Every Best Picture Nominee of the 2010's Ranked: #40-44

Scene from The King's Speech (2010)

As 2019 reached its end, another decade of cinema had passed. It's amazing to think about how things have evolved since 2010 when the biggest controversies were about recognizing genre movies. Things look different now, especially as genre films like The Shape of Water and Parasite are winning Best Picture and the voting body looks incredibly different with each passing year. With this period in the books, it feels like a good time to celebrate their accomplishments by ranking all 88 titles nominated for Best Picture from worst to best with the goal of seeing which films are more likely to stand the test of time. Join me every Saturday and Sunday as I count them down, five at a time. It's going to be a fun summer looking back on what was, especially as we prepare for the decade ahead and an even more interesting diversity that we haven't even begun to think of.

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.

A Wrap-Up of This Year's Oscars Season

The winners of this year's acting categories

This is it for another awards season. It has been a fun past 13 months (since technically Get Out started the prestige talk early), and it only feels right to look back on the highs and lows of this season, specifically as it relates to the Oscars ceremony. To me, the biggest issue with the ceremony is that it was both an exciting year, but also one of rather predictable courses. All of the acting categories went to the blazing front runners who had been winning awards since December. However, it was still a period of change the likes of which The Academy is still surprising us with. In a conventional year, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri would've won Best Picture. Instead, it went to the first monster movie to win Best Picture: The Shape of Water. Say what you will, but this was one of the best Oscar seasons in recent years.

How'd I Do? A Look Back at My Oscar Predictions

Sam Rockwell

With The Academy Awards now in the books, it's time to look back at awards season. One of the best parts is looking at how well the predictions went. For me, it was a fairly obvious year - even if it overall wasn't my strongest year. But there's no use beating around the bush. The following is a rundown of the winners compared with what I predicted would win each category. Let's just say that some production design and documentary categories did me in, and that's pretty much the only real place where I had any issues. How well did you do? Feel free to leave your results in the comments.

What "The Shape of Water" Winning Best Picture Means to Me

Credit: Naki for Variety

There's certain things that people have come to expect from a Best Picture winner at The Academy Awards. They are prestigious dramas conveying deep and conflicting resonance of the moment it came out. It's supposed to be serious, often contextualizing a piece of history through an artistic prism. But, as someone who has loved classic monster movies, I've also known that another thing is true: genre movies don't win. Comedies or musicals maybe, but never sci-fi, horror, fantasy, or anything considered niche. After all, the Best Picture winner is something agreed upon of thousands of people from differing tastes. So to see The Shape of Water win two of film's most prestigious awards this past Sunday gave me an incredible feeling. Somehow it validated the idea that The Oscars have always preached: all movies matter. For the first time this millennium, that's felt like more than hyperbole.

Here's the Winners of the 90th Academy Awards

The Shape of Water winning Best Picture

With The Academy Awards now behind us, it's time to look back on the films that won and lost during the ceremony. It was an incredible year, with seven of the nine Best Picture nominees walking away with at least one statue. The even bigger surprise is that in a year where Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri had swept awards season, it was a prestige monster movie that ended up taking Best Picture, and thus continuing to prove that this is a new era of Oscars. It's a time of inclusion and an even bigger diversity. While I will be exploring different aspects of the ceremony and winners in the days to come, let's start with a quick rundown of who won, which is what I'm sure you're all most excited about.

A Round-Up of My Reviews for Oscar-Nominated Movies

With today being Friday, it would be a good enough reason to look forward to the weekend. However, most people are also looking forward to this Sunday for one reason. After a lot of speculation, the Academy Awards ceremony is finally upon us! Considering that you've likely seen all the movies and have your own thoughts, it's time to start finalizing predictions and placing bets. While I will be sharing my predictions tomorrow, I decided to dedicate this entry as a little primer, or a reminder, for those wanting to know my thoughts on the Oscar-nominated movies. This is mostly a place for me to share links from both The Oscar Buzz and Optigrab, where I wrote about the more pop culture-centered movies. Enjoy and good luck with your balloting. 

Long Shot Week: Best Original Screenplay - "The Shape of Water"

Scene from The Shape of Water

Welcome to the first Long Shot Week, where I will attempt to persuade you to think outside of the Oscar box. While it's too late to change voters' minds, I believe that audiences need to take a moment to look at the other contenders in any category and give them a chance. Long Shot Week is designed as a way to highlight these talents that likely don't stand a chance of winning, but more than deserve a chance to be appreciated for what they bring to the game. In a way, this is my list of "Films that should've won," though it's not always indicative of my favorite. Join me all week as I look at different categories and pose the question "Why not?" in hopes that The Oscars still have a few surprises up their sleeve.

