The 97th Academy Awards have wrapped up the 2024 film awards season. Looking back, there are some highs and lows that came from this year’s Oscars.
Starting off with the biggest highlight: Conan O’Brien. The show would’ve been completely different if he wasn’t hosting, and he outshined every preceding Oscars host.
Thankfully, he’ll be returning to his hosting duties next year for the 98th Academy Awards. It’s pretty crazy that they have an awards show going on in the middle of a Conan O’Brien comedy special.
Awards-wise, Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña taking home the awards for Best Supporting Actor and Best Actress were another highlight of the night.
Kieran Culkin’s performance in “A Real Pain” was worthy of a win. His ability to bring emotional depth to the film without appearing to use too much effort is what made it more than just a “road trip” movie.
Just as deserving of the award was Jeremy Strong’s performance in “The Apprentice.” However, given how controversial the film was upon its release, I can understand why the award wasn’t given to Strong.
Regardless, I was happy with Culkin’s win and Strong’s nomination. The “Succession” co-stars were certainly going strong.
Although I applaud Saldaña for being the first Dominican to win an Oscar, I do believe that there are two flaws in her win: one, it shouldn’t have taken her role in “Emilia Pérez” to do it, and two, the award should’ve gone to Ariana Grande for her role in “Wicked.”
Saldaña has had so many roles in iconic blockbusters of the last twenty years, so it’s criminal that a movie so universally panned as “Emilia Pérez” is what brings it home. This is the same actress who was in “Avatar,” which took home three Academy Awards.
Yet, Ariana Grande also deserved a Supporting Actress win just as much as Saldaña. Everywhere she went this awards season, she was nominated but rarely acknowledged for her performance as Glinda in “Wicked.”
Her performance was so overlooked for a role that she was born to play. Everything about her in press tours and the film itself was the embodiment of Glinda. Hopefully going into the film’s second part, she gets another chance at taking something home.
As for the lows, I didn’t appreciate Adrien Brody winning Best Actor. Considering his film, “The Brutalist” also had some controversy around it, it left a bad taste in my mouth.
The point of being considered Best Actor is that you give a performance as if it is the performance of your life or career. Does using artificial intelligence to make a Hungarian accent count as cheating or does it really “enhance” your performance?
By contrast, Timothée Chalamet played Bob Dylan, a real person, which meant having to channel every aspect of his likeness, from his walk, talk and musical talents into his performance. No artificial intelligence was used there. Sebastian Stan also did the same thing to portray Donald Trump in “The Apprentice,” and convincingly so.
Every other actor who was nominated was deserving of that win. The presence of artificial intelligence this year felt lazy. Not to mention, the five-minute Oscars speech also wasn’t needed.
I loved watching Mikey Madison in “Anora” and thought her performance was great in the film. However, I thought that Demi Moore and Cynthia Erivo were more deserving of Best Actress.
Cynthia’s performance as Elphaba in “Wicked” is memorable enough. Her vocals were so powerful and held so much of the emotional depth that Elphaba harbors that people were leaving the movie theaters in tears.
Demi Moore is the embodiment of social issues that she and many other women face: aging, beauty standards and the unique case of the entertainment industry. But since “The Substance” is regarded as a horror film, her winning Best Actress was unlikely. The Academy has a track record of ignoring horror films.
There weren’t any particular films that I favored for winning Best Picture; none of them stuck out to me as being “the best.” However, I would’ve chosen “The Substance” to win, which was robbed all throughout the night.
Of the Best Picture nominees, two films shouldn’t have been nominated: “Emilia Pérez” and “Wicked.”
Don’t get me wrong, I loved “Wicked” and thought it was a great movie but not worthy of a Best Picture nomination. The performances were more of the film’s saving grace than its cinematography or exhibition.
For “Emilia Pérez,” the film feels like it is not done in great taste. Directed by a French man who admitted to doing no research on Mexican culture, it should not be nominated for Best Picture. In saying that, “El Mal” also should not have won Best Original Song either.
If you were to replace Best Picture with nominees in other categories, I’d put “A Different Man,” “Nosferatu” or “The Apprentice” there instead.
“Anora” took home Best Picture, which wasn’t too disappointing, but not satisfying either. It’s entertaining, funny and sad, but not worthy of a Best Picture win. At the same time, it’s better that it went to “Anora” and not “Emilia Pérez.”
More than anything, what marked a sore spot for the Oscars was the silence over artificial intelligence.
Nominees openly admitted they used artificial intelligence in their work without any repercussions. That is a slap in the face to all the work SAG-AFTRA had done with the strike in 2023.
I hope that the Academy chooses to implement new guidelines to prevent the use of artificial intelligence in movies, but their silence was telling during this awards season. It’s disingenuous to those who work hard instead of cutting corners.
