Oscars 2019: winners, nominations, and biggest moments

One of the most thankless professions in the US — and one of the fastest-growing — had its moment in the spotlight Sunday during the 91st Academy Awards ceremony.

As he received an Oscar for the movie Roma, Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón paid tribute to millions of housekeepers and nannies who spend their lives taking care of other families.

We all know that A Star Is Born co-stars Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga have chemistry, but at the 2019 Oscars on Sunday, their intimate performance of “Shallow” — the movie’s hit duet, which picked up an Academy Award for Best Original Song — was more than any of us were expecting.

The song started with a mesmerizing cold open after Cooper and Gaga walked up to the stage from the audience (because by now, “Shallow” needs no introduction), and ended with the pair staring soulfully at each other.

President Donald Trump took a bizarre swipe at Spike Lee in the wake of the director’s Oscars victory on Sunday night. Hours later, Trump accused Lee of undertaking a “racist hit” against him in his acceptance speech, in which Lee did not name Trump but encouraged viewers to “mobilize” around 2020.

“Be nice if Spike Lee could read his notes, or better yet not have to use notes at all, when doing his racist hit on your President, who has done more for African Americans ... than almost any other Pres!” Trump tweeted on Monday.

The 2019 Oscars were a study in contrasts. On the one hand, there were milestones aplenty in the hostless show — which ran smoothly, counter to many people’s expectations. On the other hand, the winners ranged from daring films like The Favourite and Black Panther to more conventional Oscar fare like Best Picture winner Green Book.

Fifteen movies took home the night’s 24 awards; Bohemian Rhapsody led the pack with four, and Green Book, Roma, and Black Panther each took home three. That means there were lots of winners, and some unexpected upsets too.

Green Book’s end-of-the-night Best Picture victory at the 2019 Oscars felt like a rapidly changing Academy retreating to the comforts of the familiar.

After a ceremony in which numerous awards were won by women and people of color, when milestones were being reached left and right, Green Book was quite possibly the safest choice the Academy could have made — a largely enjoyable but simultaneously forgettable movie about how all we need to do to overcome racism is talk to each other.

Nobody really knew what would happen at 2019 Oscars on February 24 — the first ceremony in 30 years without a host. The evening concluded with the awards spread around; every Best Picture nominee earned at least one trophy, and 15 movies in all earned the 24 awards.

But someone has to win the big prize, and that winner was Green Book, which won Best Picture in addition to two other awards: Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali, and Original Screenplay. And it did so despite being the subject of a number of controversies, particularly because of its depiction of the history of race in America.

The 2019 Oscars are in the books. Bohemian Rhapsody took home the most awards with four, followed by Green Book, Roma, and Black Panther with three each. The ceremony — the first without a host in 30 years — yielded several milestone wins, and 15 films earned trophies in 24 categories.

If you’re ready to catch up on the winning films, you’re in luck; many of them are still in theaters, and most are available to watch at home as well.

Few things could upstage a performance by then–soon-to-be Oscar winner Lady Gaga for her then–soon-to-be Oscar-winning song “Shallow,” particularly one in which she and her co-star and rumored lover (okay, the rumors there are shaky, but whatever) shared one of the most sexually tense moments in awards show history. But if anything could, it’s a 141-year-old, $30 million rock.

When Lady Gaga arrived on the red carpet in a black Alexander McQueen gown and matching leather gloves, she was also wearing a striking yellow diamond — the kind of diamond that has, like, a name.

As hard as it may seem to believe, legendary director Spike Lee had never actually won a competitive Oscar before he finally took home a trophy on Sunday. Lee won in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for BlacKkKlansman, his critically acclaimed film about the Ku Klux Klan that’s also nominated for Best Picture.

Lee was famously nominated in 1990 for his screenplay for Do the Right Thing — and just as famously passed over in that category, in addition to being snubbed in the Best Director category, where he wasn’t nominated at all.

Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma is about many things: power dynamics, gender, race, domestic work, and, as presenter Diego Luna said at the Oscars, about “strong women and absent men.” It could have been the first foreign-language film to win Best Picture, a fact Luna alluded to when he began his announcement of the film in Spanish. “Ya se puede hablar español en los Oscars. Ya nos abrieron la puerta y no nos vamos a ir,” Luna said onstage — translation: “It’s possible to speak Spanish at the Oscars now. They finally opened the door for us, and we’re not going anywhere.”

