90th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress

Oscars 2018: Best Supporting Actress

Here we are at last with the final main Academy Awards category to gloss over before the ceremony takes place on the 4th of March, and following in the footsteps of its' predecessors, the Best Supporting Actress this year is yet another strongly contested battle between five stars who each are deserved of prestigious recognition. With Allison Janney my own personal tip for taking home the gong after her success at the BAFTA's for her hilarious role in I, Tonya, such a decision speaks more so from the head whilst the heart points in the direction of Leslie Manville for her absolutely brilliant and stunningly nuanced role in Paul Thomas Anderson's wickedly subversive, Phantom Thread, a movie which unfortunately may be completely overlooked in most of the categories in which it has nominations. Elsewhere, Laurie Metcalf and Octavia Spencer earn the plaudits for their brilliant performances in Lady Bird and The Shape of Water respectively, whilst Mary J. Blige completes the ticket for her role in the Netflix funded Mudbound, and whilst the likes of Sylvia Hoeks and Rosamund Pike could easily been nominated likewise for Blade Runner 2049 and Hostiles also, we conclude our Academy Award rundown with the final main points below...

Winner - Allison Janney (I, Tonya)

Personal Favourite - Leslie Manville (Phantom Thread)

Nomination Snub - Sylvia Hoeks (Blade Runner 2049)

90th Academy Awards: Best Actress

Oscars 2018: Best Actress

With Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri handing Francis McDormand her most juiciest on-screen role since Fargo, a film which of course also brought Academy Award success for the star, the category for Best Actress is seemingly over before it begins, with McDormand's portrayal of the hateful, scenery chewing Mildred Hayes picking up awards in a similar ilk to Gary Oldman's colossal domination of success as Winston Churchill, and whilst Saoirse Ronan's role as the angsty, hysterically colourful titular teenager in Greta Gerwig's masterful Lady Bird would be my own personal choice for the win, it seems my plead to the Academy will seemingly go rather unnoticed. Elsewhere, in a alternate universe, Sally Hawkins would undeniably lead the line for her outstanding performance in Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water whilst Margot Robbie continues to show off her sturdy acting chops as the disgraced ice skating star, Tonya Harding in the wildly comical, I, Tonya, and with Meryl Streep capping off the nominations for The Post, it's no surprise to say that this year's ballot paper is one of the strongest in recent memory. As for the forgotten few, whatever anyone may think of the movie, Jennifer Lawrence is absolutely fabulous in Aronofsky's divisive mother! in her best on-screen role to date, whilst who can forget Jessica Chastain's performance as Molly Bloom in Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut, Molly's Game, and whilst it's a tad late to change the nominations, here are the top points for the Best Actress category...

Winner - Francis McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)

Personal Favourite - Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird)

Nomination Snub - Jennifer Lawrence (mother!)

90th Academy Awards: Best Director

Oscars 2018: Best Director

With a trio of veteran filmmakers and a duo of directorial newcomers, this year's Best Director category is undoubtedly the tightest one to call, and whilst Guillermo del Toro seems to be the named favourite after picking up awards at both the BAFTA's and the Golden Globes, any of the five nominees stand a more than plausible chance at walking away with the top prize. Whilst del Toro himself more than deserves at least the slightest of Academy Award recognition after failing to win the Best Foreign Language gong for Pan's Labyrinth back in 2007, no one can seriously question the remarkable directorial skills of Christopher Nolan on Dunkirk, and whilst many may see Nolan's wartime masterpiece as more of an technical exercise than that of a classical historic drama, the chance for Nolan to finally win an award after being royally snubbed previously for the likes of Inception and The Dark Knight is a mistake that may indeed come full circle. Elsewhere, Paul Thomas Anderson is a equally prestigious and remarkable filmmaker who has seemingly bypassed the Oscar award fever, and whilst Phantom Thread is an outstanding work of melancholic brilliance, the chance to succeed may indeed seep by once again, but for the likes of Greta Gerwig and Jordan Peele for their work on Lady Bird and Get Out respectively, the Academy does deserve some form of applause for attempting to widen its' cinematic scope when it comes to choosing films worthy of such a prestigious award, and whilst snubs for the likes of Denis Villeneuve for Blade Runner 2049 and Darren Aronofsky for mother! prove that that they can't get it right all the time, at least the Academy are slowly catching up.

