Our contributors have watched the Oscars, looked at the winners, and have decided to share with you their thoughts of Sunday night’s ceremony and results. Before we get to our contributors’ thoughts, let’s look at how they did at predicting this year’s Oscars.

In a decently tight race for first, Thomas came out on top with 18 correct predictions and 3 runner-up predictions, correctly fielding predictions or runners-up in 21 of 23 categories. Wesley was second with 16 correct predictions and 6 runner-up predictions, for a total of 22 of 23. Peter was in third with 13 correct and 9 runners-up for a total of 22. And Tripp, who didn’t make many alterations to his original post-nominations predictions, fielded 12 wins, 5 runners-up, and whiffed in 6 categories for a total of 17 of 23.

This year, only three categories didn’t have a correct prediction, Original Score, Production Design, and Costume Design, but all three did feature a correct runner-up prediction. Thomas was the only person to correctly prediction Actor and Original Screenplay while Peter was the lone selector of Live Action Short Film. The nine categories where all four of us correctly predicted the winner were: Animated Feature, Supporting Actor, Original Song, Film Editing, Cinematography, Sound, Visual Effects, International Feature, and Animated Short Film.

Now that we’ve gone over the statistics, let’s hear what everyone had to say.

Wesley Lovell

I’m not going to say a lot about the Oscars this year as I was largely uninspired by the winners selected. Everything Everywhere All at Once, while a mostly enjoyable film, wasn’t even close to the best of the year and it ranks 63rd currently on my list of all-time best Best Picture winners (pending viewings of Nomadland and CODA).

For the most part, the emotional speeches were largely positive in nature hailing the Academy for thinking outside of the box and that’s a wonderful thing to hear even if it wasn’t delivered by the figures I wanted to see win. Jimmy Kimmel was a solid host with a few great jokes and a few groaners, but he delivered a largely enjoyable show.

While I wasn’t that excited about the three Everything actors winning their Oscars, I nevertheless felt emotional at them winning for it represented a sea change in the Academy’s once-stuffy reputation (in Yeoh and Quan’s cases) or a triumph of under-rewarded actors finally winning recognition (Yeoh and Curtis).

I’m utterly devastated for Colin Farrell who genuinely delivered one of his greatest performances, but was too soft a figure for the Academy to reward. I’m elated for Sarah Polley winning an Oscar, but can’t say I was over-the-moon about anyone else.

One of the most grating ventures in the telecast was the self-serving Disney 100 celebration, first-look trailer for The Little Mermaid. Disney owns ABC, so we all know it was a crass effort. What’s even worse is that they tossed in a paltry Warner Bros. centenary tribute as well, but all they got was a hodge podge of clips from a lot of films that weren’t even from Warner Bros. Productions originally, just part of their collection of studio catalog purchases they’ve made over the years. Both of these were tone deaf with the former utterly reprehensible.

The worst things about the show were the hard-to-understand song performance of “Applause,” the tone deaf and aurally horrendous “This Is a Life” performance, and the poorly edited necrology wherein two figures were pushed off screen with a lack of recognition and the ostensibly great Angela Lansbury being stuffed into the middle without so much as a clip or any other tribute.

Those are my thoughts for this year and now it’s time to move on to next year and perhaps a few changes coming soon.

Peter J. Patrick

The Academy made some excellent unexpected choices, most notably An Irish Goodbye in live-action short. The birthday tribute to that film’s star, mentally challenged James Martin, was a highlight of the ceremony, as was the emotional acceptance speech of Mrs. Navalny, wife of the imprisoned Russian opponent of Vladimir Putin, in the feature documentary category.

Overall, the awards were an endorsement of the various guilds with all four acting winners repeating their SAG wins. I thought that the 7-statuette haul of Everything Everywhere All at Once was overkill. I was hoping against hope that Tár, The Banshees of Inisherin, and/or All Quiet on the Western Front would win the top prizes. All Quiet on the Western Front did win four awards, including Best International Feature, so that’s something. The other two were completely shut out as were fellow Best Picture nominees The Fabelmans and Triangle of Sadness as expected, along with Elvis, which some, but not me, expected to do better.

