Anyway, One Battle After Another was the night’s big winner taking home Best Picture and Best Director for Paul Thomas Anderson (finally!) among other accolades, but Sinners held its own, with huge wins for star Michael B. Jordan, writer-director Ryan Coogler (Best Original Screenplay), and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw.

Let’s roll up our sleeves and get into the real winners and losers of the show.

WINNER: GENRE FILMS
My gob was fully smacked when Conan launched the show with a parody of Weapons, the mid-budget horror film directed by Zach Cregger. Dressed like the Baby Jane-esque witch Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), Conan ran through various film sets, chased by a mob of children.

Weapons is brilliant, but there was a time that a film like that would just not be considered Oscar material, darling. (Picture that said with your nose turned fully up.) And it continued from there. Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress for Weapons and then Sinners, a social commentary about the vampiric nature of the white music industry masquerading as an actual vampire film, was another one of the big winners of the night.

It seems the Oscars have finally figured out what the rest of us have known for years, that there’s another name for a good genre film: a good film.

LOSER: NETFLIX
One of Conan’s most trenchant jokes was aimed at the streaming service. “Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos is here and it’s his first time in a theater.”

WINNER: LEO’S MUSTACHE
Leonardo DiCaprio seems to be in his Clark Gable era (see photo above) and I’m here for it!

LOSER: PEDRO PASCAL’S MUSTACHE
Did he…loan it to Leo?

WINNER: KIERAN CULKIN
Last year’s Best Supporting Actor winner had one of the quips of the night when announcing Sean Penn’s win for One Battle After Another: “Sean Penn couldn’t be here this evening or didn’t want to.” He said the quiet part aloud and it was both hilarious and refreshing.

LOSER: SEAN PENN
Can you be a loser if you actually won an Oscar? Maybe, if you’re Sean Penn. Dude, you gotta show up. Fellow nominee Delroy Lindo looked pissed. (Imagine living your life knowing that Delroy Lindo is mad at you.)

LOSER: MY TEAR DUCTS
Look, we all knew the In Memoriam segment was going to be brutal this year. We lost some absolute giants of cinema and many of us are still reeling from the particularly tragic death of Rob and Michele Reiner. The tributes were beautifully and tastefully done.

First, Billy Crystal came out to honor his late friend Reiner—noting the near historic run the director went on in the ’80s: This is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, Misery. Then the curtain opened to reveal an all-star line-up of Reiner’s actors including Christopher Guest, Kathy Bates, Mandy Patinkin, Cary Elwes, Demi Moore, and Meg Ryan, all standing in solemn silence.

Next, holding back tears, the ever charming Rachel McAdams came out and gave a tribute to Diane Keaton, acknowledging that virtually every young actress in Hollywood idolized her. (I wonder if, in a different timeline, Woody Allen himself would have come out to pay tribute to his Annie Hall…but I digress.)

Then, the images of more lost luminaries flashed on the screen until they paused on Robert Redford.

“Oh my God, it’s going to Barbra Streisand,” I said out loud.

And indeed it was—a rare appearance from the semi-reclusive icon. She spoke lovingly about her friend and co-star (he was the only one who could get away with calling her “Babs,” she said) and then—be still my heart—she belted out a few bars of “Memories,” the theme song from The Way We Were. Reader, I haven’t cried this much since the last time I watched The Way We Were.

LOSER: THE (OUT OF) CONTROL ROOM
It started out ominously when Conan made a joke about meme king DiCaprio and the camera gave a fumbling, blurry pan to the…carpet?—before finally settling on the star.

At another point, at the tail end of one of two acceptance speeches for Best Documentary Short (it was a tie!), the camera inexplicably panned to Conan waiting in the wings. He looked baffled and slightly annoyed (a theme that will re-emerge) until the camera panned back to the acceptance speech.

When Streisand came out to do her Redford tribute her microphone was dangerously low. I figured they would raise her levels or cut the music, but alas, neither occurred. Still, it was Babs, so everyone craned their necks and listened. Microphone glitches also nearly ruined the Bridesmaids tribute—there was all this ambient noise, like someone in the crowd was mic’d up and trying to get in on the act.

Toward the end of the broadcast, after coming back from a commercial, Conan said, sotte voce, “We’re almost there…we’re almost there.” It wasn’t clear if he knew he was on the air. “Are we on?” he said finally, adding: “You never know.” (Oh, he’s big mad.)

But the biggest miscue of the night occurred when the team behind mega hit “Golden,” from KPop Demon Hunters got cut off mid acceptance speech. Co-songwriter Yu Han Lee had just made his way to the mic when the music played him off. He looked confused and dismayed, and attempted to speak anyway, but the mic remained off and the music only got louder. As they cut to commercial, you could hear loud boos emanating from the Dolby crowd.

LOSER: THAT BRIDESMAIDS TRIBUTE
Look, I love Bridesmaids. You love Bridesmaids. But was its 15-year anniversary really worth an extended tribute? I mean, I get it. They knew that Rose Byrne (nominated for her stunning turn in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You) and Maya Rudolph (married to man-of-the-hour Paul Thomas Anderson) would already be there, so why not just assemble the rest of the Scooby gang? But the mic glitches and embarrassing play off of the “Golden” winners only amplified the sense that it was something of a waste of time.

WINNER: “I LIED TO YOU,” SINNERS
An all-star lineup, including Miles Caton, Shaboozey, Britanny Howard, Buddy Guy, and dancer Misty Copeland, came out and did a rollicking rendition of the nominated song, referencing that magical scene in the film that showcased the ghosts of Black music past and present. Many folks on Bluesky said Sinners should—and likely will—become a Broadway musical at some point. If this was a preview, I am sat.

LOSER: BALLET AND OPERA JOKES
I think we have officially reached the point where everyone is annoyed by the pile-on that occurred after Timothée Chalamet’s ill-conceived dismissal of opera and ballet. Yes, it was a dumb thing to say, but was it worth two solid weeks of tongue lashing? The references to the star’s gaffe fell flat—there were groans, not laughs. And it was clear that most people were ready make like Elsa and let it go.

WINNER/LOSER: WOMEN
Yes, Autumn Durald Arkapaw was the first woman, not to mention the first POC woman, to win Best Cinematography. Huzzah! So well deserved. But also, this was the 98th Oscars, how on earth was she the first woman to win Best Cinematography?

LOSER: COOL GUYS
The too-cool-for-school likes of Robert Downey Jr., Will Arnett, and Lewis Pullman all seemed to be embarrassed to be doing their corny Oscar bits. Yes, the jokes were lame, but one way to assure mutual destruction for both you and the joke? Acting like you’re above it all.

WINNER: MARRIAGE
The look that actor Ed Harris gave his wife Amy Madigan—a mixture of pride, love, and “What did I tell you?”—has already gone viral as #CoupleGoals. And some people were just finding out that actress/comedian Maya Rudolph is married to director Paul Thomas Anderson. Talk about a power couple.

WINNER: MICHAEL B. JORDAN
From The Wire to Friday Night Lights, we’ve all seen Michael B. Jordan grow up before our very eyes. Collectively, we felt like part of his success and, dare I say, his journey (sorry)—and he acknowledged it. “Thank you to everybody in this room and everybody at home for supporting me over my career. I feel it. I know you guys want me to do well and I want to do that because you guys bet on me.” Sniff.

WINNER(ISH): CONAN O’BRIEN
He was more plagued by the technical glitches than anyone and it began to visibly wear on him by the end, but he once again proved himself a nimble and very funny host.

My favorite bit of the night involved him and Sterling K. Brown doing an overly ’splainy version of Casablanca for the “second screen” set, as apparently mandated by Netflix. (See also: Loser, Netflix.)

“Of all the gin joints in the world, she walked into mine,” he said. “She being Ilsa,” Sterling said, all while playing a mean piano.

