The Oscars Got It Right
‘One Battle’ and ‘Sinners’ deserved to dominate the night, and my big takeaways
In retrospect, that tie in the best live-action short race was trying to tell us something.
No, the winners of that category — The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva, both of which were featured in this very newsletter! — didn’t actually have anything to do with the two biggest movies of the night. But the fact that they shared their category, the first Oscar tie in over a decade, felt like a preview of the parity that would emerge between expected juggernauts, One Battle After Another and Sinners.
The two Warner Bros. releases, which led the nominations total and were widely seen as the frontrunners heading into the Oscars, did not actually end up tied: One Battle won six Oscars, including best picture, while Sinners won four, including original screenplay. But both films really had a moment to shine throughout the ceremony, sharing the spotlight and the sense that, if they weren’t up against each other, they might both be having historic sweeps. Directors Paul Thomas Anderson and Ryan Coogler posed for a photo later in the evening with their Oscars in hand, pretty much summing it up.
I shared most of my Oscar hot takes — five full hours’ worth! — during my livestream with my colleague Christopher Rosen, which you can revisit if you really want to (both part one and part two), or listen to our recap of the entire night on today’s special Monday edition of the Prestige Junkie podcast, available below.
But because I genuinely love the Oscars, that wasn’t even all I had to say about it; as soon as Chris and I wrapped up our livestream, I headed out to Neon’s after party, where I swapped hot takes with my fellow journalists before Sentimental Value director Joachim Trier received a conqueror’s welcome, arriving with Norway’s Oscar in hand. (Yes, again, the director of the best international feature winner does not actually win the award; I don’t understand it, but at least I tried to get an answer out of Academy bosses Bill Kramer and Lynette Howell Taylor.) At the party, everyone agreed that, while we’re all glad the season is over (so glad!), it ended up about as well as we could possibly have hoped these Oscars would go.
It feels a little too soon to process everything we saw on Sunday — as I write this, after-parties around Los Angeles are just wrapping up — but here are five big takeaways from the night as I see them now. Later this week, I’ll have one final check-in on this Oscar season, including a look back at everything we all got wrong and how we might do things differently next time. For now, though, let’s simply celebrate.
Sometimes Oscar History Gets It Right the First Time
When I wrote my (very easy) prediction that Paul Thomas Anderson would win best director, I noted that he could have gone down in history as one of the true greats who never won the top Oscar, but the wide acceptance of One Battle After Another made it possible to actually give him his due. That wound up being true for many winners on Sunday — people who didn’t just deserve Oscars, but won them for the right things. No matter what else Michael B. Jordan does over the course of what’s already an exceptional career, his dual roles of Smoke and Stack in Sinners will be one of his signature performances, making it an ideal Oscar win. Same for Ryan Coogler, who surely has a best director Oscar in his future, but whose win for original screenplay feels perfect for someone who got his start at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, and Jessie Buckley, whose performance in Hamnet was so widely accepted as exceptional for months that it actually felt underrated. What a great group of winners.
Conan O’Brien, Host for Life: Make It Happen
It’s a bold move to end the Oscars with a pre-recorded bit, since everyone inside the Dolby Theatre is already making their way to the lobby, and the viewers at home may have finally turned it off. But I loved the One Battle After Another parody that O’Brien recorded with his friend (watch it above), SNL writer and star of the movie Jim Downey, in which he’s escorted into the office he’ll occupy as “Oscar Host for Life,” just as Sean Penn’s Colonel Lockjaw achieves his dream before being unceremoniously murdered in One Battle.
I know it’s not the point of the joke, but if Conan did become Oscar host for life, I’m not sure anyone would complain. He is uniquely well-suited to balancing the silliness (“F1 did so well they’re making a sequel: Caps Lock”) and the sense of occasion required of an Oscar host. Just as he did last year, he pivoted at the end of his opening monologue to a heartfelt explanation of why events like this matter even in what he called “chaotic, frightening times.” That’s a tough thing to pull off when the audience has just seen you running away from children in an Aunt Gladys wig, part of another perfect pre-taped bit. But O’Brien has the gravity to pull it off. Hopefully, he keeps deciding to come back and share it with us.
In Memoriam Was High Stakes. They Got It Right
We’ve suffered through so many years of rushed In Memoriam clip reels, with mawkish songs sung over them and garish applause piped in through the audience, that it felt like an outright miracle to watch what they pulled off last night. Having past co-stars pay tribute to Rob Reiner, Diane Keaton and Robert Redford, having an entire phalanx of Reiner’s past stars take the stage, having Barbra Streisand sing live — the tributes kept rolling and rolling, paired with actually good clips for more departed legends like Robert Duvall and Diane Ladd, and the somehow pitch-perfect Princess Bride score. It wasn’t enough, of course — I do think it would have made sense to fit Varsity Blues star James Van Der Beek in there despite his strong affiliation with television work, and documentary legend Frederick Wiseman probably deserved a bit more tribute, too. But after so many recent Oscar ceremonies that seemed hell-bent on racing to the finish line, it was a relief to see this one take its time and truly nail the landing.
Sean Penn’s Win Was Even Weirder Than You Think
Sure, Sean Penn was widely expected to win his third Oscar for his supporting turn in One Battle After Another, and his victories at BAFTA and the Actor Awards proved that industry voters didn’t necessarily care that he wasn’t eager to campaign or even show up to accept his trophies. But as far as I can tell, Penn is the first living acting winner to not accept his award in person since Paul Newman in 1987 (with a Covid-era exception for Anthony Hopkins, who later recorded a lovely acceptance video for The Father in 2021). Plenty of acting legends have sat out the Oscars throughout history — Katharine Hepburn never showed up for any of her four! — so Penn is not breaking new ground here. But in the modern, campaign-heavy era of the Oscars, almost everyone shows up if they think they even have a chance of winning. (Rather than attend, Penn went to Ukraine during the Oscars instead.) I’m curious what this might mean for other grouchy legends who now think they can sit out the entire awards-season rigamarole — sorry to my Oscar award-strategist friends, but you may have a new headache on your hands.
Wild Swings in Your Oscar Predictions Just Might Be Right
My tally of correct Oscar predictions is nothing to write home about — I managed to get two of the three shorts, stuck stubbornly with Delroy Lindo in supporting actor and, like everyone else, thought Sinners had the first-ever casting award locked up. (Instead, One Battle After Another pulled it off.) But I thought that Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw stood a good chance of winning her category, both as the history-making first woman to win the best cinematography Oscar and as part of a film that’s been partly defined by its ambitious, large-format photography. She had won so few of the precursor cinematography awards that predicting her felt like a big swing — she’s the first winner in this category without wins from the American Society of Cinematographers, British Society of Cinematographers or BAFTA Awards in more than a decade — but it was right! Just goes to show you that the other awards and historical trends can tell you most of what will happen on Oscar night, but every now and then, a fantastic surprise can emerge.
Oscars commentary can get negative so it's been lovely to see positive after action reports from you and others at the Ankler. This was a great year and a great ceremony.