Composing Greatness: #2. Oscars 2018 Edition - "The Shape of Water"

Scene from The Shape of Water

Welcome to a very special edition of Composing Greatness. In this limited series, I will be looking at the five scores nominated for this year's Best Original Score category. To avoid favoritism, the list will be done in alphabetical order of composers and feature the same guidelines as the original series. This is meant to explore the music behind the great films of 2017, and provide insight into what makes each of them special and whether or not they deserved to be nominated at all. Join me all week as I listen to the  music, leave some thoughts, and hopefully sway you to check out these wonderful, wonderful scores.

"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. 

A Ranking of the 2017 Best Picture Nominees

It has been over a week since The Academy announced the nominees for this year's Oscars. While there will be plenty to talk about in the interim, it feels right to kick things off by ranking the Best Picture nominees. This is by no means a prediction on what film will win, but is more of a look into my personal preference. All things considered, I believe that this is one of the best years in general, with eight of the nine being among my Top 20 of last year. This new class of Academy voters has definitely brought forth an interesting mix of the old and new, and I think it's going to produce a very interesting discussion going forward. If you're interested, feel free to rank the films in the comments section, if just to see how much we differ from each other.

Ranking the Most Nominated Oscar Films of the Past 10 Years

Scene from The Shape of Water

With this week presenting the Oscar nominations, it only seems right to continually nitpick every category to determine just how good this year is (in my opinion, it's a very good one). However, there is one piece of trivia that's likely to go unnoticed: the films with the most nominations. While it's a big deal in any given year, does anyone remember what that film was even 10 years ago? It's what inspired me to rank the last 10 years of films that lead the year with the most nominations. Ironically, it's a bit uneven as there were many ties in a given year. However, it's also 13 films - the number of nominations that The Shape of Water received this year. It's interesting to look back at the films that dominated, even if they didn't win much. The following is my ranking of the past 10 years, which has produced a lot of interesting results.

Oscar Predictions vs. Nominations: How Did I Do?

Scene from Dunkirk

This morning marked the announcement of this year's Oscar nominations. Like most years, it wasn't without its surprises. Like most people, I decided to make predictions for what would make the cut. It wasn't my best year, but there's a lot that I got right. So, let's look at how well I did at making my predictions in all of the major categories and determine whether or not I did a good job.

Check Out the Official List for the 2018 Oscar Nominations

Today was one of the biggest moments in every cinephile's year. This morning, hosts Tiffany Haddish and Andy Serkis presented the nominees for this year's Academy Awards. As with every year, it was full of surprises - good and bad - that will go on to be discussed in detail. With The Shape of Water and Dunkirk leading the nominations, this was an incredibly packed year full of interesting choices. The following is a rundown of those names. Come back throughout the week for further Oscar coverage, including pieces related to surprises, achievements, and how I'd personally rank the Best Picture category. Until then, here are the nominees for this year's Academy Awards.

Here's My Predictions for the 2018 Oscar Nominations

Scene from The Shape of Water

The moment is almost here. Tomorrow morning, The Academy will announce the nominees for this year's ceremony. It has been a rich year full of a diverse mix of movies, and the trail to this moment has been full of rocky surprises. While tomorrow answers the question about who made the cut, it will open other questions, such as who will win. It's a question that's not quite as fun, but a lot more fun to speculate about. The following is my personal predictions for what will make the cut in the major categories, including Best Picture, Best Director, and the four acting fields. It's been difficult to whittle it down, but here's hoping that I get plenty right. Feel free to leave your predictions in the comments, and come back tomorrow morning for full coverage of the awards after they're announced!

Here's the Winners of this Year's Golden Globes

Scene from Lady Bird

Yesterday marked one of the first big stops in this year's awards season. The Golden Globes were a moment where actresses spoke out in solidarity as part of the new Time's Up movement, and the winners seemed to be just as politically charged. With many harrowing speeches, the night was full of a rare energy, and it wasn't without some controversy in Best Picture (Drama) winner and top winner of the night, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The following is a look at the movie winners of the night, including some thoughts on how they may shake up the Oscar race, or what they have to say about things going forward. It was an interesting night, and it was in part thanks to these surprises.

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. 

Check Out This Year's Golden Globe Nominees

It's officially that time of year. With many critics groups putting out their Best of 2017 lists, it was only a matter of time until the major awards began releasing their nominees. There are few that trumpet in the season quite like the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), whose track record of predicting the Oscars is spotty, but paints an interesting look into what films will be discussed throughout the awards season. This year's nominees are officially here, and you can check them out below, including some commentary on the movie categories. What made the cut? What didn't? Read on to find out.