2023-24

It's a Wonderful Night for Oscar! Oscar, Oscar! Who Will Win?

It's been 15 years since Slumdog Millionaire cried "Jai Ho!", and danced away with eight Oscars on Hollywood's New Year's Eve, and no movie since has been able to match that trophy haul. A lot of things about the Academy Awards have changed since then. The organization's membership has nearly doubled in the aftermath of the 2015-2016 #OscarsSoWhite firestorms; Several branches have overhauled their nominating procedures, especially the once laughable but now quite respectable International Film committee; All categories including shorts and documentaries are now open to the entire voting body to decide the winner, which has significantly impacted prediction methods; And the actual number of categories has sadly decreased by one (R.I.P. Best Sound Editing & Mixing 😢), although a new category for Best Casting is on the 2026 horizon!

But the most notable change of all since Slumdog's 8-Oscar night to remember is that it was the final year of five Best Picture nominees, with Christopher Nolan's infamous snubs for The Dark Knight looming large over that whole awards season. AMPAS' knee jerk response to that embarrassment was to balloon the Best Picture field to ten, and while there has been some tweaking and experimentation with the specifics in the 15 years since, that new system has stuck. How fitting then that Christopher Nolan's atomic opus Oppenheimer looks poised to become the first film in the expanded Best Picture era to finally match – if not eclipse – that 8-Oscar threshold, finally bringing Nolan the golden statuettes many believe he should long have since collected for any one of his other hit films.

Will it sweep? Heavens, no (personally I think ten wins is the ceiling). But the mere potential for a record-setting 12 or 13 wins might be enough to attract even the most casual of viewers, if the presence of Barbie in several categories isn't already doing that heavy viewership lifting. Hopefully ratings will be up, and the show will be an appealing affair, especially with a more forgiving 7 p.m. start time. Word is they're resuscitating the winners circle presentation format for the acting categories, an innovation that was also borne from the 2008/09 Slumdog year, so conceptual symmetry abounds!

As far as my prediction confidence goes, I'd say it's a pretty normal distribution; About six locks, six reasonably safe bets, six coin flips, and five tossups.

So let's get into it! As always, take these predictions with a big cube of salt;

BEST PICTURE ✅

Will win: Oppenheimer, with its trifecta of Academy-friendly historical subject matter + critical hosannas + major box office, is looking unstoppable at this stage.

Could win: If anything is running a distant second to the Oppenheimer steamroller, it could be Poor Things. Its strong showing at the BAFTAs coupled with its impressive Oscar nomination haul indicates a broad level of international industry support, but not enough to top Oppie. In fact, it runs the risk of going 0/11 (which would tie the unenviable record for biggest Oscar night goose egg)!

Should win: As much as Oppenheimer's assured victory will be a fitting choice as arguably the biggest cinematic success story of 2023, the choice that would age best is Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest, a staggering and haunting reinvention of how a movie can be about the Holocaust.

Should've been here: Let's start by celebrating what an absolute knockout the top category is this year. This might be one of the all-time great Best Picture lineups, boasting six of my own top ten, three films directed by women, three films primarily not in the English language, four comedies, with a nice balance of box office hits and art house fare. And while I would still swap out American Fiction and The Holdovers for a few upgrades, there isn't a true clunker in the bunch. But what to replace them with? I'd like to believe that somewhere in the multiverse there's an Earth where Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had won more serious year-end recognition than just a solitary nomination for Animated Feature, or that pre-summer gems like Asteroid City and Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret had found a large enough audience within AMPAS to get any nominations, rather than the rude shutouts they suffered in our timeline. All three are absolutely Best Picture material in my eyes.

BEST DIRECTOR ✅

Will win: It's Christopher Nolan's coronation year at last.

Could win: None. I suppose Scorsese might pull a few votes on the basis of legacy, but it still feels locked for Nolan.

Should win: Jonathan Glazer crafted a conceptual horror film that's impossible to shake, with a laser read on the most unsettling facets of human behaviour. Future generations of cinephiles will look back, jaws agape, and wonder how he didn't sweep this awards season.

Should've been here: Celine Song earned a healthy haul of 'debut feature' prizes this season for Past Lives, but was never taken seriously as a contender for this top honour, which is crazy to me. The gentility of her vibe, which sidesteps melodrama in favour of grace, is the kind of tonal soft touch that's harder to pull off than she makes it look.

