In this week’s Friday Know-It-All, Social Media Coordinator Mia wraps up the 2024 film awards season with a look back at some of this year’s biggest successes, snubs, and snafus.

Even though you just heard about some Academy Awards history from Ira last week, I’m here to recap this year’s award season! As Trivia Mafia’s resident film expert (i.e., the narrow winner of the past three Oscars pools and writer of many a too-difficult movie theme round), I’ve got plenty of opinions on the awards shows of the past few months. Even though the slate of 2024 movies wasn’t as strong as past years in my opinion, there was still plenty to talk about this year — from egregious snubs and obnoxious acceptance speeches to surprisingly good hosts.

Hostesses with the Mostesses

Women are making awards shows funny again! This year, we saw some absolutely fantastic female performers taking the stage to host some of this year’s shows, from old favorites to historic firsts.

SNL alum Aidy Bryant was back again to host this year’s Film Independent Spirit Awards, which I was super excited to see — last year’s Spirits was her first hosting gig ever, and she absolutely killed it. Her 2024 opening monologue poking fun at the typical roast comedy at awards shows is one of my favorite host bits I’ve ever seen, and she once again brought some fantastic comedy to the 2025 ceremony. For the uninitiated, the Spirits are basically the indie Oscars (or, as Bryant lovingly referred to them last year, “the bisexual Oscars”), which award films and television series made by independent filmmakers and studios on smaller budgets. This year, “Anora” took home the most awards, including Best Feature, with Sean Wang’s feature directorial debut “Dìdi” and Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain” following closely behind. My personal favorite film of 2025, “My Old Ass,” even managed to take home a win, with star Maisy Stella (making her feature debut) very deservedly taking Best Breakthrough Performance.

Also this year, comedian Nikki Glaser became the first woman to solo host the Golden Globes in its 82-year history. Which, first, yikes — Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have co-hosted a couple of times, and Sandra Oh co-hosted with Andy Samberg a few years ago, but taking this long to have a female solo host? Really? At any rate, Glaser not only made history in that sense, but also perhaps as one of the funniest hosts in the show’s history, which was especially needed for the Globes to bounce back after Jo Koy’s disastrously unfunny and misogynistic monologues last year. She did an excellent job of toeing the line of making some edgy jokes while also just delivering some very tight comedy, even fitting in a self-aware but topical musical bit about “Wicked” and “Conclave” that I still quote, weeks later.

Actor Kristen Bell stepped up to host this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, which I would argue are even more significant and meaningful than the Oscars, since the Actors are peer-voted. It wasn’t her first rodeo, having hosted the ceremony back in 2018, but she somehow managed to top her own performance this year. The “Frozen” star opened the night with what may be my favorite awards show monologue ever, a parody of her character Anna’s song “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” (here instead “Do You Want to Be an Actor?”) that featured a highlight montage of some of the nominees’ first-ever roles. It’s a great example of how different styles of hosting can all be equally as meaningful — even though it can work out great, you don’t have to be doing roast comedy to make a good impression as a host! You can actually be earnest and do something heartfelt that makes people feel good and be just as effective! Imagine that.

Even though the women hosting this year’s shows killed it, I do also have to offer an honorable mention to David Tennant’s second BAFTAs. Even though I’ve not watched him in much since “Doctor Who,” he’s one of my parents’ favorite actors, and for good reason — his comedic timing and self-awareness is impeccable, and of course he had to lean into his Scottish heritage with a rousing rendition of The Proclaimers’ “500 Miles,” famously his favorite song.

I Don’t Want No Snubs…

As is inevitable during any awards season, there are plenty of fantastic films and performances that don’t end up getting the recognition they deserve. Last year, for example, even though A24 really beefed it with the distribution, I will die on the hill that Zac Efron should’ve gotten a Best Actor nomination for “The Iron Claw.” And where were Celine Song and Greta Lee’s respective Best Director and Best Actress nominations for “Past Lives”? Anyway.

Perhaps one of the most notable films to be completely shut out from this year’s Academy Awards was Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers.” Even though I’ve never been a huge Luca fan, I was, like most of America, completely enamored with the film: the performances from Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist were all fantastic, the cinematography was genuinely inspired, and the screenplay was honestly pretty solid, too. However, its real stand-out was its earworm-y techno score composed by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The pair had previously worked with Guadagnino on the score for this 2022 cannibal romance “Bones and All,” and he approached them to score “Challengers” by simply asking, “Do you want to be on my next film? It's going to be super sexy.” Despite winning several dozen industry awards and honors, including the literal Golden Globe for Best Score, the soundtrack didn’t even get so much as a nomination at this year’s Oscars, with the eventual winner being “The Brutalist.”

Also really shocking, maybe just to me personally, was Greg Kwedar’s “Sing Sing” getting locked out of a Best Picture nomination. Based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison, the film also starred actual formerly incarcerated actors from the program playing fictionalized versions of themselves. It also made headlines for its pay structure, with every single person on the cast and crew agreeing to the same day rate in exchange for a certain amount of equity in the film. It was one of the best films of the year, but again, A24 really botched the distribution, with the film never even hitting wide release in some markets. Thankfully, it still received a few nominations at this year’s Oscars, including Best Actor for star Colman Domingo (which he was robbed of, but we’ll get to that a little later), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Song.

Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech!

Let’s get it out of the way: with dozens of speeches every awards season, there are always some duds. This year was no exception, from Adrian Brody throwing his gum at his date, refusing to be played off, and somehow producing the longest acceptance speech in the history of the Academy Awards, speaking for five minutes and 37 seconds; to “Emilia Pérez” soundtrack co-writer Camille awkwardly breaking into song mid-speech (and, you know, failing to acknowledge anybody in the transgender community). But we’ve also seen some incredibly sincere and heartfelt acceptance speeches at the various awards shows in the past few years. From the likes of Ke Huy Quan, Bong Joon Ho, Lupita Nyong’o, and plenty of others, most awardees do know how to graciously and non-obnoxiously accept an award.

Even this year, we had a couple of really great ones, with my personal favorites coming from some of our SAG and Golden Globes acting winners. Timothée Chalamet, winning the Actor for his portrayal of Bob Dylan in the biopic “A Complete Unknown” (notably marking his first major win after almost a decade of nominations), gave an impassioned speech about his pursuit of greatness as a performer. It was honestly a breath of fresh air in the sea of winners being overly humble and insisting they didn’t deserve the recognition. Chalamet also had a fantastic showing during his Oscar campaign this year in general, between his interviews with the likes of Brittany Broski and Nardwaur and becoming the first non-musician this century to do double-duty on SNL.

Fellow first-time winner Demi Moore, who led the Coralie Fargeat body horror flick “The Substance,” took home the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy and told a heartfelt story about her journey in the industry and the impact of winning her first acting award in her 45 years of working. Many fans pointed out the significance of Moore’s win at 62 in relation to the film itself, which features her character being pushed out of her job as a performer for being too old, in favor of a shinier, younger counterpart. Personally, I just saw “Ghost” for the first time recently and I think Moore deserves all of the career awards for that performance alone, so I was pleased to finally see her take home some wins this year.

In conclusion — overall, a somewhat interesting season, although nothing’s ever going to beat the rush of watching “Everything Everywhere All At Once” take home so many awards in 2023. There have already been some pretty fascinating flicks out this year — I’m headed out to see Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” this weekend, and, against all odds, I actually loved Osgood Perkins’ newest film, “The Monkey.” And hey, there’s plenty of opportunity for next year’s shows to be just as, if not more, interesting than this year’s.