, the orchestra knew better than to try to interrupt.

Weirdness factor: 3 Terrence Howards

Joan Rivers Was Left Out of the In Memoriam Segment

Not so much weird as just seriously lame.

Lady Gaga Does a Sound of Music Tribute

Here’s the thing, Lady Gaga is a very talented woman, even if it’s literally impossible to get a handle on her as a singer: Is she a pop star? A performance artist? A jazz siren? A Broadway belter? But by 11:15 p.m., we were all pretty much ready for the show to be over. Instead, Lady Gaga came out with an utterly unnecessary Sound of Music medley. Yes, she sang it well—and Julie Andrews, who glided onto stage at the end, seemed genuinely moved/impressed—but it all would’ve worked so much better at 9:30.

Weirdness factor: 2 Terrence Howards

Terrence Howard Introduces Two of the Best Film Nominees

This was the ne plus ultra of weirdness. The plan to introduce the Best Picture nominees in pairs was, indeed, a time saver (imagine how long the ceremony would’ve been if they hadn’t done that) but it made for some strange bedfellows: The Grand Budapest Hotel and American Sniper, anyone? Terrence Howard, on a roll right now with his delicious primetime soap opera, Empire, came out to introduce Whiplash and Imitation Game and it was just . . . well . . . I’m not totally sure. He hesitated, looked lost, teared up, talked about how emotional he was—although it wasn’t clear which film made him so emotional—looked helplessly at the audience for assistance (which never came) and finally skulked off the stage. Theories were abound: His teleprompter broke? He was drunk? He actually was deeply moved by, er, something? Either way, it was definitely weird, earning our highest distinction of 5 Terrence Howards.

Weirdness factor: 5 Terrence Howards

Okay, enough of that.

A few thoughts on the winners.

I was happy to see both The Grand Budapest Hotel (four awards) and Whiplash (three awards) honored so much, but it made me a little sad that The Grand Budapest Hotel, in particular, was never considered a real contender for Best Picture. Let me get this straight: You love the makeup, costume design, production design, and score of Wes Anderson’s impeccably crafted and singularly realized cinematic world, but the film itself was never in contention? Huh.

I was on #TeamBirdman, so I was happy to see it win Best Picture. However, I had really been hoping for a little more love for the wonderful Boyhood. I never bought into Boyhood as a true “Oscar film” (I go into great detail about that here), but it was such an incredible achievement that one award (Best Supporting Actress to Patricia Arquette) seemed criminally insufficient.

Now for some highlights!

This dress.

Also, this dress.

This one, too.

This tux. (Because go big or go home, right?)

Common and John Legend’s wonderfully stirring performance of Glory from Selma . . .

Which led to Oprah comforting a visibly moved David Oyelowo and this perfectly distilled man tear from Chris Pine.

Julianne Moore finally (!) won a long overdue Oscar for her brilliant work in Still Alice. Hooray!

Hollywood survivor Patricia Arquette won her deserved award for Boyhood and gave a really important speech about equal pay for women that got “who-knew?” BFFs Meryl Streep and J.Lo up and out of their seats cheering.

Orchestra shenanigans notwithstanding, it was very brave/wonderful of The Imitation Game writer Graham Moore to discuss his own suicide attempt.

Everyone got really cute Lego Oscars (and I want one NOW).

And, after more than three-and-a-half hours, the show finally ended.

Photos and GIFs courtesy of Buzzfeed, Oscars.com, The New York Times, and Just Jared.

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So, you can understand my natural skepticism when I saw that Iñárritu’s new film was called BIRDMAN or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). That long parenthetical is practically a beacon of self-regard. To make matters worse, press materials for the film have specific instructions for how critics are to handle the title. We must refer to the film’s complete title the first time we reference it. From there, we can go nuts and just refer to it as BIRDMAN—all caps, mind you.

Oh boy.

Well, don’t assume or …well, you know the rest. BIRDMAN, while still tackling monumental themes (what is an artist? what is our authentic self? what is the true measure of a man?) is extremely funny. It also happens to be Iñárritu’s best film—and it’s not even close.