BEST FEMALE ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE ❌

Will/Could win: It's 2023 all over again! We have a neck-in-neck race between the BAFTA+Critics Choice+Globe winner (Emma Stone) who already has an Oscar but is earning the best reviews of her career vs. the SAG+Globe winner (Lily Gladstone) on her first nomination and who also just so happens to symbolize an "EDI vote" *. This nearly mirrors the close race between Cate Blanchett vs. Michelle Yeoh last year, but not quite perfectly. Yeoh actually had more factors going for her than Gladstone has; Yeoh was headlining the assumed Best Picture winner, and she's had a longer more legendary career than Gladstone. One could argue that Gladstone representing the only one of Killers' ten nominations that it can realistically win should be a point in her favour, but as we saw just last year the Academy has no problem shutting out high-nomination films. I'm tentatively predicting that recency bias from her SAG standing ovation gives a slight edge to Lily Gladstone, but this will be a nail-biter.

*Only a true cynic would believe that a Gladstone win results purely from the Academy's collective want for favourable history-making moment, as her performance is a magnificent, quietly powerful force that makes a strong case on merit. But only a fool would believe that representation has nothing to do with it. Oscar voting never occurs in a vacuum.

Should win: While I'm rooting for Gladstone on principle, the award should really be going to Sandra Hüller's mercurial, emotionally slippery star turn in Anatomy of a Fall.

Should've been here: To play an "idea" rather than a fully fledged character is one of the trickiest challenges an actor can undertake, but Margot Robbie made it work as the impossibly proportioned doll having an existential crisis in Barbie.

BEST MALE ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE ✅

Will/Should win: With SAG+BAFTA in hand, it looks like all of those super tight closeups that Cillian Murphy had to endure in Oppenheimer are paying dividends.

Could win: Paul Giamatti's victories at the Globes and Critics Choice are starting to feel like a distant memory, but those speeches he gave were textbook awards show graciousness and humour. He's a beloved veteran in role that fits his skill set like a glove, and for me he was the brightest spot in a film that's otherwise defined by its many faults. Like Best Actress, another nail-biter!

Should've been here: Kōji Yakusho's sublime performance in Perfect Days is a triumph of dignified understatement, evoking the soft beating heart and wisdom of a man who has chosen a cloistered, peaceful life.

BEST FEMALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE ✅

Will win: No individual in front or behind the camera has been singled out more uniformly this season by critics groups and awards bodies than Da'Vine Joy Randolph. What felt like a nomination-is-the-reward scenario upon The Holdovers' release has since mutated into the heaviest lock of the year.

Could win: It's unimaginable that Randolph could lose at this point. To even speculate the runner-up feels like a cruel exercise.

Should win: Jodie Foster's earthy, refreshingly grounded anchor to Annette Bening's ego-maniacal Nyad would come close to cracking my own supporting actress lineup. So would Da'Vine for how well she plays mourning fatigue while managing to retain a dry sense of humour opposite Giamatti's more mannered performance.

Should've been here: Rachel McAdams, the beating heart and soul of Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret; Penélope Cruz, a much needed jolt of white hot fury and grief in Ferrari; Scarlett Johansson, Asteroid City's most effortless performance within a performance; Viola Davis, who worked harder than any actor last year to legitimize the very rickety movie surrounding her in Air... The inclusion of any one of these ladies would have improved the quality of the category tenfold.

BEST MALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE ✅

Will win: I always suspected that the first Oscar-friendly post-Iron-Man role to come Robert Downey Jr.'s way would put him on a cleanly paved path to gold, and having swept all key precursors I have no reason to second-guess that hypothesis now.

Could/Should win: Another locked category, although it's awfully fun to imagine Ryan Gosling pulling a Kevin Kline á la A Fish Called Wanda and landing an Oscar for such an expertly silly, purely comedic performance.

Should've been here: All due reverence to Robert De Niro, Sterling K. Brown, and Mark Ruffalo – all fine actors who have done other work I admire – but they're taking up valuable space! Just consider the near-impossible balancing act John Magaro pulls off in Past Lives, playing a husband of unconditional support and empathy, yet ached by his limitations as a true soulmate. Or Milo Machado Graner's transcendent turn in Anatomy of a Fall as a child cruelly yanked between a reality he intuits and an objective truth he literally cannot see. Or Charles Melton's damaged young father in May December, finally reckoning with childhood trauma he could not comprehend at the time. Or Glenn Howerton's frightening and hilarious ego in Blackberry.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY ✅

Will win: American Fiction looks to have snatched the inside track after its surprising BAFTA win, and yet...