A few other favorite jokes: “FI did so well they’re making a sequel: Caps Lock.” (Hey, nerds need jokes, too!) “Welcome back to Has a Small Penis Theater….let’s see him put his name in front of that.” (No comment.)

WINNER: MY BALLOT
Booyah!

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I wanted to get that out of the way right off the bat because there’s so much uncertainty surrounding this year’s Academy Awards. Zoe Saldana is also almost definitely going to win Best Supporting Actress for her role in Emilia Pérez, unless her win is derailed by the controversy surrounding the film (more on that in a sec). And I’m feeling relatively comfortable picking Demi Moore as our Best Actress winner for The Substance.

But Best Picture? Best Actor? Best Director? A lot of these big categories are thrillingly up in the air. (You might even say their outcome is A Complete Unknown…*ducks.*)

It’s been a long time since we’ve had an “awards season” (one of the most cursed phrases known to man) so unpredictable. Just when you think you know which way the wind is blowing—Adrien Brody as Best Actor for his stellar work in The Brutalist, say—along comes a change in direction, like Timothée Chalamet getting an eleventh hour Screen Actors Guild nod for A Complete Unknown.

On top of that, there have been the aforementioned controversies. Some were clearly drummed up by competing studios (the disclosure that The Brutalist employed AI to zhuzz up Adrien Brody’s Hungarian accent), while others happened more organically: A journalist unearthed offensive tweets by Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón, the first trans woman ever to be nominated for Best Actress. Even before that, the film was controversial, with an increasingly loud online backlash for what many saw as its broad caricature of Mexican culture. (Not for nothing, the film’s director, Jacques Audiard, is French, and there are no Mexican actors in the main roles.)

Before those controversies emerged, Emilia Pérez was a veritable lock for Best International Film (its 13 nominations were most in this year’s field and made it the most nominated non-English film in Oscar history). Now it leaves the door open for an upset.

So, yeah, lots to chew on here. I’m going to do my best here with my predictions, but don’t put any money on my guesses. Except for Kieran. With him, go all in.

BEST PICTURE
Who will win: Anora
Who might win: Conclave, The Brutalist
Who should win: Anora
Final thoughts: As recently as two weeks ago, I was sure The Brutalist was going to win this thing. Then Anora won both the PGA and the DGA, making it a clear frontrunner. But, with the preferential ballot in play—meaning voters rank their choices—a much liked (if not quite loved) consensus pick could still snag the award. When you look at it that way, the universally loved Conclave—or hell, even Wicked or A Complete Unknown—could score an upset win.

BEST ACTOR
Who will win: Adrien Brody
Who might win: Timothée Chalamet
Who should win: Adrien Brody
Final thoughts: Chalamet was very good in A Complete Unknown and he’s been on an all-out charm offensive since the film’s release, hosting SNL (and serving as the musical guest), showing up to a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest, wearing some fly (and, let’s face it, some fugly) fashion, and all-in-all being the happy-go-lucky goofball that he is on his press tour. Will his winning personality, combined with the (nothingburger, in my opinion) AI controversy propel him to a win? I still think Brody’s performance was just too good to deny, so I’m sticking with my pick.

BEST ACTRESS
Who will win: Demi Moore
Who might win: Mikey Madison
Who should win: Fernanda Torres from I’m Still Here
Final thoughts: Moore sealed her fate when she gave a stirring acceptance speech at the Golden Globes. Yes, she’s quite good in The Substance and her winning would be the feel-good moment of the Oscars, but if we’re being honest here, she gives the fifth best performance in this group (which also includes Cynthia Erivo and Gascón).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Who will win: Kieran Culkin
Who might win: Tom Wambsgans?
Who should win: Edward Norton
Final thoughts: I wish this race had been a little more contested. Norton is a heartbreaking Pete Seeger in A Complete Unknown and Jeremy Strong is riveting as that snake Roy Cohn in The Apprentice. But I can’t begrudge Culkin his win. A Real Pain is a special movie and he is its beating heart.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Who will win: Zoe Saldana
Who might win: Ariana Grande
Who should win: Zoe Saldana
Final thoughts: It was wonderful to see Saldana, an actress who has sometimes been buried under a sea of green makeup and CGI in films like Guardians of the Galaxy and Avatar, show the full range of her talents here. I think she has accrued enough momentum and good will over the years that her association with the now tainted Emilia Pérez won’t derail her win.

BEST DIRECTOR
Who will win: Sean Baker
Who might win: Brady Corbet
Who should win: Sean Baker
Final thoughts: I admire how Corbet made a searing American epic with a limited budget in The Brutalist—and I really loved that film—but Baker has been releasing banger after banger since 2015, and Anora is arguably his best film yet. It’s his time.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Who will win: A Real Pain
Who might win: Anora
Who should win: Anora
Final thoughts: Most prognosticators are picking Anora here so I’m deviating from the pack. I feel like the Oscars are going to want to reward Jesse Eisenberg, who is beloved.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Who will win: Conclave
Who might win: A Complete Unknown
Who should win: Conclave
Final thoughts: I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t love Conclave (although a few are a bit iffy on that surprise ending…I dug it). Feels like its year.

A FEW MORE PREDICTIONS:

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: The Brutalist
BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: I’m Still Here
BEST EDITING: Conclave
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: The Wild Robot
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Porcelain War

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It had all the hallmarks of an Oscar darling. Academy voters love epics, they love history, especially World War II—better still if the film is about the Holocaust. They love films about brilliant, tortured men. And if the film features a haunting, tour-de-force performance from its male lead? Start making room in that trophy case.

Now that I’ve seen The Brutalist, my opinion hasn’t really changed—I still think it’s going win. But it turns out the film is much weirder, more singular, more audacious than I ever expected it to be. For one thing, Corbet breaks his grand-scale film—shot in a stunning, mid-century hi-res technology called VistaVision—into small, sometimes shockingly intimate set pieces. Although it is never boring, its pace is defiantly unhurried. That haunted male lead, played by Adrien Brody? He happens to be a heroin addict, a snob, and a philanderer, among other things. The film is both better than I thought it would be, and less Oscar bait-y, if that makes any sense. It almost made me wonder: Have the Oscar voters seen it?

When we first encounter László Tóth (Brody), he is in the steerage compartment of a ship arriving at Ellis Island. He has broken his nose along the way—or so we’re told (with all due deference to the prodigious beak of Mr. Brody, it’s hard to tell)—which starts him on his path to heroin addiction. He is greeted by his cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who takes him home to live and work in his custom furniture shop, Miller and Sons, just outside of Philadelphia. (“Who’s Miller?” László asks. “I am,” Attila says, explaining that he Americanized his last name. He also invented make believe sons because Americans like “family businesses.”)

Miller and Sons sells sturdy, Shaker style furniture, which László regards with some disdain.

“What do you think?” Attila asks.

“Of the furniture?” sniffs László. “It’s not very beautiful.”

As we are soon to find out, before the war broke out and he was imprisoned in a concentration camp, László was a rising-star architect in Budapest, a progenitor of the Brutalist style. (The massive, minimalist structures represent permanence to László in a fragile world.) Now Attila has agreed to let him live in a spare room, adjacent to the workshop, as long as he helps out with the custom builds. Attila’s beautiful, gentile wife, Audrey (Emma Laird), isn’t super keen on this new tenant, and will ultimately be the thing that comes between the cousins. (Attila represents one choice available to the European immigrant Jew—assimilation as a survival tactic.)

László has a wife of his own, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), whom he assumed died in the war. When Attila tells him that she’s alive but stuck in Europe with László’s niece (Raffey Cassidy), László collapses in relief and joy. But getting Jewish refugees to the U.S. is challenging, bordering on impossible. So he must carry on with the real possibility he’ll never see her again.

