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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Lord knows he gets lots of the details right. The anti-maskers who insist they can’t breathe with a mask on. Those geniuses who wore masks but didn’t cover their noses. The six-feet distance rule that no one could quite measure correctly. The endless Zoom meetings and videoblogs. The long lines at testing centers and those draconian giant Q-tips they would shove up our noses to get samples. The constant flaring of tempers. And, of course, the outbreak of conspiracy theories (it’s biological warfare! It’s the Chinese! It’s the Russians! It’s Bill Gates!) that began to metastasize, auguring the conspiracy rich world that we are living in today. In one scene, I noticed several rolls of toilet paper neatly stacked on the floor of a character’s home. Aster doesn’t call attention to this cultural relic. It’s just there.

And of course, COVID wasn’t the only thing making America sick around that time—George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis and Black Lives Matter protests sprung up across the country. Everything felt het up, precarious, volatile.

Aster captures this time perfectly. What he doesn’t do, as least as far as I could tell, is give us a unifying theory of all this, something insightful and provocative to chew on. Instead, the movie has a, “That was totally nuts, huh?” quality. (On the other hand, perhaps that’s the only reasonable response to 2020.)

The film’s action takes place in the small New Mexico town of Eddington. Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) is the anti-masker sheriff. Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) is the “woke” mayor. Well, I should say, ostensibly woke. He may believe in masks and science but he seems perfectly happy to let a giant, energy sucking technology center start building in the center of town.

Aster has called his film a western of sorts, and the fact that these two men hate each other and often have to face off in nearly vacant streets six-feet apart from each other (no weapons in sight—yet) does contribute to that sense. Social distancing at the O.K. Corral.

While we see a bit of Ted’s home life—his wife left him and he’s raising a mildly rebellious teenage son on his own—the film mostly follows Joe’s journey. At the start of COVID, his bonkers mother-in-law, Dawn (Deidre O’Connell), moved in with him and his sad-sack wife, Louise (Emma Stone). Joe loves Louise with all his heart—it’s his most redeeming quality—but she’s drifting away, falling further and further down the conspiracy rabbit holes her mother introduces her to. And he loses her completely when she falls under the spell of a handsome would-be cult leader (Austin Butler) who spreads fevered tales of secret pedophile rings.

Early in the film, Joe decides he’s going to run for mayor and he festoons his sheriff’s truck with flags and anti-lockdown slogans with questionable spelling (“Your being manipulated”) and photos of Ted Garcia that read: “Get this virus out of office.”

At this point, Joe only has two employees left in his sheriff’s office: Guy (Luke Grimes), who is white, and Michael (Micheal Ward), who is Black. Guy insists that before the Black Lives Matter protest came to town, he barely noticed that Michael was Black. But now he can’t help but wonder whose side he’s really on. (So yes, Aster even nails those “Black Lives Matter made me racist” types, too.)

In the spirit of equal opportunity satirizing, I was amused by how Aster makes fun of the self-righteous teens who protest Floyd’s death while sheepishly apologizing for their own whiteness. “We need to shut up and listen to Black people!” yells one white boy to a crowd of BLM protesters. “Which I will do… right after making this speech! Which, uh, I have no right to give because I’m standing on stolen ground!”

That said, I was a bit puzzled by his introduction of Antifa late in the film. Instead of gently mocking the far right’s vision of Antifa as some sort of militant, ubiquitous force, he seems to buy into it. (It’s parody, sure, but hits differently from the other bits of parody that were so spot-on.) Just for the record, I should note that the final third of the film is extremely violent—like, Tarantino violent.

I can’t say I actually enjoyed Eddington—although I don’t think that was what Aster was going for. He wants us to feel uncomfortable (he succeeds) and he wants us to reflect on the craziness that we collectively experienced. I buy into the “tragedy plus time equals comedy” formula. But maybe not enough time has passed. And the fact that things today feel similarly unhinged doesn’t help matters. If you’re stuck in the middle of a cyclone, do you really need a movie that says, “Hey, remember the early days of this cyclone? Those were wild.”

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Midway through Materialists I came to the somewhat depressing conclusion that writer-director Celine Song and I are simply not simpatico. I admired the intelligence and craft of her previous film, Past Lives—and thought it was a fresh take on the immigrant experience. But I turned on Greta Lee’s Nora when she ignored her husband, Arthur, at the bar, instead speaking in Korean to her childhood love, Hae Sung—and never fully recovered from that.

Nonethless, I was looking forward to Materialists, as I love the idea of an intelligent female auteur working in the romantic movie space and the film has gotten nearly unanimous rave reviews.

And yet…here we go again. For the second time, I just wasn’t jibing with what I saw on screen. If you’ve seen the trailer, you get the gist. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a successful matchmaker in New York. Her job is basically to manage the expectations of her clients—especially the female ones. “I’m not building a man in a lab,” she tells one (I’m paraphrasing). “I can’t make him to your exact specifications.” The women of New York, it seems, mostly want the same thing: a man who is rich, has most (if not all) of his hair, and is tall. (The appeal of tall men is a weirdly major plot point in Materialists). The men of New York also want the same thing: Someone younger than them and way hot.

Her job is to get these singles to somehow meet in the middle. And she’s good at it.

Early in the film, she goes to a wedding of one of her clients—with nine marriages under her belt, she is the most successful matchmaker at her firm—and meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), the brother of the groom. He is handsome, rich, with a full head of hair, and, yes, tall. (Stands to reason, because he’s Pedro Pascal.) They begin to flirt—or, more accurately, he begins to flirt; she thinks she’s recruiting him as a client. (She calls him a “unicorn,” meaning he checks all the boxes: rich, handsome, nice, and available.) Just then, the cater waiter shows up, in the form of Chris Evans, with stubble, trying to look like a loveable schlub. Turns out, he’s a struggling actor, still living with two slovenly roommates, and Lucy’s ex. They broke up because he was poor. Lucy told him she “hated” herself for caring about his financial status, but she did.

So she begins to date Harry. She tells him, based on her calculations, she’s not good enough for him. He could bag someone better than her—younger, richer, prettier (puh-lease).

But I like you, Harry says.

Based on the trailer, I figured that Harry would be the guy she dated because of his wealth but Evans’ John was the one she really loved. And . . . that’s pretty much what happens. Except John is still the sweet, broke loser she broke up with for valid reasons and Harry is actually a great guy—a gentleman who woos her and, as we’ve established, really likes her.

There’s a major incident that is supposed to lead to Lucy’s awakening: One of Lucy’s clients, Sophie, is assaulted by the man Lucy set her up with. Lucy didn’t really think they were going to be a match, but she was getting desperate—Sophie was proving to be a tricky client, as she was of average beauty and average wealth, and was pushing 40. Lucy is understandably distraught over the news of the attack, all the more so when her boss shrugs it off as an unfortunate inevitability of the job. But I’m still not sure why this was the moment of epiphany for Lucy. It’s not her fault that this guy assaulted Sophie, nor does it send the message: Marry for love, not creature comforts.

(I’d like to take this moment to applaud Zoe Winters, who plays Sophie. She is heartbreaking in the role and her emotional rawness contrasts strikingly, almost jarringly, with Johnson’s somewhat affectless cool.)

So yeah, I just didn’t connect the dots in Materialists. Despite good acting across the board (or, more accurately, appealing movie star performances), I never bought it. I didn’t buy Captain America as a loser. I didn’t buy Dakota Johnson as a woman who would doubt her own desirability. And I certainly didn’t buy Pedro Pascal as the guy you take a pass on.

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