Winner - Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water)

Personal Favourite - Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk)

Nomination Snub - Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049)

90th Academy Awards: Best Picture

Oscars 2018: Best Picture

With the 90th Academy Awards set to take place on the 4th of March, we begin our examination of the nominations and major snubs in each of the major categories with the prestigious Best Picture nod, a category which features this year, nine movies vying for the chance to win the top prize and whilst the easiest course is to examine elsewhere where movies have done particularly well, including winners at the Golden Globes and BAFTA's, the Oscars do tend do pop out the odd surprise, with last year's Moonlight win being arguably being the most iconic in recent history. With the top two in contention for the prize being The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, it would be great to see Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk potentially take away for the award, but with its' total snub at the BAFTA's, a ceremony with a predominantly British-centred gaze when it comes to choosing the winners, Nolan's Oscar vacuum may seemingly go on. Elsewhere, the likes of Get Out, Lady Bird and Call Me By Your Name prove that independent, ideas based movies continue to be recognised, whilst Darkest Hour and The Post seem to be the box-ticking historical dramas which although have a wide range of merits, really have no chance of taking home the award, and even with Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread potentially being the worthy outsider for the prize, it can be hard to argue between the top two favourites which have been dominating award ceremonies over the past few months. When it comes to nomination snubs, Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 is the obvious misstep whilst the widely acclaimed Logan and Julia Ducournau's Raw are too movies which easily could have been chosen with an eye-widening and forward thinking Academy. Anyhow, here are the predictions...

Winner - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Personal Favourite - Dunkirk

Nomination Snub - Blade Runner 2049

Film Review: The Shape of Water

"He's Happy To See Me. Every Time. Everyday. Now, I Can Either Save Him Or Let Him Die..."

With 2015's Crimson Peak in retrospect coming over as somewhat of a major disappointment, Spanish director, Guillermo del Toro, returns this week with the Academy Award nominated, The Shape of Water, a fantastical romantic drama featuring the likes of Sally Hawkins (Paddington 2), Michael Shannon (12 Strong), and long term del Toro collaborator, Doug Jones (Hellboy) on staggering form and a release which poses as the director's best work since the masterful Pan's Labyrinth back in 2006. Built around a somewhat overly simplistic narrative with heavy influences of B-Movie cinema and underlying themes of Cold War paranoia, The Shape of Water, in fairy-tale like fashion, explores the radiant relationship between the charming mute figure of Sally Hawkins' Elisa Esposito and Doug Jones' remarkable, amphibian human hybrid who is captured by the US Government and kept in solitude at a high-security research facility under the watchful eye of Michael Shannon's vulgar Colonel Richard Strickland. With a blend of romance, fantasy and at times, exploitation violence, The Shape of Water is a stereotypical del Toro release through and through and with flashes of remarkable brilliance and a Sally Hawkins on fine, fine form, the Spanish director's latest is unlike anything you'll see throughout the remainder of this calendar year.

With a loving sense of cinematic tradition and a wild, twisting tornado sensibility which navigates the movie through a wide range of differing genres, The Shape of Water is a beautifully old-fashioned work of film, one with a larger than life digital print clouded with dark colours of emerald green and cold war inspired muskiness, and a film which utilises the widescreen format to staggering degree, resulting in the film, as a work of pure spectacle, simply gorgeous to breathe in and admire for its' detailing and slimy creature feature makeup and effects. Although The Shape of Water may not be as rewarding as del Toro's previous endeavours as an overall body of work, the feature is one which instead arguably boasts his most humanist cinematic venture to date, with the leading relationship between human and inhuman marvellously envisioned thanks to character building set pieces which are as eye-wateringly romantic as they are naturally subversive in nature and with the film's leading character having to rely on the usage of sign language due to her incapability to convey her emotions through speech, Sally Hawkins is truly spectacular, a performance both powerful and understated in equal measure and one which may indeed tip the boat for upcoming Oscar success. Whilst the movie's quest for award supremacy in each of its' respective nominated categories is admirable and actually quite brave considering the fundamental strangeness of the tale at the heart of it, the most obvious case would be for The Shape of Water being the movie which hands del Toro his long-awaited directing Oscar after being wrongly acquitted of it back in 2006, and whilst when up against the likes of Dunkirk and Phantom Thread the film does seem lesser in its' successes in comparison, del Toro's latest is still a wonderful and endlessly romantic drama of monstrous creativity which demands to be admired on the biggest screen possible.  

Overall Score: 8/10

Film Feature: Looking Forward to Film in 2018

2018 In Film

Whereas 2017 proved that audiences were more inclined to disperse away from a turgid summer blockbuster full to the rafters with trashy, monetary fuelled nonsense and head instead for the likes of interesting, well-made movies in the ilk of Andres Muschietti's It and Christopher Nolan's spectacle epic Dunkirk, particularly within the UK, 2018 is the chance for Hollywood to recompense for their sins in a year which once again features endless amounts of sequels, remakes and franchise continuing cash cows which counteract the release of independant and much more interesting movies which although tend to falter at the box office in comparison, do tend to be the movies which make more of an impact throughout the year. As per the norm at Black Ribbon at the start of a new cinematic year therefore, here we will look forward to 2018 in film, picking out the highlights of a year full to the rafters with new and hotly anticipated movies and attempting to gauge which ones will be the real hits of yet another twelve months of visiting your local cinema.

