2025 Oscar Reactions

The 97th Academy Awards have concluded and with them a truly great (despite what you may hear) year for movies. Overall I was pleased with the show (more on that in a bit), but I really missed on my predictions. Last year I had a 69% completion rate. This year I only got 12/23 which is 52%. Woof. Even though I did miss on a lot of predictions, there were very few awards I was shocked on & I wasn’t really mad about most of my misses.

The categories I got correct were Best Documentary (No Other Land), Best International Feature (I’m Still Here), Best Original Song & Best Supporting Actress (Emilia Perez), Best Production Design & Best Costume Design (Wicked), Best Cinematography (The Brutalist), Best Visual Effects (Dune: Part Two), Best Original Screenplay (Anora), Best Adapted Screenplay (Conclave), & Best Supporting Actor (A Real Pain).

So I missed on all three short categories (Live Action, Animated, & Documentary) and I guess I need to some more deep dive on those going forward because if you would’ve had me rank them on what I thought would win, I would’ve put what actually won in last place for all three categories. So that’s embarassing.

For Best Sound I thought the Academy would just throw one award at ‘Dune: Part Two’ to please fans, but I’m really glad it deservingly walked away with two. My prediction was ‘Wicked’ for anyone curious.

For Best Original Score I had gone with ‘Conclave’ & ‘The Brutalist’ actually took home the prize. Not mad at it and Daniel Blumberg’s speech was quite endearing.

Best Film Editing I picked ‘The Brutalist,’ because I didn’t foresee the dominance of ‘Anora’ & Sean Baker.

I picked ‘The Wild Robot’ for Best Animated Feature but ‘Flow’ actually took home the award. Though I strongly prefer ‘The Wild Robot,’ ‘Flow’ winning is great for the industry and animation because a Latvian film with no dialogue, a crew of five people, a budget of less than $4 million, & the use of the animation software Blender managed to take down both Disney/Pixar & Dreamworks. That’s really incredible if you think about it.

And I missed on all four major categories. I predicted Timothée Chalamet, Demi Moore, Brady Corbet, & ‘Conclave’ for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, & Best Picture. The winners were Adrien Brody, Mikey Madison, Sean Baker, & ‘Anora.’ I really like the Mikey Madison win because I think the Academy had been leaning too much on people’s resumes opposed to the single performance. I thought a 25-year old actress with little name recognition (prior to ‘Anora’ at least) winning is awesome & a great step forward. I had to mourn when Timothée lost. Still mourning.

Some other thought & comments I have about the show:

Sean Baker joined Walt Disney as the only individual to win 4 Oscars in a single night & his all came from the same movie, which is a first. Props to him both for his wins & for using his speech platform to promote independent film & the film industry as a whole. I say as a proud AMC Stubs A-List Member who gets great use of my membership: Go to the theater folks!

Cynthia Erivo & Ariana Grande slayed the house down and my early prediction is that they will be taking home the Best Actress & Supporting Actress awards a year from now for ‘Wicked: For Good.’

Conan O’Brien was a perfect host & I was so pleased. I think there are only three directions to go that wouldn’t be a misstep. Either go to the no host format giving the presenters a little more time to make jokes. Either bring Conan back. Or let John Mulaney do it.

I thought Conan’s monologue was great (loved the Adam Sandler bit) & I appreciate how celebratory he was to the films opposed to degrading. Which feels like it should be the bar. But hey, Academy members watching the movie should also be the bar and that doesn’t happen so I’ll take what I can get.

I really enjoyed most of the presenters. Bowen Yang was hilarious & I loved the formatting they did for Best Costume & Cinematography, I hope they bring those back next year and bring it to other categories. I also enjoyed June Squibb & Scarlett Johansson, Ben Stiller, Mick Jagger, and Billy Crystal & Meg Ryan. One aspect of the presenting I didn’t like was having them specifically talk about each nominee like they did with the Supporting Actor/Actress awards. It’s awkward because obviously the presenters know some people a lot better & some not at all. Just show the clips like they do for Best Actor/Actress.

