"Spotlight" Beats "The Revenant" To Best Picture; "Mad Max: Fury Road" Scores Six At 2016 Oscars

Spotlight has taken the top prize at the 88th Academy Awards, defeating the favourite heading into the ceremony: The Revenant.

The Best Picture victor, which details the Boston Globe’s investigation into the Catholic Church molestation scandal, also nabbed Best Original Screenplay for its director Tom McCarthy and his co-writer Josh Singer.

The Revenant hardly went home empty handed though, with director Alejandro González Iñárritu collecting his second consecutive Best Director prize, after scoring the accolade last year for Birdman.

Star Leonardo DiCaprio also brought to an end his seeming Oscar curse, earning Best Actor, following four prior failed shots at Oscar glory.

The Revenant’s cinematographer, Emmanuel ‘Chivo’ Lubezki, made history by winning in his category for the third consecutive time.

Mad Max: Fury Road, however, stole the rest of The Revenant’s thunder by taking home six statuettes of its own, all shiny and chrome. The George Miller-directed feature becomes the most awarded Aussie film in history at the Oscars, thanks to wins for Film Editing, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Costume Design, and Production Design.

The Big Short, thought to be another major contender for Best Picture, had to make do with the Best Adapted Screenplay prize, handed to Adam McKay and Charles Randolph (working off Michael Lewis’ book).

Up-and-comers Brie Larson (Room) and Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl) picked up Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress respectively, while theatre veteran Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) bested the category favourite Sylvester Stallone (Creed) for Best Supporting Actor.

Sam Smith also caused an upset by winning Best Song for his Bond theme, “The Writing’s On The Wall”.

Inside Out was named Best Animated Feature and Son of Saul collected Best Foreign Language Film, while Amy earned Best Documentary, Feature.

Legendary composer Ennio Morricone, DiCaprio-style, broke his Oscar curse after being recognised for his Original Score to The Hateful Eight. It marks his first win in that category, despite his lengthy and iconic career.

In one of the evening’s biggest surprises, the $15 million indie Ex Machina trumped Best Picture nominees The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road and The Martian, not to mention something called Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, to claim Best Visual Effects.

Check out the full list of winners here.

The ceremony was hosted by Chris Rock, who addressed the #OscarsSoWhite controversy in beautiful, blistering fashion during his opening monologue, to a sometimes-uncomfortable (largely white) audience.

After making it the centerpiece of his first stage appearance, he periodically returned to share several vignettes that amusingly poked fun at the dearth of black nominees in 2016, without diminishing the seriousness of the matter.

This clip is perhaps the funniest and most empathetic of the lot.

Kevin Hart, Sacha Baron Cohen (in character as Ali G) and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs all commented on the diversity issue during the ceremony, contributing to the show's overall sense that the Academy's missteps had indeed lessened the sheen of the awards.

There is much ground to recover in 2017; hopefully the steps taken by the Academy to improve diversity will make membership more inclusive and reflective of the modern film scene, and return esteem back to the Oscars.

Photo: ABC.