Luna’s decision to start his Roma announcement in Spanish may seem unusual, but so is Roma’s mainstream success. As Vox’s Constance Grady explained, it’s not the kind of movie that usually attracts a wide audience — it’s a black-and-white art film with subtitles, not exactly a blockbuster with universal appeal. If not for its ultra-famous director, Roma would be the kind of movie that gets relegated to the Best Foreign Film category. But Roma was nominated for 10 awards — including Best Foreign Film — and is tied for the most nominations this year with The Favourite.

Over the past few years, the #OscarsSoWhite and Time’s Up movements have been pushing unceasingly for more diversity in Hollywood, both in front of the screen and behind the scenes. And while the Oscars are still overwhelmingly white and male, that work has started to pay off, with the Academy adding multiple women and people of color to its voting body in 2017. That was evident at the 2019 Oscars: Multiple Oscars milestones were reached, with people of color and women taking home awards that have never been claimed by anyone from their identity group before.

They’re milestones worth celebrating — but it’s also worth noting how absurdly long it’s taken to get even this far.

One of the most eerily accurate on-screen metamorphoses that took place last year has to be Christian Bale shape-shifting into Dick Cheney for Vice. Vanity Fair called it “the actor’s most haunting transformation yet.”

Movie makeup vet Greg Cannom was the head of the team behind the magic, and his work earned him an Oscar this year. The makeup designer has previously won Oscars for his work on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Dracula. He’s even won a technical Oscar for inventing a special kind of silicone used in movie prosthetics. For Vice, he worked with a team of sculptors, makeup artists, and hair and wig stylists to transform Christian Bale and Amy Adams, who plays Lynne Cheney, and then age them from their 20s up to their 70s. Cannom had to create looks for about six different Dick and Lynne Cheneys through the ages. “It was very rough on [Bale], but he never complained and he really was so happy with the way the makeup turned out, and he had a lot of fun with that character and doing it,” Cannom says.

If A Star Is Born has given us anything, it’s been the opportunity to see Lady Gaga perform the film’s signature song, “Shallow,” over and over again at every awards show on the circuit. The song, which won the Oscar for Best Original Song, has become a chameleon: In Gaga’s hands, “Shallow” can be a powerful pop anthem, a weirdo dance hit, or a low-key romantic duet. Taken together, the performances coalesce into a showcase for the many facets of Lady Gaga’s star image.

A couple of weeks ago at the Grammys, Gaga performed “Shallow” solo as a weirdo dance hit. She was wearing a rhinestone-encrusted white jumpsuit, and as she sang, she contorted herself into deliberately awkward shapes; Vox’s Todd VanDerWerff compared her to a “monstrous spider.” For the music industry’s annual honors, Gaga returned to her roots as a pop provocateur, with her performance coming straight out of the era of meat dresses and egg cocoons.

Serena Williams made not one but two appearances at the Oscars. The tennis pro presented A Star Is Born during the ceremony — and she’ll also be featured in a new Nike ad, “Dream Crazier,” that also includes gymnast Simone Biles, fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, the US women’s national soccer team, and other women athletes.

“If we show emotion, we’re called dramatic. If we want to play against men, we’re nuts. And if we dream of equal opportunity, we’re delusional,” Williams says in the ad. “When we stand for something, we’re unhinged. When we’re too good, there’s something wrong with us. And if we get angry, we’re hysterical, irrational, or just being crazy.”

The Favourite is a film about power, and the monarchy, and sex, and women. It is also a film about gout, and wigs — really, really deranged wigs — and caked-on makeup that definitely contains lead, and anachronistic blue cake, and also gout.

Which is to say that The Favourite is a very weird film, and so when Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry presented the award for Best Costume Design at this year’s Oscars, they spoofed it in equally weird outfits.

So yes — technically, the 2019 Oscars have no host. But after Queen and Adam Lambert opened the show, a trio of America’s favorite comedians showed up onstage to crack a few jokes about the show’s hostless state.

Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler came out to present the first award of the night, for Best Supporting Actress (the honor went to Regina King, for If Beale Street Could Talk), but they started with a series of quips about the host-free ceremony.

The 2019 Oscars began without a host delivering a monologue or tossing up comedy bits. They didn’t open with some comedian crooning a song specially written for the occasion.

No, they opened with a blast of rock music, as singer Adam Lambert (probably still best known for coming in second on American Idol) joined the surviving members of Queen to rip through some of the band’s greatest hits — including “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” — and celebrate not just Best Picture nominee Bohemian Rhapsody but also Queen itself, the band that forms the basis of the film.

Less than a year ago, Yalitza Aparicio was an unknown preschool teacher from a small town in Mexico. Now Aparicio, who was nominated for Best Actress for her role in Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, is a red-carpet regular whose style and unexpected rise to fame often make headlines. Vogue predicted that the 25-year-old actress is “about to emerge as a true fashion icon.” Fashionista called her a “style star to watch.” Her Golden Globes look, a silky baby pink Prada dress, got her a spot on a handful of best-dressed lists, including Glamour’s and the Cut’s. And tonight at the Oscars, Aparicio wore another pastel, princessy gown: a tulle seafoam green dress with a sparkly bodice by Rodarte.

Aparicio is undoubtedly this year’s breakout star. Her life story and red-carpet style are often used to frame her rise to fame as a real-life Cinderella story: A young indigenous Mexican woman gets plucked from obscurity by a world-renowned director, delivers an incredible performance, and then goes on to enjoy all the trappings of celebrity.

If there’s a time for best-dressed lists, it’s Oscar night. The Oscars are the red carpet all red carpets wish they could be, the one where the world’s most prestigious actors present themselves in the way they’ll be remembered decades from now. Unlike, say, a wedding — which in Hollywood, who knows how that’ll turn out? — the Academy Awards has a pretty high likelihood of becoming the actual best night of attendees’ lives. And they dress like it.

At this year’s Oscars, stars like Gemma Chan, Angela Bassett, and Linda Cardellini have been praised for their pink, poofy gowns, while Best Actress nominees Glenn Close and Melissa McCarthy have perfected the art of the elegant cape. These, along with other trends, from gender-bending fashion to ’70s glam rock–inspired looks, have dominated the red carpet.

If you’re tuning in for the 2019 Oscars and wondering why there’s no host this year, the answer is about as dramatic as you might expect.

There’s plenty of uncertainty around the 2019 ceremony — especially given that it boasts one of the most unpredictable Best Picture races in recent memory. But when the Hollywood glitterati assemble for the 91st Academy Awards, perhaps the biggest mystery of all won’t concern any of the awards.

After months of speculation, controversy, and movie-watching, the 2019 Oscars are about to arrive — without a host and with lots of potential for chaos. The 91st Academy Awards will air live from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday, February 24, at 8 pm Eastern/5 pm Pacific on ABC. The awards will also stream live on Oscars.com and the Academy’s Facebook page.

This year’s ceremony has existed beneath a cloud of controversy dating back to August 2018, when the Academy announced a number of changes aimed at buoying the telecast’s dipping audience numbers — such as introducing a category for “popular film” (an idea that was immediately panned and eventually postponed) and shortening the show to three hours.

The 2019 Oscars have finally arrived. Though the road to this point has been chaotic, the show must go on; the best films, performances, directing, cinematography, editing, and everything else having to do with moviemaking over the past year will be honored at the 91st annual Academy Awards on Sunday night.

The two most-nominated films are Roma, Alfonso Cuaròn’s moving, black-and-white tribute to the woman who helped raise him, and the wickedly divine The Favourite. Each film has 10 total nominations, and both are up for Best Picture.

I’ve spent much of Hollywood’s 2018-’19 awards season grousing about the quality of movies being nominated for various honors. (A not-just-my-opinion factoid to back me up: Bohemian Rhapsody is the Oscars Best Picture nominee with the second-lowest Metacritic score of the past 10 years; the lowest belongs to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a 2012 nominee you’ve already forgotten about.)

But I’ll give the season this: It certainly doesn’t lack for suspense.

2018 was an extraordinary year for documentaries, and that’s led to an especially terrific group of nominees in the Best Documentary category at the 2019 Oscars.

The candidates span a broad spectrum of ideas and techniques. There’s a movie about a mountain climber, and another about a group of young skaters in Rockford, Illinois. One film centers on Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; one tries to redefine how we imagine the black American experience; one is an unnerving portrait of radicalism.

Each year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominates between five and 10 movies to compete for the Oscars’ Best Picture trophy — its most prestigious award, and the one given out at the very end of the ceremony. There’s no strict definition for what makes a “best” picture; it’s easiest to think about it as an honor given to the film that Hollywood thinks best represents the year in movies.

So whichever film wins Best Picture essentially represents the American movie industry’s view of its role in driving culture, as well as its capabilities and aspirations, at a specific point in time.