Hollywood’s biggest night reviewed 

Hollywood’s biggest night has come and gone. The 92nd Academy Awards has graced our screens once again last Sunday and it was a mixed bag of joy and cringe.

For the second year in a row, the award show chose to go hostless and while it does speed up the show quite a lot, being hostless still leaves something to be desired by the audience. The spark that the academy awards had with the sketches created by the host is severely missed.

Rather than the hosts making you laugh, the presenters try instead. Some succeed and some fail. Some are hilarious and others are just weird.

The weirdest thing being the fact that they announce presenters to present the presenters. Famous figures will come on stage only to announce other famous figures that will present the awards. Why so much announcing? It is weird and jarring and just adds unneeded time.

This year’s Oscars had some weird moments like that but it also had some great moments. So here is a nice little breakdown of the 92nd Oscars.

Performances

One of the best parts of the Oscars– the musical performances –continues to amaze. While it will be hard to beat last year’s performance of “Shallow” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, the performances this year were still pretty good– well, almost all of them.

Idina Menzel wowed the audience with her performance of “Into the Unknown” from “Frozen 2.” She belted out the vocals and was joined by various other performers from around the world who were her voice in the dubbed versions for those countries. It truly was amazing.

Elton John also blew us away with his performance of “I’m Gonna Love Me Again” from “Rocketman.” He played piano among a starry set and was having a ball doing it.

Cynthia Erivo came up on stage to perform “Stand Up” from “Harriet” and she left the crowd speechless. Accompanied by a choir, she sent shivers down the spines of anyone within earshot.

Chrissy Metz also performed “I’m Standing With You” from “Breakthrough” and again with a choir really gave it her all and wowed us once more.

Randy Newman performed “I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away” from “Toy Story 4” and was a nice change of pace from the choir filled performances. It had people bobbing their heads to the tune and easily got stuck in everyone’s head.

Billie Eilish did this year’s In Memoriam and it was very haunting but also sweet. She performed the Beatles song “Yesterday.” The In Memoriam always brings a few tears out and Ellish’s performance helped with that.

Even Eminem was there. Why? Good question. He performed after a movie-music montage and brought energy to the room. 

Almost every performance wowed. They knew what they were doing and went with it, making us feel something. However, there was one performance that was a little weak.

At the beginning of the show, Janelle Monae came on stage to introduce the show. She performed a song with a bunch of dressed-up dancers that started out well but sort of fell apart near the end. It was obvious that they were trying to get people excited and also introduce the show but it fell flat.

The Awards

Now everyone watches award shows for the awards, that is the main point of them. This year the categories had strong competition and among the nominees, there were no huge upsets but there was a big surprise.

The Korean-made film “Parasite” swept the award categories, even snagging Best Picture. It won four of the awards that night beating out movies like “Joker,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and “1917.”

Another big surprise is “1917” beating “Avengers Endgame” and “Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker” for visual effects. Both are very visual effects-heavy films yet were beat out. 

Most of the projected winners one in their various categories. Joaquin Phoenix took home the best actor for “Joker” and “1917” won for Cinematography, no surprise there.

“Toy Story 4” won for animated feature and Elton John won for the best original song. Again, no huge surprise.

It was a pretty easy Oscars to predict other than a couple of categories. 

Stage Antics

Of course, this being the Oscars the stage is filled with antics. Some presenters try their hardest to make the audience laugh and some succeeded.

The biggest laugh of the night came when James Corden and Rebel Wilson came on stage dressed in Cat outfits to present the award for Visual Effects. They made fun of last year’s “Cats,” which they both starred in and have notoriously been panned by everyone and gave many people nightmares.

Will Ferrell and Julia Louis Dreyfus bounced jokes off each other as they presented cinematography and film editing. Both pretending like they don’t actually know what the awards meant.

Maya Rudolph showed us again why they haven’t given her the hosting gig yet.

Overall it was a solid 92nd Oscars. Not any huge upsets just some surprises. Mostly every performance was stellar. There were some laughs to be had, however, it is still missing that spark that the host brought to it.

The breaks in the action, comedic sketches and need someone to tie it all together. Hopefully next year we will get a host again, but it’s not very likely since the hostless format has helped them make the award show shorter.

I guess we’ll just have to see what happens when the 93rd Oscars come around in 2021. Until then just keep watching movies.