After his falling out with Attila, László takes a menial job with a construction crew where he is reintroduced to captain of industry Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce, never better). They had met before, when László and Attila had built him a custom library, a surprise gift from his son (Joe Alwyn). Van Buren hated the library, designed by László with remarkable retractable shelves, and threw László and Attila out of the house. (He was also bothered that László had brought a good friend to help with the construction who happened to be Black.)

Now he has returned to László, a bit sheepishly. He has discovered that László was, in fact, a famous architect—a man of great distinction. Van Buren would never admit that he didn’t like or understand the library—he protests that his mother was sick and dying and he was too upset to fully appreciate it, but he wants to hire László for a job. He’ll be building a massive community center/gym/chapel on his property, allegedly in honor of his late mother but actually a monument to himself, and he wants László to design it. And thus begins the precarious relationship between the two men. Van Buren claims that he is intellectually stimulated by his talks with László, but he’s also quick to denigrate his tattered clothes and broken English. He’s seething with jealousy over László’s brilliance, but he’s repulsed by him, as well. And he’s a man who like to lord his wealth and power over everyone who meets. As you can guess, things will not go smoothly between them.

Eventually, Van Buren puts László in touch with a lawyer who can arrange to bring Erzsébet and his niece to Pennsylvania. And that’s the end of the first half. Yes, there’s an intermission in this three-and-a-half-hour film, which I welcomed (and I didn’t even need to pee). It’s nice to be able exhale and gather your thoughts a bit before the second half begins.

The second half focuses on László’s relationship with Erzsébet, strained for a variety of reasons, and the various roadblocks he encounters building Van Buren’s massive vanity project. (Art and commerce have never made for good bedfellows—and when you throw in László’s status as an enigmatic Jewish outsider, things are further complicated.)

The malevolence of both Van Buren and his feckless son comes into high relief in the second half—perhaps a bit too unsubtly.

The film’s epilogue, set in 1980, is another audacious choice as László, now an old man, doesn’t even speak in it. But it’s there where we come to understand the particular choices László made in his creation of Van Buren’s massive center. It’s not a surprise ending, per se, but one that adds a layer of depth and poignancy to all we’ve just seen.

The Brutalist isn’t just the front runner for Best Picture; Adrien Brody will likely get an Oscar for playing László, his second time for depicting a Holocaust victim. Look, the guy has a face built for tragedy—expressive and searching and gaunt, like a hollowed out Buster Keaton. And he’s captivating here, depicting all of László’s contradictions—his vanity, his brilliance, his desperation.

I’m not quite prepared to call The Brutalist a great American masterpiece just yet—I’ll need to see it a couple more times to make that call—but it is quite extraordinary. A deeply personal story told on a grand scale. A story about American monsters and American heroes—and how those lines can sometimes blur. If it does win Best Picture, the voters will have accidentally gotten it right.

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He was a good sport in the audience, playing along even when host Jimmy Kimmel cracked that he wanted to go camping with him “and not tell our wives.” He acted out a genuinely funny fake feud with Emily Blunt over Barbenheimer (sample joke: “They called it Barbenheimer, not Oppenbarbie because you were riding on our coattails all year.”) And, most of all, he delivered an instantly iconic performance of “I’m Just Ken.”

Before his appearance was announced, lots of people speculated that he wouldn’t perform the Oscar-nominated song because he was too big a star to be relegated to “musical talent.” Others feared that the song was just too silly for a cool guy like Gosling to perform in public.

This demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of who Gosling is. What makes him so wonderful is that he is gleefully, unabashedly, exquisitely goofy. He’s been goofy on SNL (his Papyrus digital short is a classic). He’s was goofy in The Nice Guys (a great film, if you haven’t seen it). He was simultaneously goofy and heartbreaking in Barbie. And he was gloriously goofy on stage last night. Advice to men who fear being goofy: It just made him more powerful.

It wasn’t just that Gosling was fully committed to the song—belting it out while wearing a bedazzled bubble gum pink suit, all while channeling Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It was that it was a production. At one point, they did a Busby Berkeley-style overhead camera shot with complicated choreo. Gosling’s fellow Kens showed up, including Simu Lu and Kingsley Ben-Adir. He pranced into the audience, giving director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie their chance to sing and bop along. Hottie musical producer Mark Ronson was on stage, and then Guns ‘N’ Roses guitarist Slash showed up, too, just for good measure.

I mean, why shouldn’t they do elaborate numbers like this at the Oscars? Why should the Tonys have all the fun? (As one wag quipped on X, formerly Twitter: “If you liked ‘I’m Just Ken,’ wait til you find out about Broadway musicals.”) (Unfortunately, I can’t find the original tweet, so that’s a paraphrase.)

So yes, the Kenergy was strong at last night’s Oscars, but it was overall an excellent show, with a few minor quibbles. Below, I give you a few of the highlights and lowlights.

Best Joke of the Monologue: “This night is full of enormous talent and untold potential, but so was Madame Web, so who knows?”

Best Bit from the Monologue: Kimmel “pulling a Biden” by forcing the room to applaud for the injustice of Greta Gerwig’s Best Director snub and then pointing out that they were the ones who didn’t vote for her.

Best Performance That Wasn’t “I’m Just Ken”: Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” How that young woman can create such heartbreaking intimacy on such a grand stage is beyond me. She’s a generational talent.

Most Wasted Opportunity: Having John Cena give an award for “Best Costumes” while naked. It was an inspired bit—and he had me giggling on my couch. But man, this was the year that Barry Keoghan made nudity his thing. My man dropped trou a lot. First in his controversial film, Saltburn, and then in a Vanity Fair animated cover. It would have been EPIC if Keoghan had been the night’s DNG (Designated Naked Guy).

Best Award Intro That Wasn’t Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt: John Mulaney is just a confident comedian. And it takes his kind of confidence—and comic chops—to do a non-sequitur riff on Field of Dreams while announcing Best Sound. Many thought he was auditioning to be next year’s host. Suffice it to say, he passed.

Worst Fashion Trend: The floating straps seen on Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh were…odd. As I said on X, formerly Twitter: “It looks like a ghost is removing their dresses.” It didn’t help that Blunt’s dress had a strange, um, crotch design. 

Best Dressed Woman: Zendaya absolutely stunned in an antique rose silk gown by Georgio Armani Prive. Yes, it helps when you LOOK LIKE ZENDAYA. But she was utter perfection.

Best Dressed Man: When it comes to awards-show fashion, every man is playing checkers and Colman Domingo is playing chess.

Most Unwelcome Product Placement: Was I hallucinating, or did an ad for Don Julio break out in the middle of the broadcast?

Best Upset: Zone of Interest winning for its uncanny haunting sound design was an unexpected—and inspired—choice.

Funniest Line in An Acceptance Speech: Robert Downey Jr.’s “I’d like to thank my terrible childhood.”

Most Adorable Winner: When The Last Repair Shop took home the award for Documentary Short, they brought out one of the film’s subjects: 12-year-old violinist Porché Brinker, who looked like a fairy tale princess in a pale blue taffeta dress.

Second Most Adorable Winner(s): The crew from Godzilla Minus One, who nabbed an upset award for Best Visual Effects, all while clutching Godzilla toys. What they lacked in English-language proficiency, they more than made up for in giddy, contagious enthusiasm.

Most Adorable Audience Member: They lied to us and said that Messi, the talented Border Collie from Anatomy of a Fall, wasn’t going to make the Oscars due to important dog park business (or somethin’). But it was a fake-out! Messi was there, wearing a fetching bow-tie (get it?) and effortlessly stealing the show.

