The world recently witnessed the 2025 Oscars, the annual night of movie awards that inevitably leaves the internet with many controversies to discuss, and “cinephiles” and film classes with debates to wage. However, many of us watch these shows as a guilty pleasure. I don’t really care who wins Best Original Screenplay, and I don’t begin to claim some sort of expertise on why one nominee should emerge victorious. Still, it’s undeniably fun to have some opinions on some categories, judge some red carpet fits and watch the TV closely for any wild moments. These most recent Oscars were full of atrociously awkward PR moments and, in my admittedly non-expert opinion, some robberies of awards. The award ceremony succeeded in being entertaining, certainly, ƒbut the eventful night gave much more to talk about.
Adrien Brody is an undeniably talented actor, and his nomination for Best Actor at these Oscars ensured that he would receive lots of attention on the big night. However, after the PR nightmare that was his behavior at the 97th Academy Awards, I fear that his fantastic performance in “The Brutalist” was not what people were talking about at the end of the night. His long acceptance speech was completely ridiculous, annoying and beyond tone deaf. The complete lack of understanding he seemed to have of how poorly that situation would be perceived by the public is shocking and extremely characteristic of the relationship between Hollywood and normal people. To be under any sort of misunderstanding that a vain five-minute show of a shocking lack of humility would be received well is to show the extreme gap between celebrities and the rest of the world, and Brody seemed to be on a personal mission to expose that gap throughout the entire night. Tossing his gum at his girlfriend on his way to the stage to give this tacky speech would have been the icing on the disrespect cake if it wasn’t for the Halle Berry kiss. I don’t know exactly who to blame for Halle Berry walking up to Adrien Brody on the red carpet and kissing him right in front of his girlfriend in a recreation of the 2003 kiss between the two following Brody’s Best Actor win for “The Pianist”, but I can tell you that the moment was odd, uncomfortable and came across as very disrespectful. Overall, I think that Adrien Brody’s night was a very interesting case study of the very worst actions of the celebrity elite.
Now, I don’t want to act like there is a “right” or “wrong” with awards, because, at the end of the day, art is absolutely a subjective thing. When it comes to “Emilia Perez,” which took home Best Original Song and Best Supporting Actress, however, any notion of critical understanding I can have about the victorious night this film had goes out the window. This movie musical performed almost entirely in Spanish about a transgender cartel leader who navigates life aided by a random lawyer, directed by a French man who can’t speak Spanish, wasn’t inherently doomed to fail, but it certainly did. I want to have some nuance in my complaints here, but the movie is just bad, and I won’t insult all of our intelligence with some off-kilter, ridiculous argument about how the movie won Oscar awards because it was a positive representation of the transgender community, or how being a foreign film pushed it forward in the awards pool in woke Hollywood. It won because critics liked it, and the people didn’t, but the Academy simply didn’t care. The movie is an interesting idea, yes. It is visually sometimes cool, and some of the acting is quite good. However, I just don’t think that this film is enjoyed by an average viewer, and if you’re putting “El Encuentro” on a Spotify playlist then I have serious questions for you.
Additionally, trans and Mexican people have been quite clear: This movie is bad representation for both communities. I’m not going to make some argument claiming that if a movie isn’t 100% liked by the community it’s representing then it’s inherently bad, but I will say that in a movie whose one potential saving grace would be its representation, bad representation sort of dooms it. And I’m being generous to this movie, honestly. I watched it after the Oscars, and I tried to keep an open mind going into it, but it really is just that tacky, lazy and boring, and it has potentially one of the most random and ridiculous plots I’ve ever encountered. A musical film about a transgender cartel boss could’ve been cool, but not with a racist Tweeter (just google Karla Sofia Gascon) screeching in a viewer’s ear, offensively nonsensical plotlines and lazy acting by Selena Gomez haunting the screen. Zoe Saldana, who won the award for Best Supporting Actress, is fine in her role, but not good enough to win the Oscar. With music failing to rival even 2019’s “Cats” and a plot so disastrous the movie itself doesn’t even bother trying to follow through on most of its points, my overall reaction from the movie doing so well at the awards is just a sense of numbness. I think it reflects the extensive gap between the vision of critics and the real audience of movies. The production and press around this movie were tacky, offensive and lackluster, and its victory is just so telling.
These awards leave me with some questions about the future of film, and in my opinion, a dangerous precedent set by some of the victors. “The Brutalist” was a fantastic film, preened for Oscars glory, but used generative AI to aid the Hungarian accents of leads Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones. In the disaster “El Mal,” the song from “Emilia Perez” that somehow won Best Original Song, AI was also used on the voice of Karla Sofia Gascon. I already had my concerns about AI affecting art, as I’m sure most of us do, so to see Oscars victors have it in use is really concerning to me. It sets what I think is a really dangerous precedent for the way that AI will be viewed in the movie, music and television industries.
Something else from the night that bothered me quite a bit was the victory of Sean Baker for Best Director for his work on “Anora” because of the absence of an intimacy coordinator on the set of the movie. Mikey Madison, the Oscar-winning lead actress in this film, has expressed that she didn’t want one and that she declined the offer from the directors to work with one in the movie. Although I’m glad that Madison felt comfortable not having an intimacy coordinator on set, I’m not convinced that it should really be an option in a movie of this nature. There are a plethora of scenes in this movie that involve nudity and sexuality, and for the benefit and comfort of everyone on set, not just Madison, there should have been a professional intimacy coordinator to facilitate safe filming. Sean Baker and the other leading production figures involved with this movie should have insisted on this, and that’s why I’m nervous about his victory in the Best Director category at this year’s Oscars. Similarly to why I don’t like the AI-aided performances winning, I don’t like the precedent that this victory is setting for handling intimacy in Hollywood.
Overall, I honestly don’t mean to complain too much. Good things happened at the 2025 Oscars. I was thoroughly entertained, for one, and some awards went to what I see as the right nominees. Conan O’Brien was fine as the host, the “Wicked” performance was an awesome display of talent and the rest of the entertainment during the show was comparatively on the better side for award shows. “No Other Land” is a beautifully done and important documentary that won its category against stacked competition. “Dune: Part 2” was appreciated in its victories in Sound and Visual Effects. “The Substance” had its well-deserved recognition in winning Makeup and Hairstyling, and, although I haven’t seen all the nominees for the Short Film categories, they seemed to have victors that were well-praised. Overall, the 97th Academy Awards weren’t inherently bad. There is complaining that I could do about any awards show, but for these Oscars, I leave primarily with a bad taste in my mouth at the audaciousness of Hollywood and the scary precedent set around AI.
