Oscars 2025: 'Anora' One Bites the Dust

Rob Sheffield reviews the 2025 Oscars, which were long, drama-free, and featured a solid performance by host Conan O'Brien.

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This was truly the brutalest Oscars, which is not a spelling error. Let’s put it this way: Earlier on Sunday, Harry Styles ran the Tokyo marathon and took less time than this Oscar ceremony did. But to look on the bright side of the 97th Academy Awards, Adrian Brody made only one speech. Conan O’Brien did great. No mimes. No Best Original Song dance snoozers. There was only one reference to “the magic of storytelling.” Cynthia Erivo sang with Ariana Grande. Timothée’s yellow suit. An indie film like Anora won. All told, it was an Oscar Night that felt like a true celebration of movies and the people who love them—except when Adrian Brody was talking.

Conan hosted for the first time, but damn, he simply did not care. That’s good news, since it’s a fact that a loose, DGAF Oscar night is more fun than an uptight, punch-the-clock Oscar night. It was inevitable to have the L.A. firefighters come out for an ovation—but it was a brilliant Conan twist to make them do bitchy jokes, especially when one declared, “All of our hearts go out to those who have lost their homes. And I’m talking about the producers of Joker 2.”

Coco set out to mock and humiliate the ceremony, which gave him a devious way of looking sharper than his material, starting when he was introduced as “four-time Oscar viewer Conan O’Brien.” As he said, “A Complete Unknown, A Real Pain, Nosferatu—these are just some of the names I was called on the red carpet.” As a star who owes Hollywood nada, he breezed from killer lines to duds without seeming to care or even notice the difference, so it kept everyone on their toes. “Anora uses the F-word 479 times,” he said. “That’s three more than the record set by Karla Sofía Gascón’s publicist.”

Brody, the Meryl Streep of AI-enhanced accents, won Best Actor and gave a windbagulent speech even longer than The Brutalist. He was the first winner all night to thank God, for making him so amazing. Yeah, Lord, nice work there with this one. It’s a rare feat to win an Oscar for a Holocaust-themed movie and forget to mention the Holocaust, but the Brode almost had it in the bag until the five-minute mark, after he’d already yelled at the orchestra, “This isn’t my first rodeo!” As a longtime connoisseur of terrible Oscar speeches, I was in awe, especially when he urged us all, “Let’s fight for what’s right!” This man truly is to giving speeches what Doja Cat is to singing James Bond themes. The best you can say is that the Oscars had the decency to schedule Halle Berry early, so she had time to get a running start.

Timothée Chalamet was one of the most openly-disappointed non-winners in Oscar history—for the last time anyone looked so bummed to lose, you have to go back to Samuel L. Jackson for Pulp Fiction. But honestly, Tim wasn’t disappointed enough, because dude got totally robbed for his Dylan in A Complete Unknown. When Emma Stone opened the envelope and read Brody’s name, I must admit I screamed at my TV, “I don’t believe you! You’re a liar!” Especially since he wore that excellent Givenchy canary fit—as fashion critic Robert Zimmerman would say, his suit wasn’t yellow, it was chicken. It was arguably Tim’s greatest Oscar Night look since he showed up in 2002 in that crazy red backless “Tanya Tucker-circa-TNT” rig. As for Tim’s date, Kylie Jenner, she seemed to spend much of the ceremony rolling her eyes. And that was even before Brody started talking.

I’m not claiming to be an unbiased Oscar viewer here—I was rooting hard for Demi Moore to grab Best Actress for The Substance, for the doorknob scene alone. There’s no way I could resist a performance so Gen X-coded that her first big scene comes in a restaurant where she literally sees a black fly in her Chardonnay. (I was expecting the waiter to bring her ten thousand spoons when all she needed was a knife.) But Demi losing to an ingenue was a perfect Substance-worthy twist in itself.

Mikey Madison won for Anora, noting, “I want to again recognize and honor the sex-worker community.” It was a gracious touch after none of the Oscar winners from Emilia Pérez mentioned the trans community or Mexico. (Fun trivia: Madison was born the same week as the 1999 Oscars, the night of the legendary Harvey Weinstein-beats-Spielberg upset, one of the most sheerly entertaining Oscar Nights in history.)

The Oscars honchos made the butt-foolish decision not to show movie clips for the first few acting awards—instead of letting us see the nominees do their actual acting, they just rolled out previous winners to give long, quite long, oh so long speeches about them. It was such a dumb idea that they ditched it halfway through the night—for the big acting awards at the end, they cobbled together clips. (They also stiffed the Best Screenplay awards early on, with quickie one-liner clips instead of dialogue.) Figure this out in advance next year, okay? Nobody wants to see poor Kieran Culkin sobbing “your magic is real” to next year’s Best Supporting Actor nominees.