Worst Dismount: Best Picture is the emotional climax of the night…except for when it isn’t. Al Pacino came out to deliver the award and he was a bit, shall we say, shambolic. He neglected to read out the 10 nominees, hastily tearing open the envelope and saying, with a slightly quizzical look on his face, “And my eyes see Oppenheimer.” It took a full 5 seconds for people to realize that Oppenheimer had actually won, which is an eternity on live TV. No, it wasn’t quite the La La Land/Moonlight fiasco, but they didn’t exactly stick the landing.

Worst Trend: The In Memoriam segment is always a bummer, and not just because it reminds us of all the great talent lost in a given year. People clap at awkward moments, as though one person’s death is more applause-worthy than another’s. And the Academy invariably leaves someone notable out. But the solution to this problem is not to run a quick, scrolling list of the dearly departed after the main segment. It felt more like a diss than a tribute, akin to the original Gilligan’s Island theme song referring to the Professor and Mary Anne as “and the rest.” Don’t do it again!

Best Gift From the Comedy Gods: When Jimmy Kimmel, known for his “Mean Tweets” segment on his late-night talk show, began reading one of his bad reviews on social media—sample quote: “His opening was that of a less than average person trying to be something which he is not”—it just seemed like the host was just doing a riff on that segment. Then he got to the punchline: “Make America Great Again.” Yes, the anonymous social media critic was, in fact, former president Donald Trump. “Thank you for watching, President Trump,” the comedian quipped. “I’m surprised you’re still up. Isn’t it past your jail time?” Oh, buuuurn.

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On the other hand, it has felt a bit like a slow march to the inevitable this season, hasn’t it? There are locks every year, but thanks to the juggernaut that is Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (an excellent and largely deserving film!), there are more than usual this year. I’d love to tell you to expect the unexpected, or prepare for upsets galore, or gird your loins, or whatever—but I can’t lie to you like that. Most of these categories are in the bag.

With that said, here are my (not that) bold predictions for the major categories.

BEST PICTURE
American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Past Lives
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest

Who will win: Oppenheimer
How sure am I? I’d bet the farm, if I had one.
Who could win: No other film might win. Don’t blame the messenger.

BEST DIRECTOR
Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall

Who will win: Christopher Nolan
How sure am I? What’s surer than sure?
Who could win: Just for giggles, I’ll give Lanthimos a two-percent chance.

BEST ACTOR
Bradley Cooper, Maestro
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction

Who will win: Cillian Murphy
How sure am I? I’d go all in, but maybe leave a bit of emergency cash in a lock box.
Who could win: Paul Giamatti has a chance, in the Dumb and Dumber, “So you’re saying there’s a chance?” sense of the phrase. But a chance all the same.

BEST ACTRESS
Annette Bening, Nyad
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall
Carey Mulligan, Maestro
Emma Stone, Poor Things

Who will win: Lily Gladstone
How sure am I? Pretty, pretty sure.
Who could win: Emma Stone could clearly take this. It’s been neck and neck between these two great actresses all awards season, but Gladstone definitely has the mo’.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things

Who will win: Robert Downey Jr.
How sure am I? Like, Michael Phelps at the Beijing Olympics sure.
Who could win: People are beginning to recognize how great Mark Ruffalo was in Poor Things. But…naaa.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
America Ferrera, Barbie
Jodie Foster, Nyad
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Who will win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph”
How sure am I? If I had a second farm, I’d bet that one, too.
Who could win: Honestly, no one. But for the sake of argument, Emily Blunt.

Okay, that’s the end of the categories I’m totally sure of. I’ll throw in a few more predictions that I’m relatively confident in below:

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: American Fiction

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Anatomy of a Fall

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Oppenheimer

BEST SONG: “What Was I Made For?”, Barbie

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Spider Man: Across the Spider-Verse

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: 20 Days in Mariupol

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: The Zone of Interest

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

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On the one hand, the film was nominated for Best Picture (yay!). Additionally, Ryan Gosling was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his funny (and oddly touching) depiction of Ken and, in a bit of a surprise, America Ferrera, who gave that memorable speech about the double standards women must navigate in this life, was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. All told, Barbie managed eight nominations, including two for Best Song and one for Production Design.

But there were two rather glaring omissions. Greta Gerwig, the woman who directed and co-wrote the film (with her husband, Noah Baumbach), was not nominated for Best Director. And Margot Robbie, who gave a pitch-perfect turn as Barbie, was snubbed in the Best Actress category.

Reaction on X (formerly Twitter) was fast and furious—as reactions on X tend to be.

“Ryan getting a nomination but Margot [not getting one] just proves the plot of Barbie,” wrote user @phobicgay, echoing the sentiment of many online.

“So the plot of Barbie 2 is going to start with today?” quipped Elie Mystal, justice reporter at The Nation.

“Greta Gerwig being snubbed at the Oscars despite Barbie being the only $1 billion movie solely directed by a woman feels very sus to me…” said user @zacidk.

Even Gosling himself weighed in, releasing a statement in which he expressed his gratitude for the nomination, but added how sad he was that his colleagues weren’t similarly honored. “To say I’m disappointed…would be an understatement,” Gosling wrote.

So what gives? Were Gerwig and Robbie snubbed? And is the patriarchy to blame?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is that it’s complicated.

Let’s start with Robbie’s “snub” first. One thing you have to know about the Oscars is that it’s very hard for a comedic performance to land in one of those two “Best Lead” categories. This has to do with a flawed belief that dramatic acting is the only true form of acting and comedic performances are somehow unworthy of Oscar’s highest honors.

It’s a ridiculous notion, one that should be lambasted as much as possible, but it’s pretty entrenched in Oscar’s DNA. Supporting acting awards are where comedy performances can occasionally (albeit rarely) sneak in—see Melissa McCarthy’s nod for Bridesmaids or Robert Downey Jr.’s for Tropic Thunder. Which might explain why Gosling and Ferrera got nominated, but not Robbie. (Also, tellingly, Ferrera gives a pretty straight performance in that film. She’s giving us emotional realism, not broad, physical comedy.)

Gerwig’s “snub” is a little more complicated. Many have noted that Justine Triet—a woman—was nominated for Best Director for Anatomy of a Fall (my second favorite film of the year)—and since she got the nod it proves that THE ACADEMY CAN’T BE SEXIST!

I think that’s a bit facile. Here’s my take on Gerwig’s omission: I think if she were a man, say Gary Gerwig, who had taken a completely amorphous concept—a film about G.I. Joe acknowledging his own role in the patriarchy, for example—and turned it into the cinematic event of the year, a certain mythology would’ve formed around him. The Great Man Theory would’ve taken root and Gary Gerwig would be seen as an auteur of the highest order, a mastermind, a colossus. Obviously, I can’t say for sure that Gary Gerwig would’ve gotten nominated for G.I. Joe, but I have a hunch he might have.

On the other hand, directors of comedic films have often fallen into the same trap that actors have. Their work, no matter how masterful, is seen as trivial compared to those who make films about atomic bombs and the Holocaust.

So, in short, I’d say that those who believe Gerwig and crew were wrongly snubbed and those who say “jeez, not everything is about the patriarchy!” are both right.

Long live nuance.

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The Good: Chris Rock’s opening monologue.
We all knew he was going to address the proverbial elephant in the room (aka, The Incredible Whiteness of Oscar) but it was how he did it that proved to be so artful. He basically treated the monologue as an extended stand-up routine, where he riffed, in true Chris Rock truth-bomb fashion, on the Oscar’s history of racism, while also putting it in historical perspective. (Addressing why the #OscarsSoWhite campaign was such a recent development in the face of 88 years of neglecting black talent: “Because…we had real things to protest; you know, we were too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won best cinematographer.”) He was funny, not scolding, but he kept it blisteringly real (“I’m here at the Academy Awards, otherwise known as the White People’s Choice Awards.”) In a way, Rock’s monologue reminded me a bit of the film The Big Short, which won for Best Adapted Screenplay—he took a dead-serious subject and made it both accessible and funny, without diminishing its seriousness. I tip my hat to you, Mr. Rock.

