“The solution to our current divisiveness does not live in the White House. Instead, we will find unity only when we recognize that in our current president we have elected, perhaps for the first time in our history, an enemy of compassion. Indeed, we can be unified not only with each other but with Africa, El Salvador, Haiti, Mexico, the Middle East and beyond if we recognize President Donald Trump is an enemy of Americans, Republicans, Democrats, Independents and every new child born. An enemy of mankind. He is indeed an enemy of the state.” — from “Donald Trump Is the Enemy of Compassion,” a Time essay by Sean Penn.

Last month it looked like The Florida Project‘s Willem Dafoe had the Best Supporting Actor race all sewn up. Starting with the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and into early January, Dafoe’s performance as a harried motel manager couldn’t stop racking up wins. He took at least 13 trophies from the National Society of Film Critics, the National Board of Review, the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Toronto Film Critics Association, the Indiewire Critics poll blah blah. Okay, enough already, he’s got it.

(l.) Florida Project‘s Willem Dafoe; (r.) Three Billboards‘ Sam Rockwell.

And then five days ago Dafoe suddenly lost…what happened? Sam Rockwell‘s performance as a none-too-bright local cop in Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri took the Best Supporting Actor prize at the Golden Globe awards, and out of the blue Dafoe’s mojo was no more. Last night Rockwell won again at the Critics Choice awards, and now people are wondering if Dafoe was strictly a finicky critics favorite but Rockwell is more of a rank-and-file industry guy. They’ve both been nominated for a SAG award in this category; we’ll see how this shakes out on 1.21.

Could Dafoe be the new Bob Hoskins? In late 1986 the likelihood of Hoskins winning the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as a lovesick chauffeur in Neil Jordan‘s Mona Lisa seemed guaranteed. After winning the Best Actor prize at the ’86 Cannes Film Festival, Hoskins — like Dafoe — won the same award from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics. And then he won the Best Actor BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe…how could Hoskins lose?

Yesterday Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water won the Critics Choice award for Best Picture. CC picks don’t always mirror Academy preferences, but they have much of the time. That plus Shape‘s Golden Globe win last Sunday tells me that this erotically-tinged period fantasy fable is probably going to win the Best Picture Oscar.

A friend says “no way” because The Shape of Water has no SAG ensemble nomination, and is therefore a longer shot to win than Get Out. Okay but…but…but…Get Out can’t win the Best Picture Oscar…no! There’s also a possibility that both of these projections are wrong and that Martin McDonagh‘s Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri will take it instead.

Two days ago it was apparent that Shape, Three Billboards and Jordan Peele‘s Get Out had become the leading soft default picks across the board. But Shape is the apparent darling. It’s softer, smoother and more sumptuous than the well-written, very finely performed Billboards, its closest competitor, and it’s apparently fated to overtake the politically correct support enjoyed by Jordan Peele‘s Get Out, which is either tied with Billboards or in third place — you tell me.

Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones in Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water.

Accept it — a Best Picture Oscar for a very handsomely composed genre film about rapturous mercy sex with the Creature From the Love Lagoon might soon be placed alongside the statuettes for Birdman, Spotlight, The Hurt Locker, 12 Years A Slave, Platoon, The Godfather Part II, A Man For All Seasons and The Best Years of Our Lives in the Academy’s golden display case in the upstairs lobby. Probably. Maybe.

It will therefore cinch a hard-fought triumph over (a) one of the boldest, most avant garde and stunningly captured war films ever made, (b) the most emotionally affecting and transformational gay love story since Brokeback Mountain and probably of the 21st Century, and (c) one of the sharpest, punchiest and most fetchingly performed coming-of-age tales about a young woman at the start of her adult life, and in a year that obviously cries out for a top-tier woman-directed film and/or a female-centric story to be celebrated above all.