Beginning the year and acting as a cure for the inevitable celebration hangover is Aaron Sorkin's Molly's Game, a dramatic adaptation of Molly Bloom's career as the high-profile poker runner with a brilliant central performance from the ever reliable Jessica Chastain and a supporting cast featuring the likes of Idris Elba and Kevin Costner. If the first day of 2018 is primarily acting as a day of recovery however, the first weekend of the year brings with it a stack load of new releases including the Ridley Scott directed All the Money in the World, featuring a thrown in Christopher Plummer after the much publicised Kevin Spacey debacle, as well as the latest Christian Bale movie, Hostiles from Black Mass director, Scott Cooper. Heading through January and into February therefore, Oscar season sweeps along with the likes of Darkest Hour, Steven Spielberg's The Post, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and of course, Paul Thomas Anderson's latest, Phantom Thread, featuring Daniel Day Lewis' self-proclaimed final on-screen performance, and whilst all are seemingly on show primarily for awards consideration, neutral film fans can take comfort in the release of the Ryan Coogler directed Black Panther just on the stroke of the half term holidays, one of three MCU related releases over the course of the year. 

With the Greta Gerwig directed Lady Bird featuring the radiant presence of Saoirse Ronan, and Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape of Water closing out the end of February with a much anticipated bang, the following weeks bring with it Francis Lawrence's Red Sparrow, an American spy thriller which reunites the director with Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence, alongside the likes of the Walt Disney released A Wrinkle in Time and the science fiction spectacle sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising, both of which are guaranteed to light up the box office to some extent before summer hits, even with the likes of the second Spielberg release of the year in the form of Ready Player One acting as healthy competition. Carrying on through to Easter, the latest X-Men installment in the form of the Anya Taylor-Joy and Maisie Williams starring, The New Mutants, gets a release, whilst the Martin Freeman starring horror portmanteau, Ghost Stories also comes to cinemas after a handful of trailers which immediately pricked up my attention, yet the holidays will undoubtedly belong to Avengers: Infinity War, the biggest release of the MCU so far which brings together the many plot threads set in place since the franchise's inception back all the way in 2008 and a movie which will undoubtedly break a handful of blockbuster records with a rising wave of anticipation after its' recently released trailer. We can't wait. 

Skimming through May and into June, the money machine which is the Star Wars universe continues with the Ron Howard directed Solo: A Star Wars Story featuring Hail, Caesar! star Alden Ehrenreich as the titular space cowboy, whilst the likes of the ensemble comedy thriller Game Night and Deadpool 2 are sure to find audiences in their own right, particularly the latter after the outstanding commercial success of its' predecessor back in 2016. With A Monster Calls director on directorial duties for the latest Jurassic Park movie in the form of Fallen Kingdom, with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard both reprising their role from the previous installment, the most interesting sequel of the month goes to Sicario follow-up, Soldado, featuring the return of both Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin from the stunning Denis Villeneuve thriller back in 2015, with a screenplay once again from the extraordinary scribing talents of Taylor Sheridan, and if the dark underworld of the American drug trade isn't for you then maybe Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again or Mission: Impossible 6 is indeed the sequel for you. Whilst the latter end of the year does simmer down in terms of possible future releases, the likes of Shane Black's The Predator, the latest adaptation of Robin Hood and the final MCU release of the year in the form of Ant-Man and the Wasp, will hopefully all be there to entertain the masses before the final three months of a jam packed year of film. 

With a Star Wars release absent from the Christmas schedule for the first time since 2015, the remaining couple of months of 2018 open the floodgates for a wide range of eclectic releases including the likes of the Tom Hardy starring Venom, Andy Serkis' take on Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book and even the newest release in the everlasting and indestructible Halloween franchise. Sticking on the lines of horror releases, Eli Roth's The House With a Clock In Its Walls will appease an incredibly niche fanboy audience whilst Don't Breathe director, Fede Álvarez takes over from David Fincher on the continuation of the Americanised Millennium series with The Girl in the Spider's Web featuring Claire Foy as Lisbeth Salander. From a personal point of view, Whiplash and La La Land director, Damien Chazelle also returns with First Man, an autobiographical drama focusing on the life of Neil Armstrong, and with both previous releases managing to receive full marks here at Black Ribbon, the bar is set exceptionally high. No pressure. Finishing the year with the likes of Aquaman, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and Mary Poppins Returns, it's fair to say 2018 is set to end with a considerable bang, but of course, with so many releases to come, please stick with us for another twelve months of movie reviews as we attempt once again to point you in the right direction of where you should be spending your well earned pocket money. Enjoy!