The Good: The fact that the jokes about race continued throughout the evening.
I had expected them to essentially “get it over with” early—like some messy bit of business they had to dispense with discreetly. Instead, the jokes kept coming throughout the evening. There was a brilliant bit where black actors like Whoopi Goldberg, Leslie Jones, and Tracy Morgan were inserted into the Oscar nominated films. (You haven’t truly lived until you’ve seen Morgan, in a dress, eating a Danish and repeating, “I’m The Danish Girl!” in his “I’m Brian Fellows” voice.) And there was another funny and poignant bit where Rock interviewed (almost all black) moviegoers outside an L.A. cinema and questioned them about the current slate of Oscar nominees. “Those are real films?” one movie goer queried, incredulous. “Where? In London?” OTOH, not all the race bits landed, leading us to the evening’s first…

The Stacey Dash: Stacey Dash
This was an inside joke, wrapped in a meta commentary, locked in Neil Patrick Harris’s doomed lockbox from last year. Some context: Stacey Dash, an actress known best for the movie Clueless, is also a regular contributor on Fox News, and is famous for saying racially inflammatory things like, “We should get rid of Black History Month.” So when Rock brought her out as the (pretend) director of minority outreach for the Academy, it was an inside joke that only the tiniest percentage of people would get—mainly people who closely follow racial media politics on Twitter. The whole thing was so fast, so diffident, so awkward, it led to some to wonder if Dash herself was in on the joke (she had to be, right?). Anyway, I’m sure a lot of 23-year-olds, both black and white, were explaining that bit to their parents.

The Bad: Abe Vigoda dissed
You do not leave Abe Vigoda out of the In Memoriam tribute. You just do NOT. Although I did have a theory:

Abe Vigoda fake died so many times, when he really died they forgot to put him in the montage. #Oscars
— Max Weiss (@maxthegirl) February 29, 2016

The Bad: Girl Scout Cookies
It was cute when Ellen DeGeneres made celebs buy slices of pizza two years ago. Rock having them pay for his daughter’s Girl Scout cookies seemed derivative—and indulgent.
Plus, as many on Twitter pointed out, the time wasted with that lame bit could’ve been put to better use—like perhaps bringing honorary Oscar winners Spike Lee, Gena Rowlands, and Debbie Reynolds onto stage?

The Stacey Dash: Sam Smith’s Delusions of Grandeur
Okay, Sam Smith you can sing well enough and good on you for losing all that weight. But your Bond theme song was dreadful and, no, you were not the first openly gay person to win an Oscar. (Tell that to Elton John, who won for The Lion King and Dustin Lance Black, writer of Milk.)

The Good: Lady Gaga’s Tribute to Victims of Sexual Abuse (and maybe Kesha?)
Joe Biden introduced her and Lady Gaga sang her heart out, as she is wont to do, looking flawless in her alien-meets-white-orchid pantsuit. The song, “Til It Happens to You” was featured in The Hunting Ground, a documentary about campus rape. But the true emotional show-stopper was when a group of young people—mostly women, but notably, not all—came out, dressed in street clothes, a stark contrast to the glammed up folks in the audience. They were all survivors of sexual abuse, standing together, in solidarity. Some trembled visibly as Lady Gaga sang. Gaga had tweeted earlier that she would be thinking of her friend Kesha, the pop singer who has accused her producer, Dr. Luke, of rape. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

The Good: The Mad Max-apooloza
Some had hoped George Miller would win best director. (He didn’t. That honor went to Alejandro González Iñárritu for the second year in a row.) A few dreamers had even hoped Mad Max: Fury Road would score an upset win Best Picture. (Nope, that went to Spotlight, as I predicted.) But Fury Road, a gloriously gnarly apocalyptic road film that is hardly your typical Oscar fare, had itself a helluva night, picking up virtually all of the artistic awards—Production Design, Film Editing, Costume Design, Makeup, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing. Best of all was Jenny Beavan, her hair a defiant blonde frizz, who won for Best Costume Design and marched to the stage wearing a leather biker jacket with a rhinestone skull emblazoned on the back. Some, apparently, were not amused. Get over yourselves, dudes.

The Bad: The Thank You Scroll
It was pointless, dumb, and nobody read it.

The Good: This dress

The Good: Also this one

The Good: It’s Leo Time!
After his failure to win an Oscar had become a meme, Leo finally won the big one for his committed performance in The Revenant. He got a standing ovation from his peers and the band did not dare play him off, even when he went off on a (brilliant) tangent about climate change. Now that’s Hollywood clout.

The Stacey Dash: The Song That Closed the Show
Yes, Oscars, you openly discussed race. Yes, you were cool enough to give a boatload of awards to Mad Max, the coolest film of the year. But ending the show with Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” was downright bizarre. Newsflash: You are the power. Hopefully, next year, you’ll put your money where your mouth is, the nominees will be more diverse, and we’ll discover that the #OscarsSoWhite movement took on the power—and won.

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This year, however, I’m totally lost.

I was early out of the gate predicting Spotlight as the Best Picture winner. It ticked off all the right boxes: Prestigious ensemble cast; important social message; grimy, throwback feel; established director who had paid his dues with smaller indie films; and so on.

Ridiculously early Oscar pick, based on a hunch: SPOTLIGHT will win Best Picture.
— Max Weiss (@maxthegirl) September 8, 2015

(I actually wrote that tweet BEFORE I saw Spotlight, by the way, and ended up liking it very much. However, as I’ve said many times before, seeing a film, if anything, impedes one’s ability to objectively assess its Oscar chances. One’s heart (or even one’s taste) should never get in the way in the commerce + art + past-as-prologue formula that is predicting Oscar.)

Anyway, although Spotlight has done pretty well for itself in the run up to Oscar (Critic’s Choice Award, SAG Award, NSFC winner), it hasn’t quite seized the momentum I thought it would. In fact, two other films—The Big Short (Producer’s Guild and Golden Globe for comedy) and The Revenant (BAFTA, DGA, and Golden Globe for drama)—have stolen much of its thunder.

Which leaves me in a bit of a conundrum.

My Osc-dar says that neither The Big Short nor The Revenant are your standard and Oscar fare:

The Big Short, smart and wickedly entertaining as it is, is simply too bratty and jokey for Oscar. Its themes are dead serious but its tone is not—and Oscar doesn’t usually reward comedies. More importantly, its director Adam McKay has Anchorman and Step Brothers under his belt. Those films are actually both great, but is that the kind of résumé that generally gets rewarded with Oscar?

The Revenant poses its own sets of problems. For starters, its director, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, just won last year for Birdman (both as Best Director and Best Film). Oscar has never awarded the same director Best Picture two years in a row, so that would be a remarkable new precedent. Also, The Revenant, much as I enjoyed it, is really just a beautifully shot revenge Western. It has some actual depth—in the form of Tom Hardy’s pious and self-justifying sadist—and some pseudo depth (DiCaprio’s murmured and mystical memories of his dead Native-American wife) but it works best as an impeccably directed adventure film. Is it important enough for Oscar?

And yet. If you go to the useful Oscar prognostication site, GoldDerby.com, you’ll see that virtually all of the experts polled there are picking The Revenant. Many of these people live in L.A., attend luncheons and other such functions with Oscar voters, and are able to have their ears to the ground in a way that I simply can’t here in Baltimore. So here we are. Do I go with my gut instinct and pick Spotlight? Or do I do the sensible thing and go with the overwhelming pundit vote?

After way more soul searching than this subject deserves, I’ve decided to stick to my guns and pick Spotlight. Switching to The Revenant at the eleventh hour feels like that SAT answer you changed at the last minute—and got wrong.

