Oscars 2019 Winners: 5 Things The Academy Got Wrong (& 5 They Got Right)

1. Green Book Wins Original Screenplay & Best Picture

Green Book's win in Best Original Screenplay was an early warning that it might be winning at the end of the night too, since it was largely expected The Favourite was going to take the prize there.

That would've been more richly deserved: Green Book's biggest strength is the performances of Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali, with the latter in particular elevating what he's given to work with. The Favourite's performances are superb too, but you can really feel the screenplay when you watch it, from the dialogue to the sheer invention to the layered reveals. It drips off the page and onto the screen, which should've allowed it to take the Screenplay prize over Green Book.

It gets worse in Best Picture, where it was a battle between Green Book and Roma. The former feels like a movie from 30-years-ago (there's a reason for all those Driving Miss Daisy comparisons). It has a charm, but in a year with so many powerful films, it isn't good enough. Roma, on the other hand, is a beautiful, cinematic masterpiece from one of the modern greats. Both epic and intimate, it's a stunning achievement that deserved to be recognised above all the other Best Picture nominees. But, since it was Netflix, that would've been the Academy embracing the future. Green Book is very much going back to the past.