To be honest, I think that, at least at the margins, Lily Gladstone was hurt by the choice to put her in this category instead of best supporting; if you've seen the movie, you know that she has a meaningful role, but you also know that she's on-screen for well less than 1/3 of the 32 hour run-time of the movie (time is both approximate, yet deeply accurate). In addition, and as a general rule, the awards for acting tend to go to "more" and "brave" than "understated."
I'm glad you mentioned this because I quit on KotFM about half-way in, in part because she had all but disappeared from the movie by then. Early on the movie gives the impression that she's a main character, but from what i gather it's mostlt a Leo and DeNiro movie.
Anyway, I found it too full of unwanted Scorcese-isms to warrant sitting through the whole thing.
Oppenheimer is an amazing-looking and -feeling movie, but it has an odd lack of POV (other than "geniuses are mysterious and worshipful" and "RDJ's character is mean") - but maybe that's a common thing in biopics*? I have issues with Nolan's approach to narrative, but I'm not surprised or upset that it won Best Picture. I saw all the nominees except Anatomy of a Fall and Zone of Interest, but of the rest I would have rather seen Maestro get it. That movie knocked my socks off.
Emma Stone is AMAZING in Poor Things, so I'm glad she won Best Actress.
Since Into the Spider-verse won for Best Animated feature in 2019, I can see why they went with The Boy and the Heron this year.
I hope Best Cinematography was a tough call, because Oppenheimer, Poor Things, Maestro, and El Conde are all amazing-loooking movies. KotFM is first-class, but I don't think it does anything particularly impressive in this area.
I'm glad Poor Things won for Production Design, although part of me wanted to see Barbie win this category. They are both feasts for the eyes.
I would rather have seen Laura Karpman (American Fiction) or Jerskin Fendrix (Poor Things) win for Score, because as great as Goransson work on Oppenheimer and Robertson's work on KotFM are, I have issues with the scoring decisions there - the Oppenheimer score seems more interested in what will be happening next that what is actually happening on screen, and Robertson's score seems out-of-place.
I keep forgetting how amazing Billie Eilish is, so I'm glad she won for her "What Was I Made For?" song from Barbie. And Ryan Gosling's "I'm Just Ken" performance at the ceremony helped make the show worth watching.
The make-up on Bradley Cooper as older Leonard Bernstein was uncanny, so I'm a little surprised Poor Things won there.
Thrilled that Godzilla Minus One won for Visual Effects! On the budget that movie was made for, that's an accomplishment of on-brand proportions!
* That word is pronounced "BYE-oh-pick", by the way, not "bye-AH-pick". BIOgraphical motion PICture = bio-pic.