Put it to you this way: If The Revenant wins, I’ll be bummed. (And amused, because the critics of so-called Film Twitter—who largely hate it—will go bananas.) But if Spotlight wins and I had gone with conventional wisdom and picked The Revenant, I’d never forgive myself.*

*But you should probably go ahead and pick The Revenant on your Oscar pool. I mean, what are you, some sort of crazy person?

Okay, let’s go through the entire race.

Best Picture
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight

Who will win: Spotlight
Why: See above.
Who should win: Carol . . . but since it’s not nominated, I’ll say Brooklyn.

Best Actor
Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl
Matt Damon, The Martian

Who will win: Leonardo DiCaprio
Why: When an actor is seen as overdue and becomes the popular and sentimental favorite—true of DiCaprio—all he has to do is deliver a performance that is good enough to warrant an Oscar. His performance here is certainly that—and more. Some have argued that it’s more a feat of endurance than artistry, but I make a case for its unqualified excellence in my The Revenant review.
Who should win: DiCaprio

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

Who will win: Brie Larson
Why: The performance is really, really great—plus it has that stripped down, vanity-free quality that Oscar voters love so much. Larson made a name for herself with Short Term 12, then ably supported the red-hot Amy Schumer in Trainwreck, and comes into her own as both a major talent and star here.
Who should win: This category is such an embarrassment of riches I can’t EVEN. I can make a strong case for all of these sublime performances winning (well, maybe not Lawrence’s, although she was quite good). But I actually voted for Larson on my Critic’s Choice ballot, so I’ll stick with her.

Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale, The Big Short
Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Sylvester Stallone, Creed
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

Who will win: Sylvester Stallone
Why: Nostalgia mostly. And because Sly is really good in it.
Who should win: Tom Hardy

Best Supporting Actress
Rooney Mara, Carol
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight

Who will win: Alicia Vikander
Why: She’s great in the film, a wonderfully earthy counter balance to Redmayne’s self-conscious posing and also, she is the It Girl extraordinaire right now. Oscar loves an It Girl.
Who should win: With the full acknowledgement that this is bit of category fraud (she was every bit the lead that Blanchett was in Carol), I’d have to go with Mara, whose Therese fell in love and suddenly saw herself, her friends, and her city with a brand new set of eyes.

Best Director
Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Revenant
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
Adam McKay, The Big Short
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Lenny Abrahamson, Room

Who will win: Iñárritu
Why: Some find him pretentious and self-important, but Oscar is clearly buying what he’s selling.
Who should win: George Miller, for the obsessive, mad, visionary genius he displays in Fury Road.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Drew Goddard, The Martian
Nick Hornby, Brooklyn
Adam McKay and Charles Randolph, The Big Short
Phyllis Nagy, Carol
Emma Donoghue, Room

Who will win: The Big Short
Why: The script is whipsmart and wildly creative. Plus, if The Big Short is among the Top 3 (including The Revenant and Spotlight) it stands to reason it would take this.
Who should win: Phyllis Nagy for Carol

Best Original Screenplay
Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, Spotlight
Matt Charman, Joel & Ethan Coen, Bridge of Spies
Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, Ronnie del Carmen, Inside Out
Alex Garland, Ex Machina
Andrea Berloff, Jonathan Herman, S. Leigh Savidge, Alan Wenkus, Straight Outta Compton

Who will win: Spotlight
Why: A wonderfully sobering and insightful script. Plus, same reasons why The Big Short is winning adapted.
Who should win: Inside Out

Best Foreign Language Film
Son of Saul (Hungary)
Mustang (France)
A War (Denmark)
Embrace the Serpent (Colombia)
Theeb (Jordan)

Who will win: Son of Saul
Why: It’s a Holocaust film. It’s Oscar. Need I say more?
Who should win: If you haven’t seen the dreamy, spellbinding Mustang, what are you waiting for?

Best Animated Feature
Inside Out
Anomalisa
Shaun of the Sheep
When Marnie Was There
Boy and the World

Who will win: Inside Out
Why: Because when Pixar is at the top of its game, no one can beat it.
Who should win: Inside Out

Best Documentary Feature
Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom

Who will win: Amy
Why: It’s great and, more importantly, Oscar voters have seen it.
Who should win: I’m afraid I can’t say for sure since (shamefully) Amy is the only film in this category I’ve seen. It certainly affected me profoundly.

Okay, everyone! Enjoy Oscar night. And check back here on Monday for my recap of the show, where I’ll talk about Chris Rock, the best frocks, and all the shocks.

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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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Selma Was Robbed

Last year, I talked about the elements that made a perfect Oscar film. It had to be a thematically important film that was nonetheless accessible. It had to have wonderful lead performances and sure-handed direction. It helped if the film had a grand scope and a sense of historical significance.

There’s only one film this meets that criteria this year and that’s Selma—and man, was it robbed. This is the second year in the row—with last year’s 12 Years A Slave—that Oscar had a chance to honor a “perfect Oscar film” that also happened to be great. (They don’t always go hand in hand). And now that won’t happen.

Yes, you’ll point out. Selma was nominated for Best Picture, but since neither Ava DuVernay, the film’s director, nor David Oyelowo, who starred in the film as Martin Luther King Jr., were nominated, it feels like a consolation prize. Selma won’t be winning Best Picture this year and that’s a shame.

So what happened? Well, at least partly, the fault lies with Paramount, who botched the publicity campaign, getting screeners to voters late or not at all. Still, Selma was already playing in theaters in NY and LA before the voters’ ballots were due, so that’s no excuse.

Nope, the biggest reason that Selma didn’t get nominated is because the smear campaign worked. Someone—Harvey Weinstein always gets blamed, but he can’t possibly be the only one—started complaining that the film was unfair, possibly even unpatriotic, in its depiction of LBJ. The fact that most people who made that accusation hadn’t even seen the film— in fact, Selma‘s depiction of LBJ is quite even-handed—was irrelevant. The narrative had stuck.

Women and People of Color Were Also Robbed

Among the acting awards, there was not a single person of color nominated. Not David Oyelowo, or any of the wonderful cast from Selma. Not Tyler Perry (no, really!) for Gone Girl. Not Oyelowo, again, for A Most Violent Year. Not Chadwick Boseman for Get On Up. Not Rosario Dawson for Top Five or Gugu Mbatha-Raw for Belle or Beyond the Lights. Let that grim thought sink in for a moment.

As for women, along with the inexcusable DuVernay snub, Gillian Flynn was robbed for adapting her own novel, Gone Girl. She had been considered a near lock.

Speaking of Gone Girl . . .

Yikes! What happened there? With the exception of Rosamund Pike for Best Actress, it got shut out. No David Fincher for Best Director (I’m not the biggest fan of the film and even I thought he deserved it), no adapted screenplay as mentioned, no best original score, no Best Picture nod. Methinks history won’t look kindly on these snubs.

I Hate the Word “Snub” But Okay, Here Are Some More of Them . . .

Ralph Fiennes, who created one of the most original and irresistible characters of all time in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Jake Gyllenhaal, who reached DeNiro-in-Taxi-Driver levels of all-American weirdness in Nightcrawler.

The Lego Movie, which was certainly one of the best animated films of the year.

Life Itself, which was most certainly one of the best documentaries of the year (despite some reservations I had about the creepy, from-beyond-the-grave voiceover).

Force Majeure, a brilliant film by any measure.

And Here Are Some Pleasant Surprises…

Marion Cotillard, receiving a richly-deserved Best Actress nod for her work in Two Days, One Night.

2014 MVP Laura Dern, getting a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Wild (she was also wonderful in The Fault in Our Stars).

