98th Academy Awards: Recap and Review

Written by Andreas Babiolakis

You can find the full list of winners from the 98th Academy Awards below our Recap & Review.

Recap & Review

Michael B. Jordan clinched a Best Actor win for Sinners: one of the handful of awards Ryan Coogler’s beloved film garnered.

The ceremony was a cutthroat contest between the two biggest winners: One Battle After Another and Sinners. One of them was going to win Best Picture, but the question was which would ultimately come away with the ninety-eighth such award. One Battle After Award wound up being the winner in the end, with six total wins for Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners didn’t go away empty handed, however, with four major wins. Some Best Picture nominees did wind up with zero wins, including Bugonia, Train Dreams, The Secret Agent, and — the most nominated of this lot — Marty Supreme. The night was equal parts entertaining and cynical, with a focus on why we love motion pictures intertwined with jabs about what are killing the film industry (from the awful, vertical aspect ratios of social media that ruin video clips, and films written with over explanation to encourage multi-tasking while watching, to governmental interference and artificial intelligence); the evening was both a reminder of why many of us love films and the Oscars (more the former, really), as well as why we must not give up on celebrating this passion.

The night opened with a horrifying — but unsurprising — look at second-time host Conan O’Brien in Aunt Gladys makeup ala the hit film Weapons (whose Amy Madigan was nominated for Best Supporting Actress). As per the film, O’Brien was chased by the possessed children all the way across a sequence of many iconic moments in cinema from 2025; there’s the racetrack mid race (F1), a ping pong tournament (Marty Supreme), and across the stage during the pivotal Hamnet climax; he winds up in the car of Sensei Sergio (One Battle After Another); he even winds up in animated form to cameo in KPop Demon Hunters. This is all befre he sits down for an interview with Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value) for a temporary reprieve; he tries one last effort to run into the juke joint in Sinners and fails the audition to get in, finally running into the Dolby Theatre for the live Oscars ceremony (children and all). This was a hilarious and fitting way to kick off the evening with pure electricity, and a means of honouring many of the night’s nominees. He was thankfully quickly back in his normal getup before returning back out and showing appreciation for being the last human host in Academy Awards history (hopefully not).

O’Brien got the obvious joke of Timothée Chalamet’s opera-and-ballet snaffu out of the way, by wondering why Chalamet didn’t criticize jazz as well. O’Brien ripped into Netflix mogul Ted Sarandos for finally showing up in a theatre (a joke he seemed to be a reasonable sport about). O’Brien’s joke about Agnes Shakespeare giving birth alone in the woods didn’t sit too well with the audience when he quipped that this was akin to the “affordable healthcare” in the United States (it got a chuckle out of this Canadian critic). After a few jabs, he brought up his own film that got an Oscar nomination (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You) before stating that nominee Rose Byrne did an admirable job for acting alongside her celebrity crush (himself). The biggest applause during his speech came from the nominees for Best Documentary Short Film all the way from the back of the Dolby Theatre; the cheering was so rampant that O’Brien actually had to take a miniature pause. After making a jab at the United States’ inability to arrest anyone off of the Epstein files, O’Brien riffed off of Michael B. Jordan playing twins in Sinners by announcing that every seat filler will be Jordan himself; the feed cut to a dozen of Jordans (which I am sure was a dream for some of our dear readers).

Amy Madigan: the night’s first winner, for Weapons (Best Supporting Actress).

After his kooky opening monologue, O’Brien took the time to get a little serious to thank all of the industry and the many craftspeople from around the world present today, the many nationalities and cultures represented, and everyone working hard in the arts during tumultuous times, stating that artists are noble for still making art “not because all is well but because we hope for better.” This was before things got silly again with O’Brien “winning” an Oscar for Best Achievement with Josh Groban serenading his win and a hawk delivering his trophy. The first win of the night went to veteran actor Amy Madigan for the role that O’Brien spoofed earlier: a rare horror film win in Academy history (and Weapons’ sole nomination). Needless to say, Madigan was nonplussed, and so was the theatre. To the surprise of very few, KPop Demon Hunters won gold for Best Animated Feature Film (the eruption of applause for the film’s clip during te nomination rollout was a dead giveaway that the stars, indeed, aligned for the film). Canada got a win with The Girl Who Cried Pearls, which picked up the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.

The first music segment of the night was a show-stopping, magnificent rendition of Sinners’ nominated song “I Lied to You,” which best replicated the metaphysical, time-skipping one shot sequence of the film via a similar routine that resulted in a much-deserved standing ovation; this included many fantastic cameos from Black icons like Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard and ballet extraordinaire Misty Copeland (who joined the routine merely days after Chalamet’s ballet comments went viral, and only around a week before the Oscars took place). This set the precedent for Sinners’ big night. The first design win of the night went to Frankenstein’s Kate Hawley for Best Costume Design in a rather competitive category. Frankenstein’s makeup and hairstyling team shortly joined the main stage for their respective win. Once it was time for the new award of the night — best casting — the stars of the nominated films — Paul Mescal (Hamnet), Gwenyth Paltrow (Marty Supreme), Chase Infinity (One Battle After Another), Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent), and Delroy Lindo (Sinners) — paid tribute to their casting directors one by one; it was a lovely tribute before the winner, One Battle After Another’s Cassandra Kulukundis, took home the prize: a bit of a shock when many predicted Sinners would clinch this one.

