In Anora We Trust: Celebrating My Second Favorite Movie of 2024's Big Oscar Wins

Plus a few other scattered thoughts on this year's Academy Awards.

The Academy Awards just finished so I’m dashing off a quick few thoughts on what was a pretty fun night overall — Conan O’Brien remains The Best and, not shockingly, made for a very funny host — filled with a group of mostly deserving winnings that were also mostly expected going in… though with a couple of big surprises, both good and bad thrown in.

My off the cuff takeaways:

Hell yeah, Anora!

When I listed my Top 10 movies of 2024, Anora was up at number two, only behind a movie that never had any chance of being nominated for an Academy Award, The First Omen. That being the case, I’m pretty damn thrilled by its near-sweep tonight, as it won five of the six awards it was nominated for, including Best Picture.

Yes, the Oscars sometimes give a Best Screenplay win to a movie that won’t get recognized otherwise, but once Sean Baker got up to accept his Academy Award for Best Editing as well, it felt like Anora was probably locked in for the remainder of the evening - which was indeed the case. (as an aside, how trippy must it be to begin the night never having won an Academy Award and then going home with four of them, like Baker did?).

My love for Anora has preserved since I first saw it, which was reinforced a couple of weeks ago when I went to an American Cinematheque screening of the film where I saw it for my third time, which was followed by a Q&A with Baker and his fellow producers (and now Oscar-winners), Alex Coco and Samantha Quan. I think the movie is so beautifully crafted, expertly introducing you to Anora’s world and conveying how she’s drawn in by the false promises of this goofy, adoring rich guy - before things take an audacious turn into feeling like a more crime-adjacent dark comedy in the second half. And the film’s centerpiece sequence, when Anora is confronted by the guys working for her new husband’s powerful (and furious) family, is outstanding, filled with both tension and so many truly hysterical moments that killed with the audience at that screening.

But of course Anora the movie doesn’t work if Anora the character doesn’t work, which brings me to….

Mikey Madison’s Upset Win

It was strange to go into the night feeling like Anora had a great chance of winning Best Picture but that the highly acclaimed title performance that the movie absolutely hinges on probably wasn’t going to win Best Actress. But as much as Mikey Madison had been lauded for her work, it felt like Demi Moore was locked in for The Substance.

Moore is absolutely fantastic in The Substance and, in a voting world where outside narratives do indeed count, it’s been impactful and emotional seeing her make this awesome comeback and prove just how good she is in a film that also has so much to say about how terribly Hollywood treats women as they get older. Moore was 100% deserving of winning that award… but so was Madison. That’s just how it goes sometimes. You want to see standout work chosen for these categories and sometimes that means more than one person can be the “right” winner. So while I was legitimately shocked Moore didn’t win, and did feel bad she didn’t, I also was simultaneously incredibly happy for Madison, who took her first starring role and made sure everyone understood she’d earned it.

Music and Emilia Woes

I didn’t hate Emilia Pérez but it’s a big mess of a movie that never felt at all worthy of all of its Academy Award nominations even before its star, Karla Sofía Gascón, created a PR nightmare for the film when her hate-filled tweets from the not too distant past were resurfaced. But, like others, I did feel Emilia Pérez had one very deserving nomination, which was Zoe Saldaña for Supporting Actress. Saldaña’s been continually great playing a lot of women in outer space in a lot of blockbusters, and this was an excellent spotlight for her in a very different type of role. So I cheered her accepting her award — and her powerful speech — yet also hoped that would be it for Emilia Pérez winning anything. And it almost was, except the film also won Best Original Song for “El Mal,” which I suppose is the “best” song among the mediocre to bad music in Emilia Pérez. Yes, the entire Original Song category was weak this year, but come on, this was a musical where the music wasn’t good!

It was much easier to back the Best Original Score winner, Daniel Blumberg for The Brutalist, which is a terrific score for sure… though I also still am bitter that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ amazing score for Challengers wasn’t even nominated.

Kudos to Those Nominee Spotlights

I quite liked how the supporting actor categories this year had the presenter speak to each actor about their work and what made it special before announcing the winner - though it was pretty obvious that when they didn’t do the same thing for the lead actor and actress categories, it was because of the controversy around Gascón and feeling uncertain about speaking so fondly of her.

However, maybe skipping that is what lead them to also do big spotlights for categories like Costume Design and Cinematography, as an actor from each of the five nominated films was there on stage to both represent the production and to speak fondly about each of the people who were nominated. Obviously, most Academy Award viewers are only really familiar with the actors (and a few of the more famous directors), so this was a commendable way to truly single out and honor these talented people even beyond them getting a nomination in the first place.

Random Thoughts

-There was a great oh-so Conan recurring bit with a guy dressed as the Sandworm from Dune showing off different musical talent a couple of different times through the night, but dang it, the Sandworm should have joined the Dune Part II winners on stage for its wins for Best Sound and/or Best Visual Effects! …and maybe stop the orchestra for so brutally cutting off the third winner for Best Sound before he could speak.

-I get it, you can’t include every single person who passed away in the past year in the In Memoriam section, but there’s always some baffling and maddening omissions, which was the case again this time. Considering Gene Hackman was included, it can’t just be chalked up to the recent timing of their deaths that Michelle Trachtenberg and Roberto Orci weren’t included, but I suppose there might have been an argument they were better known for their TV work (though Orci wrote so many giant franchise films, so that’s dubious). But how the hell were Airplane! and Hot Shots! director Jim Abrahams and Candyman himself, Tony Todd — who had a such a long film career — both excluded?!

-That was a wonderful, emotional and inspiring speech from the filmmakers of Best Documentary winner, No Other Land. Most everyone in that room was cheering the speech, even as no studio, big or small, has actually agreed to distribute the film. One would hope this win might change that ASAP?

-Sean Baker did a good job mixing up the content of his four (!) different acceptance speeches, but I especially was happy to see him use his Best Director win to give a variation on a speech he’s given at some of his other recent award wins, as he spoke up about the importance of theatrical distribution. Are you listening, Ted Sarandos?! (I mean, he was in the room, so the literal answer is yes, but it probably won’t sway him)

-On a night that skipped the usual performances of the Best Original Song nominees, that was a nice opening with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande’s medley of songs from The Wizard of Oz, The Wiz, and Wicked. Though seeing Grande singing a lovely version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” also had me hoping it could somehow turn into the next Domingo sketch for SNL.

-Along with Queen Latifah’s performance of “Ease on Down the Road” as part of a tribute to Quincy Jones, the other big music number — besides Conan’s great one about not wasting our time — was the medley of James Bond songs. I knew they would skip the best Bond song, “A View to a Kill,” but it still hurt when they did, alas. But at least we got to see Margaret Qualley show off her impressive dancing skills at one point during the Bond medley, in a reminder of that awesome commercial she starred in.