Oscars Winners List: Oppenheimer Wins Big, While Poor Things Provides the Biggest Shock of the Night
Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, and Past Lives ended up with zero wins among them.
The Oscars season is finally over! Every season seems longer than the last and certainly, this one is no different. I guess it didn’t help that two of the biggest motion pictures of 2023 launched on the very same day dropping a culture bomb that would not only dominate box office receipts but end up sucking up all the attention from other worthy movies. It’s not that movies like The Holdovers or Poor Things didn’t have their moments to shine, they are both exceptional movies, but it felt like that warm summer weekend in July was the beginning and the end of the cinema season as far as box office receipts and award attention were concerned. It didn’t help that there were two lengthy strikes (that could’ve been avoided!) in 2023 either.
Oppenheimer was the big winner of the night winning 7 Oscars — Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Music, Cinematography, and Film Editing. Despite being a champion for the theatrical experience and creating beloved movies like The Dark Knight and Dunkirk, Director Christopher Nolan had never won the prize for Best Directing. Having Steven Spielberg on stage to present the award to Nolan felt like a passing of the guard. Spielberg’s name has often been enough of a draw to sell audiences on a film and few directors have that same power. In my opinion directors like Scorsese, Tarantino, and Spielberg are the names most often associated with exceptional movie experiences. If it wasn’t already there before, Nolan’s name would be the one to carry the torch for the next thirty years.
As for the acting categories, Robert Downey Jr. and Cillian Murphy won Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor for their roles in Oppenheimer. I never felt like RDJ was phenomenal in Oppenheimer, but I imagine most of that feeling comes from the casting of that movie. There isn’t a scene in that sprawling epic that doesn’t have some kind of recognizable actor chewing up the scenery, whether that’s Kenneth Branagh, Casey Affleck, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, or Benny Safdie. It certainly would’ve won the Best Casting Oscar that is supposed to become a thing next year. As for Murphy, his performance falls into a similar issue of being carried by a tremendous cast, but he is the guiding force of that movie and it will undoubtedly be a career performance for him. I’m not disappointed that he won for this role.
The biggest surprise of the night was the Best Actress category which has been a heated competition all awards season. Just two weeks ago, Lily Gladstone won the Screen Actors Guild prize for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon over Emma Stone, and that traditionally would’ve been a signifier of what was going to happen on Oscars night. Why? Because the actor’s branch of the Academy has the biggest numbers and despite adding the other branches in for the voting on those categories, the SAG award is usually a good bellwether for how it’s going to go. Even Sam Adams from Slate believes that the producers of the Academy Award show scheduled Best Actress as the penultimate award of the evening because it would’ve been a historic win for Gladstone as the first Native American to win the Best Actress trophy.
A win for Gladstone wasn’t meant to be. Emma Stone took home her second Best Actress trophy (she previously won for La La Land), for her Frankenstein-like performance as Bella Baxter in Poor Things. It’s an award-worthy performance if only for the physicality of the character, never mind the range of emotions Stone depicts in the movie. Poor Things ended up doing pretty well overall winning a total of four Oscars— Best Actress, Makeup, Production Design, and Costume Design. Director Yorgos Lanthimos makes some incredibly strange movies (that aren’t for everyone), but given his history with movies like The Lobster and The Favourite, Poor Things is his most approachable feature.
It was no surprise whatsoever that Da’Vine Joy Randolph took home the Best Supporting Actress award for her performance in The Holdovers. I thought she’d be tired of giving speeches having dominated the category throughout the last four months of campaigning and dinners, but she gave my favorite speech of the evening. Even though she has received so much acclaim, she doesn’t take this victory for granted. I would’ve loved to see The Holdovers win more given how much I enjoyed it, but given its instant accession to a Christmas classic, I’m sure I’ll be watching it more over the next 1thirty-odd some years than any other movie that won Sunday night.
Some of my other favorite awards of the night came in the form of big wins for Japanese cinema. Best Animated Feature went to Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron which many believe will be Miyazaki’s last feature film. While the movie isn’t my favorite in his extraordinary career, I’m ecstatic that the legendary director has won a second trophy after winning previously for Spirited Away. I imagine that had Best Animated Feature been a category since the ‘80s, he’d likely have a few more wins. Best Visual Effects went to Godzilla Minus One, 2which is an absolutely crazy story. The movie was made for only $12 million and it was competing with the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 and Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning— movies that cost multiple times its budget. Its win is a challenge to visual effects studios to reign in the spending and create something of this magnitude with a fraction of the budget. Despite Godzilla being a household name for seventy years, this Oscar represents the first time that the franchise was nominated and won an Academy Award.
Which brings me to Barbie. It was the biggest box office smash of 2023 and if somehow you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worthy of all the acclaim. The two women at the forefront of its production, Director Greta Gerwig and Executive Producer/Star Margot Robbie deserve all the congratulations in the world. Barbie ended up going home with only one award on the evening, Best Original Song for Billie Eilish’s ballad "What Was I Made for?” That didn’t stop it from being the main event of Oscars night. Even though he didn’t win, Ryan Gosling, seemed to be the focus of Oscars camera for the evening. It’s unfair that a man that handsome can also be incredibly goofy and good-natured. Stop being perfect Ryan Gosling. Gosling did get to perform his big showstopping number, “I’m Just Ken,” and undoubtedly proved that even though Barbie didn’t take home a lot of trophies, it was loved by almost everyone.
