Daniels’ sci-fi action-comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once was the big winner at the 95th Academy Awards, winning 7 of its 11 nominated categories, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh, Best Supporting Actress for Jamie Lee Curtis, Best Supporting Actor for Ke Huy Quan, and Best Editing for Paul Rogers. The major winners are rounded out with Brendan Fraser winning Best Actor for The Whale and Canada’s Sarah Polley winning Best Adapted Screenplay for Women Talking.
There was a brief period when it looked like Everything Everywhere All at Once‘s night may be spoiled by the German-language remake of All Quiet on the Western Front. Quite predictably, the film won Best International Feature Film, but it also won three technical awards for Cinematography, Production Design, and Original Score. In one of the rare years a Disney film didn’t walk away with Best Animated Feature, Guillermo del Toro won his third Oscar, along with co-director Mark Gustafson, for their stop-motion version of Pinocchio. Despite deserving to be nominated in more than a single category, RRR became the first Telugu Indian film to win the Oscar for Best Song for the film’s signature number, “Naatu Naatu.”
Following last year’s controversial moment of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, this year’s Oscar ceremony happened without a hitch. That said, some of the jokes by host Jimmy Kimmel fell flat. This was one of my better years when it came to my personal predictions tally, as I ended up correctly guessing 17 of the 23 awards, thanks in no small part to the big night experienced by Everything Everywhere All at Once.