Jennifer Aniston NOT getting a Best Actress nomination for the shamelessly Oscar bait-y Cake. (She’s a great actress but I can’t even with that film.)

The wonderful Ida, getting both Best Foreign Film and Best Cinematography nods.

The genius Wes Anderson getting his first Best Director nomination. *

Things That Made Me Go Hmmm . . .

If you buy into Bennet Miller’s oppressive direction and Steve Carell’s caricature-like performance, why not go ahead and give Foxcatcher a best picture nod? That made no sense.

Are the respectable but FAR-from-great The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything, and American Sniper really three of the best films of the year? Do better, Oscar!

How did American Sniper come on so strong, anyway? It’s currently sporting a not-so-great 73% positive rate over at Rotten Tomatoes.

Things That Made Me Giggle

Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs calling Mr. Turner cinematographer Dick Pope “Dick Poop.” Sorry, I’m 12.

It’s Too Early For Final Predictions But Here Are Three You Can Take To Vegas:

Patricia Arquette for Best Supporting Actress in Boyhood

J.K. Simmons for Best Supporting Actor in Whiplash

Julianne Moore for Best Actress in Still Alice

(I’ll make the rest of my predictions closer to Oscar day.)

As for Best Picture, the Jury Is Still Out

Oscar pundits have been calling for Boyhood for a while now and I’ve been (stubbornly) disagreeing. I adored the film, but in my mind, Boyhood is too deeply personal, too small (none of that grand sweep I was talking about), and too structurally loose (Oscar loves a plot) to take home Best Picture. But if not Boyhood, then whom? I’m beginning to think it just must might be the little indie, 12 years in the making, that could.

In closing, always remember this: If you expect the Oscar nominations to disappoint you, they never disappoint.

The Oscars air February 22 on ABC

*An earlier version of this story failed to mention this cheering fact

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I ask this because,
several years ago, Dave Letterman was basically run off the stage for
treating the Oscars with too much irreverence (remember his infamous
Uma/Oprah bit?) and last night Ellen DeGeneres was serving pizza,
collecting tips, and compelling Brad Pitt to hand out paper plates.

As
stars have become more accessible thanks to Twitter and Instagram, it
only stands to reason that they’d be more willing to let down their hair
and show their human side at awards shows.

(All the more reason
why Jimmy Kimmel’s pre-show shtick—where he climbed through a TV and
berated a grotesquely slovenly couple for daring to live Tweet the
Oscars—seemed so tone deaf and unnecessarily nasty. It was totally
antithetical to the spirit of the show.)

Of course, the genius of
choosing Ellen to host the Oscars is that she’s not really irreverent at
all, certainly not in a way that has any teeth. She’s not Seth
MacFarlane making rude jokes and smirking smugly at the audience. She’s
not Ricky Gervais (who has hosted the Golden Globes, not the Oscars),
gleefully skewering Hollywood culture with several surgically-placed
barbs. She’s more of the “stars, they’re just like us!” school of
irreverence, the kind of humanizing of celebrities—pizza! selfies!—that
makes them more endearing, if slightly less glamorous.

So yes,
Ellen was the safe, albeit entertaining, choice and the ceremony seemed
to reflect that. There were no giant production numbers, no parodies of
the nominees, and both the video montages and the songs were mercifully
brief. (In the case of Karen O’s haunting “The Moon Song”—too brief.)
(And what the hell was up with John Travolta butchering Idina Menzel’s
name? I shudder to think what he might’ve done with Lupita Nyong’o’s
name had he been announcing the Best Supporting Actress category.)

The dresses were uniformly gorgeous—although, again, safe
(where are Cher and Bjork when you really need them?). My personal
favorites, for what it’s worth: Lupita Nyong’o, Emma Watson, Olivia
Wilde, and Cate Blachett. On the men’s side, Kevin Spacey’s navy blue
tux was absolute perfection.

As for the awards themselves? They, too, were also pretty safe and predictable. (So predictable that I went 12 for 12 on my pre-show guesses!)

I
was very happy across the board, although it hurt a little to see
Leonardo DiCaprio lose again. What does this guy have to do to win an
Oscar? Slither across a parking lot in a Quaalude induced haze? Oh wait,
he did that already.

I was particularly thrilled that 12 Years a Slave
won for Best Picture. And director Steve McQueen’s spontanous leap in
the air when the film won—joyous and oh-so-human—was a fitting final
image of the night.

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There are exceptions, of course. Oscar can’t resist a big, splashy musical (see: Chicago). And sometimes they dole out make-good Oscars for directors who should’ve won for earlier, better work (see: The Departed). But for the most part, it’s a solid formula.

Let’s put it in action, shall we? Here are the past 10 winners.

Argo,
2012: Wildly entertaining and the Iran Contra affair is history, right?
(The more historically edifying, but significantly less entertaining Lincoln, never had a chance.)

The Artist, 2011: Manages to be both irresistibly fun and silent! And French! The voters felt smarter just voting for it.

The King’s Speech, 2010: British accents, kings and queens, and wildly entertaining. This film was catnip for the voters.

The Hurt Locker,
2009: An important and serious war film that was also a kick-ass action
film. (And bonus self-congratulatory points: directed by a woman.)

Slumdog Millionaire, 2008: Not literary, per se, but Dickensian in its theme and scope, plus set in India, which, like The Artist, made the voters feel worldly. Also, criminally entertaining.

No Country For Old Men,
2007: Based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy. (Literature!) Directed by
the Coen Brothers (artsy!). Mournful and dark while also being a really
awesome serial killer flick.

The Departed, 2006: This was
one of the aforementioned make-good wins. But it did have a lot of
great fake Boston accents (hell, even Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg’s
accents sounded fake—and they’re from Boston) and expensive production values to go along with Marty’s way overdue Best Picture.

Crash,
2005: This one—a pseudo-serious, comfortingly liberal multi-arc film
that appealed to the Academy voter’s white man’s guilt (sorry)—still
gets stuck in my craw. Brokeback Mountain was so much better Alas, it never stood a chance.

Million Dollar Baby,
2004: The gritty poverty, high-pedigree director (Clint Eastwood),
gender twist, and tragic ending, gave this (wildly entertaining)
traditional boxing pic a more Oscar-y feel.

The Lord of the Rings, Return of the King,
2003: This one doesn’t quit fit any of the categories, but it’s close
enough. Tolkien is semi-literary (well, it’s a book, at least). The film
wears its expensive production values on its sleeve. And it’s a little
bit of a make-good Oscar for the first two installments of the saga,
which were both worthy in their own right.

Okay, now let’s move onto this year.

Of the nine films nominated, only three are really considered contenders:

Gravity
American Hustle
and
12 Years a Slave

Based on the above theory, you might think I’d be going with American Hustle,
which is both historical (ish) and easily the most entertaining of the
three. But . . . a few caveats. I don’t think it’s historical enough
(who’s ever even heard of Abscam?), it bears too much of a resemblance
to last year’s Best Picture winner (wide lapels, big mustaches, bad
perms), and it has been the victim of a bit of a last minute smear campaign
by the Oscar-watching press, many of whom consider it too lightweight
for consideration. (For the record, I thought it was just dandy.)

That leaves Gravity and 12 Years a Slave.

Gravity
has the production values, for sure, but that’s about it. Sci-fi is a
hard sell for the Oscars. What’s more, I’ve heard a lot of whispers from
my readers—mostly women, interestingly, since Gravity features
such a strong female lead—who say they found it uninvolving (mostly
they were unimpressed by the film’s soaring visuals and complained about
the dialogue, which is a little cheesy).

12 Years a Slave
is legitimately edifying (not just pseudo-edifying) and, in the hands
of the brilliant director Steve McQueen, it’s extremely involving. No,
not easy to watch, but riveting.