The presenters for the very first Best Casting award.

Then the rare incident of an Oscars tie happened in the Best Live Action Short Film, where both The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva won Oscar gold. Shortly after, Sean Penn pulled off the not-as-rare Oscars third win for acting, for his supporting work in One Battle After Another; to the shock of no one, Penn — who has written off awards shows years ago — did not show up to claim the award. After that, finally, Paul Thomas Anderson picked up his very first Academy Award win after fourteen staggering nominations — this was for Best Adapted Screenplay for One Battle After Another; his second win for Best Director happened later in the ceremony (it’s about damn time). While it didn’t take him nearly as long as Anderson, Ryan Coogler won his first Academy Award shortly afterward, naturally for Best Original Screenplay (Sinners).

The next segment involved Oscars hosting icon, Billy Crystal, commemorating the late Rob Reiner, whom Crystal was best friends with (as well as Reiner’s wife, Michelle. His tribute was exquisite, and the hurt in his voice — which he pushed through — was impossible to not feel in that lump in your throat. If that wasn’t enough, a surprise appearance from many of Reiner’s lead actors — Demi Moore, Mandi Patinkin, Kathy Bates, and many others — came out to bid farewell to the Reiners. This only kicked off the lengthy, devastating in memoriam segment that reminded us just how many titans we lost in 2025 and earlier this year. The in memoriam was paused for some beautiful words by one Rachel McAdams; her main focus was on Diane Keaton who worked with her on The Family Stone. The in memoriam proceeded in usual fashion before Barbra Streisand came out to honour the departed Robert Redford in a similar way (the two worked on The Way They Were).

The Oscars went back to business by delivering the Best Production Design award to, you guessed it, Frankenstein once more, helping the Guillermo del Toro film achieve its expected trifecta. Presenter Sigourney Weaver then happily presented the Best Visual Effects award to Avatar: Fire and Ash — which, of course, she stars in. Next came the two documentary category winners — with All the Empty Rooms winning for Best Documentary Short Film, and Mr Nobody Against Putin for Best Documentary Feature Film. Ludwig Goransson won his third Oscar, this time for Sinners (his second for a Coogler-related film, the first being Black Panther). this award was presented by a reunion of Bridesmaids actors Kristin Wiig, Rose Byrne, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy, and Ellie Kemper. F1 then picked up its solitary win for Best Sound shortly after; this was also presented by the sublime Bridesmaids team.

Jessie Buckley completed her awards season sweep, winning Best Actress for Hamnet.

Next came Bill and Lewis Pullman who presented Best Film Editing to Andy Jurgensen for One Battle After Another: it was at this point that the Best Picture award was all but a lock. Not so fast, however, as Sinners claimed Best Cinematography right afterward. Cinematographer Autumn Duraid Akrapaw’s win was a benchmark moment in the Academy, being the first woman to win this award. To spruce up the remainder of the evening, an elaborate and bombastic performance of the KPop Demon Hunters hit song — “Golden” — was performed before the final awards were handed out; “Golden” would later win for Best Original Song. Best International Feature Film went to Joachim Trier and, well, Norway for Sentimental Value: a well deserved win for a sensational film (it would be the film’s sole Oscar win of the evening); this is also Norway’s first win for this category.

Then, it happened. Michael B. Jordan’s win for Sinners came through; the only sign that this would happen was his SAG award just weeks ago. This has been a long time coming for an actor who previously wasn’t even nominated; it would take Jordan playing twins for him to finally be acknowledged and even win. Then, as it was written, Jessie Buckley completed her awards season sweep by picking up her well earned Best Actress Oscar for Hamnet. To present the biggest award of the night — Best Picture — stars Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman came on stage as a Moulin Rouge reunion for its twenty-fifth anniversary. That award, of course, went to One Battle After Another: a prescient film that mirrors the state of the country — and the world.

Paul Thomas Anderson entered the 98th Academy Awards a fourteen-time nominee with zero wins; he and One Battle After Another went home with a handful of trophies, including Best Picture.

The evening was only around ten minutes over schedule, thanks in part to the conciseness of the ceremony — sometimes to its detriment; cutting off some speeches egregiously so was in poor taste, so much so that there were even awkward pauses that only added that extra time the Oscars were hoping to avoid (O’Brien quipped that pulling a mic down into the ground mid speech is “funny”, but you know O’Brien meant something else with the way he said this). Otherwise, there weren’t any major controversies, most of the presenters were quite entertaining (no real duds, here), and most of the awards were rather expected (in a pleasant way, not a dull one, considering the fact that there were quite a few head-to-head categories that could have gone either way). I would argue that O’Brien was even funnier last year, but I do think the extra severity and cynicism he brought this time around was important, given how alarming many of his talking points and references were. Overall, this was a solid Academy Awards that might not be overly memorable as a ceremony (this can be a good thing, if you recall the many concerning low-lights of past years), but I would argue a number of its winners will withstand the test of time.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.

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