News Desk (MNN); The darkly comic thriller One Battle After Another won Best Picture at the Academy Awards on Sunday, leading a haul of six Oscars in a night when Hollywood recognized unconventional and offbeat films.
The film, which tells a story of political resistance, competed closely with the vampire-themed movie Sinners, keeping audiences on edge at the Dolby Theatre. Director Paul Thomas Anderson celebrated on stage, saying, “Let’s have a martini! This is pretty amazing,” after being awarded Best Picture.
The Warner Bros. movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a former revolutionary who becomes a marijuana-smoking single father of a teenager. Anderson, previously nominated 11 times for Oscars without a win, also received awards for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Accepting the screenplay award, he said, “I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess we left in this world, but also with the hope they will bring common sense and decency.”
Sean Penn, playing an obsessed military officer in the film, won Best Supporting Actor but was absent from the ceremony. Presenter Kieran Culkin accepted the award on his behalf.
Sinners, which led the nominations with 16, won four awards including Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan, who played twin brothers Smoke and Stack. Set in the Segregation-era southern United States, the film celebrated Black culture and blues music with a supernatural twist. Jordan paid tribute to past Black Oscar winners including Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, and Halle Berry.
Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first Black woman to win Best Cinematography for Sinners. Irish actor Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for portraying Agnes Hathaway in Hamnet, a film exploring a couple coping with the death of their 11-year-old son. Amy Madigan, 75, received Best Supporting Actress for her role in the horror film Weapons, earning her first Oscar 40 years after her initial nomination.
KPop Demon Hunters, a Netflix animated hit, won Best Animated Feature, and its song “Golden” won Best Original Song.
The Oscars also honored the late directors Robert Redford and Rob Reiner. Sentimental Value, directed by Joachim Trier, won Best International Feature, marking the first Norwegian film to achieve this award.
Host Conan O’Brien opened the ceremony with humor, calling himself “the last human host” amid Hollywood’s concerns over artificial intelligence. Warner Bros., the night’s biggest winner with 11 Oscars, is being sold to Paramount Skydance, sparking protests from media watchdogs like Free Press. Winners were chosen by around 10,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
