Not since “Slumdog Millionaire” won eight Oscars in 2009 has a film blitzed the Academy Awards like “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which won seven Oscars, including three of the four acting prizes along with best picture, director and original screenplay. Though only Showtime subscribers can stream the film currently, it’s available to buy on other digital platforms. But with the exception of “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which is still only in theaters, and the live-action short winner “An Irish Goodbye,” all of the night’s honorees are accessible through streaming services, digital outlets or both, with Netflix earning a particularly good haul with the war drama “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the stop-motion animated feature “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” and the documentary short “The Elephant Whisperers.” Here’s a complete rundown of winners that are only a click away:
‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’
Won for: Best picture, director, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress, original screenplay, editing.
How to watch: Stream it on Showtime. Buy it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.
As the beaten-down, put-upon proprietor of a failing laundromat (the Hong Kong legend Michelle Yeoh) faces the hassles of a Chinese New Year party for her visiting father and a hostile audit from an I.R.S. agent (Jamie Lee Curtis), she discovers that the multiverse has bigger plans for her. Nothing is off the table in this absurdist sci-fi comedy/drama by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, a.k.a. Daniels (“Swiss Army Man”), who cast Yeoh as a woman who’s surprised to discover that only she has the power to keep an interdimensional rupture from consuming the world. Her mission is crazier than it sounds, but affecting, too, in its insights on family and the immigrant experience in America.
‘All Quiet on the Western Front’
Won for: Best international feature, cinematography, production design, score.
How to watch: Stream it on Netflix.
The year after Erich Maria Remarque’s novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” was published in 1929, Lewis Milestone turned it into one of cinema’s most enduring bleak antiwar films, painting the German war effort as a hellish abattoir for idealist young men. This Netflix adaptation, shot in German by the director Edward Berger, adds a modern pictorial slickness to the imagery but spares none of the brutality. It also balances the on-the-ground experience of an enlistee (Felix Kammerer) in the trenches with cease-fire negotiations between a German armistice chair (Daniel Brühl) and his French counterpart. One story line greatly impacts the other.
‘The Whale’
Won for: Best actor, makeup and hairstyling.
How to watch: Buy it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.
More on the 95th Academy Awards
- A24’s Triumphant Night: The art-house studio behind “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “The Whale” became the first studio in the history of the Oscars to capture the top six awards in the same year.
- Normalcy Reigns: After breathing a sigh of relief that the night went smoothly, our co-chief film critics discussed the academy’s carefully staged return to (fingers crossed?) a new normal.
- Oscar Fashion: Rihanna’s belly, Florence Pugh’s shorts and Cate Blanchett’s archival velvet brought new relevance to awards show dressing, our fashion critic says.
- After-Parties: Take a look inside the Governor’s Ball and Vanity Fair’s Oscar party, where the stars and filmmakers celebrated with moguls, musicians and models.
The protagonists of all of Darren Aronofsky’s films, from the hallucinating number theorist in “Pi” to the ballerinas in “Black Swan” to the biblical shepherd of “Noah,” are unified by a shared crucible of the body and mind. As Charlie, a 600-pound shut-in with congestive heart failure in “The Whale,” Brendan Fraser plays another Aronofsky sufferer, albeit one whose self-destructive habits are mitigated by an earnest desire for connection. Behind all those thick prosthetics, Fraser’s soft voice and pleading eyes bring unexpected warmth to a bleak scenario, as Charlie absorbs the frustrations of the friend (Hong Chau) who looks after him and the estranged daughter (Sadie Sink) he seeks to mollify.
The intermingling of fantastical creatures and events with dark historical backdrops has been a feature of Guillermo del Toro films like “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Devil’s Backbone,” and the surprising World War II context is only one of the standout elements in his take on the Pinocchio myth. Another is his use of stop-motion techniques to bring the herky-jerky young puppet to life, as Geppetto’s magical creation falls in with a traveling carnival and makes his way through the perilous landscape of fascist Italy, including an audience with Mussolini himself. What emerges is a warning about children raised in times when their innocence and vulnerability is abused.
‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’
Won for: Best costume design.
How to watch: Stream it on Disney+. Rent or buy it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.
