Oscars 2024 Highlights: Best & Worst of the 96th Annual Academy Awards

by Julian Spivey

Screenshots

Worst Moments

5. Early Start Time
The Academy Awards decided to start the ceremony one hour earlier than usual this year at 6 p.m. (CST) instead of 7 p.m. (CST) and I might be the only person who wasn’t a fan of this. I haven’t seen much, if any complaining about the earlier start time, although host Jimmy Kimmel did make a joke about people expecting the Oscars to begin at 7 p.m. and missing the first hour. I guess I’m in the minority but I’d rather the show run later into the evening than begin earlier, as it just fits my schedule better. Also, it just seems weird for ABC to use the biggest night in the film industry as a lead-in promotion for a new episode of a sitcom. I love “Abbott Elementary,” but in some ways going from the best in film to a network TV sitcom just seems wrong.

4. Predictable Winners
If you pay attention to the film industry awards circuit as I do you may find yourself bored with the actual awards come time for the biggest of the film industry because you’ve mostly seen the same winners before at ceremonies like the Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards and others. Seeing Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Robert Downey Jr. win every single honor can become tiring even if I admit they were the rightful winners of the award. I’m certainly not advocating for surprising wins or participation trophies just for the sake of entertainment. The only real way to fix this is something we’re probably not going to see. It would take the Academy agreeing to push the Oscars to the beginning of the year, say in mid-January, and essentially forcing all of the precursor awards to take a back seat and schedule after. I just don’t ever see this happen. So, if you follow along with the movie awards you’re probably going to be a cinch to win your office Oscars pool yearly.

3. Al Pacino Announces Best Picture
You would’ve thought the Oscars would’ve learned after the Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway debacle seven years ago that it might not be the best idea to place an octogenarian in the spotlight to announce the evening’s biggest winner of Best Picture. Al Pacino, the 83-year-old acting legend, may not have screwed the pooch as badly as the “Bonnie & Clyde” duo did but it was still an awkward moment as he went straight to opening the Best Picture envelope and announcing “Oppenheimer” as the winner without announcing the nominees. I do wonder if that might have been the plan because the Best Picture nominees were all profiled throughout the evening but even if that’s the case – and it probably wasn’t – it’s still unorthodox. I understand wanting to honor the legends of the medium and don’t want to disrespect the greats or sound ageist but at some point the Academy is just opening itself and these legends to embarrassment. Why not try to get a slightly younger Oscar winner to give out the big award like say Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts next year?

2. In Memoriam
My most common complaint over the years about award shows has been screwing up the In Memoriam segment and once again it appears high on my list. It’s so easy to screw up the In Memoriam segment. Anything that comes across as being disrespectful to the legends of the medium who have died in the years since the last ceremony. The most common way to do it is by focusing on the artists performing whatever song has been chosen as the In Memoriam song instead of what the main focus of the segment should be those deceased legends. And the Oscars In Memoriam this year is one of the most disrespectful I’ve ever seen. Not only did the segment focus too much on performers Andrea and Matteo Bocelli, but the camerawork was atrocious as it was so far from the stage and the screen with the names and faces of the departed you needed a magnifying glass to make out some of the names. The In Memoriam segment should also be the easiest of the night to get right. All we’re asking for is the faces and names of those artists we love and admire on the screen. We don’t even need a live performance. The orchestra playing something lovely in the background is all that would be necessary. 

1. Stunts
This was the dirtiest, most pandering, placative moment of the entire show and I immediately felt bad for an entire segment of the film industry during it. Emily Blunt, Best Supporting Actress nominee for “Oppenheimer,” and Ryan Gosling, Best Supporting Actor nominee for “Barbie,” had just given one of the best back-and-forth presenter moments of the evening taunting each other about how “Oppenheimer” was racking up the most awards and how “Barbie” was the most-watched film of 2023 at the box office before they turned to do what they were there for in the first place – pay tribute to the movie stunt community. The telecast then showed a montage of celebrated stunts from more than 100 years of movies. What’s the problem? Stunt coordinators don’t have their category at the Academy Awards despite many years of lobbying to add one. So, this essentially amounted to the Academy Awards honoring the “unsung heroes” of cinema that they don’t feel are worthy of winning Oscars. If the Academy truly wants to pay tribute to stunt men and women then give them their category. Because this kind of “stunt” was disgusting in its patronage. 