Was the Show a Success or a Dud?
I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the winners and that’s probably because the show ended up being a pretty swell time at the movies. Everybody in the audience seemed like they were having a good time except for Robert DeNiro, which I assume is because he would’ve liked to be anywhere else but there. With Killers of the Flower Moon walking home with 0 awards, it becomes the third Martin Scorsese movie to be nominated for 10 awards at the Academy Awards and end up with nothing (the other two were Gangs of New York and The Irishman).
The biggest laughs of the night came from John Cena walking out naked to present Best Costume Design and when The Fall Guy co-stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt ribbed each other on stage about Barbenheimer before giving a nod to stunt performers in 2023 (a category that John Wick: Chapter 4 likely would’ve dominated.)
3Call me old or a parent of a small child, but I thought host Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes about a rectangular penis, Bradley Cooper dating his mom, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph learning how to smoke to improve her performance weren’t exactly his best material. And sure not every joke can be a smash, but that opening monologue wasn’t the best. In another statement that is sure to upset Guillermo del Toro and everyone else in the animation branch, Kimmel jokes about how Best Animation is a category for children,
"Next is the Animated Feature categories, please raise your hand if you let your kid fill out this part of the ballot."
The Boy and the Heron is the first ever PG-13 movie to win Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards. Like most Disney movies, it features a character struggling with the death of a parent. Unlike most Disney movies, it has an unpleasant scene of self-harm, murder parrots, and a creator contemplating his legacy before his death. Not a movie the children should be filling out the ballot for Kimmel.
There were certainly other flubs—Tim Robbins joking that DeNiro’s performance was an Award-winning performance rather than an Award-nominated performance, Emma Stone’s dress falling apart, or Al Pacino not listing off the nominees for Best Picture before announcing the winner unceremoniously. As far as Best Picture goes, maybe the Academy should learn from this and past mistakes and help the aging stars deliver the most prestigious award of the night. Just a thought. Movie fans are also disappointed by the In Memoriam segment this year. I’m sure a majority of people at home felt like they didn’t miss any big names and were plenty satisfied with the gesture, but sometimes a name doesn’t get the same attention. Honestly, it’s a damned if you do, damned if they don’t scenario for the Academy, and to make “good television” having tenor Andrea Bocelli and his son out there singing “Con te Partiro” was a fine decision.
A good show, and good (if mostly unsurprising) awards wrap up the Oscars season. 4Oppenheimer was my pick for movie of the year and I’m not disappointed in the result. I’ll be recording a podcast this week to wrap up the award show and move on to another exciting year for It’s the Pictures.
Full List of 2024 Oscars winners
Best Picture
Oppenheimer
Emma Thomas, Charles Roven, and Christopher Nolan, Producers
Actress in a Leading Role
Emma Stone
Poor Things
Directing
Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan
Actor in a Leading Role
Cillian Murphy
Oppenheimer
Music (Original Song)
“What Was I Made For?” from Barbie
Music and Lyric by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell
Music (Original Score)
Oppenheimer
Ludwig Göransson
Sound
The Zone of Interest
Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn
Live Action Short Film
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Wes Anderson and Steven Rales
Cinematography
Oppenheimer
Hoyte van Hoytema
Documentary Feature Film
20 Days in Mariupol
Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner, and Raney Aronson-Rath
Documentary Short Film
The Last Repair Shop
Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers
Film Editing
Oppenheimer
Jennifer Lame
Visual Effects
Godzilla Minus One
Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Tatsuji Nojima
Actor in a Supporting Role
Robert Downey Jr.
Oppenheimer
International Feature Film
The Zone of Interest (UK)
Costume Design
Poor Things
Holly Waddington
Production Design
Poor Things
Production Design: James Price and Shona Heath; Set Decoration: Zsuzsa Mihalek
Makeup and Hairstyling
Poor Things
Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier and Josh Weston
Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
American Fiction
Cord Jefferson
Writing (Original Screenplay)
Anatomy of a Fall
Justine Triet and Arthur Harari
Animated Feature Film
The Boy and the Heron
Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki
Animated Short Film
War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko
Dave Mullins and Brad Booker
Actress in a Supporting Role
Da’Vine Joy Randolph
The Holdovers
I’ve just decided that thirty is my arbitrary number for this article. I have no foresight into what I’ll be watching in 2054.
Click for a video shared by Godzilla Minus One producer Toho Co., Inc. which details the visual effects process for the feature.
I am definitely one of these things
Looking ahead there isn’t a surefire Oscar nominee on the calendar this year. Dune: Part Two has the reviews and box office to be there come next March, but that’s a long way away. No one thought Oppenheimer and Barbie would turn out the way they did.