Our contributors have watched the Oscars, looked at the winners, and have decided to share with you their thoughts of last night’s ceremony and results. It was a night of shocks, surprises, and glitches. Below are the thoughts of each of our contributors.

Wesley Lovell

It was the gaffe heard round the world. Only once before in Oscar history has a presenter accidentally read the wrong winner, but never in such a major and important category. Were the announced winner not the expected victor, everyone would have suspected something odd; however, La La Land was heavily expected to win and had even claimed six prizes throughout the evening. Yet, it wasn’t the winner. After the producers had already started delivering their speeches, the hubbub built and one of them announced that Moonlight, not La La Land, was the winner.

This snafu was a shock, but more shocking was the fact that a film about poor gay black men won the Oscar for Best Picture. While Midnight Cowboy had gay undertones and both Driving Miss Daisy and Crash each dealt with race relations at various points in our history, this is the first film that truly embodies each of those experiences in a straightforward and unguarded way. That’s certainly something. While I don’t know that Moonlight necessarily deserved this award, I am thoroughly ecstatic that it became the victor and thanks to this earth-shattering mistake on accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers’ part, more people will hopefully check out the film and perhaps learn a thing or two about it.

There was one other major mistake that few are talking about, largely because most people have no clue who she is. Four-time Oscar nominated costume designer Janet Patterson (The Piano, The Portrait of a Lady, Oscar and Lucinda, and Bright Star) died in 2016. As expected, she was included in the In Memoriam segment. The problem was the image they used wasn’t of her. A noted recluse, Patterson’s good friend, producer Jan Chapman, had the unfortunate experience of seeing her own image take Patterson’s place in the montage. It was a sad and disappointing situation for her, but is further proof that focusing on the details is still significantly important.

Apart from this, the night went largely as expected. A few unusual selections were made (Makeup, Sound Editing, Editing, Costume Design), but nothing truly outlandish occurred down ballot. That allowed us to rejoice in one of the best Oscar telecasts in recent memory. I never though Jimmy Kimmel would be able to handle the task of hosting the Oscars, but he nailed it. His humor was pointed, but good natured; his exhortation of Meryl Streep was brilliant; the tour bus schtick was fun, though it drag on a bit too long (but what can you really expect from normal people thrust into such an abnormal situation?); and the running gag with Matt Damon played out perfectly. While some details of the ceremony were frustrating (such as the repeated insistence on feeding the audience gags), it was largely a fun evening, kicked off in grand and rousing splendor by Justin Timberlake’s Oscar-nominated song performance.

I’m happy that Arrival managed to pick up at least one award, and winning for the creation of the sounds in the film was a fine place to honor it; however, I was not so happy that Zootopia, a film I certainly loved, beat out one of the best animated films in the last decade. Kubo and the Two Strings was simply the best, but it does highlight one major issue for the Academy’s membership: there are other studios besides Disney and Pixar. In the 15 years the award has been given out, Shrek, Wallace & Gromit, Happy Feet, and Rango are the only films not produced or distributed by Disney/Pixar to win. That the only animation studio to secure Oscar nominations for every single one of its animated productions has never won the prize is a galling error, one I hope that is one day made up. Laika is the pre-eminent art house in animated cinema and one day people will look back and wonder why it lost.

The season, a long one to be sure, went mostly as expected. Surprises certainly occurred, but it was precisely the kind of season we look forward to: just enough predictability to build excitement and just enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. Next year, I’m hoping things will remain interesting, though it would be nice if the Academy started recognizing genre films a little more consistently.

Peter J. Patrick

The Oscar Show was the best in ages. Jimmy Kimmel was relaxed, funny and unforced. He even handled the awkward moments well. The ending was bizarre, but mistakes happen.

The awards themselves were very satisfying. Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea were the year’s two best dramatic films and Moonlight‘s Best Picture win over presumptive winner La La Land was very satisfying even if did take a wrong turn to get there. Moonlight won three of the top eight awards and Manchester by the Sea tied La La Land at two each. It was as good as it’s been at the Oscars in a long time.

One irony is that Moonlight, Viola Davis, Mahershala Ali, and all the other minority winners would likely have won without last year’s “Oscars So White” battle cry. The other irony is that eleven years after Academy voters denied the gay themed Brokeback Mountain a Best Picture award and gave it instead to a film set in their home town featuring black people, this time they denied the award to a film about their home town and gave it to a film about a gay black man.

It doesn’t get much better than this at the Oscars.

Tripp Burton

Unavailable at this time.

Thomas La Tourrette

After a year of bizarre in 2016, Brexit and the US presidential race, somehow it seemed fitting that the Oscars celebrating that year would end with yet another surreal moment. Not since 1964 (the Oscars for 1963) has the wrong film been named a winner and then been told no it was not. In 1964 the award was for score, so a fairly minor category versus Best Picture. Having the producers of La La Land be stopped right after their thank yous to be told it was not them had to be devastating. At least the producer Jordan Horowitz handled it beautifully, announcing how he would be proud to hand the Oscar to the producers of Moonlight. For everything else that happened that night, this is the one thing that will be remembered forever at the 89th Oscars.

I had thought it was going to be La La Land’s night, easily winning at least eight Oscars and perhaps tying the record at 11. The lighthearted entertainment was fun, a big kiss to old Hollywood musicals and romance films, and perhaps something that the world craved after the tumultuous year. It still won six Oscars, not a bad haul, but not the number many, including myself, thought it would take home. The Academy members do not seem to be as caught up in what the guilds awarded, which often is a benchmark for the Oscars. The Oscars went to different films that the costume designers, Cinema Audio Society, Producers Guild, and sound editors guilds awarded, and diverged on two of the five Screen Actors Guild awards. It may definitely get harder to predict the Oscars in the future if they do not use the guilds for guidance. It may also be becoming more the norm for Best Picture and Director to go to different films, as that has happened four of the five past years.

It did make for a more interesting Oscars as the awards were spread out between more movies than I would have guessed. Neither Arrival nor Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them were poised to go home winners, but they did. (Fantastic Beasts became the first film of the Harry Potter universe to win an Oscar.) Hacksaw Ridge and Manchester by the Sea could easily not have won anything, but both took home two Oscars. I was mostly pleased by the acting awards, but I would have preferred Denzel Washington to win over Casey Affleck. Both were superb, though I thought that Denzel directed himself to a career best performance. I wonder if the rancorous presidential election led to the winning of a film about tolerance and empathy. I liked Moonlight, but did not love it as much as most everyone I know who has seen it. Evidently I need to see it again now to see what I think. I am a sucker for musicals and was rooting for La La Land to win as was expected. Upsets make for dramatic and memorable Oscars and this certainly was a memorable one.