Could win: ... it is rare for the Best Picture winner to lose for its screenplay, having only occurred thrice in the last 18 years, which makes Oppenheimer a plausible prediction. Add in the wrinkle that Barbie, which has competed as an Original Screenplay (appropriately) at other awards shows, was relocated here due to AMPAS' overly literal definition of the word "adapted". There may be enough voters who rally behind Gerwig here after her perceived "snub" in Best Director.

Should win: I'm torn. On the one hand, The Zone of Interest is a tremendous feat of conceptual adaptation, but without having to concern itself with narrative structure or character arcs or interesting dialogue, it's a tough sell in this particular category even to its strongest admirers; Oppenheimer is a compellingly dense, articulate deep dive on character, but is also unwieldy and leans on chronological timeplay more than it needs to; Poor Things has great fun with language and freaky-deaky characterization, but only trades in simplistic ideologies without anything all that insightful to communicate; Barbie wins big points for being able to tow the corporate line while also feeling like a singular artist's vision, but its humour is sometimes too on-the-nose, and its detours into slapstick outstay their welcome. Today, I think this may be the one category where I'd opt for Nolan over Glazer, but ask me again tomorrow...

(Not making a case for American Fiction – the weakest of the five – which barely gets by on some urbane verbiage but is frustratingly limited, aiming at easy satirical targets while offering little more than a passing glance at the more interesting racial & cultural issues it portends to explore. It rankles to me no end that this is the frontrunner.)

Should've been here: Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, Kelly Fremon Craig's loving adaptation of Judy Bloom's landmark YA novel, may sound on paper like a project aimed exclusively at preadolescent girls, but will surprise you in how welcoming and relatable it is to many demographics. Craig's obvious love for the source material shines through clear as day.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY ✅

Will win: Anatomy of a Fall surprised at both the Golden Globes and BAFTAs with victories over its more Amerocentric competition.

Could win: The Holdovers feels like a more traditional winner that would have taken this category easily had it been released about 15 years ago, and it still might.

Should win: While Anatomy will be a fine winner, my personal preference is for Past Lives, with its fluid conversational style and poetic philosophical diversions.

Should've been here: Asteroid City, arguably the apotheosis of Wes Anderson's many authorial tics.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE ❌

Will/Should win: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has already followed in its predecessor's footsteps by being a wildly entertaining, frequently hilarious, and quite moving superhero eye-popper. Will history repeat itself with an Oscar to boot?

Could win: It's not such an easy path to victory for Spidey this year, with Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron standing there as the option with more artistic street cred, sure to appeal to the sophisticated tastes of the Academy's international bloc. I know I should be an obedient little cinephile and join them in kneeling down in respect and fear at the altar of Miyazaki, and present my humble offering of a rave review to every new "final" feature he conjures, but... I just can't pretend that I liked The Boy and the Heron all that much. Sure, it has imagination to spare and beauty to behold, same as all his works, but its dream logic and under-explored world building kept me at more than arm's length. Still, a second Oscar for Miyazaki feels right for a master of his clout. I'm sure he won't even attend the ceremony, but that would be a cool moment to witness.

Should've been here: On the topic of anime, Makoto Skinkai's Suzume continues to mark his rise as a global name in the genre, following up the success of Your Name and Weathering With You. One of these year's the Academy is bound to recognize him.

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE ✅

Will/Should win: With five well deserved nominations including Best Picture under its belt, The Zone of Interest is a foregone conclusion.

Could win: Society of the Snow or The Teachers' Lounge are more accessible, and in a prior era either one could have been the shocker, but such upsets no longer happen ever since they opened up this category to the full voting membership in 2012.

Should've been here: France's controversial decision to not submit Anatomy of a Fall is being derided as the biggest fumble and juiciest scandal of the year. Oh, to imagine a world in which we had it here going up against The Zone of Interest! This category would actually have been competitive and exciting for the first time in a decade.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE ✅

Will win: 20 Days in Mariupol is an urgent and harrowing chronicle, even if it's footage is over two years old (which still makes it the most current event covered in this year's nominees). But it's a tough watch...

