Oppenheimer dominates 96th Academy Awards, winning 7 Oscars

By Darren Lyn

HOUSTON, US (AA) - Oppenheimer blew up the 2024 Academy Awards in Hollywood on Sunday night, taking home seven Oscars, including the grand prize for Best Picture.

The film's star, Cillian Murphy, won the golden statuette for Best Actor and Robert Downey Jr. claimed the award for Best Supporting Actor. Christopher Nolan won the Oscar for Best Director and the movie also took home the hardware for Best Cinematography, Best Original Score and Best Film Editing.

The film follows physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists who spent years developing and designing the atomic bomb. Their work comes to fruition as they witness the world's first nuclear explosion on July 16, 1945, which forever changed the course of history.

"I dedicate it (Oscar) to the peacemakers everywhere," Murphy said in his acceptance speech.

Poor Things won four Academy Awards, including Emma Stone for Best Actress as well as Oscars for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design and Best Costume Design.

The dark comedy is about a childlike woman (Stone) in Victorian London who comes to life through a brain transplant and begins a journey of self-discovery.

"It's not about me. It's about a team that came together to make something greater than the sum of its parts, and that is the great thing about making movies," said Stone.

Da’Vine Joy Randolph won Best Supporting Actress for her role in the comedy-drama The Holdovers. She plays a school cafeteria head cook who just lost her son in the Vietnam War but has to help babysit a handful of students at a New England prep school with nowhere to go over Christmas break.

Oppenheimer led the 96th Academy Awards with 13 nominations, followed by Poor Things with 11, Killers of the Flower Moon with 10 and Barbie with eight.

Barbie only managed to win one Oscar for Best Original Song with the tune What Was I Made For? by Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas O'Connell.

Killers of the Flower Moon was shut out of the winner's circle, taking home no hardware after receiving plenty of hype with a star-studded cast that included Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.

Oppenheimer won every major guild and industry award leading up to the Oscars, including the Golden Globes, Critics Choice, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Screen Actors Guild, Directors Guild of America and Producers Guild of America, according to Variety. It is the first film to have a perfect season since Argo in 2012.

Anatomy of a Fall won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The story is about a woman suspected of her husband's murder with their blind son facing a moral dilemma as the sole witness.​​​​​​​

American Fiction was awarded the statuette for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film centers around a frustrated author who is tired of Black entertainment that relies on discriminatory tropes. In wanting to prove his point, he uses a pen name to write an outlandish Black book that uses offensive racial stereotypes that cater to white audiences and it accidentally shoots him to critical acclaim and notoriety.