2017 BAFTA Nominations

Congratulations to this year's BAFTA nominees!

BEST FILM
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME Emilie Georges, Luca Guadagnino, Marco Morabito, Peter Spears
DARKEST HOUR Tim Bevan, Lisa Bruce, Eric Fellner, Anthony McCarten, Douglas Urbanski
DUNKIRK Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas
THE SHAPE OF WATER Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Martin McDonagh

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
DARKEST HOUR Joe Wright, Tim Bevan, Lisa Bruce, Eric Fellner, Anthony McCarten, Douglas Urbanski
THE DEATH OF STALIN Armando Iannucci, Kevin Loader, Laurent Zeitoun, Yann Zenou, Ian Martin, David Schneider
GOD’S OWN COUNTRY Francis Lee, Manon Ardisson, Jack Tarling
LADY MACBETH William Oldroyd, Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly, Alice Birch
PADDINGTON 2 Paul King, David Heyman, Simon Farnaby
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI Martin McDonagh, Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
ELLE Paul Verhoeven, Saïd Ben Saïd
FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER Angelina Jolie, Rithy Panh
THE HANDMAIDEN Park Chan-wook, Syd Lim
LOVELESS Andrey Zvyagintsev, Alexander Rodnyansky
THE SALESMAN Asghar Farhadi, Alexandre Mallet-Guy

DIRECTOR
BLADE RUNNER 2049 Denis Villeneuve
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME Luca Guadagnino
DUNKIRK Christopher Nolan
THE SHAPE OF WATER Guillermo del Toro
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI Martin McDonagh

LEADING ACTRESS
ANNETTE BENING Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
FRANCES McDORMAND Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
MARGOT ROBBIE I, Tonya
SALLY HAWKINS The Shape of Water
SAOIRSE RONAN Lady Bird

LEADING ACTOR
DANIEL DAY-LEWIS Phantom Thread
DANIEL KALUUYA Get Out
GARY OLDMAN Darkest Hour
JAMIE BELL Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET Call Me by Your Name

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
ALLISON JANNEY I, Tonya
KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS Darkest Hour
LAURIE METCALF Lady Bird
LESLEY MANVILLE Phantom Thread
OCTAVIA SPENCER The Shape of Water

SUPPORTING ACTOR
CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER All the Money in the World
HUGH GRANT Paddington 2
SAM ROCKWELL Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
WILLEM DAFOE The Florida Project
WOODY HARRELSON Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
GET OUT Jordan Peele
I, TONYA Steven Rogers
LADY BIRD Greta Gerwig
THE SHAPE OF WATER Guillermo del Toro, Vanessa Taylor
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI Martin McDonagh

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME James Ivory
THE DEATH OF STALIN Armando Iannucci, Ian Martin, David Schneider
FILM STARS DON’T DIE IN LIVERPOOL Matt Greenhalgh
MOLLY’S GAME Aaron Sorkin
PADDINGTON 2 Simon Farnaby, Paul King

DOCUMENTARY
CITY OF GHOSTS Matthew Heineman
I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO Raoul Peck
ICARUS Bryan Fogel, Dan Cogan
AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk
JANE Brett Morgen

ANIMATED FILM
COCO Lee Unkrich, Darla K. Anderson
LOVING VINCENT Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman, Ivan Mactaggart
MY LIFE AS A COURGETTE Claude Barras, Max Karli

ORIGINAL MUSIC
BLADE RUNNER 2049 Benjamin Wallfisch, Hans Zimmer
DARKEST HOUR Dario Marianelli
DUNKIRK Hans Zimmer
PHANTOM THREAD Jonny Greenwood
THE SHAPE OF WATER Alexandre Desplat

CINEMATOGRAPHY
BLADE RUNNER 2049 Roger Deakins
DARKEST HOUR Bruno Delbonnel
DUNKIRK Hoyte van Hoytema
THE SHAPE OF WATER Dan Laustsen
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI Ben Davis

EDITING
BABY DRIVER Jonathan Amos, Paul Machliss
BLADE RUNNER 2049 Joe Walker
DUNKIRK Lee Smith
THE SHAPE OF WATER Sidney Wolinsky
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI Jon Gregory

PRODUCTION DESIGN
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer
BLADE RUNNER 2049 Dennis Gassner, Alessandra Querzola
DARKEST HOUR Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer
DUNKIRK Nathan Crowley, Gary Fettis
THE SHAPE OF WATER Paul Austerberry, Jeff Melvin, Shane Vieau

COSTUME DESIGN
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Jacqueline Durran
DARKEST HOUR Jacqueline Durran
I, TONYA Jennifer Johnson
PHANTOM THREAD Mark Bridges
THE SHAPE OF WATER Luis Sequeira

MAKE UP & HAIR
BLADE RUNNER 2049 Donald Mowat, Kerry Warn
DARKEST HOUR David Malinowski, Ivana Primorac, Lucy Sibbick, Kazuhiro Tsuji
I, TONYA Deborah La Mia Denaver, Adruitha Lee
VICTORIA & ABDUL Daniel Phillips
WONDER Naomi Bakstad, Robert A. Pandini, Arjen Tuiten

SOUND
BABY DRIVER Tim Cavagin, Mary H. Ellis, Julian Slater
BLADE RUNNER 2049 Ron Bartlett, Doug Hemphill, Mark Mangini, Mac Ruth
DUNKIRK Richard King, Gregg Landaker, Gary A. Rizzo, Mark Weingarten
THE SHAPE OF WATER Christian Cooke, Glen Gauthier, Nathan Robitaille, Brad Zoern
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick, Stuart Wilson, Matthew Wood

SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
BLADE RUNNER 2049 Gerd Nefzer, John Nelson
DUNKIRK Scott Fisher, Andrew Jackson
THE SHAPE OF WATER Dennis Berardi, Trey Harrell, Kevin Scott
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI Nominees tbc
WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES Nominees tbc

2017 Golden Globe Winners

Congratulations to all of this year's Golden Globe winners!

