darthrush said:
I honestly would have no qualm if it won Best Picture.
I can't decide yet if that or Two Billboards is the best. They are both deserving but so different. On that subject, I've now watched the last couple of BP nominations:
Lady Bird (2017)
Semi-autobiographical. At first I thought the quirky-o-meter was reading a bit high on this one but it turned out to have some real emotional heft.
Saoirse Ronan as the title character is as wonderful as you'd expect and
Laurie Metcalf is so damn good. Full of human frailty, love and miscommunication. Shot really beautifully capturing the love Director
Greta Gerwig has for her Sacramento home town. Personally, I'm not sure if I'd have nominated it for Best Picture but I'm fine with it being there.
The Shape of Water (2017)
It's reassuring to know that a sumptuously romantic film about a mute cleaning lady falling in love with fish-man can still get a theatrical release and be a box office smash! For what is billed as a whimsical fantasy film, I wasn't expecting this much explicit sex and gory violence. That
Guillermo del Toro can shoot a period sci-fi film looking this magical and luxuriously expensive on the kind of budget that some blockbuster Director's would spend on their catering (19.5 million) shows his total command of the craft. Up there with Del Toro's best.
Alexandre Desplat did a beautiful job on the score. It's got a Parisian 'Edward Scissorhands' vibe:
Also,
The Handmaiden (2017)
I managed to get this in a dirt-cheap boxset with two cuts of the film.
I haven't watched the Director's Cut yet but the Theatrical version was good enough that I'm intrigued to watch that when I revisit 'The Handmaiden'. I had high expectations after
Park Chan-Wook's last film
'Stoker'. This doesn't quite hit those highs for me but it's still a very fine film. Meticulously designed sets and costumes mixing Japanese, Korean and Victorian styles are a feast for the eye. A sexual quadrangle of eroticism, fetishism and deception plays out in a complicated flash-back/flash-forward way.