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The 2025 Academy Awards ceremony was held on March 2nd, and, like every year (and awards show), it was an eventful night.
To start, here were my positives of the evening:
No Other Land won the Oscar for Documentary Feature Film
I was lucky to catch No Other Land at a local theatre a couple of weeks ago, as the Palestinian documentary isn’t the easiest to track down at the moment since no American distributors have picked it up. The masterful editing of the documentary stood out to me as it packed so many aspects of an oppressive reality into just an hour and a half of runtime. I’m happy to see it get the recognition it deserves and hope it is picked up soon so that more people get to watch it. In the meantime, I highly recommend checking out the website to see if it’s being screened anywhere near you.
Wicked won Oscars for Production Design and Costume Design
The Wicked sets were absolutely breathtaking, made more impressive as the filmmakers sought to use minimal VFX. Also, I want all of Elphaba’s outfits. So I think these awards were well-deserved!
I enjoyed the James Bond tribute, mostly
I was a little surprised to see how many people online full-on disliked the performances. Granted, I have a weird attachment to the franchise as I grew up watching them from a questionably young age and my family has almost a full DVD collection, excluding some of the newer ones, but I was happy to see it being honored on stage, literally just for the banger of a theme song. A dance number was a fun way to incorporate that!
I can see how people were confused by the choices of Margaret Qualley, Lisa, Doja Cat, and Raye to lead the performances, but I think there was reasonable intent to tie in something nostalgic with newer faces. Honestly, I wasn’t sure about the first two singers, but I thought “Skyfall” was well-suited for Raye, though I understand some people would have preferred Adele as the original performer. But if I had it my way, I also would have featured my personal favorite Bond song, “The World is Not Enough”; we can’t have it all! Overall I think it made sense to have the tribute following Amazon’s acquisition of the franchise, as a farewell to its existing legacy, despite many feeling like it was all a bit random.
And what’s on my watchlist now
I’ve been hearing a lot about Flow, and as someone who passionately believes that animation is the superior motion picture medium, it’s definitely got my attention. I caught a glimpse of a group of adorable lemurs while slightly distracted and am sold. It also features a very cute cat! I will definitely be watching this film ASAP.
Also, the animation and VFX industry has been suffering quite a few blows lately, which is saddening as someone who holds animation so close to my heart. I hope beautiful films like Flow and The Wild Robot (which was gorgeous, though I had some issues with the pacing) garner some more appreciation for animation, what it can achieve, and all of the work that goes into it.
Another movie on my watchlist now is Conclave, which I’ve seen described as “mean girls for popes”. Okay, you got me! That sounds super fun, as someone more easily bored by movies that feel like movies, in the wise words of Harry Styles.
Onto the worse and weirder events of the night:
Weird acceptance speeches and a strange song choice
Maybe it was the infectious theater kid energy of the night, but some people got real weird on stage. Clément Ducol and Camille accepted the award for Original Song, “El Mal”, and following the former’s speech, Camille broke out into song. I caught a giggle from Ducol and thought it was a joke, but then they both kept going, even as director Jacques Audiard laughed behind them. I laugh every time I rewatch it, too.
The musical the song is from, Emilia Perez, has already been shrouded in negative buzz: criticism of its representation of Mexican culture and trans women, resurfacing of bigoted tweets by lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón, and most recently, on the night of the Oscars, Zoë Saldaña’s bizarre response to a reporter commenting on the harm caused by the film.
Then there was Adrien Brody’s five minute (almost six!) speech. I read the speech over again just to make sure it wasn’t all a fever dream, and to confirm that he spent all that time saying absolutely nothing of importance, and that was in fact the case. He stuck in the most speech-worthy bit at the end, commenting on the themes of the movie, but other than that, it was a lot of droning. And after reading the whole thing, I solidly believe he could’ve gotten through most of it had he spoken with a bit more haste rather than taking the time to remember every person (and entity) on the planet he wanted to thank. Get off the stage Brody!
Finally, I thought that Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” was an odd choice to play during the In Memoriam sequence. I usually associate it with despair and grim anticipation, and it seems many had the same idea. Then again, last year’s was accompanied by a weirdly distracting dance and faced similar criticism. I think the lesson here is that less is more, musically and visually.