Michael Keaton plays actor Riggan Thomson who, 30 years ago, starred as the growly, wisecracking superhero “Birdman” and is now a middle-aged has-been. (Hmm, sound familiar?) He’s looking for a comeback, one that establishes his bona fides as an actor and an artist, so he adapts a Raymond Carver story and sets out to mount it on Broadway, casting himself in the lead role.

BIRDMAN is essentially a backstage drama—with all its attendant mishaps and jitters and catastrophic previews—but the stakes are unusually high. Not just the normal make-or-break of opening night, but a man’s career, his very legacy on the line (also, his finances: Riggan takes out a second mortgage on one of his homes to bankroll the play). The question everyone asks, including Riggan himself: Is this play an expression of Riggan’s true artistic temperament, or is it just a calculated move to make him seem like a man of substance? In other words: Who is the real Riggan? Birdman or this serious actor adapting Carver?

To add to Riggan’s angst: His nearly estranged daughter Sam (Emma Stone), fresh out of rehab, is serving as his personal assistant for the play—and throwing tiny daggers of resentment his way. His current girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough), also an actress in the play, may or may not be pregnant. His leading lady (Naomi Watts) is massively insecure, in constant need of affirmation, especially since the play’s newest castmember, the cocky method actor Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), is her boyfriend.

There’s also a fair amount of magic realism, if that’s your thing. Riggan can’t seem to get the voice of Birdman, who talks to him from a movie poster on his dressing room wall, out of his head. And what Birdman is saying is, “Screw these theater ponces! You were a movie star! The king of the world!” Also, Riggan may or may not be able to levitate. So there’s that.

Iñárritu films all of this, ingeniously, in what appears to be one continuous take. It’s a trick of course, but it adds to the sense of chaos and urgency—people are constantly on the go, parts are constantly in motion. The soundtrack is mostly just a jazzy drum, sometimes a jaunty snare, sometimes a cacophony, with cymbals.

The acting, across the board, is marvelous. Unlike Riggan, Michael Keaton was a real actor before he donned the Batsuit, proving to be a manic and appealingly weird presence in movies like Beetlejuice and Night Shift. And he had a dramatic side too, as evidenced in the little-seen (but quite good) Clean and Sober. I actually have no idea why he dropped off the radar—maybe because he doesn’t quite have a leading man’s chiseled jaw? Or maybe he had some personal reasons, who knows? I won’t tell you if Riggan achieves his goal of an artistic comeback—that would be a spoiler—but I can say that Keaton is excellent here, revealing all of Riggan’s contradictions, his inflated ego and God complex mixed with his crushing self-doubt and self-loathing.

In some ways, both he and Norton are playing exaggerated versions of themselves. Norton has always been perceived as the wildly talented but difficult-to-work-with method actor. Here he riffs on that, playing Mike Shiner as the kind of actor who insists that he drink real gin on stage, who gets annoyed that Riggan is using an obviously fake gun in one scene (“Have some self respect!” he barks), and who can’t get it up in the bedroom but gets aroused during a sex scene on stage. (What he’s really turned on by is himself.) It’s a showy, scene-stealing part that Norton rips into with appropriate gusto.

In an interview, Emma Stone said she felt a bit cowed by the heavyweights she was working with, and was afraid she was going to be the one to screw things up. She had nothing to worry about. She is utterly convincing as both the angry little girl who secretly craves her father’s approval and the sexy coquette who seduces Shiner, most likely just to piss her father off. A scene where Sam tells her father off, calling him an irrelevant dinosaur, is one of the film’s most devastating.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the good work Zach Galifianakis does as Riggan’s best friend and lawyer, an LA-style hustler who will stop at nothing to make sure the show goes on. He’s playing way against type here, but he disappears completely into the role.

BIRDMAN is far from flawless. It has one character, a (made-up) theater critic for The New York Times, who seems to exist solely so Iñárritu can express his disdain for my profession. (The critic sees Riggan as an unworthy movie star sullying her precious stage—he rips into her about her lack of understanding of technique or process, and how easy it is to critique rather than create). And, as I mentioned, some of the film’s flights of fancy are too, well, fanciful (and flightful, for that matter) for my taste.

But why quibble? I loved the veritable banquet of cinematic delights BIRDMAN or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) served up. This is the work of a filmmaker completely in control of his gifts. I left the theater soaring.

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