The 2025 Oscars took place on March 2, 2025, making it the 97th Academy Award show. This year many amazing movies were nominated in classic categories, but this year the award show brought surprises. With over 23 categories and many films nominated for each, the night was full of emotions.
While many of the movies that were talked about have been in our theaters, lots of those nominated never really saw the light of day. It wasn’t only me who was scratching their head wondering when these movies got released or even advertised. Nonetheless, many awards that were given were rightfully deserved, while others in my opinion, got robbed.
The movie Anora won best picture and was one of the top winners most of the night, winning five awards. Anora was released on Oct. 18, 2024, and made $41 million worldwide. Anora is a comedy-drama film that follows a stripper from Brooklyn in a complicated situation involving marriage, sex, and money. The audience’s reasoning for why Anora won Best Picture was that the movie had the effect of making you feel hopeful about humanity. While the public’s reaction to the movie winning was very mixed, it was clear that this movie deserved a chance in the running.
In my opinion, a deserved win that night went to the movie Flow, which won the Academy Award for best animated film and best international feature film. Flow is an animated indie film following the story of unlikely animals coming together and teaming up when facing the obstacle of a flood destroying their home. The thing that made Flow stand out from the rest of the nominees is that none of the characters talk to each other; Flow tells a story without words.
For best production design, Wicked won by a landslide. Wicked was released on Nov. 22, 2024 and had immediate success in theaters. Wicked is based on the popular Wizard of Oz musical and book. The audience follows a woman named Elphaba who faces prejudice due to her green skin. She, along with the other main character, Galinda discovers their powers that take them to different paths of life. With how much influence the movie has had in the media, it was no shock that they would win an award. Wicked fans, while happy that the movie won, believed that Wicked deserved to go home with more than one trophy for the movie.
Out of all the awards given out the one that has been the most controversial and talked about had to be the individual awards for best actor. A large reason why movie fans were upset about this win was that The Brutalist had used AI to enhance the Hungarian spoken by Adrien Brody. Many believed this was not fair to actors who put in the hard work to perfect their technique, rightfully so.
The Oscars this year gave everyone mixed emotions. While I don’t agree on all the wins there, I am happy that some movies got the attention they deserve. I’m excited to see what the future holds for next year.
