The 2018 Academy Award Nominees (A partial list avec les links)

So, those award nominations were announced this morning. You ever get the sense the nominations are a bigger deal than the actual ceremony? If you hold your breath you can actually hear the gears of Hollywood turning as the studios rush out to promote the hell out of their anointed pictures.

I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but this is a list of good-to-great movies. Four films from my 2017 Top 10 list are in the Best Picture category, which I think is a record—I have immediate and probably unfounded suspicions when my tastes line up with the Academy—and another of my picks can be found in the Best Foreign Language Film category.Would I have liked to see The Florida Project amongst the Best Picture nods? Sure. Did Armie Hammer and Michael Stuhlbarg both deserve Supporting Actor nods for Call Me By Your Name? Damn straight. But so did John C. Reilly for Kong: Skull Island and Harrison Ford for Blade Runner 2049. There will always worthy performances that go unrecognized. But this isn’t a bad bunch, all things considered.

Here are the big award nominees, with links to my review where I’ve seen the film:

Best Picture:

Call Me by Your Name
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Get Out
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
The Post
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Lead Actor:

Timothée Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name
Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread
Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out
Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
Denzel Washington, Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Lead Actress:

Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water
Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Margot Robbie, I, Tonya
Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird
Meryl Streep, The Post

Supporting Actor:

Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water
Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World
Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Supporting Actress:

Mary J. Blige, Mudbound
Allison Janney, I, Tonya
Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread
Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
Octavia Spencer, The Shape of Water

Director:

Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan
Get Out, Jordan Peele
Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig
Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson
The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro

Animated Feature:

The Boss Baby, Tom McGrath, Ramsey Ann Naito
The Breadwinner, Nora Twomey, Anthony Leo
Coco, Lee Unkrich, Darla K. Anderson
Ferdinand, Carlos Saldanha
Loving Vincent, Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman, Sean Bobbitt, Ivan Mactaggart, Hugh Welchman

Adapted Screenplay:

Call Me by Your Name, James Ivory
The Disaster Artist, Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber
Logan, Scott Frank & James Mangold and Michael Green
Molly’s Game, Aaron Sorkin
Mudbound, Virgil Williams and Dee Rees