It has all been said and done. The winners have won, the songs have been sung, and the tweets have been tweeted. But let’s now go through the predictions, the winners, the losers, and the surprises (if there were any). We have to start with who won the coveted Jet Ski, though.
After no musical opening — and a solid opening monologue from Jimmy Kimmel — this year’s host promised to give a brand new Jet Ski to the winner who had the shortest acceptance speech. So, who won? No one could beat Mark Bridges’ short acceptance speech, which he gave after having won the Oscar for Best Costume Design for his work on Phantom Thread.
To be honest with you, I was so busy celebrating that Phantom Thread won something — and tweeting — that I don’t think I actually heard a single word from his acceptance speech. Forget about the little golden men, the Jet Ski was a fun recurring joke with a pretty good payoff. Some of the other comedic moments didn’t quite work for me. I thought it was a fun idea for Kimmel to stop a screening of a film to run in with icons, stars, and Oscar-winners to hand the audience food and snacks, but it went on for way too long.
All of the acting categories went the way we expected them to, so the only memorable moment with those winners was McDormand’s acceptance speech. And, honestly, that was the thing this year. There weren’t really any big surprises, if you ask me.
Or were there? People had kept on saying that we should just accept that “This Is Me,” from The Greatest Showman would win Best Original Song, but I just could not predict it to win. And, thankfully, I didn’t, because Coco got to take home both the Best Animated Feature and the Best Original Song awards.
People may say that it was surprising that War for the Planet of the Apes didn’t win Best Visual Effects, but I really don’t think it was. None of the other films in the reboot trilogy did, even after they all won Visual Effects Society Awards. I fully expected it to lose.
The greatest moment of the night, for me, was when Roger Deakins FINALLY won an Oscar on his fourteenth nomination. It was a well-deserved win for his work on a stunning film — Blade Runner 2049 — that ended up with two Oscar statues at the end of the night.
The funniest moment of the night, however, was probably when Jimmy Kimmel joked that at the 90th Academy Awards they wouldn’t play you out, instead Lakeith Stanfield would be running onto the stage to yell “Get out,” which they, of course, had Stanfield do at that very moment. Perfect joke, and a great moment for the young actor.
Another great moment was when Jordan Peele got to accept the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Get Out. For a moment there I was absolutely certain that my ‘crazy-ish’ Best Picture prediction would come true, but it didn’t.
Thankfully, another amazing and memorable movie won Best Picture. Not just any amazing movie. The Shape of Water won Best Picture. A science fiction film won Best Picture. A great creature feature love story won Best Picture. A Cold War fairy tale won Best Picture. A movie where a mute woman falls in love with an amphibian man won Best Picture. It is an absolutely amazing result.
For the full list of winners, go here. For my full reactions as it happened, go here.
– Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen
I'm Jeffrey Rex 