Click here for more from our Oscars 2018 coverage, including the Best & Worst of the ceremony, all the speeches, and the Snubs & Surprises.
Happy Oscars! It was the best of times, it was the mostly okay of times, it was the 90th Academy Awards ceremony and they made sure we remembered that the Oscars are about movies. Literally, there was a movie montage celebrating movies brought to you by movies at the movie awards. The show definitely had its ups (Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph for EVERYTHING please) and downs (okay what was happening with that “Remember Me” performance?), but was overall a pretty safe and standard Oscars ceremony.
READ MORE: The 2018 Oscars By The Numbers
Which is to be expected considering how sideways the end of the show went last year. Luckily, we were keeping tabs on all the happenings and compiled them all into a list of the best and worst moments of the 90th Academy Awards. Here you go.
“The Shape of Water” Wins Best Picture And Best Director – Complete Winner’s List
BEST
Jimmy Kimmel’s Opening Monologue
Jimmy Kimmel’s second time hosting the Oscars wasn’t quite a slam dunk, but the talk show host did an admirable job. He kept things bouncy and lighthearted, while still recognizing some very real and relevant topics having right now, and that was certainly so during his opening monologue. Cracking jokes at Oscar’s respect in Hollywood thanks to his safe anatomy, complete with no penis, to the expected gags at the expense of last year’s “Moonlight/La La Land” flub that were, surprisingly, pretty sharp and funny, it was a good, strong opening for Kimmel, and while the rest of the show didn’t match it, it was a solid opening for what ultimately became an enjoyable, if not memorable, night at the Oscars.
Jet Ski/Lake Havasu Prize For Shortest Speech
One of the biggest hassles of the Oscars are the prolonged speeches. Some of them are good. Some of them are great. But they are more than a few that go on. And on. And on. And ON. And even the most enthusiastic viewers can find themselves tried by it all. In any ongoing battle to find a way to respect the winners without making the show go on too long, Jimmy Kimmel found a fairly creative way to keep the speeches short. In a bid notably inspired by “The Price Is Right,” Kimmel promised the person with the shortest speech would win their very own jet ski. It didn’t ultimately make the speeches shorter, but it was still entertaining.
Sam Rockwell Takes Home Best Supporting Actor With Class and Suave
Not everyone loves “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” But it’s hard to deny Sam Rockwell’s star power. The man is a charmer in every sense of the word, and his awards speech was one that was hard to resist. We’re sure many of you wanted Willem Dafoe to win the award. You’re not alone in that respect. But Rockwell made a hell of a good impression on that stage, and we’re happy that he is finally getting celebrated for once in this extended career. We can only hope this opens more doors for him. The only thing we have to criticize: no dancing. C’mon Rockwell. You could’ve given us a kick or two. Oh well.
90 Years of Oscars and A Grand Celebration of Cinema
The Oscars have long been celebratory of the art of cinema. It’s in their nature, of course. And they found a beautiful way to celebrate the movies while also recognizing the 90th anniversary of the awards ceremony in question. Through the use of revered cinematic moments of old mixed with rousing movie moments of today, this year’s Oscar ceremony found a beautiful, evocative way to bring together the movies we’ve celebrated throughout the years, in all their different times and styles, and to celebrate why we love going to the movies in the first place. Yes, it makes the ceremony longer, but the Oscars are all about the movies. It’s the cinephile’s time to shine. And we were appreciative of their loving nods to classics and new favorites, along with several presentations from Oscar winners of the past. Yes, it’s sentimental and it was mushy as hell. But we liked it. We like celebrating movies.
Representation Montage
Representation matters. And the Academy Awards are recognizing that (finally). Through a segment featuring sit down interviews from Ava Duvernay, Lee Daniels, Kumail Nanjanji and more, the Oscars celebrated the impact of the movies not only on an emotional level, but on a social and cultural level. The movies that inspire us should be inclusive and expansive in their scope and representation. We hope this segment inspires filmmakers everywhere to make the films they want to make, and we thank the Academy for celebrating the voices of tomorrow. We hope to see those filmmakers on the stage soon.
Sufjan Stevens/St Vincent Beautiful Live Rendition of “Mysteries of Love”
Sufjan Stevens and St. Vincent didn’t end up walking away with any Oscars tonight, but they still gave one great performance. While it was always a stretch for the “Call Me By Your Name” signature tune to take away the gold, “Mysteries of Love” was nevertheless given a moving and beautiful tribute during tonight’s performance. It’s not quite an Oscar winner, but it’s still a winner in our eyes. We hope that’s worth something at least, Sufjan. If nothing else, we still love you. But you knew that already, didn’t you? There are no mysteries here.
Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph Save The Night
Just when the Oscars were starting to sag, dulling as they usually do around the middle of the night, Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph came onto the scene to liven up the proceedings. Through their moment of levity, the drudgery of the Oscars was lifted —if only for a brief moment of time —and we got a good laugh from their inspired silliness. In The Playlist house, there were quite a few people claiming they should host the Oscars next year. We’re just throwing that out there. Use that information however you will, Academy.
Impromptu Theater Visit (With Celebrity Guests!)
A handful of tonight’s winners took a moment to thank the moviegoers who helped make their movies the successes they have become. But most of the time, the moviegoers, and the moviemakers are divided, not often interacting save for the occasional moment on Twitter. But Jimmy Kimmel wanted to fix that. Along with his hodgepodge collection of assorted celebrities, including Gal Gadot, Ansel Elgort, Guillermo Del Toro, Margot Robbie and a few others, Kimmel and friends surprised an unsuspecting group of moviegoers during the middle of their screening of “A Wrinkle in Time” to put them in the Oscars. Hot dog guns and several other assorted amounts of junk food was also included in the mix because the Oscars are really milking this whole “feed the audience” bit for all its worth these last few years. Grumping aside, it’s a fun, original moment of award show television, and it’s nice to see some regular guys and gals like you and me (we assume…) on the television, for once.