Although I downplayed it in my predictions, I was not surprised by the inevitability of Everything Everywhere All at Once to win Best Picture, Actress, Supporting Actor, Director, and Editing. I was, however, surprised and saddened that is beat The Banshees of Inisherin in both Supporting Actress and Original Screenplay.

As for the show itself, it was better than most recent ones. I liked that they showed clips from all ten Best Picture nominees without the laborious introductions usually accorded them. The performances of the Best Original Song nominees were highlights as they should be with the Oscar-winning “Naatu Naatuu” from RRR especially well-done.

There were very few negatives, although I could have done without both appearances by the Cocaine Bear and thought Jimmy Kimmel’s Robert Blake joke was in extremely bad taste. I also thought his mentioning of three of the best actress nominees, Cate Blanchett, Michelle Yeoh, and Michelle Williams while ignoring Andrea Riseborough and Ana de Armas (unless I missed something) was a bit rude especially when he went out of his way to mention non-nominees Danielle Deadwyler and Viola Davis whose places according to the Twitter world were stolen by Riseborough and de Armas.

Although the pre-show made numerous references to this having been the 95th Academy Awards, there was no particular reference to that during the ceremony. The closest we came to looking back was at the bizarre presentation of the Warner Home Video commercial commemorating Warner Bros. 100th anniversary. The problem was that a number of the clips shown, all of which are from films available on Blu-ray from Warner Home Video, were from films made by Warner’s rival, MGM, which are now owned by Warner Home Video. What are they going to do next year for MGM’s 100th anniversary?

Thomas La Tourrette

Well, another Oscar broadcast is over. I did well with my predictions, though as always there were some surprises. It is better to have some suspense and this year did have a lot of that. No one knew how three of the four acting awards would go, so it kept up interest through the show. It was a tasteful show with no great shocks like the year before, and that is good. Jimmy Kimmel kept things moving along breezily which is perhaps the best we can ask from an Oscars host. He did get a good couple zingers in about Will Smith and surprisingly Robert Blake, the latter may not have been in good taste but it was very funny. Except for Naatu Naatu’s big dance number, the musical numbers were not very exciting, but the songs were unexceptional this year too.

Everything Everywhere All at Once garnered seven Oscars, the most of any film since the Academy enlarged the number of nominated films beyond five. I would say it definitely earned them. I was especially glad to see Michelle Yeoh win as best actress. It was not just a career Oscar but also deserved for that specific performance. I wondered down to the moment her name was called if it would go to Cate Blanchett for Tár, a movie I heartily disliked. Jamie Lee Curtis’ Oscar was a pleasant surprise as she was good in the movie but until the SAG awards I did not expect she had a chance. Sadly, Stephanie Hsu gave the better supporting performance in that film, but hopefully she will have a later chance to earn an Oscar. This was Curtis’ first nomination and conceivably her last too. I was sorry that The Banshees of Inisherin went home empty-handed as it was a good movie that just happened to come out in the wrong year. I would not have minded Colin Farrell winning for best actor, but it was hard to beat the back story of Brendan Fraser’s return to a starring role and giving the best performance of his career. I was also surprised that Elvis won nothing. It was not as spectacular as some of Baz Luhrmann’s other films, but I thought it would snag something.

All Quiet on the Western Front did better than I expected, winning four Oscars. Score was somewhat unexpected but deserved. The more surprising win was for production design. It did vividly bring home what trench warfare was like, though the work of Babylon was probably more deserving. After it won that, I did wonder if it could sneak in for best picture. But when Women Talking still claimed the adapted screenplay award, that felt like it would not happen. I did not expect Black Panther: Wakanda Forever to win for costume design as a sequel had never won before, but traditions can be broken. I might quibble with the wins for An Irish Goodbye and The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, both a little trite though the latter was beautiful to look at. And Naatu Naatu, the song from RRR, might have been more about dance than the singing, but it was nice that a song won that was central to the plot rather than just sung over the closing credits. Navalny, Pinocchio, and Avatar all had well deserved wins. So now we start thinking about what should win next year.