I think the Academy should encourage non-English speakers to speak their native language. I really admire them trying to speak English, but it’s the biggest moment of these people’s lives. Let them be comfortable. I couldn’t even imagine how embarrassed I would be accepting an award and trying to make a speech in another language. Let them do their thing & either give a slight time delay to put captions up or just say screw it and let people sit there for 45 seconds.

On the note of acceptance speeches. It was very tactless of the Academy to cut off the craftspeople in their speeches, sometimes not even letting members of a group say anything. I thought Conan’s gag song about wasting time was funny, but it really is an issue that that got so much time and one of the winners of Best Special Effects didn’t even get to get a word out. Like genuinely they cut off Dune’s VFX team at 30 seconds. And I’d say maybe next year don’t include a not very good, five minute segment for a film series that hasn’t had an entry in four years? That whole Bond segment was weird & unnecessary. But if you need to, just commit to a 4 hour runtime and give people time to talk.

Also in regard to speeches. Was not a fan of Adrien Brody’s move. Yes, absolutely that is his moment. But he could’ve gone about it better. Kieran Culkin was vigilant of the time and politely asked them to let him finish a brief (& fun) story about his wife. That was fine. Part of me thought Brody’s response to being played off was almost cool because it exuded confidence, but for a guy with a history of kind of being a dick, I didn’t love it. He also continued on to say absolutely nothing. He rambled aimlessly and didn’t get a thought out. Mind you, he said he was ‘going to be brief’ and set the record for longest acceptance speech in Oscars history at nearly 6 minutes. Sean Baker (who we saw a lot of) spent less time talking than Brody did. Baker won four awards, three of them as the sole winner & was concise but effective in all of his speeches. The only person who spent more time talking than Brody was Conan, the host of the show. Admittedly, if you want to see something funny, rewatch Brody’s speech but just watch Cillian Murphy (who didn’t want to be there) patiently, but awkwardly stand there waiting for Brody to wrap up.

The ‘In Memoriam’ segment was rough. Part of me thinks they should cut it completely next year. There are always going to be notable exceptions no matter how many people you fit in and part of it feels strange giving some people 2 seconds on screen while others get 30. I understand it is based on name value of the individual, but keep in mind it ended by telling you to scan a QR code to see who else died. All that, plus the horrible music choice, made it feel a little tactless in my opinion.

All the following nominated films went home with nothing: ‘Sing Sing,’ ‘Nickel Boys,’ ‘The Wild Robot,’ ‘A Complete Unknown,’ ‘Nosferatu,’ ‘The Apprentice,’ ‘Better Man,’ ‘Gladiator II,’ & ‘Alien: Romulus.’ Those first five feel a little strange to have gone home completely empty handed.

I want to take this opportunity to remind you that next year the Academy is adding a new award, Best Casting, so there’s one more opportunity for me to miss a guess. But once they get Stunts & Voice Acting in there, I think we’ll be good to go.

The final thing I want to share is that ‘Dune: Messiah’ is going to win ALL the Oscars. Like ‘Lord of the Rings: Return of the King’ style. If you look, the awards trend between the trilogies is very similar so I have faith this is the route it will take. And though Chalamet will surely earn a nomination for ‘Marty Supreme’ (to be completely honest I’m not 100% sure what the pool looks like this early into the year, but I’m sticking with this take), he’s going to take home his first Oscar as Paul Atreides two years from now and the film will also win Best Picture, Director, Visual Effects, Score, Sound, Production Design, Costume Design, Makeup & Hairstyling, Cinematography, & Editing, as well as receive nominations in Adapted Screenplay & Best Supporting Actress (both Zendaya & Florence Pugh). How do I know all this? Because I drank the water of life and can see all the possible outcomes. LISAN AL-GAIB!