In reality, The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s 1950s-set fantasy about a janitor and a sea creature, took home the awards for best picture and director at the Oscars.
Below, our readers make their case for the films they think were deserving of the main prize.
The Florida Project - “America’s I, Daniel Blake”
It was America’s “I, Daniel Blake” moment. I loved the characterisation of both mother and daughter. The kids were so fresh, the colours so vibrant and Willem Dafoe’s character so real. There was a lot to learn about bedrock America and its “freedom”.
- Thangboche
Phantom Thread - ‘a beautiful cinematic experience’
This year’s Oscars had Phantom Thread in most major categories but was overlooked. I can’t imagine what Paul Thomas Anderson must think year after year - he’s a director at the top of his game, a master of his craft.
Phantom Thread has haunted me ever since my first watch. It’s a truly beautiful cinematic experience and one that should have been celebrated as such.
- James Lawrence
Call me by your name - ‘a wonderful bittersweet dream of love’
I wept like nothing else for the last half hour. I had a lump in my throat for the entire day afterwards thinking about it, like I was remembering a wonderful, affecting, bittersweet dream of love. Yes, I’m gay, and somewhere between Elio and Oliver’s ages, but I believe you don’t have to be in order to be completely swept up by an endless, dream-like summer in 1983 Northern Italy.
- TheRebelPrince
Blade Runner 2049 - ‘sustains the existential puzzle’
I had worried this would not measure up to Ridley Scott’s masterpiece but this belated sequel was a triumph that brilliantly sustained the original dystopian narrative and existential puzzle.
Its a future probably already lost, lost by a system that destroys the ecology and makes slaves out of both humans and replicants. Ignore the tatto on the eyeball and humans and replicants are indistinguishable in the grand narrative; expendable commodities in techno-capitalism’s grand scheme.
- David Eaton, Sunderland