The reasons for Shape‘s possible victory: (a) it’s a lot warmer than Dunkirk and certainly warmer than the somewhat jagged-edged Three Billboards, (b) it isn’t dealing gay cards (which is a seeming disqualifier among older white male Academy members given that last year a meditative, under-stated gay movie won the Best Picture Oscar), (c) it’s an emotionally inviting fable with a Johnny Belinda-like lead performance from Sally Hawkins, and (d) you don’t have to believe in socially progressive largesse or be on the “woke” bandwagon — you just have to be susceptible.

Recently there’s been a fresh wave of accusations against Woody Allen. Again. The last time I checked, and especially after reading Robert Weide’s 12.13.17 summary of the certainly debatable 25 year-old allegations against Allen, I thought the matter had been more or less put to bed. Move on, let sleeping dogs lie, etc.

Weide’s piece was posted in response to Dylan Farrow’s 12.7 L.A. Times essay that asked why Woody has escaped a #MeToo slapdown. But any fair assessment of the facts suggests that Dylan’s accusation is, at the very least, clouded by uncertainty. Just take ten minutes and read the Weide piece. It’s all there. Really.

Nonetheless the tide has recently turned, and we’re now back in a Crucible-like environment, and more or less due to three things.

One, that Richard Morgan Washington Post piece about Allen’s obsession with teenaged girls, as evidenced by certain scripts he’s written. Two, Greta Gerwig‘s declaration that she’ll never work with Allen again. And three, Mira Sorvino‘s open letter to Dylan Farrow (i.e., “I believe you”).

Something snapped inside when Hunter Lurie, the son of director and HE pally Rod Lurie, asked this morning why no one has queried Timothy Chalamet about a controversial-sounding Allen film, A Rainy Day in New York, that he co-stars in.

I took this to mean that Lurie believes that Chalamet needs to follow in Gerwig and Sorvino’s footsteps, etc. He claimed otherwise, but he also tweeted that he suspects that A Rainy Day in New York, which partly focuses on a 40ish guy (Jude Law) in a reportedly unconsummated relationship with a much younger woman (Elle Fanning), might become a hot potato and perhaps not even be released due to the real-life echoes.

The Directors Guild of America membership has an infuriating if not infamous decision to live down.

It has not only backhanded the brilliant Call Me By Your Name helmer Luca Guadagnino (i.e., “Sorry but the Oscars already did the gay thing last year with Moonlight, and we feel too gayed-out to go there again”) but has nominated Get Out director Jordan Peele twice(!!) — for its top-dog feature-film award award as well as a possible trophy for being the best first-time director.

This is impossible, ridiculous. I give up. Sheepthink, no justice, just politics. The fix is in.

For the top feature film award the DGA also nominated Lady Bird‘s Greta Gerwig, The Shape of Water‘s Guillermo del Toro, Three Billboards‘ Martin McDonaugh and Dunkirk‘s Christopher Nolan.

Other first-time nominees are Taylor Sheridan (Wind River), Aaron Sorkin, Geremy Jasper (Patti Cake$) and William Oldroyd (Lady Macbeth).

The Post‘s Steven Spielberg wasn’t nominated, and this, I fear, is the final death knell. The Post — ironically my favorite Spielberg film since Saving Private Ryan — will most likely not be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

Other blow-offs include The Florida Project‘s Sean Baker, Mudbound‘s Dee Rees and The Beguiled‘s Sofia Coppola.

Who will take the top honor? Del Toro, I suspect, although I would give it to Nolan without blinking an eye.

Received from a New York guy who gets around: “What a kick in the groin to Steven Spielberg and Luca Guadagnino. I’m talking of course about the double-down bet the DGA just placed on Jordan Peele. If he’s a newcomer — and that’s how I think he should be considered — he doesn’t belong in both categories.”

