Key takeaways from Oscars 2025: Brody beats orchestra, Brits keep it classy and Kieran Culkin botches his big moment
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The awards ceremony can’t escape Harvey Weinstein and two fairytales come a cropper

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Mon 3 Mar 2025 01.49 EST

Last modified on Tue 4 Mar 2025 17.06 EST



Small budgets win big
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While the dominance of last year’s Oppenheimer showed that big films will forever have their place at the , the Academy has increasingly gravitated to the smaller movie. Back in 2017, Moonlight became the best picture winner with the smallest ever budget (about $1.5m) and since then, films like Coda ($10m), Parasite ($11m) and Nomadland ($5m) have continued to bring indie films back to the main stage. This year, blockbusters like  and  might have scored major nominations but they had to settle for below-the-line wins, typically where bigger budget films have now tended to remain. The films that won above the line such as  ($6m),  ($10m) and A Real Pain ($3m) relied on campaigns that stressed the importance of making a lot from a little and it meant that the night was ultimately another success story for independent film-making. Ben Lee

[](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/mar/02/oscars-academy-awards-trump-ukraine-wildfires-conan)

[](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/mar/02/oscars-academy-awards-trump-ukraine-wildfires-conan)

 Photograph: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

, but the spectre of another Hollywood villain – Harvey Weinstein – did put in an appearance. Accepting his best actor award,  shouted out his partner, Georgina Chapman – who is Weinstein’s ex-wife – and her two children. Their lives had been, he said, a “rollercoaster”, but he was thankful they had accepted him. “Popsie’s coming home a winner!” he said, addressing them. Letting the world know that Weinstein’s children call Brody “Popsie” feels quite a statement. Catherine Shoard

... but managed to forget Tony Todd
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[](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/mar/02/oscars-academy-awards-trump-ukraine-wildfires-conan)

 Photograph: Daniel Cole/Reuters

This was supposed to be the year of the democratised Oscars – as in, Oscars not just for linear television but also streaming for the first time on Hulu, and thus available to the lowly people who pay for a bunch of streaming services instead of traditional cable. The Oscars for all, they said. Well. Tech glitches dogged the Hulu broadcast, most egregiously when the livestream “expired” just before Mikey Madison’s best actress win, preventing anyone reliant on Hulu to either scramble for a provider login to the ABC app or miss the final two awards. (Maybe Adrien Brody’s speech made Hulu give up?) It was an embarrassing night for the streamers overall – Netflix’s Emilia Pérez only took home two awards (out of 13 nominations), Sean Baker pointedly shouted out both independent films and movie theatres, and Conan O’Brien had a hard-hitting bit on “cinemastream”. The radical pitch? A screen the size of a thousand phones, which you don’t have to hold. His next pitch should be a bunch of TV channels available with one bill and one button. Sian Cain

A 50-piece orchestra is no match for Adrien Brody
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In 1942, best actress winner Greer Garson set a new record with a six-minute acceptance speech, which led to the Academy introducing a new 45-second limit. But it turns out if you win best actor, you get to negotiate with the orchestra when they try to play you off: two minutes into his heartfelt, but rambling acceptance speech,  begged the conductor for more time. “I’m wrapping up, please turn the music off,” he said. “I’ve done this before. Thank you. It’s not my first rodeo, but I will be brief.” He really wasn’t. Cue 1,000 jokes about needing an intermission. Other nominees got played off while trying to thank their wives. It is almost like this awards ceremony isn’t egalitarian or something. Sian Cain

Madcap doesn’t always equal fun
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[](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/mar/02/oscars-academy-awards-trump-ukraine-wildfires-conan)

 Photograph: Daniel Cole/Reuters

This was supposed to be the year of the democratised Oscars – as in, Oscars not just for linear television but also streaming for the first time on Hulu, and thus available to the lowly people who pay for a bunch of streaming services instead of traditional cable. The Oscars for all, they said. Well. Tech glitches dogged the Hulu broadcast, most egregiously when the livestream “expired” just before Mikey Madison’s best actress win, preventing anyone reliant on Hulu to either scramble for a provider login to the ABC app or miss the final two awards. (Maybe Adrien Brody’s speech made Hulu give up?) It was an embarrassing night for the streamers overall – Netflix’s Emilia Pérez only took home two awards (out of 13 nominations), Sean Baker pointedly shouted out both independent films and movie theatres, and Conan O’Brien had a hard-hitting bit on “cinemastream”. The radical pitch? A screen the size of a thousand phones, which you don’t have to hold. His next pitch should be a bunch of TV channels available with one bill and one button. Sian Cain

Horror can’t catch a break
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It had felt like a major breakthrough for horror, a historically maligned genre suddenly getting unprecedented recognition from awards bodies that had previously turned their noses up. But gory, gloopy body horror  went in with five Oscar nominations and came away with just one win, slithering away with makeup and hairstyling. With previous winners in that category including The Wolfman and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it wasn’t quite the major moment some in the industry had hoped for. Star Demi Moore was seen as the lead actress frontrunner and writer-director Coralie Fargeat had been viewed as a major contender for original screenplay but they both lost out to Anora, a far from traditional choice yet one that was in safer genre territory. Even the far more serious period horror Nosferatu couldn’t win in any of its four craft categories, rounding out a rather scary night for scary movies. Ben Lee

The ingenue is back in fashion
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Going into the night, it had felt like the best actress race would be one highlighted by the power of telling stories of neglected older women: The Substance’s  at 62 playing an actor cast aside by a youth-obsessed industry and I’m Still Here’s Fernanda Torres at 59 as a wife and mother protecting her family against barbaric forces. While younger men are famously rejected in the lead actor category (Adrien Brody was the youngest and only under-30 pick at 29 for The Pianist in 2003), the lead actress category was once known for crowning a parade of young female actors. There was Marlee Matlin at 21, Jennifer Lawrence at 22, Grace Kelly at 25, Audrey Hepburn at 24 and so on until recently where the ingenue rule had been thrown out of the window, allowing women including Michelle Yeoh, Frances McDormand and Jessica Chastain to win. But Mikey Madison has shown a return to an older way of voting, at 25, she’s the ninth-youngest and the first under-30 winner since Emma Stone in 2017. Ben Lee

Two best actress fairytales become Oscar nightmares
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[](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/mar/03/oscars-best-quotes-conan)



Conclave makes a cardinal sin
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It’s been a strange old season with frontrunners never seeming quite firm enough and with films that felt like unusual, often radical choices. There was a musical about witches, a comedy about a sex worker, an opera about a trans cartel boss, a body horror about a magic drug – not exactly conventional Oscar fare. So Conclave, a sturdy, exquisitely made adaptation of a Robert Harris novel filled with familiar older faces, started to seem like it could maybe be the obvious winner we had all brushed past. It was one of the most universally liked films of the season devoid of any controversy and when it won both the Bafta for best film and then the Screen Actors Guild ensemble award, it felt like maybe it could go on to win best picture. But it left the night with just a solitary award for best adapted screenplay, a traditional pick that maybe felt a little too traditional for a voter base that’s younger and more diverse than ever before. Ben Lee

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Oscars 2025: Anora takes it all, Adrien Brody’s second and Wicked dresses to impress – video
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3:04

Oscars 2025: Anora takes it all, Adrien Brody’s second and Wicked dresses to impress – video

This article was amended on 4 March 2025. Mikey Madison was the first under-30 best actress winner since Emma Stone (2017), rather than since Brie Larson (2016), as originally stated. In addition, an earlier version misnamed Nathan Crowley as Noah Crawley.

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