For that reason, I feel that 12 Years a Slave comes close to being a perfect Oscar film: Edifying, engrossing, artsy (it feels auteurish), important.

It’s my pick as this year’s Best Picture.

My thoughts on a few of the other big races.

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
There
were some whispers that the Woody Allen controversy was going to affect
Blanchett’s win, but I don’t see that happening. The works speaks for
itself and it’s just too good.

Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyer’s Club
They say Leonardo DiCaprio is gaining on him—and I would love that, because he’s great in The Wolf of Wall Street and so overdue. There’s also a chance that 12 Years a Slave
will become a juggernaut, in which case the equally deserving Chiwetel
Ejiofor could swoop in. But I think the McConnassiance, as it’s been
dubbed by the press, is too irresistible, both in terms of the concept
(lightweight leading man becomes serious character actor) and delivery
(McConaughey is great in The Dallas Buyer’s Club—and The Wolf of Wall Street for that matter). (The fact that he’s currently impressing Oscar voters with his work on the HBO hit True Detective only further galvanizes his frontrunner status.)

Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyer’s Club
The
closest thing to a lock in the major races. And anyone was concerned
that his nose-thumbing, “grrr, I’m a rock star!” attitude might be
disruptive to the ceremonies, he’s been very well behaved and gracious
in all the Oscar dress rehearsals (Golden Globes, Screen Actor’s Guild,
et al), even bringing his mother. I don’t see anyone beating him.

Best Supporting Actor: Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
This
one is close, between Nyong’o and new Oscar darling Jennifer Lawrence.
Quality of the work should never, ever be a factor when predicting Oscar
winners (sigh), but great as Lawrence is, it’s hard to look at her work
side-by-side with Nyong’o’s and not pick the 12 Years a Slave
star. Also, Oscar loves anointing a new female superstar, particularly
in this category. (Look no further than last year’s win for Lawrence.)
Also helpful? Nyong’o has been dazzling the voting public with her impeccable awards-style and preternatural beauty. I say this is her year.

Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón, GravityThe director/film split is a very rare thing in Oscar’s history, although the most recent was last year, when Argo
won for best picture and Ang Lee won for best director. Oddly enough, I
see it happening again, only because Oscar knows the visionary Alfonso
Cuaron a bit better than they know the (younger) visionary Steve
McQueen. Both film’s are “director’s films” but Gravity seems
to have sprung, whole cloth, from Cuarón’s rich magination. I say
history repeats itself and we have another Best Picture/Best Director
split.

Other picks:

Adapted Screenplay: 12 Years a Slave
Original Screenplay: Her
Cinematography: Gravity
Documentary: 20 Feet From Stardom
Foreign Language Film: The Great Beauty
Animated Film: Frozen

I’ll be back with my wrap-up after this Sunday’s telecast.

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Also, Enough Said, my favorite film of 2013 got
completely shut out. Not even the expected nods for James Gandolfini in
the best supporting actor or Nicole Holefcener for Best Original
Screenplay. And in my opinion, Julia Louis-Dreyfus gave one of the
best—if not the best—female performances of the year.

But, I’ve licked my wounds, sulked a bit, and I’ve returned to break the major nominations down.

Best Picture:
12 Years a Slave
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
The Wolf of Wall Street

Surprises: Philomena
was released by the mighty Weinstein Company but hadn’t gotten a whole
lot of love from other major voting bodies. Some critics felt it was too
hard on the Catholic Church, others, like myself, felt it was a lovely,
but slight, film. Philomena’s inclusion speaks, once again, to the never-to-be-underestimated power of Harvey Weinstein. Thrilled about the inclusion of Her, which I wasn’t sure would make the cut. Also, the controversial The Wolf of Wall Street
was a question mark. The Academy voters tend to be on the conservative
side and that wild and wooly film is anything but. Again, critics were
torn, some thinking it was muscular satire of human excess served up
like only Scorsese can, while others, like myself,
believing it to be skillful but exhausting—much Quaaludes about
nothing, if you will. Well, the Academy decided to back Marty. I have to
say, my own misgivings about the film notwithstanding, I’m impressed.

Snubs: On the good end: No Saving Mr. Banks, no August: Osage County. On the bad: I already had my freak-outs about Inside Llewyn Davis and Enough Said. I also would’ve loved to have seen nods for All is Lost and Blue is the Warmest Color, which was ineligible for best foreign film. A little surprised that The Butler, which has Academy Award prestige picture written all over it, didn’t get a nod.

Early favorite: 12 Years a Slave

Best Actor
Christian Bale (American Hustle)
Bruce Dern (Nebraska)
Leonardo DiCaprio (Wolf of Wall Street)
Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)
Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)

Surprises:
Wasn’t totally sure Leonardo DiCaprio was going to get a nod, but I’m
glad he did. As I said in my review: “I don’t want to take DiCaprio’s
excellence for granted, as I think we sometimes do. If a newcomer had
arrived on the scene with this kind of confident, charismatic,
full-throttle performance, we’d all be swooning.”

Snubs: With DiCaprio in, that meant Robert Redford in All is Lost was out. Such a disappointment that this performance for the ages won’t get recognized. Also, Tom Hanks was excellent in Captain Phillips (and as Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks
for that matter), but I wouldn’t swap him out for any of the nominees. I
held out a bit of hope that Michael P. Jordan would get nominated for
his revelatory work in Fruitvale Station, but I can’t say I’m completely shocked the indie film was overlooked.

Early favorite: Matthew McConaughey

Best Actress
Amy Adams (American Hustle)
Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
Sandra Bullock (Gravity)
Judi Dench (Philomena)
Meryl Streep (August: Osage County)

Surprises:
While first stating for the record that Meryl Streep is our Greatest
Living Actress and a National Treasure ™, I also have to say, I wasn’t
wild about her boozy, caustic, furniture-chomping performance in August Osage County. To me it was a, “Look at me, I’m acting!” kind of performance, in a film I thought was actually pretty bad.

Snubs: Okay, I’ll stop talking about Julia Louis Dreyfus (if I must), but what about Adele Exarchopoulos in Blue is the Warmest Color and Brie Larson in the underseen (and brilliant) Short Term 12? Some people were expecting a nod for Emma Thompson in Saving Mr. Banks. She was great, but the film was thin, so I’m not too disappointed.

Early favorite: Cate Blanchett

Best Supporting Actor
Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)
Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)
Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)
Jonah Hill (Wolf of Wall Street)
Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)

Surprises: So Jonah Hill is now a two-time Oscar nominee. Wrap your brain around that.

Snubs: Oh, how I wished that James Franco’s truly insane (in the best way) performance in Spring Breakers could have been nominated. And then I wish he could’ve accepted the award in character, cornrows, gold grill, and all.

Early favorite: Jared Leto

Best Supporting Actress
Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)
Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave)
Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)
June Squibb (Nebraska)
Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine)

Surprises: A very good one, in that Sally Hawkins was nominated for Blue Jasmine. She did the kind of understated, thankless work next to an outsized performance that often gets overlooked.

Snubs: One word: Oprah. (For her great performance in The Butler).

Early favorite: Jennifer Lawrence

Best Director
Martin Scorsese (The Wolf of Wall Street) David O. Russell (American Hustle)
Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity)
Alexander Payne (Nebraska)
Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave)

Surprises:
Wasn’t totally sure Alexander Payne was going to make the cut, although
I think he’s quite deserving. The Wolf of Wall Street was an all in or
all out proposition for the Academy. They obviously went all in, hence
Scorsese’s nod.

Snubs: Besides the Coen Brothers, I sure would’ve loved to have seen the visionary auteur Spike Jonze get a nod.

Early favorite: Alfonso Cuarón

I’ll check back in when we get closer to Oscar day (Sunday, March 2) with my final predictions! Off to go listen to the Inside Llewyn Davis soundtrack and cry in my beer.

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