Could win: Bobi Wine: The People's President centres on a very compelling figure and packages his personal & public lives into an accessible political drama. Pre-2012 when the award was only voted on by special screening attendees, this would have been our winner.

Should win: To Kill a Tiger handles its traumatic and triggering subject of child rape with an empathetic eye. Nisha Pahuja & crew extend great care and sensitivity toward the survivor whose story they tell, while diving deep into the cultural stigmas that have allowed such violence to perpetuate unchecked in communities throughout rural India.

Should've been here: Beyond Utopia for its riveting firsthand account of a family feeling North Korea.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY ✅

Will win: Hoyte van Hoytema pulled out all the tricks for Oppenheimer, not the least of which was inventing a new black-and-white IMAX film stock! While he wouldn't be my first choice, I've been a big fan of the Swedish DP's work ever since Let the Right One In (2008), so this victory will still be nice to see!

Could win: Poor Things has much more colourful and fanciful dressings to fill its fish-eyed frame. For every viewer who balks at Lanthimos' seemingly random lens and iris choices, I imagine there's another viewer who eats it up. Feels like a very real spoiler...

Should win: Maestro has a lot more going on that just the Old Hollywood stylishness of its first act. There's real texture to Libatique's palette and lighting choices in the film's more sombre chapters.

Should've been here: Saltburn is hot rubbish, and Linus Sandgren is the one bringing the heat! His imagery is lurid and palpably scorched through steamy summertime haze.

BEST EDITING ✅

Will win: Even with a three-hour runtime, the persistence of Oppenheimer's cross-cutting makes it the most obviously edited film of the year, and in this category, obvious editing is what you often need to secure the actual win.

Could win: Killers of the Flower Moon does present an opportunity of a history-making fourth win for living legend Thelma Schoonmaker, but I doubt enough voters know or even care enough about that opportunity.

Should win: Laurent Sénéchal's nimble control of pacing and perspective in Anatomy of a Fall is the kind of invisibly flawless editing that I wish could win more often. This movie clocks in at over 2.5 hours but it just rips by!

Should've been here: The editing branch has never had the open-mindedness to honour an animated feature for this prize, but if ever there was an effort that could (and should) have persuaded them it was Michael Andrews' dizzying assemblage of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN ✅ and BEST COSTUME DESIGN ✅

Will/Could win: I'm tackling both design categories with one write-up, since they both share an identical roster of nominees (way to dig deep, designers branch 😒) and because both categories present the same predicting dilemma; Barbie and Poor Things going head-to-head, the former having dominated regional critics groups for its pink plastic toyland and retro doll outfits, and the latter winning more recent industry prizes for its playfully erratic riffs on Victorian architecture and couture. So many outcomes! Do they split the design Oscars one apiece? And if so, which film takes which category? Does Barbie win both? Does Poor Things win both? Or do fringe contenders emerge from left field, like last year which saw All Quiet and Black Panther 2 take the stage after many had presumed Elvis and Babylon were duking it out?

For now I'll nervously pick Poor Things for both, but I'll be pulling my hair out right up until the envelopes are open. These two categories will make or break your Oscar pool!

Should win: While the aforementioned frontrunners boast much creativity, the tactile work in Killers of the Flower Moon is more tangible and immersively authentic. With an unfussy attention to detail, Jask Fisk's sets and Jacqueline West's costumes transport us to a time and place seldom explored in mainstream cinema, Osage County circa 1920, that feels lived in and culturally specific.

The other Jacqueline in Best Costume Design (Durran) would also be an inspired choice for her on-point fashion recreations in Barbie. And there's no denying that Sarah Greenwood's construction of Barbie Land is an eye-popping feat.

Should've been here: Asteroid City -- I'm befuddled as to why the Academy has only gone all-in on Wes Anderson one time (Grand Budapest Hotel), when really his entire filmography should be landing Production & Costume Design nominations with ease. Perhaps the fastidious auteur will get his due in another category?...

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE ✅

Will win: The ubiquity of Ludwig Göransson's soundtrack to Oppenheimer has made him a default sweeper this season. You may not remember a single melody, but you'll remember that the music was 🎵 ALWAYS 🎵 THERE 🎵 (for better or worse), and so will Oscar voters, which is sometimes all they need.