Best Motion Picture, Drama
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy
Lady Bird

Best Director
Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water

Best Actor, Motion Picture, Drama
Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour

Best Actress, Motion Picture, Drama
Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Actor, Motion Picture, Comedy
James Franco, The Disaster Artist

Best Actress, Motion Picture, Comedy
Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird

Best Supporting Actor, Motion Picture
Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Supporting Actress, Motion Picture
Allison Janney, I, Tonya

Best Screenplay
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Original Score
Alexandre Desplat, The Shape of Water

Best Original Song
“This Is Me,“ The Greatest Showman

Best Animated Feature
Coco

Best Foreign Language Film
In the Fade

Review: "The Post"

In 1971, U.S. military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, then employed by the global policy think tank the RAND Corporation, emerged one of the world's most famous whistleblowers with his leaking of the Pentagon Papers to the American press. The Papers marked an unfiltered Pentagon study, spanning three decades and four U.S. presidents, of government decision-making, warts and all, pertaining to the Vietnam War.

Steven Spielberg's The Post observes how Kay Graham (Meryl Streep), the first female publisher of a major American newspaper (The Washington Post), and Post editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) vied to catch up with The New York Times, the first publication to report on excepts from the more than 7,000 pages of the Pentagon study.

The Nixon administration files a court order against the Times, temporarily barring them from further coverage on the Papers. This inspires Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys), hopeful another publication can continue this reporting, to leak the documents to Post reporter Ben Bagdikian (Bob Odenkirk). Further coverage is easier said than done, however, as Graham and Bradlee face pressure from the Post's financial stakeholders to refrain from stories on the Papers, plus the prospect of potentially being thrown in jail for publication of these top secret documents. 

Like recent Spielberg dramas Lincoln and Bridge of Spies, The Post is a sufficiently engaging and entertaining endeavor, hardly on the same level of his best work (or 2015's newsroom drama Spotlight) but just satisfying enough. After a meandering start, the proceedings catch fire as Graham, Bradlee and the Post staff agonize over whether to go to print. All is well until the picture's final few minutes, a heavy-handed ending that brings out the saccharin worst in the director.

Streep and Hanks, even if they never really disappear into these roles (unlike Jason Robards as Bradlee in All the President's Men), are in sturdy form. More interesting are the scene-stealing Odenkirk and Bruce Greenwood, who portrays former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, a friend of Graham's who hardly comes across well in the Papers. A scene in which McNamara warns Graham about the Nixon administration's hellbent desire to shut the Post's efforts down is among the film's best.

Sadly, other talented actors, like Sarah Paulson as Bradlee's wife, Alison Brie as Graham's daughter and Carrie Coon as another Post reporter, serve as mere window dressing.

In the end, The Post is a fine, if workmanlike piece of Oscar bait, lacking the imagination and vitality of Spielberg's best work but, given the compelling subject matter and talent involved, still plenty watchable.

B+

2017 National Society of Film Critics Awards

Congratulations to this year's National Society of Film Critics honorees!

Best Film
Lady Bird

Best Director
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird

Best Actor
Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out

Best Actress
Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water

Best Supporting Actor
Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project

Best Supporting Actress
Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird

Best Screenplay
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird

Best Cinematography
Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049

Review: "Call Me by Your Name"

Remember that glorious, gut-wrenching scene in James Ivory's The Remains of the Day in which the lonely butler Mr. Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) is caught by housekeeper Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson), the woman he secretly adores, reading a book of sweet love stories?

I will never forget it and it's that sense of overwhelming longing and desire that I figured would play so prominently in Call Me by Your Name, a picture not directed by Ivory but written by the filmmaker - a rare screenwriting credit. Yet the film, pretty as it may be, ultimately left me more restless than anything, one of the great disappointments of the 2017 film season.

The picture opens on young Elio (Timothee Chalamet) who, over the summer of 1983, spends his days relaxing in the Italian countryside with his family. His father (Michael Stuhlbarg), a professor of archaeology, invites Oliver (Armie Hammer), a twentysomething doctoral student, to spend much of the season with them. Initially, the introverted Elio and high-spirited Oliver seem to have little in common but, over time, they do grow close and, despite Elio's courting of Marzia (Esther Garrel), a sexual relationship soon blossoms.

Call Me by Your Name is sumptuously photographed by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom - it's a picture that looks just as splendid as Ivory's best. Alas, director Luca Guadagnino, who has impressed me in the past (I love I Am Love), shows far more sensual feeling for the countryside scenery than his characters. Elio and Oliver are just not as captivating or absorbing a pair as say, Mr. Stevens and Miss Kenton or Maurice and Clive of Ivory's Maurice.

Chalamet is dead-on convincing as Elio. Too bad he's stuck playing against Hammer who, his matinee idols looks aside, continues to exude the acting prowess of a block of wood. At the film's 11-'o-clock hour, Stuhlbarg has a monologue on young love that, while exquisitely delivered by the actor, rings of something manufactured that you'd only hear in the movies.

Call Me by Your Name dazzled my eyes but, to my surprise, barely tugged at the heartstrings.

B