"But isn’t this a bit of a cautious, comfort-food nomination list? Oscars to soothe everyone in troubled Trumpian times?"

"A brilliant exercise in exotic fantasy in an imagined American past, and some rousing journeys back to Britain’s wartime past in Dunkirk and Darkest Hour? Creatures in the water ... Winston in the bath? I wonder. The Shape of Water is great: but Hollywood feels on the back foot right now. The movie establishment might in other circumstances feel moved to let rip with rage at the hated pussy-grabber. But the Weinstein fallout is clearly making the tuxed throng of awards season feel they’re living in too a fragile a glass house from which to be throwing stones. The Post — a movie which feels tacitly anti-Trump — has not made much of a ripple. As for the documentary nomination list, there are some great movies on there. But I’m waiting for a Michael Moore moment, a repudiation of politeness, a confronting of the elephant in the Oval Office, a ferocious upsetting of the apple-cart — something to infuriate both the conservatives and the sensible liberals."

Writes Peter Bradshaw (in The Guardian). Trump is himself such a ferocious upsetter of apple carts that it's hard to see how it's possible to confront him with ferocious upsetting. And the news and social media confront him continually. What would work in a movie? The Trump presidency is already the movie (the nightmare).