Could win: Poor Things has some kooky flourishes that could help it stand out.

Should win: What a perfect opportunity this is to honour the late Robbie Robertson, finally receiving his first nomination (albeit posthumously) after a decades-long collaboration with Scorsese. He invigorates and even surprises the experience of Killers of the Flower Moon with his fusion of 70's rock, bluegrass, and Indigenous influences.

Should've been here: Carmen; The experimental border drama/dance film was always too art-house to grab mainstream attention (I wasn't that taken with it, though your mileage may vary), but there's no denying that Nicholas Britell's expressive strings and ethereal choral atmospherics add a lot to it. On the animation front, Daniel Pemberton's electrifying soundtrack for Spider-Verse absolutely rips, and Joe Hisaishi's lush orchestrations for The Boy and the Heron would have made handsome legacy nomination for the longtime Miyazaki composer.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG ✅

Will win: "What Was I Made For" underscores the poignant catharsis of Barbie's emotional climax.

Could/Should win: "I'm Just Ken" – the daffy power ballad that transfigures into epic beach battle that transfigures into phantasmagorical dream ballet – underscores Barbie's comedic climax; A riotous rock operetta and the single most memorable cinematic sequence of the year. Honestly, it's another coin flip category. Both songs are polar opposites in their tonal registers and in how they serve the film, and yet both songs are so successful in meeting their very different goals.

Is there a world where the two Barbie songs split the vote, allowing "Wahzhazhe (A Story For My People)" to surprise? It would be such a unique Oscar win, and an appropriate way to honour the Osage contributors to Killers of the Flower Moon.

Should've been here: "Meet In The Middle" from Flora & Son, another stealth charmer from John Carney (Once, Begin Again, Sing Street). The Irish director who has carved out a comfortable little niche for his brand of uplifting quasi-musicals is long overdue for an Oscar nomination.

BEST SOUND ❌

Will win: Oppenheimer would actually be a rather atypical winner, in that it's not an action or sci-fi or war picture with a bunch of obvious sound effects. But it's use of silence and bombast at select moments is striking, and the deafening audio quality of the IMAX cinemas where many audiences heard it will keep those moments ringing in their ears.

Could/Should win: The Zone of Interest's unexpected win at BAFTA gives me the faintest of hopes. Ostensibly more an artistic achievement of sound design than an immaculate technical accomplishment, but it's remained one of the most consistent stories about that movie all season. If it can win with one mainstream awards body like BAFTA, whose to say it can't win with another one like AMPAS? 🤞

Should've been here: The fact that Society of the Snow's grimly detailed foley effects didn't get recognized here is a felony. Ditto The Killer's devilishly precise mix.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS ✅

Will/Could win? Chaos reigns! The toughest category of the year. Godzilla: Minus One – with its modest budget and unexpected international crossover success – is the only nominee with any kind of "narrative" orbiting the craft on display, which is admittedly impressive. But is the Academy at large clued in to that story? This is my no guts no glory pick for the year.

Could/Should win: The effects work in The Creator is the most cleanly rendered and convincing (it would be my winner), but the movie itself sorta came and went without generating any passion. Napoleon hews closest to a traditional "Best Picture contender" (with a key Production Design nomination to boot) which is a boon in this category, but again, do voters actually like the movie? The CG animals in Guardians of the Galaxy and the train sequence in Mission: Impossible are memorable accomplishments, but will the Academy ever go for those franchises this late into their runs?

In the absence of the would've-been surefire winner Dune II which got bumped from its original 2023 release, any of these nominees could take it. This is one of those precious rare (like once-every-five-years sort of rare) categories where it's a true five-horse race!

Should've been here: The remarkable animated embellishments of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse add much to experience, while the fire & water effects in Pixar's Elemental are kinda mind-blowing if you stop to think about them. As ever, the VFX branch is notoriously resistant to animated features, even though animation itself basically is a visual effect!

BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING ❌

Will/Could win: "In this category it's tough to beat a transformative, lead-acting-nominated performance in a Best Picture nominee." I applied that exact logic (word for word) to my prediction last year, only to pick the wrong transformative lead-acting-nominated performance; It went to The Whale for fat-suiting Brendan Fraser when I had guessed Elvis for fat-suiting Tom Hanks and Austin Butler. By similar extension, this year I have to flip a coin: Will it be Poor Things for wigging out Emma Stone, or will Maestro's heavy prosthetic work on Bradley Cooper win by a nose? I'm guessing the latter for now.

