Oscars 2025: The Best & Worst Moments (Plus The Biggest Surprise)

The 97th Academy Awards have come to a close, and there's a lot to discuss. Throughout the proceedings, host Conan O'Brien kept things moving at a decent clip (though it certainly didn't hurt that, unlike previous years, the ceremony started at 7 P.M. on the East Coast, giving the telecast a chance to run a little long without being actively obtrusive). Awards were handed out, and for the most part, they actually went to the most deserving people; though it initially seemed like film composer Quincy Jones was left out of the In Memoriam segment, he got his own tribute with Queen Latifah at the helm. Several categories, including Best Costume Design, got tableau presentations featuring actors who were actually part of the projects being honored. A lot of the telecast, to be honest, was really good!

Some it was also annoying, bad, or both. So what's the breakdown here? We've got you covered. Here are the five best moments of the 2025 Academy Awards, the four worst, and one major surprise that happened right at the end of the night.

A lot of the time, it feels like the people chosen to host the Oscars just ... don't like movies very much. With all due respect to Jimmy Kimmel, the most frequent host in recent years, he typically opens his monologues by complaining about how the movies are long and boring, indicating that he'd rather be anywhere in the world than the Dolby Theatre. Thankfully, a cinephile who happens to be one of the funniest guys in the entire entertainment industry hosted the Academy Awards this year, and it was awesome. Conan O'Brien, who revealed four stellar picks when interviewed by Letterboxd the day before the ceremony — specifically, any "Pink Panther" movie featuring Peter Sellers, "Citizen Kane," Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven," and "Duck Soup" — actually loves movies, and it showed.

Not only did O'Brien keep things snappy throughout the ceremony — despite his extremely sarcastic musical number about not wasting anyone's time that, obviously, wasted a little time — but he seemed genuinely enthused about the nominees, even if he did go after "Emilia Peréz" nominee Karla Sofía Gascón over her offensive social media tear. (That was deserved, honestly.) After the monologue, O'Brien also largely made himself scarce, letting the ceremony speak for itself. It worked.

You can basically guarantee that you get an incredible performance if you put Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande on stage together. Not only were both actresses nominated for their roles in "Wicked" — Erivo scored one for best actress for her performance as Elphaba Thropp, and Grande, credited as Ariana Grande-Butera in the film, made it in the best supporting actress category for playing Galinda, later styled Glinda — but after a montage celebrating Los Angeles after fires devastated the city at the beginning of 2025, Erivo and Grande performed some heartfelt melodies before teaming up for a show-stopping duet. Grande sang "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" to start, followed by Erivo's performance of "Home," a song from "The Wiz."

By the time the two came together to sing "Defying Gravity," audiences in the Dolby Theater and around the world were locked in; these two actresses know how to tug at the heartstrings, and they did just that. Before Conan O'Brien even showed up for the monologue, two of the industry's best singers paid homage to their film and Los Angeles at the same time, and it was truly magical.

For the most part, the 97th Oscars moved at a decent pace. The major exception was the "James Bond" tribute, which not only had no place during the telecast but went on for an interminably long time. Amidst the news that the intellectual property of "James Bond," the franchise spawned by Ian Fleming's spy novels that became one of the biggest sensations in cinematic history, is now owned by Amazon — indicating that, perhaps, Jeff Bezos will simply crown himself as the next 007 if he feels like it — was disappointing news to receive recently, and it almost felt like insult to injury that a massive tribute to these major movies brought the Oscars to a screeching halt.

Despite a lovely effort from Margaret Qualley — the co-star of "The Substance" who, as it happens, is a professionally trained ballet dancer — this entire sequence felt bizarre and misplaced, and it didn't do anything other than slow down an otherwise well-planned ceremony. Why include this? "James Bond" is important, but now that it's owned by the company where you probably order toothpaste and paper towels, this tribute was just awkward and weird.

