‘Shape of Water,’ ‘Dunkirk’ and ‘Three Billboards’ lead Oscar nominations

UPDATED AT: 10:07 a.m.; the complete list follows.

The nominations for the 90^th Academy Awards were announced on Tuesday morning by a dapper, genial Andy Serkis and the always intoxicating Tiffany Haddish. Serkis became famous for motion-capture performances in films like Lord Of The Rings films and the new take on Planet Of The Apes. Haddish hit big in Girls Trip this year and has earned countless admirers for being joyfully herself at every opportunity. And while the nominees they announced weren’t exactly unexpected given what we already knew – big showings for The Shape Of Water, Dunkirk and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri — they had enough freshness and enough room for new voices that they didn’t feel rote. Agree or disagree, they didn’t simply represent a full list of the films and the performances that sounded the most “Oscars-y,” from the directors and writers who had been nominated before.

For best picture, sure, two World War II dramas (Dunkirk and Darkest Hour) seem pretty obvious, and The Post is a Steven Spielberg period piece. Guillermo del Toro making a beautiful fable like The Shape Of Water is in an Oscars sweet spot, as is Paul Thomas Anderson’s luscious but chilly Phantom Thread and Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Call Me By Your Name, a gentle love story with a James Ivory screenplay – not too much of a reach. But first-time feature director Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, a talky coming-of-age film with as much comedy in its DNA as drama? Jordan Peele’s searing horror comedy Get Out? Neither of those necessarily felt genetically engineered to win Oscars, to compete for best picture, or to bring new directors and new actors to the very tip-top of the ceremony where Hollywood, more than anything, tells a story about what it thinks it is.

Gerwig and Peele join del Toro, Anderson and Nolan (who directed Dunkirk) in the best director race, making it a fresher category than usual. Daniel Kaluuya, whose single traumatized tear became the image of Get Out, seemed at one point in recent months like he might be slipping out of the best actor category, but then he slipped right back in – albeit in a tough race against Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour, Timothee Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name, Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread, and Denzel Washington in Roman J. Israel, Esq.

But no first, no for-real first, feels quite as big as Rachel Morrison’s nomination for cinematography for Mudbound. Hard as it is to believe, no woman has ever been nominated in the category before. Directed by Dee Rees, Mudbound did well for itself all around on nomination day: its screenplay was nominated, as were an original song and supporting actress work by Mary J. Blige.

Even more than usual, films not nominated for Best Picture wiggled into the screenplay categories: The Disaster Artist, Molly’s Game, Mudbound and Logan for adapted screenplay, and The Big Sick for original screenplay. In the end, there are ten screenplay nominations and nine best picture nominations, but only five overlap.

People will take exception to what was nominated, and especially what wasn’t: it would have been lovely to see more affection for Sean Baker’s beautiful The Florida Project, which earned only a nod for its most famous actor, Willem Dafoe. It would have been nice to see more nominees from Get Out, which runs on several terrific performances besides Kaluuya’s.

Power in Hollywood doesn’t just shift; it must be shifted. If it is to support more new voices, and more kinds of voices, it must hand them power. Oscar nominations don’t really “matter” in the sense that the best films are often not nominated. But whether they should or not, nominations give people juice for a certain period of time; they raise profiles. They attract attention. And by honoring people like Peele and Gerwig and Kaluuya and Rachel Morrison, the Oscar nominations found some new recipients for the power that putting the distinction “Academy Award nominee” after your name confers.

The complete list is below.

Best picture

Call Me By Your Name

Darkest Hour

Dunkirk

Get Out

Lady Bird

Phantom Thread

The Post

The Shape Of Water

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Directing

Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk)

Jordan Peele (Get Out)

Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird)

Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread)

Guillermo Del Toro (The Shape Of Water)

Actress in a leading role

Sally Hawkins (The Shape Of Water)

Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)

Margot Robbie (I, Tonya)

Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird)

Meryl Streep (The Post)

Actor in a leading role

Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name)

Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread)

Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out)

Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour)

Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel, Esq.)

Writing (original screenplay)

The Big Sick

Get Out

Lady Bird

The Shape Of Water

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Writing (adapted screenplay)

Call Me By Your Name

The Disaster Artist

Logan

Molly’s Game

Mudbound

Animated feature film

The Boss Baby

The Breadwinner

Coco

Ferdinand

Loving Vincent

Music (original song)

“Mighty River” (Mudbound)

“Mystery of Love” (Call Me By Your Name)

“Remember Me” (Coco)

“Stand Up for Something” (Marshall)

“This is Me” (The Greatest Showman)

Documentary (feature)

Abacus: Small Enough To Jail

Faces Places

Icarus

Last Men In Aleppo

Strong Island

Documentary (short subject)

Edith + Eddie

Heaven Is A Traffic Jam On The 405

Heroin(e)

Knife Skills

Traffic Stop

Foreign language film

A Fantastic Woman

The Insult

Loveless

On Body And Soul

The Square

Actor in a supporting role

Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project)

Woody Harrelson (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)

Richard Jenkins (The Shape Of Water)

Christopher Plummer (All The Money In The World)

Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)

Actress in a supporting role

Mary J. Blige (Mudbound)

Allison Janney (I, Tonya)

Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread)

Laurie Metcalf (Lady Bird)

Octavia Spencer (The Shape Of Water)

Makeup and hairstyling

Darkest Hour

Victoria And Abdul

Wonder

Film editing

Baby Driver

Dunkirk

I, Tonya

The Shape Of Water

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Visual effects

Blade Runner 2049

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2

Kong: Skull Island

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

War For The Planet Of The Apes

Music (original score)

Dunkirk

Phantom Thread

The Shape Of Water

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Short film (live action)

DeKalb Elementary

The Eleven O’Clock

My Nephew Emmett

The Silent Child

Watu Wote/All Of Us

Short film (animated)

Dear Basketball

Garden Party

Lou

Negative Space

Revolting Rhymes

Sound mixing

Baby Driver

Blade Runner 2049

Dunkirk

The Shape Of Water

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Sound editing

Baby Driver

Blade Runner 2049

Dunkirk

The Shape Of Water

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Costume design

Beauty And The Beast

Darkest Hour

Phantom Thread

The Shape Of Water

Victoria And Abdul

Cinematography

Blade Runner 2049

Darkest Hour

Dunkirk

Mudbound

The Shape Of Water

Production design

Beauty And The Beast

Blade Runner 2049

Darkest Hour

Dunkirk

The Shape Of Water