Should win: All snark about its controversial proboscis aside, Kazu Hiro's aging of Cooper and Mulligan throughout Maestro is pretty damn convincing.

Should've been here: The Last Voyage of the Demeter; Terrible movie. Really cool creature effects! It bewilders me that the makeup branch rarely promotes the horror genre, one of the great bastions of their craft.

BEST ANIMATED SHORT ✅

Will win: WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko is straining as hard as its all-caps title suggests to win you over with bathos and jerk forcefully on your heartstrings at the end (and it's connection to the song is tenuous at best). But name-check recognition and easy sentiment are a mighty one-two punch in this category. Eyes will roll for this.

Could/Should win: Ninety-Five Senses plays with multiple animation styles and flows between a surprising range of tones and feelings in its brief runtime. To think that Jared Hess, the director of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libré might win an Oscar, and that he deserves it!

Should've been here: The sobering, heartbreaking stop-motion marvel Humo.

BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT ✅

Will win: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar; Hard to believe that Wes Anderson might win his first Oscar for a short -- one in his anthology of Roald Dahl adaptations for Netflix -- but that makes it no less a "Wes Anderson movie" than any of his features.

Could win: The After is the single worst Academy Award nominated film in any category this year. That alone makes it a threat to win. Of course I'm being superstitious! The shorts have burned me too many times before with awful winners.

That said, the topicality and impactful twist ending of Red, White and Blue make it a very strong spoiler possibility.

Should win: I go back and forth between Red, White & Blue and Invincible, from Québec filmmaker Vincent René-Lortie (always gotta root for Can-con at the Oscars!); An intimate and moving dramatization of a juvenile offender with a poetic soul, tragically spurred by inner crisis.

Should've been here: Dead Cat, another French-Canadian effort, hilarious in its brevity.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT ✅

Will win: Given how many liberal feelgood boxes it checks off, The Last Repair Shop feels like it was reverse engineered to win an Oscar in this category. You wanna know something about those Oscar-by-design shorts? They do frequently win.

Could win: The adorable Nai Nai and Wai Po matches the feelgood energy of Repair Shop with less than half of that short's runtime, and without feeling nearly as forced. It would make a cute winner in a category where docs that are more slight on subject matter usually struggle to even get nominated. But watch out for The ABCs of Book Banning, whose mere title and manipulative tactics could pull off a win on perceived importance alone (and would also fit the mould of the worst nominee in a shorts category winning).

Should win: Island in Between, in which Taiwanese-American filmmaker S. Leo Chiang revisits his homeland -- the precariously situated Kinmen Island -- as a way to explore his own complex relationship with nationality.

Should've been here: Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games

Post-Oscars Analysis

Final score: 19/23

I'll take it. Lost three of the six coin flip categories, which makes prefect statistical sense, and of course did not get The Zone of Interest's mini-upset in Best Sound where Oppenheimer was widely predicted, but I'm beyond thrilled to be wrong about that particular outcome. Johnnie Burns' disquieting soundscape basically is the movie, and his victory here over more bombastic Americanized entertainment will go down as one of the best winners this category has ever seen (by which I mean 'heard'). Hell, it's the best winner in any category from at least the last ten years!

The telecast itself was a swift affair that actually finished ahead of time despite starting five minutes late due to protesters blocking the road outside the theatre. Jimmy was predictably m'eh as host, which I have no real problem with, although after four kicks at the can he's starting to show signs of diminishing returns. His opening set in particular had a lower laugh per minute ratio than any of his previous three Oscar night monologues. Perhaps a new joke writing team is in order? At least he ended strong by bringing out the teamsters and backstage crew in acknowledgement of the many unions that picketed in solidarity with the actors during last year's labour strife. That was a nice moment.