Last night (i.e., Tuesday) Tatyana and I attended a well-catered if crowded Mudbound party. It happened inside a mid-sized, two-story Chateau Marmont bungalow (the fabled oval-shaped pool was just outside) and was sponsored by Sandra Bullock and Moonlight costar Trevante Rhodes. Director Dee Rees and costars Mary J. Blige, Jason Clarke, Garett Hedlund and Rob Morgan attended; ditto producer Cassian Elwes.

During last night’s Mudbound gathering: (l. to r.) director Dee Rees, costar and Best Supporting Actress contender Mary J. Blige, Sandra Bullock. (Thanks to Ginsberg-Libby’s Paige Niemi for supplying photos.)

The idea was to remind Academy members who haven’t yet filled out their nomination ballots (Friday, 1.12 is the final day) that Mudbound is (a) one of the year’s most awarded and nominated films, (b) that Blige is a serious Best Supporting Actress contender, and (c) that the striking cinematography by ASC-nominated Rachel Morrison deserves a nom of its own.

I spoke briefly to Clarke, Elwes, Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman and elite Manhattan party orchestrator Peggy Siegal, et. al. The Mark Wahlberg-Michelle Williams pay disparity thing was a hot topic; the James Franco and Michael Douglas accusations less so. People are rolling their eyes and waving the stories away. The waiters were serving small bowls of lightly sauced Fettucini Bolognese — best I’ve ever tasted since sampling a similar dish in Rome last June.

Ask ten film historians about David Lean‘s Ryan’s Daughter, and they’ll all say it nearly killed Lean’s career. Slow and stately, over-indulged, visually pompous and old-schoolish to a fault. And that awful, Oscar-awarded village-idiot performance by John Mills. Magnificent Freddie Young cinematography, okay, but otherwise a sudden fall from grace. Not even close to the realm of Lawrence of Arabia or Brief Encounter or Bridge on the River Kwai or even the respectably second-tier Dr. Zhivago or A Passage to India.

But you know what? Last night I began watching an HD Amazon stream of Ryan’s Daughter on my Sony 65″ 4K TV. I was sitting there like a 12 year-old and studying the Super Panavision 70 detail and just marvelling at how good it looks. The HD transfer was apparently taken from a 35mm source but it’s staggering all the same. It looks much better than what I recall from some half-forgotten viewing at some Massachusetts or Connecticut bijou (i.e., not a 70mm house).

And I realized that the trick to watching Ryan’s Daughter is to watch it on a monitor like mine, and to ignore as much of the story and the dialogue as possible (not to mention the bland British officer performance by Christopher Jones) and just focus on the visuals and the music.

That opening shot of the steep Irish cliffs near Dingle Bay, and that tiny little ant (i.e., Sarah Miles) running left to right as she approaches the edge…my God! And that footsteps-in-the-sand sequence with Robert Mitchum. 20th Century filmmaking rarely exceeded this level of immaculate care and visual eloquence.

The first 24 hours of Fandango pre-sales for Black Panther tickets have set a new MCU record blah blah. Hollywood Elsewhere says “fine but calm down — the second weekend is what counts.” That said, my suspicion is that the first all-black superhero flick — a super-charged concept if I ever heard one — is going to perform like gangbusters for at least two or three weeks, if not four or five. Depending on how good it is. I was initially revved, but the trailers have suggested a fleet, flash-bang quality…a little too gleaming and shiny-car. That said, it looks, sounds and feels like a legitimate, high-throttle superhero vehicle. And my faith in director Ryan Coogler (Creed, Fruitvale Station) has never been shaken.

Over the last 60 years we’ve seen four Invasion of the Body Snatchers films — Don Siegel’s 1956 original, Phil Kaufman’s 1978 remake, Abel Ferrara’s 1993 version and Oliver Hirschbiegel‘s decade-old The Invasion.

Now it’s time for a fifth involving the installation of seed-pod mindsets, with the change agents being the Millennial and Generation Z sons and daughters of today.

