While the announcement itself provided a bunch of welcome confirmations and surprises, as well as the obligatory less-welcome ones, the most gratifying thing about the roughly 20-minute presentation of Oscar nominees was our again being able to hear in-the-moment gasps, whoops, and even, for one category, laughs with the lists of names and titles. Especially titles. But we'll get to that.

Blockbuster sequels to 13- and 36-year-old films nominated for Best Picture with no correlating nods for directing, acting, or writing, An independent release cited for directing, acting, and writing nods with no corresponding Best Picture acknowledgment. The most nods of the year – 11 in all – awarded to a foreign-language remake that debuted on Netflix. Welcome, folks, to my official, inevitably misguided attempts at predicting the January 24 Oscar nominations!

There's no doubt a smarter, meaner movie tucked inside director Gerard Johnstone's M3GAN, but the largely dopey, relatively tame one we're given is a lot of fun, too.

Over the course of three hours and nine minutes, there's one sensationally effective, entertaining, and even educational sequence in Damien Chazelle's Babylon – even if, like everything else in this wildly indulgent and obnoxious old-Hollywood saga, it, too, eventually gets royally effed up.