On episode 282 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by AwardsWatch Associate Editor Sophia Ciminello as well as AwardsWatch contributors Dan Bayer, Jay Ledbetter, Josh Parham, and Karen Peterson to go back 10 years and take a look at the 88th Academy Awards, covering the films of 2015.

The team take a trip back to just a decade ago where the Oscars were at a moment of reflection as the #OscarsSoWhite movement rang loudly as the nominations didn’t fully show the diverse, talented artists that made the year in film so strong. Chris Rock (whose jokes this night would spark the later controversy for “The Slap” at the 2022 ceremony) hosted the ceremony and highlighted perfectly that the Academy had a long way to go to show the world that they can change and allow everyone the chance to be nominated and win an Oscar. For the telecast, it was a night dominated by Mad Max: Fury Road and The Revenant in the technical categories, Leonardo DiCaprio finally winning an Oscar, a cool, shocking upset in Best Visual Effects, and Spotlight winning the top prize, along with just Best Original Screenplay, making it the first film since The Greatest Show On Earth to win Best Picture while only winning one other award.

In their in-depth discussion, the AW team talked about the film year of 1980, briefly discuss talk about Spotlight as a Best Picture winner, do an extensive conversation over the below the line categories and nominees for the year, and then the new version of the AW Shoulda Woulda Coulda game, where instead of individual replacements, they must decide as a group who the nominees and winners should be in the top eight categories. The rules of the game state they can only replace two of the nominees that year from each category, except in Best Picture, where the group could replace up to four films to make up the final set of eight nominated films. Like past retrospective episodes, it was a fascinating, fun conversation including spirited debates, alliances, vote swinging, celebrating various movies, performances that aren’t normally talked about and more that we all hope you enjoy.

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This podcast runs 3h14m. We will be back next week for a review of the new A24 drama, Warfare, as well as talk about some of the best war films of the decade/century so far. Till then, let’s get into it.

Music: “Modern Fashion” from AShamaleuvmusic (intro), “B-3” from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro).