Oscars 2025 Recap: Biggest Winners, Biggest Losers and The Importance of Not Being a Racist
I have mixed feelings about the Academy Awards.
Ultimately they hold zero significance, like all prizes for artistic work. The value is the art itself. We don’t make art to compete but to express. It’s as human as breathing.
But I do enjoy finding out who Academy voters think are the most deserving of praise. If I won an Oscar, I wouldn’t turn it down.
Plus, slagging off an undeserving winner feels great.
Here’s my recap of last night’s winners and snub-ees.
Best Picture: Anora
As a dear friend likes to say: that’s a monkey, that’s a gibbon.
In a category dominated by uncertainty, Anora shone through. It’s a deserving winner, with The Brutalist and Conclave also acceptable substitutes. For me this was enhanced by the relief of Emilia Pérez flopping so badly.
Sean Baker’s acceptance speech hailed the award as a victory for independent film. True, it’s inspiring to see such a low budget film win, but the category has been dominated by indie studios for a while. NEON’s own Parasite won a few years ago, as did A24’s Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Perhaps he meant the continued praise of such films was a victory. Either way, he’s not wrong. Long live independent cinema.
Best Lead Actors: Adrien Brody and Mikey Madison
Brody was the youngest actor ever to win the award for The Pianist, a film whose parallels with The Brutalist have been commented on to death. In winning again he managed to keep Timotheé Chalamet from breaking his record.
I was sure that Chalamet would win. The Oscars are suckers for portrayals of real people, especially someone like Bob Dylan who the decrepit Hollywood populace adore. Maybe next time, Tim.
Brody deserved it though. It was a masterful performance. Infinitely better than his weird, self-aggrandising speech but actors have never been known being normal people.
Unlike Mikey Madison, whose speech was the complete opposite. Short, concise and effusive in praise for others. How nice. She also praised the sex worker community, a lovely touch considering how much impact they had on her portrayal of a young New York stripper.
Whilst Brody’s star gets its shine back, Madison’s is on the rise.
Best Supporting Actors: Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña
The most nailed on category of last evening. Both winners were overwhelming favourites with vastly differing levels of performance.
Culkin’s work in A Real Pain was fantastically nuanced, combining charm and obnoxiousness perfectly. Saldaña’s performance was torture.
It wouldn’t be the Oscars without at least one winner that makes you think “Why the fuck did they win?”. Felicity Jones was my favourite performance but she stood no chance. An awards sweep for Saldaña left the writing on the wall, scrawled in wordy, nauseating Español for the world to see.
Biggest Winner: Sean Baker
He broke the mouse-loving anti-semite’s record for most Oscars won by a single person in one night. He’s got more Oscars than Kubrick and it happened in the space of three hours.
The best part of his many victories is just how deserving they all were. Anora was the best film. It was directed the best. It was the best written. Best edited? What do you think?
He’s increased his stock in the industry tenfold. A charming person, a skilled filmmaker and hopefully a future great.
Biggest Loser: Karla Sofía Gascón
Getting snubbed by your own co-star in her acceptance speech? Being ridiculed by Conan O’Brien in front of your peers and millions around the globe? Single-handedly tanking your own film’s chances of winning coveted gongs by refusing to apologise for your racist tweets?
Surprisingly, none of these are the reason Gascón is the biggest loser in film right now.
Starring in one of the worst films ever made is.
Biggest Surprise: The James Bond Tribute
My god this was shit.
I understand that the Bond franchise holds an importance place in cinema history, but is it necessary to dedicate an entire dance number to memorialise the fact it’s been bought by Amazon?
Let alone a dance number so embarrassingly shit you wish that Amazon would discontinue the entire series instantly? Don’t say it’s to honour Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson either. They’re not retiring and they’re not dead.
Although I will say it was a blessing not to hear much of the shite songs from Emilia Pérez. Two of them were up for Best Original Song amazingly and I could do without being reminded of those evil, tone-deaf dirges.
Good Oscars? Bad Oscars?
This was a good ceremony overall. Not the viral titan of 2022 (The Slappening) and not dominated by one film in particular (Last year’s Oppenheimer parade).
Conan O’Brien did a great job and got some great jokes in. I broadly agreed with most of the winners and it wasn’t too much of a chore to sit through.
Bring back Conan for next year, ditch the daft tributes and I think this could be a successful formula for a while.
Roll on cinema and roll on 2025.
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