THE 98TH ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS

The 98th annual Academy Awards, a celebration of awarding the best achievements in cinema, was an enjoyable yet long evening filled with over three hours of honoring the historic moments and film excellence of the previous year. 

For a second year in a row, Conan O'Brien returns to host, beginning the show with a hilarious, filmed segment of his being made up to look like Aunt Gladys in the horror film, "Weapons" and has him running from possessed children through scenes of all of the nominated movies this year. Clearly more comfortable this time, O'Brien brought a little more edge to his jokes, even delivering a few political zingers although he wasn't too harshly direct. He also found a moment to offer sincere thoughts on the importance of the globalization of cinema and the collaborative attempts in creating something of "beauty" before launching into a grand, comedic musical number with Josh Groban singing about if O'Brien became an Oscar winner with an "eagle" flying down to hand him the award.

Speaking of politics, it was relatively quiet on that front with only presenter, Javier Bardem calling out "No to War and Free Palestine" before announcing the Best International Feature winner. Other more subtle expressions included Joachim Trier, the director of the winner, "Sentimental Value", closing his speech with a quote from James Baldwin to remember that all adults are responsible for all children and not vote for politicians who don’t take this seriously and David Borenstein, who co-directed the winner of the Best Documentary Feature, "Mr. Nobody Against Putin", stated that his film is about how you lose your country through countless small, little acts of complicity.

Once again, the Best Original Song nominees were not all performed on the telecast, which is simply outrageous and not fair to the writers of these honored compositions. Only "I Lied To You" from "Sinners" which recreated the powerful moment in the film which surreally linked the past, present and future of African-American music and "Golden", the smash hit from the eventual winner of Best Animated Feature, "KPop Demon Hunters", were performed during the show. The producers claimed they wanted to highlight the cultural impact of music and storytelling last year using these songs. That is all fine and good but they still could have found time to have the other three songs performed in some capacity during the program.

The highlight of the evening turned out to be the always melancholic segment of the program; In Memoriam. We lost some major talents last year; Robert Redford, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, Rob Reiner to name a few and it did seem more than fitting to pay extended tribute to some of them. Billy Crystal started with a remembrance of Reiner, the director of many classic films that included "The Princess Bride", "A Few Good Men" and "When Harry Met Sally", and was joined on stage by many of the cast members who starred in his films. Rachel McAdams appeared next to talk about the impact of Keaton and then Barbra Streisand came on stage to speak warmly about her "The Way We Were" co-star, Redford and even closed by singing briefly the movie's iconic theme song. 

And one final thought: there really needs to be a better way to move the show along than cutting off a winner's acceptance speech. It was noticeably bad this year. Perhaps shorten the attempts at witty banter during the introduction of the categories which for the most part are strained and not usually amusing. But cutting the mic off from someone who has won during their brief moment in the spotlight is really rude and downright insulting.

"One Battle After Another" wound up becoming victorious in wining Best Picture after a tight race of going back and forth with "Sinners" throughout award season. With his tenth feature and numerous previous nominations, Paul Thomas Anderson would finally receive three awards for this film by the end of the evening, also winning Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. "One Battle" would lead with six awards total including Best Film Editing, the very first Best Casting award and Sean Penn taking Best Supporting Actor (becoming the seventh actor to have won three Oscars) but was a no-show at the ceremony, apparently deciding to visit Ukraine instead. "Sinners" had a good night as well, winning four Oscars with Coogler receiving Best Original Screenplay, Michael B. Jordan awarded a well deserved Best Actor prize and Best Cinematography went to Autumn Durald Arkapaw who became the first woman to win this honor.

The wins by these two films, along with Amy Madigan for Best Supporting Actress in "Weapons", helped Warner Bros. do very well this evening by collecting eleven awards, tying the record of the most wins for a studio in a single night. This was also a bittersweet victory as the future of this legendary movie studio is up in the air as its about to be acquired by Paramount with steep layoffs and reduced production is certainly going to occur when (or more hopefully if) this deal is finalized.

What made this Oscars ceremony such a thrilling, nail bitter is that it was such a strong year of great movies with most of the nominees in each category would be a well deserved winner. This was played out with there even being a very rare tie (only the seventh time in Oscar History with the most famous occurring with Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand being a draw as Best Actress in 1968) for Best Live Action Short. As we officially say goodbye to 2025, this current year has already delivered some promising films that have a credible possibility to be recognized during the next award season.

Here is the complete list of winners of the 98th Annual Academy Awards:

Best Picture: "One Battle After Another"
Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, "One Battle After Another"
Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, "One Battle After Another"
Best Original Screenplay: Ryan Coogler, "Sinners"
Best Actress in a Leading Role: Jessie Buckley, "Hamnet"
Best Actor in a Leading Role: Michael B. Jordan, "Sinners"
Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Amy Madigan, "Weapons"
Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Sean Penn, "One Battle After Another"
Best International Feature: "Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value)" (Norway)
Best Documentary Feature: "Mr. Nobody Against Putin"
Best Documentary Short: "All the Empty Rooms"
Best Animated Feature: "KPop Demon Hunters"
Best Animated Short: "The Girl Who Cried Pearls"
Best Live Action Short: "The Singers" and "Two People Exchanging Saliva" (Tie) 

Best Casting: Cassandra Kulukundis, "One Battle After Another"
Best Cinematography: Autumn Durald Arkapaw, "Sinners"
Best Film Editing: Andy Jurgensen, "One Battle After Another"
Best Production Design: "Frankenstein" (Production Design: Tamara Deverell; Set Decoration: Shane Vieau)
Best Original Score: Ludwig Göransson, "Sinners"
Best Original Song: "Golden" from "KPop Demon Hunters" (Music and Lyrics by EJAE, Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seon and Teddy Park)
Best Sound: Gareth John, Al Nelson, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Gary A. Rizzo and Juan Peralta, "F1"
Best Costume Design: Kate Hawley, "Frankenstein"
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey, "Frankenstein"
Best Visual Effects: Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett, "Avatar: Fire and Ash"

Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Dolly Parton

Honorary Oscars:

Debbie Allen

Tom Cruise

Wynn Thomas