Oscar updates & fish people

The nominations are in! They got announced at 5AM on Tuesday and it turned out pretty much how I expected. There were 9 films that got best picture nominations: ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’, ‘The Shape Of Water’, ‘The Post’, ‘Phantom Thread’, ‘Lady Bird’, ‘Get Out’, ‘Dunkirk’, ‘Darkest Hour’, and ‘Call Me By Your Name’. The only ones I haven’t seen out of that bunch are: ‘Call Me By Your Name’, ‘Darkest Hour’, and ‘Phantom Thread’.

Greta Gerwig got the nomination for Best Director for ‘Lady Bird’! I was so happy to see an end to the 8-year streak of only men nominees for that category. I REALLY hope she wins! I was also pleasantly surprised at all the nominations that ‘Get Out’ received. In total, it got 4 nominations but they were all the major ones. You gotta keep in mind that this movie came out in February of last year! It is very rare that a movie that got released that long ago would get a nomination. I thought it was a really great film with a totally original story that was very relevant to what is going on in the world right now with culture appropriation. That movie definitely made an impact on me and I’m glad to see Daniel Kaluuya get the Best Actor nomination. It’s nice to not see just a sea of white contenders for once. Jordan Peele also got a nomination which was deserved but I still think Greta needs to win in that category. Once we get closer to the Oscars and I watch more of these films I will post up my picks for each category but for now I have some catching up to do and more reviews to write.

It’s been a crazy busy week for me at work and I haven’t gone to the theaters since ‘The Post’ but I managed to get my hands on a few of the screeners. This week I watched: ‘Wind River’, ‘Dunkirk’, ‘Coco’, and ‘The Shape of Water’. All were good but I especially liked ‘Wind River’ and ‘Coco’. For this post, I’m going to focus on ‘The Shape Of Water’ since it got the most nominations out of all of them with a grand total of 13! I’m also going to write about ‘Wind River’ because it really made an impact on me and I am a little upset it didn’t get any Oscar nominations.

The Shape Of Water (RT 92%)

Cut to the chase: Taking place in a remote town during the Cold War era, this film is a weird love story about a mute woman and a fish person told in a way that only Guillermo del Toro can.

Let me start out by saying that I went into this with totally low expectations. Everything about this movie looked really strange and I would not have guessed that it would get as much Oscar attention as it did. After the announcement on Tuesday I was like “ok I guess I have to watch it now and see what all the hubbub is about”. It was a good film, but not 13 nominations good… especially when you compare it to all the other great films that came out last year. It was definitely original and the production design and sound were great but overall it didn’t really make too much of an impact on me. I thought it was an interesting choice to nominate Sally Hawkins for best actress as she played a mute woman and didn’t talk once during the whole movie. I know acting without talking must be tough to do but when you compare it to the performance Margot Robbie gave in ‘I, Tonya’ it doesn’t even compare.

The story revolves around Sally Hawkins who is a mute since birth and lives next door to her gay best friend played by Richard Jenkins. It’s unclear what their relationship is or how they met… I wish we would’ve gotten some more backstory on that but I guess it wasn’t really needed. Another thing that was a bit puzzling was all the scenes of her masturbating in the bathtub while timing herself with an egg timer… I guess that was to show that she was lonely and wanted a man in her life? But what’s with the egg timer?? I don’t know but it was fuckin weird and never got explained. Anyways, Hawkins works at a top-secret research facility as a cleaner alongside her friend Octavia Spencer and one day as they are cleaning one of the corridors they come across a creature being held captive. Hawkins and the creature bond since they both cannot speak and she starts coming to visit him with eggs and a record player. They soon form a relationship but when things get complicated she has to find a way to rescue him from captivity.

Guillermo del Toro is famous for directing out of the box films and I did think this was very original and interesting to watch but I don’t think it lived up to all the hype it is getting.

Wind River (RT 87%)

Cut to the chase: It’s a chilling murder mystery thriller that takes place on a remote Indian reservation in the north.

I guess this movie came out back in August of 2017 but I don’t remember hearing anything about it. The film starts out with Jeremy Renner as a local game tracker hunting down some wolves who have been killing the livestock in the area. It is clear that he is going thru a divorce as he picks his son up at his ex’s house to take him to visit with her parents on the reservation. There are hints here and there that Renner and his ex also had a daughter together that had died not too long back and are still recovering from the tragedy.

While on one of his hunts he comes across a dead woman in the snow who had appeared to be raped, beaten and had gnarly frost-bitten toes due to her lack of shoes. She was found miles away from civilization and appeared to have ran all the way there barefoot. The film is all about finding out what happened to her, where she was running from and who is responsible. This was such a good movie but it was also tough to watch at parts and I had a lot of feelings that stuck with me after. I enjoy watching films that stick with me well after the credits have rolled. If I am still thinking about it days later, that is usually a sign of a really great movie. I am a little upset that it got completely overlooked and didn’t even receive a single nomination. Had I watched this last year it definitely would’ve made my top 10. I loved it thru and thru and highly recommend watching it if you are into thrillers. Just a forewarning, there is a rape scene that is pretty hard to watch, or at least it was for me.

Thanks for reading, hope everyone has a great weekend! I guess this is becoming a weekly thing, we’ll see how long I can make that last…