The death of Chadwick Boseman left the Black Panther franchise without a Black Panther, which makes grief a central theme of “Wakanda Forever” and forces the co-writer and director Ryan Coogler to consider another way forward, mostly through the women of this besieged, vibranium-rich nation. Into this power vacuum steps Angela Bassett as T’Challa’s mother, Queen Ramonda, who assumes her leadership role with a heavy heart, and his sister, Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright), who struggles to step up. Together, they square off against a threat under the sea, as Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), the demigod king of the aquatic kingdom Talokan, acts out on his resentment of the surface world.
‘Women Talking’
Won for: Best adapted screenplay.
How to watch: Rent or buy it on Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.
With an ensemble cast led by Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey and Frances McDormand, Sarah Polley’s lacerating drama takes place in an isolated religious community that seems both centuries older and urgently up-to-date. After it’s discovered that some men have been using animal tranquilizers to sedate and rape women and girls, the other men of the colony head to the city to oversee the bail hearing, leaving the remaining women alone to discuss their options. The decisions they have to make — on justice, on forgiveness, on agency and on their own futures — lead at times to solidarity and at others to wounding divisions of opinion.
Won for: Best documentary feature.
How to watch: Stream it on HBO Max.
Premiering at Sundance the month before Russia invaded Ukraine, this documentary investigation into the poisoning of a Vladimir Putin critic has benefited from the magnified news value, but it’s surprisingly frisky entertainment. The opposition leader at its center, Aleksei A. Navalny, has been courageously stalwart in his attacks on the Kremlin, but he flashes movie-star charisma, too, in turning Daniel Roher’s film into a political thriller laced with wit. A scene where Navalny impersonates a Russian official during a call to one of his suspected assassins is only the most prominent of several jaw-droppers.
‘RRR’
Won for: Best original song.
How to watch: Stream it on Netflix.
This Telugu sensation from the director S.S. Rajamouli proved to be a rare crossover event for Indian cinema in America, because of the abundance of you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it action and musical set pieces sprinkled liberally over its three-plus-hour running time. Set in 1920s India before independence, “RRR” brings two revolutionary heroes together. The enslavement by British rulers of a girl from the Gond tribe calls a tribal warrior (N.T. Rama Rao Jr.) into action and ultimately causes his adversary, a police officer (Ram Charan), to turn on his superiors. Their partnership includes a tag-team battle against various wild animals and a dance-off to the infectious song “Naatu Naatu.”
‘Top Gun: Maverick’
It didn’t seem likely that Tom Cruise would make a “Top Gun” sequel more than three decades after the original, and it seemed even less likely that it would be nominated for multiple Academy Awards, but “Top Gun: Maverick” is a summer blockbuster of undeniable craft. Cruise reprises his role as a hot shot fighter pilot, but now he returns to an elite Navy training school as an instructor, preparing a new generation of fliers for a dangerous run at a uranium enrichment facility. Cruise’s age gives the character an unfamiliar gravitas, but the old man still feels the need for speed.
‘The Elephant Whisperers’
Won for: Best documentary short.
How to watch: Stream it on Netflix.
There’s probably no shorter path to the tear ducts than an orphaned baby elephant, but Kartiki Gonsalves’s documentary, about an Indigenous couple in South India who discovers and cares for an abandoned and badly injured elephant, works hard to earn its emotions. Filmed in the lushness of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, “The Elephant Whisperers” is loaded with day-to-day observational details, as the couple feeds, cleans and socializes the lovable Raghu in the hope that the animal can be returned to the wild. The reward for their troubles proves achingly bittersweet.
‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’
Won for: Best animated short.
How to watch: Stream it on Apple TV+.
In adapting his own 2019 picture book to the screen, and directing it with Peter Baynton, Charlie Mackesy aims for the gentle woodland vibe of A.A. Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh” stories, though here the camaraderie of forest friends is unbroken by a Tigger-like chaos agent. Mackesy’s simple scenario starts with a little boy lost who persuades a mole to help him find his way home. The one major threat to their mission is a nasty, aggressive little fox that follows its predatory instincts until an act of kindness changes his thinking. There’s more than a few morals to this story, which includes voice work by Tom Hollander, Idris Elba and Gabriel Byrne.
