Well, the 2025 Oscars have come and gone, and what a night it was—assuming, of course, you define “night” as a three-hour slog through Hollywood’s favourite pastime: clapping itself on the back until its palms bleed. Conan O’Brien, looking like a man who’d lost a bet with a particularly vindictive bookie, took the hosting reins with all the enthusiasm of a substitute teacher facing a room full of hungover teens.
His monologue, a stew of sarcasm and self-deprecation, landed like a brick through a stained-glass window—shattering the silence, if not the pomposity. “I won’t waste your time,” he sang, in a musical number that wasted our time so thoroughly it could’ve doubled as a tax audit. Still, credit where it’s due: the man’s hair, that towering ginger edifice, gleamed like a freshly polished Oscar statuette, which is more than you can say for most of the winners.
The evening kicked off with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo warbling their way through a medley so earnest it could’ve curdled milk—“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” mashed up with “Defying Gravity,” as if to remind us that, yes, these are the voices that launched a thousand TikTok covers. Grande, resplendent in a gown that screamed “ruby slippers on a budget,” fluttered about the stage like a sparrow caught in a wind tunnel, while Erivo belted out her vocals with the force of a woman who knows she’s the only one in the room who can actually sing. It was a fine start, if you’re the sort who thinks the Oscars should double as a karaoke night for the glitterati.
Then came the awards themselves, dispensed with the usual mix of gravitas and glycerine tears. Anora swept the board, snagging Best Picture and a handful of others, proving that nothing says “cinematic triumph” like a film about a sex worker with a heart of gold—or at least a heart of gold-plated ambition. Sean Baker, its director, collected his gong with the air of a man who’d just won a bar bet, while the audience nodded sagely, as if to say, “Yes, we too have seen a neon sign in our lives.”
The Brutalist, meanwhile, loomed over the night like a concrete monolith, all three-and-a-half hours of it, a runtime so punishing it could’ve been used to interrogate war criminals. Brady Corbet’s acceptance speech for Best Director was a masterclass in humility—or possibly exhaustion—muttering something about earning “nothing” from the film, which, given its box-office prospects, might well be true.
The cinematography nod went to Lol Crawley for The Brutalist, a decision so predictable you could’ve set your watch to it. VistaVision, that dusty relic of the 1950s, was dragged out of mothballs and paraded like a prize hog at a county fair, while Greig Fraser’s Dune: Part Two sandscapes and Ed Lachman’s Maria memory-lanes were left to sulk in the wings. Fairness, as ever, was a concept the Academy treated like a distant cousin—acknowledged, but rarely invited to dinner.
And then there was the James Bond tribute, a baffling interlude that felt like a contractual obligation to Amazon’s new 007 overlords. Margaret Qualley twirled about in a red dress, looking faintly annoyed, as if she’d been roped into a school play against her will. Lisa from Blackpink sleepwalked through “Live and Let Die,” Doja Cat chewed the scenery with “Diamonds Are Forever,” and Raye turned “Skyfall” into a karaoke-night warble that made you wonder if Adele was somewhere weeping into her tea. It was less a celebration of Bond’s legacy and more a reminder that even the most iconic franchises can be reduced to a corporate PowerPoint slide with a beat.
Adam Sandler, bless him, turned up in what can only be described as peak Adam Sandler: sweatshirt, basketball shorts, and a Hawaiian shirt that looked like it had been fished out of a thrift bin. Conan’s jab—“You look like a guy playing video poker at 2 a.m.”—was met with a bellowed retort from Sandler: “Nobody cared until you brought it up!” It was the night’s truest moment, a blast of unscripted chaos in a sea of rehearsed sincerity. If only the Academy had the guts to give him the mic for the whole show.
The speeches, predictably, veered between cloying and incomprehensible. Adrien Brody, picking up Best Actor for The Brutalist, refrained from snogging presenter Cillian Murphy—a restraint that marked him as a man who’s learned from past red-carpet ambushes by Halle Berry. Zoe Saldaña, Best Supporting Actress for Emilia Pérez, beamed with such wattage you half-expected her to plug in a lamp. And yet, for all the earnestness, the night stayed mercifully light on politics—a minor miracle in an era where every podium’s a soapbox.
In the end, the 2025 Oscars were what they always are: a gilded endurance test, a parade of egos in borrowed finery, and a faint whiff of desperation to stay relevant. Conan O’Brien kept it afloat, just, with his wisecracking liferaft of absurdity. But as the credits rolled and the Dolby Theatre emptied out, you couldn’t shake the feeling that Hollywood had once again thrown a party for itself—and forgotten to invite the rest of us. Still, at least the Thin Mints were good.