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Best Moments

5. Jimmy Kimmel the Modern Oscars GOAT Host
The 96th annual Academy Awards on Sunday night was the fourth hosting gig at the event for ABC’s late-night talk show host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel and the show is old hat to him by now. He’s a well-oiled machine as the Oscars host. He’s funny and doesn’t pull punches when necessary and doesn’t hit below the belt when it’s unnecessary. He’s affable and seems to be generally liked by the A-list celebrities within the audience and when a moment comes live during the show that might be unexpected, like former President Donald Trump trashing him on social media mid-show, he’s able to handle it with aplomb. Hosting the Oscars has to be one of the toughest gigs annually on TV and Kimmel makes it look easy time and time again. 

4. Cord Jefferson’s Acceptance Speech
One of the evening’s most pleasant wins went to Cord Jefferson the writer-director of “American Fiction” for Best Adapted Screenplay for the film which adapted author Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure. It’s nice to see Jefferson win for his directorial debut and hopefully, this will begin a successful film career. He’s already had a successful television writing career with credits on “Master of None,” “The Good Place” and having won an Emmy for “Watchmen.” The best part of his acceptance speech came when he encouraged Hollywood to give new creatives a shot. He said: “I understand this is a risk-averse industry. I get it. But $200 million movies are also a risk, and it doesn’t always work out, but you take the risk anyway. And instead of making one $200 million movie, try making 20 $10 million movies.” Amen. Maybe now that the big-budget superhero trend seems to be in a major downward spiral Hollywood might look to these young creatives with interesting stories to tell.

3. Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s Acceptance Speech
If there was one lock for any actor to win an Oscar on Sunday night it was going to be Da’Vine Joy Randolph for her excellent performance as school cook and grieving mother Mary Lamb in director Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers.” She had won just about every possible precursor leading into Hollywood’s biggest night. That still didn’t hush the impact of her acceptance speech where she said: “For so long, I’ve always wanted to be different. And now I realize I just need to be myself and I thank you. I thank you for seeing me.” I’ve always enjoyed Randolph in all of the little roles I’ve seen her in over the last few years, many of which have been on television, and I’m thrilled she got this major chance. I hope the big opportunities keep on rolling for her.

2. John Mulaney’s 'Field of Dreams' Bit
There are a few things that would seem to be antithetical to having a smooth awards ceremony. You don’t want the show to run too long, but you also want to be entertained and laugh. It would be so easy to help the length of the show by not allowing the presenters to do comedy bits – and in the case of Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer on Sunday that would’ve been wise. But one bit I was an absolute sucker for was John Mulaney’s comedy bit on the 1989 sports/fantasy film “Field of Dreams,” one of my all-time favorite films (and a past Best Picture nominee!). It was during his presentation for Best Sound, which I honestly had to look up because I’d already forgotten and ended up being the funniest moment of the entire telecast for me. It was a great audition for the future host of the Oscars if ABC and Kimmel ever want to go different ways.

1. Oscar Winners Announcing Oscar Winners
My favorite moment of the Oscars on Sunday was something the awards have done in the past, but not for a while, in having past winners of the acting categories show up to announce the nominees for this year. Traditionally, the previous year’s winner of the category would show up to announce all of the nominees (and all four acting winners from last year were a part of the ceremony this year). It was sweet seeing 20 former winners congratulate and speak highly of the 20 acting nominees this year and welcome four more winners into the club. This is something I would love to see the Academy Awards adopt as an annual tradition – even if it likely adds to the running time of an already long show – but I realize how hard it must be to ensure 20 past winners show up every year to enable such a thing to happen. 

What did you think was the Best & Worst moment of the 2024 Academy Awards?