Guillermo Del Toro’s romantic fantasy The Shape Of Water has been nominated for 13 Academy Awards, making it the ostensible front-runner for the 90th annual Oscars.
But Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – which took major prizes at the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards earlier this month – is a clear competitor, up for seven nominations in six of the same categories.
Both films are in contention for best picture, original screenplay, film editing, production design, original score, actress (Sally Hawkins/Frances McDormand) and supporting actor – where Shape’s Richard Jenkins is up against two Billboards stars, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell. The Shape Of Water is also nominated for director, cinematography, costume design, production design, sound mixing, sound editing and supporting actress (Octavia Spencer).
The nominations were announced by actors Andy Serkis and Tiffany Haddish at the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences’s traditional early-morning ceremony in Los Angeles. And, as is also traditional, the industry immediately began buzzing about who made the cut, and who didn’t.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was seeing Christopher Plummer nominated for best supporting actor for his performance as Not Kevin Spacey in Ridley Scott’s All The Money In The World. It’s the film’s sole nomination, and as such it feels like a reward for Plummer’s participation in Scott’s daring decision to reshoot the role weeks before the film’s scheduled release after Spacey was accused of sexual misconduct.
(No disrespect to Plummer, who at 88 is now the oldest Oscar nominee in history, but the role of J. Paul Getty is not exactly a rip-snorter, and I suspect the Academy would have rewarded anyone who pulled this off with a slot on the ballot. It’s their version of a medal for good soldiering.)
Jordan Peele’s politically charged horror movie Get Out is up for four major awards, with Peele in the mix for director and original screenplay, star Daniel Kaluuya nominated for best actor and the film itself in contention for best picture.
Greta Gerwig’s indie darling Lady Bird made a strong showing with five major nominations: it’s up for picture, actors Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf are up for actress and supporting actress, and writer/director Gerwig is nominated for both original screenplay and director. Gerwig is only the fifth woman to ever be nominated for best director, and only one woman has ever won the award: Kathryn Bigelow, for The Hurt Locker.
Mudbound’s Rachel Morrison is the first woman ever to be nominated for best cinematography that film, a Netflix production that screened at TIFF, is also nominated for best supporting actress (Mary J. Blige), best adapted screenplay and best original song. (Morrison’s odds are long, as she’s up against 14-time nominee Roger Deakins, nominated this year for the manicured visuals of Blade Runner 2049, as well as Darkest Hour’s Bruno Delbonnel, The Shape Of Water’s Dan Laustsen and Dunkirk’s Hoyte van Hoytema.
Dunkirk and Darkest Hour continued their season-long mirroring act, scoring seven and six nominations, respectively. Both films are up for picture, cinematography and production design, with Dunkirk scoring nominations for film editing, original score, sound editing and director Christopher Nolan, and Darkest Hour for costume design, makeup and hairstyling, and actor Gary Oldman.
Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson’s artful study of toxic romance, scored six nominations including picture, director, costume design, original score, supporting actress for Lesley Manville and actor for Daniel Day-Lewis. If Day-Lewis wins, it’ll be his fourth best actor win – breaking his own record. And given that Phantom Thread is supposedly his final screen performance, I imagine the Academy will be awfully tempted to send him off in style.
(On the other hand, if Denzel Washington wins for Roman J. Israel, Esq, he’d tie Day-Lewis’s current record of three wins – and with an equally fussy performance, at that.)
The snubs
Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg’s The Post, which was expected to be a major contender, was nominated in just two categories: Meryl Streep is up for best actress, and the film snagged one of the year’s nine best picture slots.
Craig Gillespie’s sarcastic biopic I, Tonya, which had been touted as a dark-horse contender for best picture, had to settle for acting nominations for Margot Robbie (lead) and Alison Janney (supporting), as well as a film editing nod. (It didn’t even place for costume design or makeup and hairstyling, which seemed like locks.) Another dark horse, James Franco’s film of The Disaster Artist, rated a single adapted screenplay nomination, leaving Franco out as both actor and director.
The period love story Call Me By Your Name felt similarly short-changed: even though it landed nominations for picture, adapted screenplay, original song and actor Timothée Chalamet, the lack of consideration for director Luca Guadagnino and supporting actors Armie Hammer and Michael Stuhlbarg – and the total absence of technical nominations for the lushly designed film – suggests the Academy doesn’t see the film as a proper contender. That said, Stuhlbarg can go to the ceremony with his head held high, as he’s also in The Post and The Shape Of Water, making him the only actor to appear in three best picture nominees.
And while I suspect no one’s truly surprised Gal Gadot wasn’t nominated for best actress for her franchise-saving interpretation of Wonder Woman – a top-tier nod for a superhero movie still seems beyond the Academy’s ken, though the adapted screenplay nomination for Logan is encouraging – I thought director Patty Jenkins might have had an outside chance, since Oscar loves an underdog story. (Jenkins, who directed Charlize Theron to an Oscar in 2003’s Monster, had gone more than a decade without making a feature.)
I was also dismayed to see Angela Robinson’s clever, kinky Professor Marston And The Wonder Women go unrewarded – in a perfect world, both Robinson’s screenplay and Rebecca Hall’s terrific performance as frustrated academic Elizabeth Marston would have been recognized at the very least.
Pleasant surprises
I was delighted to see Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon snag an original screenplay nomination for their autobiographical comedy The Big Sick, and to see Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver land nominations for sound editing, sound mixing and film editing. I did not expect either film to make the cut – The Big Sick felt too modest and Baby Driver too experimental, and also weighed down somewhat by its own Kevin Spacey associations. And as far as I can determine, the feature documentary nomination for Yance Ford’s Strong Island marks the first time a trans filmmaker has been up for an Oscar.
Speaking of documentaries, it was great to see Steve James’s Abacus: Small Enough To Jail score a feature doc slot, though I’d put money on Agnès Varda and JR’s Faces Places taking the prize – its playful spirit will make it stand out among the otherwise serious pack – and for Laura Checkoway’s Edith+Eddie to make the cut in documentary shorts. I’ve been a booster of both films – both products of James’s Kartemquin Films production company – since their debuts at TIFF in 2016 and Hot Docs in 2017, respectively, and it’s great to see them get a little recognition now.
In terms of nominees with local connections, we weren’t totally surprised that Toronto-produced animated film The Breadwinner scored a nomination in the best animated feature film category. Based on Canadian author Deborah Ellis’s book, the movie is a lot grittier than the other animated contenders – Pixar’s Coco, The Boss Baby, Ferdinand, the beautiful Loving Vincent – and was rightfully considered a front runner.
The 90th annual Academy Awards will be presented in Los Angeles on March 4.