After bad faith actors caused a massive stink over Jonathan Glazer's acceptance speech for "The Zone of Interest" during the 96th Academy Awards that aired in early 2024 — only because Glazer dared to discuss the bombardment and ruin of Gaza — it felt like, perhaps, "No Other Land" would lose out on an Oscar during this ceremony. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. A documentary directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, "No Other Land," which marks a collaboration between Palestinians and Israelis in the face of terrifying violence and overwhelming enmity, tells the story of specific settlements in the occupied West Bank, centering the friendship between Adra and Abraham as they forge a friendship in the middle of a devastating war.

"No Other Land" ultimately won Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards, and with Ballal and Szor at their backs, Adra and Abraham delivered two stunning speeches. "About two months ago, I became a father," Adra said during his remarks. "And my hope to my daughter that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing settlers, violence, home demolitions and forcible displacements." As for Abraham, he embraced Adra in his remarks: "We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together, our voices are stronger. When I look at Basel, I see my brother, but we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control." There's no question that "No Other Land," a stunningly made documentary about a devastating and all too relevant topic, deserved to win, and the acceptance speeches only cemented that.

Adrien Brody won his first Oscar in 2003 for his lead role in "The Pianist," and based on his acceptance speech for his second win for "The Brutalist" during the most recent telecast, he totally forgot that you have to keep those speeches brief. After meandering for quite some time, Brody demanded that the music stop playing him off and then he just ... kept meandering, and according to Variety, he spent a whopping five minutes delivering his acceptance speech for his performance as László Tóth, the architect protagonist of Brady Corbet's decades-spanning, three-hour film. (Five minutes, to be clear, is 300 seconds; as actors typically note while they're standing onstage at the Dolby Theater holding their statue, you usually get 45 seconds.) 

Congratulations to Brody, truly; he was phenomenal as László Tóth, even if this author believes he delivered the "most" performance of the year rather than, perhaps, the "best." The point is that you have to relinquish the stage at some point, especially if you're going to meander and pause as much as Brody did. Come on, man. Relinquish the mic.

Look. Adrien Brody insisting that the orchestra stop playing him off for "The Brutalist" only to ramble was annoying. Conversely, it was not annoying when Kieran Culkin made the same request, because he had a point. (Sorry, Brody.) Culkin, the world's favorite slime puppy from "Succession," won an Oscar for his role as a troubled man traveling throughout Eastern Europe in "A Real Pain" — alongside Jesse Eisenberg, who wrote and directed the film, as his on-screen cousin — and Culkin, who has won every single precursor leading up to the Oscar, delivered a predictably phenomenal speech.

Famously, Culkin addressed his wife, Jazz Charlton, from the Emmys stage after winning an award for playing Roman Roy on "Succession" and made a joke about how Charlton "promised" him another kid if he won the Emmy. (The couple currently have two children, and at the time, Culkin was gunning for a third.) After asking the orchestra to give him a tiny bit of time, Culkin told an anecdote about the immediate aftermath of that Emmy win. "After the show, we're walking through a parking lot ... and she goes, 'Oh, God, I did say that! I guess I owe you a third kid.' And I turned to her, and I said, 'Really, I want four.'" Culkin then continued, "She turned to me — I swear to God, this happened there's just over a year ago — she said, 'I will give you four when you win an Oscar.'"

"I just have this to say to you, Jazz — love of my life, ye of little faith — no pressure," Culkin concluded. "I love you. I'm really sorry I did this again, and let's get cracking on those kids. What do you say?" With Charlton laughing and reacting in real time in the audience, the moment was incredibly charming — so the lesson to be learned here is that if you're going to demand more time for your speech, you gotta make it count.

As it usually does, the Academy Awards chose to highlight specific lines from the screenplay nominees — both original and adapted — just before they announced the winner. For Best Original Screenplay, the nominees were "Anora," "The Brutalist," "A Real Pain," "The Substance," and "September 5." During the screenplay presentation for "September 5" — a film about murders that occurred during the 1972 Olympics in Munich — there was a grammatical error.

