Our Oscars Best-Dressed and Worst-Dressed Picks

"Safe" sums up red-carpet fashion this year, but a few still managed to perfectly dazzle and wildly disappoint.

Last night’s Oscars rounded up the usual bevy of stars, all ridiculously primped, polished and styled within an inch of their lives. It was a relatively tame night fashion-wise, with only a few great standouts. For the most part, everyone basically looked fine. But here, we don’t care about fine. We care about the decidedly amazing and the unquestionably awful. Here’s who tops our charts, and who fell flat.

OUR PICK FOR OSCARS BEST-DRESSED: Gwyneth Paltrow
Paltrow was pure statuesque perfection, in an on-trend white Tom Ford column gown topped off by a matching cape. The sleek outerwear was a wise choice: While everyone else shivered on the red carpet (poor Rooney Mara and Jessica Chastain looked like they were two minutes away from hypothermia), she was her usual calm, collected self.

OUR PICK FOR OSCARS WORST-DRESSED: Melissa Leo
Oh, Melissa. You’re an Oscar-winning actress. Get yourself another stylist, stat. Your dress looked like a black-sequined strapless dress pulled over a very fancy gold-sequined pajama top. And don’t think the limp black bow at your waist helped, either. The whole look was a colossal fail.

More Oscar dresses we loved:
Octavia Spencer looked incredible in a curve-hugging Tadashi Shoji dress.
Viola Davis was a happy spot of color in bright emerald Vera Wang (though we did have concerns about what seemed to be an immiment wardrobe malfunction).
Milla Jovovich was jaw-droppingly gorgeous in Elie Saab.
Tina Fey rocked peplum.

Michelle Williams was predictably pretty and demure-looking in a coral-red-orange Louis Vuitton gown.
Jessica Chastain—who has made some questionable choices lately (remember this ill-fitting yawn?)—finally scored a fashion hit with her black-and-gold brocade Alexander McQueen gown.
Rooney Mara was effortlessly fashion-forward in white Givenchy couture, though at first glance we thought the detailing on the bust made her boobs look like heavily lidded eyes. Still, we came around by the end of the night and ended up loving it.

And … Oscar dresses we didn’t love:
• Emma Stone’s bright red Giambattista Valli Louis dress looked great on her (hoorah for pale skin!), but we worry the bow was just a tad overwhelming. Even worse: It looked very much like the Balenciaga dress Nicole Kidman wore to the Oscars—in 2007.
• We desperately wanted to love Angelina Jolie’s Atelier Versace dress: The black velvet was so luxurious, and the volume was a welcome departure from her usual slinky gowns. But the dress had a thigh-high slit—and Angie was determined to let us see it. She posed awkwardly the entire night, thrusting her leg out in a way that looked mightily uncomfortable and ruined the look.

Shailene Woodley’s dowdy white nightgown did not have a slit, but it did have weird Princess Leia leanings.
Stacy Keibler’s gold Marchesa dress just looked cheesy.
Sandra Bullock looked like she just left her plastic surgeon’s table, but we love her and are still trying to convince ourselves that it was her slick ponytail tugging her eyes into a bizarre catlike shape.

Kristen Wiig was blahsville in a nude dress.
Melissa McCarthy was wearing a bad mother-of-the-bride look (though we initially thought we liked it, we’ve firmly decided that we actually loathe it).
Jonah Hill misstepped by wearing a black shirt instead of a white one. (Jonah: Classic is the way to go).
Missi Pyle, otherwise known as the Tallest Woman in the World, wore an eco-friendly gown that was a beautiful color, but looked like a chintzy prom dress.
Penelope Cruz looked a bit dated.
Anna Faris looked like an oil spill.
• Colin Firth’s wife just looked crazy.

In other news, Cameron Diaz needs to stop lifting weights, J. Lo needs to realize that she’s not actually a disco ball, and Ellie Kemper needs to trim her bangs. And we all need to hire professional lint-rollers like P. Diddy does.

More Oscars 2012: The disasters weren’t limited to fashion. Here are Philly Post contributor Aaron Mettey’s picks for the most cringe-worthy moments of Oscars night.