Something I was not expecting; For the first time in as long as I can remember, nearly all the presenter gags throughout the night were actually funny! You know the stuff I mean, when two celebrities who may not be natural comedians are forced to limp through whatever inane banter is scrolling across their teleprompter. These are historically the moments when my patience is most tested, and I wish they would just get on with announcing the nominees, but not so this year. Aside from Al Pacino's bizarre (possibly drunken) handling of Best Picture, just about every presenter nailed their respective shtick. From John Mulaney's rapid-fire description of sound work that hilariously veers into a stream-of-consciousness plot synopsis of Field of Dreams, to Kate MacKinnon's straight faced realization that Jurassic Park is not a documentary (with a side-splitting assist from "Dr. Spielberg" in the audience), to DeVito and Schwarzeneger's tough-guy heckling of Michael Keaton, to Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling's Barbenheimer trash-talk sparring, to John Cena's silly but perfectly executed would-be streaker gag; I can't explain it, but all of it worked for me, earning more consistent laughs than anything from the host's monologue.

The return of the "winners circle" format for the acting categories was nice to see again, but truthfully I'm glad they don't do this every year. For normies who haven't seen the movies, the absence of acting clips can make these presentations awfully dry, as few of the nominees are actually giving us compelling facial reactions to hearing a past winner praise their work. Most notable this year was Da'Vine Joy Randolph tearing up at Lupita Nyong'o's warm words of congratulations, and good on Ms. Randolph for finally putting away the paper and giving us the kind of emotive from-the-heart acceptance speech we've been waiting all season to hear from her.

Other exciting wins came from The Zone of Interest's mini-upset in Best Sound -- which will go down as one of the all-time great victories in that category -- and Godzilla's vfx team, a 'little engine that could' story which ultimately manifested in the happiest of endings. I know it seems odd to describe a movie about a 20-storey lizard crushing everything in its path as a 'little engine that could', but seriously, for a crew of only 35 people on a budget of only $15 million to pull off that kind of movie is miraculous. Now let's see about, ahem, paying them fairly, Toho...

On the whole, the group of winners are a very respectable slate (give or take a WAR IS OVER and American Fiction), and a surprisingly international one. We've seen foreign cinema win multiple trophies on Oscar night before, but usually it's from one film that caught on in a big way like All Quiet on the Western Front, Parasite, Pan's Labyrinth, or Crouching Tiger. But is this the first year when five different non-English language films have won Oscars (Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall, Boy and the Heron, 20 Days in Mariupol, and Godzilla)? I need to fact-check that, but whether or not the precedent exists, there's no denying that the growing international bloc of the Academy made themselves heard this year.

It was still Oppenheimer's night. Although it fell short of the elusive eight-Oscar total that we still have not seen in the expanded Best Picture era, seven wins is nothing to sneeze at. Chris Nolan has had this a long time coming, so it was super gratifying to see him finally clutching a little gold man, delivering a humble and appreciative acceptance speech.

However, much like last year, the overall aftertaste of the evening would ultimately hinge on Best Actress. Last year the voting collective delivered with a historic win for Michelle Yeoh, and I went to bed with a huge grin on my face. This year they denied Lily Gladstone a historic win so Emma Stone could have a second Oscar at age 35. I intend to cast no shade on Ms. Stone, who is bold and inventive in Poor Things and probably wanted for Lily to win this more than anybody, but it's one of those outcomes that's so disappointing it kinda stains the whole night.

Not to mention that the Flower Moon shutout pads an already depressing stat that Martin Scorsese has directed three films that went 0/10. Think about that for a moment: Only eight films in the Academy's 96-year history have earned double digit nominations and lost them all, and three of the eight are from the greatest American filmmaker who ever lived. It's this type of shit that really gnaws at me, man.

And we had already suffered through a couple of anticlimactic outcomes earlier in the evening. I'd be so much more excited about seeing Miyazaki win his second Oscar if I could actually, y'know, see Miyazaki win his Oscar. I had assumed he wouldn't show up, but the discovery that Wes Anderson was also not in attendance to accept his first Academy Award was a rude shock that left me feeling very unfulfilled, as I was honestly looking forward to seeing the singular auteur receive the ovation he has long deserved.

But in the interest of never falling asleep angry, I decided to go back and rewatch Ryan Gosling's ebullient performance of "I'm Just Ken" one last time before putting myself and the season to bed. The Kenergetic pink production number, which evoked Marilyn Monroe's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes while rocking out with Slash (what a get!) and inspiring the whole crowd to sing along karaoke style, epitomizes when the Academy Awards is the best version of itself; Paying affectionate homage to movies past and present, but actively encouraging people to never take showbiz awards shows too seriously. At the end of the day, we watch because they're supposed to be fun, and this musical highlight of the evening definitely was.