The Shape of Water

With an inflated run time of two and a half hours, it's inevitable that some of del Toro’s themes would resonate. Unfortunately, many of them fall short of the target in “Nightmare Alley.”

If your film is a commercial film, it has to reinvent its genre of choice, be constantly talked about by the press and audiences and/or have a hefty studio campaign budget standing behind it to even stand a chance at getting nominated. And then you’ll still lose to stuff such as “The Shape of Water.”

Theaters aren’t going anywhere, at least for Berkeley. The city’s cinema scene has managed to exist outside the typical film industry narrative.

“Best Picture” is a massive concept that is not properly captured by the rules and logistics in place because it transcends them.

Despite offering a surprisingly eclectic spread of nominees, the 90th Academy Awards proved to be utterly, boringly predictable.

Christopher Nolan may have received that coveted nomination, but the industry’s unwillingness to celebrate him remains to a significant degree.

With the general consensus that there were no major snubs in this year’s Academy Awards nominations, category predictions become all the more interesting.

While the stunning LGBTQ+ love story “Call Me By Your Name” garnered four nominations, it was snubbed for nearly just as many.

Yet this sudden upsurge in critical appreciation of genre films raises the question of whether the nature of filmmaking itself is changing, or if we are.

By continuing to break the institutional silence surrounding sexual violence and believing survivors, we’ll retain film as our source of light in 2018.