90th Academy Awards: Best Actress

The nominees are:

Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water
Role: The deaf janitor who finds love with an amphibian creature being held in a government lab and plots to break him out.

Oscar History: 1 previous nomination for Best Supporting Actress

90th Academy Awards: Best Actor

The nominees:

Timothee Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name
Role: A teenage boy who falls in love with the male student of his professor father.

Oscar History: First nomination

90th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor

The nominees are:

Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
Role: The manager of a cheap motel which is home to several impoverished Orlando residents.

Oscar History: 2 previous nominations for Best Supporting Actor

90th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress

The nominees are:

Mary J. Blige, Mudbound
Role: The matriarch of a family of tenant farmers in 1940's Mississippi.

Oscar History: Also nominated for Best Original Song

90th Academy Awards: Best Original Screenplay

The nominees are:

Guillermo del Toro & Vanessa Taylor, The Shape of Water
Oscar History: First nomination for Taylor. 1 previous nomination for Best Original Screenplay for del Toro, who is also nominated for Best Director and Best Picture.

90th Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay

The nominees are:

Scott Frank, Michael Green, James Mangold, Logan
Oscar History: First nomination for Green and Mangold, 1 previous nomination for Frank,

90th Academy Awards: Best Film Editing

The nominees are:

Jonathan Amos & Paul Machliss, Baby Driver
Oscar History: First nomination for both

90th Academy Awards: Best Cinematography

The nominees are:

Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049
Oscar History: 13 previous nominations

90th Academy Awards: Best Production Design

The nominees are:

Beauty and the Beast
Nominated Team and Oscar History:

* Sarah Greenwood: 4 previous nominations; nominated twice this year

* Katie Spencer: 4 previous nominations; nominated twice this year

90th Academy Awards: Best Costume Design

The nominees are:

Mark Bridges, Phantom Thread
Oscar History: 1 win; 1 previous nomination

Review: Call Me By Your Name (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer

To speak or to die. That's the question at the heart of Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino's adaptation of the novel of the same name about the intensity of first love, in all its confusion and terror and joy. It's a well-realized film that, despite being told via a deeply restrained and interior story, manages to bring the emotions up to the surface to create something insightful and quite moving. Nominated for 4 Oscars (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Song), and arguably deserving of more, Call Me By Your Name is one of the best films of 2017. It's a thoughtful and beautifully rendered piece of work, even though it opts to be shy at moments when it might have been better served by boldness.

90th Academy Awards: Best Makeup and Hairstyling

The nominees are:

Darkest Hour
Nominated Team and Oscar History:

* Kazuhiro Tsuji: 2 previous nominations for Best Makeup

* David Malinowski: First nomination

* Lucy Sibbick: First nomination

90th Academy Awards: Best Visual Effects

The nominees are:

Blade Runner 2049
Nominated Team and Oscar History:

* John Nelson: 1 win; 2 previous nominations

* Gerd Nefzer: First nomination

* Paul Lambert: First nomination

* Richard R. Hoover: 2 previous nominations

90th Academy Awards: Best Sound Editing

The nominees are:

Baby Driver
Nominated Team and Oscar History:

* Julian Slater: Also nominated for Sound Mixing

90th Academy Awards: Best Sound Mixing

The nominees are:

Baby Driver
Nominated Team and Oscar History

* Tim Cavagin: First nomination

* Mary H. Ellis: First nomination

* Julian Slater: Also nominated for Best Sound Editing

90th Academy Awards: Best Original Score

The nominees are:


Carter Burwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Oscar History: 1 previous nomination

90th Academy Awards: Best Original Song

The nominees are:



"The Mystery of Love," Call Me By Your Name
Music and Lyrics By: Sufjan Stevens

Oscar History: First nomination

90th Academy Awards: Best Documentary Feature

The nominees are:

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
Director: Steve James
Subject: The only company criminally indicted following the 2008 mortgage crisis.

Director's Oscar History: 1 previous nomination for Best Film Editing

90th Academy Awards: Best Foreign Language Film

The nominees are:

A Fantastic Woman
Country: Chile
Director: Sebastian Lelio
Plot: A woman's life is upended when her older lover suddenly dies.

Director's Oscar History: First nominated film

90th Academy Awards: Best Animated Feature

The nominees are:

The Boss Baby
Director: Tom McGrath
Plot: ... It's about a baby who wears a suit.

Director's Oscar History: No previous nominations

90th Academy Awards: The Shorts

The nominees are:

Best Animated Short Film

Dear Basketball
Director: Glen Keane
Plot: An animated dramatization of Kobe Bryant's letter announcing his retirement from basketball.

Director's Oscar History: First nominated film

Top 10 Week: Films of 2017

#10: The Post
The Post, Steven Spielberg's take on the Pentagon Papers story, is a conventional film in many ways but that doesn't make it any less powerful. Ostensibly a story about the press exposing the lengths to which the US government has gone to mislead the public about the Vietnam War, what The Post is really doing is using that as a framework in order to tell a story about how women struggle as they try to navigate worlds dominated by men. This is a film about a woman who is treated as if her power is merely ceremonial as the men around her shut her out and shut her down and treat her like nothing more than a nuissance, and how she develops a sense of agency and learns how to wield her power. The beats may be conventional, but the result is fantastic.

Top 10 Week: Performances by Women in 2017

#10: Aubrey Plaza, Ingrid Goes West
In Ingrid Goes West Aubrey Plaza goes all in as she plays a desperately unhappy woman who is obsessed with the lives of people she finds on Instagram. Though the film itself is darkly comedic, and finds some humor in the lengths that Plaza's character goes to in order to insinuate herself into the life of an Instagram influencer, Plaza's performance is a disturbing portrait of a person deeply in the throes of a mental health crisis, her behavior becoming increasingly unmanageable as the story carries on. It's a frightening performance because it never feels like a "performance;" it feels like a window into an incredibly damaged soul with an incredibly cracked perspective on the world. In taking on the role, Plaza eschews vanity and goes the distance.