I’m talking about a scenario in which the Anglo Saxon whitebread gene is regarded as inherently arrogant, criminal and bad for the planet — flawed, cruel, heartless, exploitive. A consensus emerges that the only way to correct this abhorrent culture is to fully indict the historical criminality of whiteness over several decades and in fact back to the beginnings of this nation — what it’s been, what it is now and where it’ll lead if things aren’t turned around.

Alien spores float down from space, affecting only the children and grandchildren of boomers and GenXers. Once turned, the awoken are free to call Anglo-Saxon culture by it’s true name — oppressor, a cancer, a scourge upon humanity. Within days the idea is spread that it’s time for enlightened non-whites to marginalize or dilute or even overthrow white culture so that POC culture can re-shape things and bring in a little fresh air and more fairness, freedom and opportunity.

Gradually seed-pod consciousness spreads to members of the liberal intelligentsia, and more and more of them are suddenly embracing the program. The general idea is “let those shitty old crusty white guys eat some of the shit that POCs have been eating for the last couple of centuries,” etc.

Gradually it becomes accepted that if you’re white and straight you’re kind of a bad person, or at the very least suspect. And that you probably need to re-educate yourself and embrace the new reality…or else.

A clever horror-comedy satire that ten years ago would have come and gone and been forgotten by awards season is transformed by seed-podders into a Best Picture contender, and those who question the validity of this are regarded as cranks or closet racists.

Friends and family members of seed-pod film critics begin to notice a certain robotic manner and a glassy, out-to-lunch look in their eyes. Local constable: “But he looks like his picture, madam. Obviously he’s Guy Lodge, the Variety critic.” Mrs. Lodge: “But it isn’t him, I’m telling you. Something is missing. It’s just not Guy!”

Liberal-minded film critics Anne Thompson and Eric Kohn declare that they’ve been making sure that POCs are ranked prominently in their year-end awards ballot, partly because they admire their films but also because they’re about or were made by POCs.

Seed-pod urban culture begins to adopt other changes. Millenial and GenZ types begin to regard heterosexuality as a problem, and it’s gradually decided that it’s time to let LGBTQ folks run the culture and push heteros off to the side a bit. They’ll be allowed to walk around and buy groceries, but they need to accommodate themselves to the notion that straight whites are an underclass.

And if educated liberal Democrat white guys complain about any of this on social media platforms, the seed-podders tag them as closet Republicans or closet racists or closet homophobes. Would the seed-podders be delighted to bust these white guys on any of these counts and thereby eradicate or at least marginalize their asses and put them out to pasture? You have to ask?

The transforming of society has never been a gentle process, and to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs.

I’ve explained over and over that the three strongest knockout films of 2017 are Luca Guadgnino‘s Call Me By Your Name, Chris Nolan‘s Dunkirk and Greta Gerwig‘s Lady Bird. In picking the most deserving recipient of the Best Picture Oscar, Academy members ought to choose between these three. They really ought to. Because Nolan’s is a brilliant, IMAX-sized work of art and a God’s-eye war film, and Guadagnino’s is a lulling, levitational love story for the ages, and Gerwig’s is a coming-of-age film with a wonderful prickly edge.

But nope, sorry, not happening. Dunkirk isn’t emotional enough, Call Me By Your Name has to stand down because older straight white guys don’t want to celebrate another gay film after Moonlight, and Lady Bird is just a flick about an anxious, creatively stifled high school girl. And so a pair of very worthy but slightly lesser films — Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water, which received 12 BAFTA noms, and Martin McDonagh‘s Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri — are stepping into the breach.

This seems to be the meaning of this morning’s BAFTA nominations, if they can be processed as foreshadowings of the 2018 Oscar nominations (which will be announced on 1.23). The 12 noms won by The Shape of Water plus the nine noms that went to Three Billboards means they’re the tippy-toppers right now.

Joe Wright‘s Darkest Hour also received nine BAFTA noms, but you have to write some of that off to the Churchill factor (i.e., genetic British nationalism).

