This year, the 96th Academy Awards took place on Sunday March 10, and I was very excited to tune in after finishing watching all 10 Best Picture nominated movies. This year was full of surprises and upsets, which made it very exciting to watch.

The show began with host, Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue. To me, his jokes were fine. Not amazing and I wasn’t dying laughing from anything he said. There were some highlights including his dig at Alabama senator, Katie Britt, after her Republican Response to the State of the Union the previous week. His monologue consisted mainly of just calling everyone attractive, from Ryan Gosling, Margot Robbie, Christopher Nolan and Robert Downey Jr. Some people that I was talking to in anticipation to Sunday were hoping he would roast people, but that didn’t happen. It definitely wasn’t the worst opening monologue from this award season, but there wasn’t much that stood out to me.

I unfortunately didn’t have the time to watch many of the the short films, only “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” by Wes Anderson. Of the awards, there were only four films I hadn’t seen (“The Boy and the Heron,” “The Last Repair Shop,” “20 Days in Mariupol,” and “War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko,”) but I plan on watching them as soon as I can. Of the films I did see, I ended up going 17/20 on my predictions. The three I got wrong were Production Design, Adapted Screenplay and Animated Feature Film.

For Production Design, I wanted “Barbie,” to win because the set of Barbieland really makes the experience of the film and was very meticulous in design and detail. From the plastic food in the fridge and plastic pools, the production design stayed true to the toys that the story is based off. This however, is the reason I think the award ended up going to “Poor Things.” Although “Poor Things,” is also an adapted movie, originally a book, I think that the crew had to come up with more of a design and idea of what the scenes were going to look like and really bring the world of the movie to life. The sets in both of these movies, and all that were nominated, were really breathtaking and contriubuted a lot to the story of the movie, so I was definitely not upset by “Barbie,” not winning.

Adapted Screenplay I had picked “Oppenheimer,” not to continue the bandwagon, but I thought that it might have a shot of winning, especially since the movie won awards like “Best Director,” and “Best Picture,” and since the script was written by Nolan. At the end of the day it went to “American Fiction,” and was the movies only win of the night. I did like the script for “American Fiction,” and was not upset by this win either. I liked the use of humor and enjoyed Monk’s character development throughout the movie.

Finally the last one I got incorrect was for Animated Feature Film. I really wanted this one to go to “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” but in the end it went to the Studio Ghibli film “The Boy and the Heron.” I’m yet to see Heron, but I do love Ghibli movies so I am excited for that watch. I think a lot of people wanted Spider-Man to win, especially due to its popularity and the fact that the first movie in the trilogy won this award in 2019. But what myself and maybe other fans forgot is that “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” doesn’t stand on its own. You kinda have to know what happened in the first one to understand the second one, and “The Boy and the Heron,” stands on its own as a completed story. As much as I loved the animation style of Spider-Man and its differences from typical animation that we have seen, just the visuals are not all that is considered in this award.

In January, I made my predictions for the Golden Globes, and in March they were still pretty much the same. For most of the categories, the answers were pretty clear. “Oppeneheimer,” was the clear favorite for pretty much every award it was nominated for, from Nolan winning “Best Director,” Cillian Murphy winning “Best Lead Actor,” Downey winning “Best Supporting Actor,” Ludwig Göransson taking home “Best Score,” and Hoyte van Hoytema taking home the award for “Cinematography.”

The big upset of this year however, seemed to come from Emma Stone taking the award for “Best Actress in a Leading Role,” over Lily Gladstone in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” It seemed that some of the promotion of this years show was based around the fact that Gladstone would be the first indigenous woman to win this award, and people were really playing into that in anticipation and in interviews, yet in the end, she didn’t win.

Now I love Stone, and I loved Gladstone’s performance. I was going back and forth like many other predictors in the weeks leading up to the awards on who would win. I think what led me to choose Stone, and maybe the Academy too, is that Stone’s makes the entire film. Now of you saw “Killers of the Flower Moon,” you know that Gladstone’s performance is otherworldly, but it is also more subtile. Stone’s protrayal of Bella Baxter is very much reliant on physical movement, whereas to me, the most powerful moments that we see Mollie are through body movement and eyes, not with words.

I don’t think that one style is necessarily better, but especially looking at Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, there were many physical aspects to his performance that made him the clear winner But looking at the two who ended up winning, I felt like what they needed to give for their roles were similar and the Academy may have liked that more this year.

Ultimately, I am looking forward to watching the biggest movies of 2024 and going through the process of seeing the Best Picture nominees and as many movies as possible in anticipation for next award season.