Oscar Night 2024

I long ago stopped expecting Oscar-history moments on Oscar night, even after we’ve seen a few recent negative moments. But Ryan Gosling forever enshrined his coolness with his performance of “I’m Just Ken,” the most purely enjoyable thing I’ve seen on Oscar night in years. Gosling also appeared, with The Fall Guy costar Emily Blunt, to pay tribute to stuntpeople. You know how actors got nervous about being replaced with AI? Stunt folks got to feel that pain first. I know there continues to be phenomenal stuntwork, but the problem is CGI has advanced to the point where we don’t believe what we’re seeing. It could be Tom Cruise risking his ass or it could be Cruise’s face deepfaked onto a CGI figure.

Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel addressed the AI topic as well, using it to lead into a shot at the latest Transformers movie, as though Transformers wouldn’t have been feted if it had made more money. Kimmel, who largely conducted himself as slickly as usual, got a bad review of his Oscar hosting on Truth Social by none other than Donald Trump, who apparently had nothing better to do. I mean, I didn’t either, but then I’m not facing 91 state and federal charges. Anyway, Kimmel is a practiced old hand at this stuff by now, and we didn’t have to sit through the usual big comedic stunt. The evening felt streamlined, other than the return of that obnoxious bit where they haul five past winners of an acting award onstage, where they each hype one of the current nominees in that category. I miss seeing those Big Acting Oscar-night clips.

Then they botched the In Memoriam segment by filming the big screen showing some of 2023’s dear departed from too far away, instead of just letting that graphic fill our screens at home. They always manage to devalue the dead non-star, below-the-line talent they occasionally deign to acknowledge, this time by making them share a screen chopped up into thirds. The annual TCM Remembers homages have put the Oscars’ frail displays to shame for a while now; maybe the Academy should just get TCM to handle In Memoriam.

The courier of nostalgia on this most nostalgic of nights was Michael Keaton, which is not something I’d have guessed thirty years ago. Keaton’s bit with Schwarzenegger and DeVito — let’s not pretend these comically “extemporaneous” gags aren’t rehearsed inside out — was terrific, and he got to have a Beetlejuice reunion onstage with Catherine O’Hara. (They’re both also appearing in the sequel, coming your way in September.) Keaton seems at ease with what people want from him, and frequently goes and does his own thing anyway. Give him an Oscar. With my luck, his next nomination will be opposite Paul Giamatti. I was darn sad to see Giamatti remain seated, but I can’t begrudge Cillian Murphy’s night in the lights. There were people and films I’d rather have seen win, but at least none of what did win is insultingly bad (or even regular bad).

I didn’t love Oppenheimer — it’s a hard film to “love” — but it was destined to clean up, and largely deserved to, picking up seven trophies including the big one. Poor Things has got to be the weirdest film to win four Oscars since The Shape of Water. Like The Irishman, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon was up for multiple awards and captured zilch. Maestro didn’t get the love either, and The Holdovers had to settle for one win — and its loss in the original screenplay category was ironic since a plagiarism claim against it had just been made public. The Zone of Interest won the right Oscars, I think. Weirdly, the three movies that got shut out (Past Lives was the third) were the only Best Picture nominees I hadn’t seen before Oscar night. I don’t really want to see Maestro.

It occurs to me that the night’s two big winners, Oppenheimer and Poor Things, are both mature geek movies — sciency and odd and unafraid to be off-putting in the pursuit of their vision. Somehow, Nolan makes a three-hour movie unfolding mostly in cramped rooms feel big, major, echoing with import. And Poor Things, which crossed the $100 million mark worldwide not long ago — which is not at all weird, heavens no — does what it does so fearlessly and with such a volatile visual sense that it has come to seem, out of all the nominees, the best example of pure cinema. That a movie this stubbornly strange could win four of the field’s highest honors while also being a legitimate hit is reason for optimism. Let’s hope it’s not unfounded.

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