In other words, Fox Searchlight almost certainly has the Best Picture Oscar in the bag. After 1.23 it’ll be competing with itself on behalf of Three Billboards and Shape of Water. Not tooth and nail, of course, but voters will have to choose. Hollywood Elsewhere hereby congratulates FS on a fight well won, and twice over at that.

The only problem is that I’ve seen Three Billboards and The Shape of Water twice each, and with all due respect and affection for all concerned they’re just not brilliant or audacious enough to be celebrated as the two finest films of 2017. They deserve to be in the final round of contenders, for sure. And they’re highly commendable — Billboards for the writing and acting (McDormand, Rockwell, Harrelson), Water for the erotic fairy-tale aspects and luxurious production design and cinematography, and in terms of Sally Hawkins‘ extremely affecting performance. But they’re not quite ivy league.

In Shape, Michael Shannon‘s villain is way too one-note demonic, Doug Jones‘ aquatic creature has no personality or longing other than to be loved and protected, and it’s ludicrous to presume (as the movie tells us) that Shannon wouldn’t instantly conclude that Hawkins’ apartment is the only place to look when Jones turns up missing at the lab.

And Three Billboards is suspended in a fantasy realm in which McDormand evades the consequences of drilling a dentist’s thumbnail and firebombing a police station (despite Peter Dinklage vouching for her in the latter case), and Rockwell suffers no legal prosecution or civil lawsuit after he throws Caleb Landry Jones out of a window and off a roof.

And yet The Shape of Water and Three Billboards are the two apparent finalists because (a) they supply enough emotion and aren’t chilly in a Nolan-esque sense, (b) they don’t irritate older white guys by being gayish (Richard Jenkins‘ Shape character aside) and (c) their stories and themes are bigger and broader than that of a Sacramento high-school senior looking to go to college back east. They’re soft consensus favorites, and that’s how it seems to be going right now.

Not long ago a director friend mentioned that of all the things he liked about Mudbound, he was most impressed by Rachel Morrison‘s cinematography. It’s not poised or prettified, he said, but it has an au natural thing — a humid, plain-as-dirt, you-are-there atmosphere.

A relatively young dp, Morrison delivered her first major-league score with her lensing of Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station (’13). She also shot Daniel Barnz and Jennifer Aniston‘s Cake (’14) and Zal Batmanglij‘s The Sound Of My Voice (’11).

Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird has won the National Society of Film Critics’ award for Best Film of 2017. The A24 release is now that much closer to winning the Best Picture Oscar. The older fence-sitters who’ve been saying to themselves “but it’s just a teenage coming-of-age story!” will now be thinking twice.

Get Out and Phantom Thread were the first and second runners-up with Jordan Peele‘s film having lost by only two votes, according to Variety‘s Kris Tapley. Given that a healthy percentage of the NSFC members are Get Out wokers, coolios and p.c. disciples, I’m hugely relieved that this divine mathematical intervention has occured.

The wokers did, however, manage a majority vote when it came to the NSFC’s Best Actor award. Will L.A. Daily News critic Bob Strauss argue with a straight face that Get Out‘s Daniel Kaluuya truly deserves this honor? Maybe he will, but if so his fingers, trust me, will be crossed. I’ve been sensing from Kaluuya’s modest remarks over the last couple of weeks that he, too, feels it’s a bit much.

Kaluuya delivered three behaviors in Get Out — cool and collected, slightly scared and super-scared with his mouth open and tears running down his cheeks. Okay, okay…maybe I’m wrong. Maybe DK’s performance was more quake-shaking than what Timothee Chalamet, Gary Oldman, Daniel Day Lewis, Tom Hanks and James Franco delivered. If I’m mistaken please forgive me. It takes me longer to come to these things.

The Shape of Water‘s Sally Hawkins won the HSFC award for Best Actress. The Florida Project‘s Willem Dafoe and Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf received the Best Supporting Actor and Actress awards.