Speaking of Kieran (or “the Culk,” as Robert Downey Jr calls him) he gave a rambling but sweet speech about fertilizing the ovaries of someone near and dear to him, but, hey, his wife was cool with it, so good for them. Keep it culking, you two. And massive respect to his ability to piss off Jeremy Strong from across a room.

Zoe Saldaña won Best Supporting Actress for Emilia Pérez, and gave one of the night’s most passionate and powerful speeches. She called herself “a proud child of immigrant parents,” as the first winner of Dominican heritage, and dedicated the award to her grandmother, adding a shout out to “my husband, with that beautiful hair.” It brings a merciful end to the long, bizarre, and exhausting saga of Emilia Pérez’ award-season campaign, which might someday inspire a better film.

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande did a grand trip through the Oz music universe, beginning the show with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Home” from The Wiz, before leading to “Defying Gravity” from Wicked. It was a powerhouse moment from two virtuoso voices that set the bar high early on. (For some reason, Timothée, Monica Barbaro, Ed Norton, and Elle Fanning did not get on up there to do similar honors for the the highlights of Dylan’s film career, like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Band of the Hand,” “Things Have Changed,” or “The Man In Me.”)

There was also a bonkers tribute to James Bond movies, because… why? Doja Cat managed to hit about .007 per cent of the notes in “Diamonds Are Forever.” Blackpink’s Lisa tried “Live and Let Die,” never regarded as an especially tough melody to sing, and handled it about as well as George Lazenby handled keeping Diana Rigg alive. Raye is a Vegas-style pro who was born to belt Bond theme ballads, but she just made the segment longer—nobody ever needs to hear three of these in a row. But the whole Bond tribute was worth it for Margaret Qualley’s dance tour de force, where her ballet chops and lip-biting panache made for high drama. Maybe she’ll play 007 next? Unfortunately, she missed a prize comic opportunity by not plucking a chicken drumstick from her dress.

Mick Jagger was an unexpected show-stealer, wiggling in a scarf and preening for the camera. The way he milked “And the Oscar goes tooooooo” was the comic line reading of the night. Mick was on hand to present Best Original Song. “I wasn’t the first choice to give this award out,” he said. “The producers really wanted Bob Dylan to do this. But Bob didn’t want to do it because he said the best songs this year were obviously in the movie A Complete Unknown.” So why Mick? “Bob said, ‘You should find somebody younger!’”

The award went to Clément Ducol and Camille, who came onstage singing “hooo hooo!” for Mick. They gave a dawdling speech while Emilia Pérez director (and “El Mal” co-writer) Jacques Audiard darted anxiously around and between them, desperate to get a word in, while they steadily refused to acknowledge he was there—a cringe-core moment that topped the actual movie for drama.

Paul Tazewell announced he was the first Black man to win Best Costume Design, for Wicked. Another one of the night’s fashion victors: Oprah Winfrey (those glasses, that suit), who appeared with Whoopi Goldberg to present a Quincy Jones tribute. Oddly, the segment had Queen Latifah doing “Ease on Down the Road,” a song he didn’t write, originating in a Broadway musical rather than a movie. (The orchestra gave him a true tribute earlier in the show with “Soul Bossa Nova.”) Andrew Garfield told Goldie Hawn how much his late mom adored her, a sweet moment—they waltzed off with this year’s Gaga/Liza award for cross-generational bonding. But then, tragically, it was time for Andrew to read the teleprompter, forcing him to begin, “The magic of storytelling…”

Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal came out at the end to revive that When Harry Met Sally magic, a high-water mark for our moment of retro-Nora-mania.

Conan graciously introduced Billy as “the greatest Oscars host ever.” The discipline it took them not to do a single “I’ll have what she’s having” joke—a year after John Mulaney did one on last year’s Oscars—deserves a handwritten thank-you note from all of us.

Morgan Freeman began the In Memoriam segment with a personal tribute to the “giant” Gene Hackman, who not only once killed him in a movie but won an Oscar for it. The whole montage was respectful and gracious, with a classical score, rather than a pop chipmunk warbling a sensitive ballad about dead people. This is a welcome Oscar trend—let’s face it, we’re all still traumatized from the In Memoriam debacle three years ago with a stage full of cheerleaders doing jazz hands to “Spirit in the Sky.” The montage moved a little fast, maybe, with mini-clips for actors but not writers or directors; perhaps Robert Towne deserved a few lines of dialogue. But it was a stylish tribute to so many of the legends we’ve lost this past year, from James Earl Jones to Anouk Aimee to Shelley Duvall. The Applause-O-Meter had some surprises—Roger Corman took an early lead for the loudest clapping, then it was Donald Sutherland, until David Lynch took over for the home stretch. R.I.P. Mr. Lynch. Silencio. No hay banda.

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