Nothing But the Best: "The Shape of Water" (2017)

Scene from The Shape of Water

Welcome to the series Nothing But the Best in which I chronicle all of the Academy Award Best Picture winners as they celebrate their anniversaries. Instead of going in chronological order, this series will be presented on each film's anniversary and will feature personal opinions as well as facts regarding its legacy and behind the scenes information. The goal is to create an in depth essay for each film while looking not only how the medium progressed, but how the film is integral to pop culture. In some cases, it will be easy. Others not so much. Without further ado, let's start the show.

"The Shape of Water" and the Three Forms of Loneliness

Scene from The Shape of Water

*Note: Spoilers for The Shape of Water

It is a moment that comes between two phases of Eliza (Sally Hawkins) and Amphibian Man's (Doug Jones) relationship. They have escaped the lab and are in their last passionate moments together before Amphibian Man returns to the sea, possibly without the requited love of Eliza. She is mute, only ever able to communicate through a mix of sign language, eggs, and Benny Goodman records. Yet it's in a fantasy moment that she gets her only spoken lines of the film. As the scene trades a dumpy apartment with a leaky room for a black-and-white set out of a musical set, she sings "You'll never know how much I love you." It's a moment where repression breaks through, and moves the subtle themes of the film to the forefront. The Shape of Water is more than a film about loving someone different, it's about understanding loneliness when you don't have love readily available. It's may be a story that's been trivialized as the "woman who loves a fish" story, but it's so much more. It's a look at how loneliness can be used for good as well as bad. 

Review: "The Shape of Water" Romanticizes Horror with Tenderness and Awe

Scene from The Shape of Water

Monsters are scary. It's a simple rule of life that all narrative forms have accepted as true. So why are we fascinated by them then? In director Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, he updates the classic fairy tale structure in order to answer that question, using Amphibian Man (Doug Jones) as an allegory for interracial love. He presupposes that monsters are misunderstood, choosing to borrow an ethos dating back to James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein. With lavish productions and an amazing performance by Sally Hawkins as Eliza, del Toro has created a film that not only humanizes monster movies, but finds the tender heart and longing that make them not too different from you or I. It's a powerful film, and one that should appeal to fans of monster movies that do more than horrify. This one sympathizes so perfectly that it becomes less of a horror movie and more of a supernatural Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. It may be simple at heart, but it only adds to the profundity of its text. 

Birthday Take: Sally Hawkins in "Blue Jasmine" (2013)

Sally Hawkins in Blue Jasmine

Welcome to The Birthday Take, a column dedicated to celebrating Oscar nominees and winners' birthdays by paying tribute to the work that got them noticed. This isn't meant to be an exhaustive retrospective, but more of a highlight of one nominated work that makes them noteworthy. The column will run whenever there is a birthday and will hopefully give a dense exploration of the finest performances and techniques applied to film. So please join me as we blow out the candles and dig into the delicious substance.

A Closer Look at the Best Supporting Actress Nominees

Continuing this year's sense of ragtag nominees in the supporting categories is the Best Supporting Actress category. Where the lead categories feel like competitive locks with numerous outcomes, this category feels less assured. It isn't that any of their roles are necessarily lackluster, but more that all of them, save for Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle) come to this film without any strong bias backing them. With three of them being first time nominees, it makes the race a little more interesting and raises curiosity on if they can transcend the rookie chances and beat the veterans.

Review: "Blue Jasmine" is One of the Most Creatively Twisted Woody Allen Film in Years

Cate Blanchett

In Annie Hall, Woody Allen famously said about people in Hollywood: "They don't throw their garbage away, they turn it into television shows." In a sense, the director's career has almost seemed to be a huge tirade against the west coast lifestyle. His films were always famously shot in New York or later on Europe. With the announcement that his latest film Blue Jasmine would be taking place on the coast he had so long chosen to ignore, it almost seemed like a resurgence for the American filmmaker to make something equivalent to the west coast as his films like Manhattan did for the east. In a way, it does live up to Allen's vision as predicted in Annie Hall. It is by no means a flattering vision.

Will "Blue Jasmine" Spice Up the Oscar Race?

Cate Blanchett

*I would just like to say thank you to everyone who has been reading my work. As of this piece, I have published 100 entries. Quite a milestone and I hope to do a lot more as the months drag on.


For most cinephiles, the gift of a Woody Allen movie every year comes as a mixed bag. Sometimes it produces gems, and others end up awkwardly. That is the pain of releasing a film annually, though it has resulted in some exciting prospects, including Vicky Christina Barcelona and Midnight in Paris. With Allen's latest film, Blue Jasmine, he tackles a new place and a new coast: San Francisco. With an eclectic cast and a new location, is it possible for the savant to strike inspiration once again from someplace new?