By: Daniel Kendle

The Oscars is a ceremony hosted by the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences, with this year’s annual ceremony hosted on March 10, 2024. As usual, the awards were directed towards movies and the people surrounding them, making for 23 different categories. Today I’ll be looking at every win in alphabetical order, what I may have wanted instead, and some statistics about the winners overall. Let’s begin!

Also, I was originally going to list the nominees individually as well, but due to time and them making the article skyrocket in size, I had to dial it down to just listing winners. Here they are:

• Cillian Murphy won for Best Actor in ‘Oppenheimer,’ and I think it was well-deserved. I would’ve also liked it if Colman Domingo won, but this was a pretty obvious pick that made sense.
• Robert Downey Jr. won Best Supporting Actor, also for ‘Oppenheimer.’ This was also a deserved win, though I was also partial to Robert De Niro. Still, a good victory.
• Arguably the most controversial win of the night was Emma Stone for Best Actress in ‘Poor Things.’ A lot of people really wanted Lily Gladstone to win for her role in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ as did I after watching the film. However, I think both actresses did well in each of their roles; Emma Stone may have been my 2nd choice for the award, but she still did a great job in her respective film. I don’t really like getting up-in-arms over this subject, as I find it weird to be so heated over real people; it’s a bit cruel.
• Finally last for the Acting category, Da’Vine Joy Randolph won Best Supporting Actress for her role in ‘The Holdovers.’ This was another easy pick, but again, a deserving choice.

Now that we’ve talked about the 4 actor awards, we can finally get into the bulk of the winners.

• ‘The Boy and the Heron’ won for Best Animated Feature, which was my favorite out of the nominees. I was sure that the ‘Spiderman’ movie from June was going to win, but I’m glad it didn’t. My 2nd choice for the win was ‘Robot Dreams,’ actually.
• ‘Oppenheimer’ won for cinematography, which was alright. I preferred ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’s’ staging, but this was alright.
• ‘Poor Things’ got Costume Design, which is pretty cool. I don’t have a dramatic opinion on this category compared to others, so this was just a nice win.
• Best Director went to Christopher Nolan, also for ‘Oppenheimer.’ I’m happy with this; he hasn’t won the award yet despite multiple past nominations, so this was cool to see. My runner-up was Jonathan Glazer for ‘The Zone of Interest,’ however.
• Documentary Feature Film was given to ‘20 Days in Mariupol.’ I haven’t seen it, but I’m sure it was deserved.
• To follow that up, ‘The Last Repair Shop’ won for Documentary Short Film. I also haven’t seen this, and my 2nd choice was ‘Nai Nai and Wai Po,’ which I watched prior to the ceremony.
• Film Editing went to ‘Oppenheimer,’ which was alright. Similar to Cinematography, I preferred ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’s’ editing, but it’s whatever.
• ‘The Zone of Interest’ won the award for International Feature Film. It’s a bit annoying how obvious it was; it’s the only nominee to be up for Best Picture; of course it was going to win. That’s nothing against it, but just a stray thought.
• Makeup and Hairstyling is another category I don’t care too much about. The award went to ‘Poor Things’ which was deserved.
• ‘Oppenheimer’ won the award for Original Score, which was a great choice. A bit of an easy pick, but if there’s one category ‘Oppenheimer’ should’ve won over any other, it’s this one.
• ‘What Was I Made For?’ By Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell got Original Song, which was a fine choice. I liked ‘I’m Just Ken’ and ‘Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)’ more, but this was an obvious win.
• ‘Poor Things’ won for Production Design, which was a good win. ‘Barbie’ had my vote, but this was alright.
• I haven’t seen any films in the Animated Shorts category, so I can’t say much on that front. The winner was ‘War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko.’
• ‘The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar’ got the pick for Live Action Short Film, which was awesome. This is Wes Anderson’s first win at the Oscars, which was great. It was my pick for the award and I was so happy to see it win.
• Another awesome win was ‘The Zone of Interest’ getting the award for Best Sound. I love ‘Oppenheimer,’ and I was so sure it was winning this category, so seeing a surprise victory for a lesser-known film was cool. My 2nd choice was ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.’
• The last of this trio for awesome wins was ‘Godzilla Minus One’ for Visual Effects. This was the franchise’s first nomination at the Oscars, so it was nice to see them win, too.
• For the 2 screenplay awards, ‘American Fiction’ won the award for Adapted Screenplay, and ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ for Original Screenplay. Both deserving picks, especially for the latter.

Finally, ‘Oppenheimer’ won Best Picture, cementing it the biggest winner of the night, with 7 wins. ‘Poor Things’ came next with 4 awards, and ‘The Zone of Interest’ in 3rd place with 2. Some widely-acclaimed films went home with no awards, including ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ ‘Maestro,’ ‘Past Lives,’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,’ ‘Napoleon’ and ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.’

The ceremony had a lot of good picks overall, and was fun to watch.