The line in question, which was displayed on-screen, was represented like this: "If, I'm saying if they shoot someone on live television. Right? Who's story is that?" It's whose, actually. Very, extremely, and wildly embarrassing that the screenplay category couldn't get this right. ("Anora" won anyway, so, all's well that ends well.)

One of the best aspects of the Academy Awards is that, every year, celebrities show up in stunning tuxedos and elaborate dresses. This entire concept was thrown aside — in the most delightful way possible — thanks to Adam Sandler, an actor who should have (in this writer's opinion) been a nominee for "Uncut Gems" several years ago. Anyway, during Conan O'Brien's monologue, he focused on Sandler, who was hanging out in the audience dressed in his usual uniform: a big sweatshirt, basketball shorts, and sick sneakers. (Also, there was a Hawai'ian shirt under the sweatshirt.) "Adam, what are you wearing?" O'Brien quipped, only for Sandler to yell, "Nobody even thought about what I was wearing until you brought it up!"

After O'Brien joked that Sandler looked like "dressed like a guy playing video poker at 2 A.M.," Sandler fired back, "You know what, Conan? I like the way I look, because I'm a good person. I don't care about what I wear or what I don't wear. Did my snazzy gym shorts and fluffy sweatshirt offend you so much that you had to mock me in front of my peers?" From there, Sandler stormed the audience, inviting them to a "five-on-five" basketball game — though Sandler did make sure to specifically invite "Nosferatu" star Bill Skårsgard, who does happen to be 6'4" — before shouting "Chalamet!" into Timothée Chalamet's face before he exited amidst raucuous applause. Sandler, who has grown wonderfully sentimental as he ages, is wonderful, and his random little cameo in O'Brien's monologue was awesome.

Here's the thing. The Oscars are, to many people, a sacred space. Sure, they don't always make the best decisions — "Crash" and "Green Book" immediately come to mind — but the Academy Awards are meant to be a night where the most glamorous people in Hollywood gather to honor the previous year's best movies, shorts, and documentaries. With that in mind, the front row of the audience is another sacred space. People like Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson appear to have a standing invitation to sit in that front row whether or not they're even nominated; usually, the high-ranking acting nominees get to sit there. This year, Kylie Jenner got one of those seats.

There's an obvious explanation here, to be fair. Jenner is dating Timothée Chalamet, who was a nominee during the ceremony for Best Actor thanks to his role in the Bob Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown" (though, honestly, "biopic" feels like a strong term for a film where the main conflict is "a guy wants to play a different kind of guitar"). Still. Kylie Jenner?! Sitting front row at the Oscars?! Has she ever watched this telecast before? Has she seen any of the movies nominated? Has she ever watched a movie at all? The bottom line is this: the Devil works hard, but Kris Jenner, Kylie's mother and "momager," works harder.

Anyone who follows the Academy Awards knows that Academy voters really love a strong narrative. Look at Brendan Fraser, a phenomenally talented actor who won for an absolute disgrace of a movie (Darren Aronofsky's wild misfire "The Whale") to mark his comeback; that same year, Ke Huy Quan won an Oscar of his own for a much better film, "Everything Everywhere All At Once," and Quan's story was also incredibly remarkable. That's why most prognosticators chose Demi Moore, who delivered an unbelievably audacious and raw performance in Coralie Fargeat's body horror film "The Substance," as the Best Actress winner for the 97th Academy Awards. They were wrong: Mikey Madison, the star of "Anora," was coronated instead.

This was an enormous surprise, especially when you consider that Moore won most of the awards that pave the path to an Oscar, including a SAG Award. It's certainly thrilling to see Madison, who's never led a major film before Sean Baker's Best Picture winner "Anora," take home the trophy, but it was simultaneously a little disappointing to see Moore go home empty-handed. This was always going to be a tough category, to be fair. Both Moore and Madison delivered incredible performances. Still, Madison's triumph was a bonafide upset ... and hopefully, an enterprising artist comes up with yet another Oscar-worthy role for Moore sometime soon.