MovieManifesto

The Oscars don’t matter. But the movies do.

That was the real takeaway of the 98th Academy Awards, an uneven ceremony that venerated some very good motion pictures. As a matter of celebratory choreography—as, y’know, an awards show—it was awfully bumpy. With the exception of Will Arnett and Channing Tatum, most of the paired presenters were dreadfully stiff, while the producers—perhaps traumatized by lingering memories of Adrien Brody a year ago—were unduly hasty in playing the winners off stage, especially for the below-the-line fields. The sound mix was clunky, some of the speeches felt obligatory, and a bunch of prearranged bits landed with a thud. It was far from the smoothest commemoration of the power of cinema.

But these Oscars were still, on the whole, a good time, in part because the movies they feted were so satisfying. It didn’t hurt that Conan O’Brien, in his second straight stint as host, was locked in from the jump, with an ingenious introduction—repurposing the rousing climax of Weapons into a rapid-fire tour through many of the nominated films—that led into a note-perfect monologue. O’Brien obviously knows how to work a crowd, but here he located just the right blend of good-natured sarcasm, political snark, and sincere admiration. He also delivered some pointed jabs about the industry’s future—roasting Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, castigating phone-cropped atrocities, teaming with Sterling K. Brown to mock the clumsy storytelling habits of the streaming era—without spoiling anyone’s fun. Read More