I was genuinely surprised that The Shape of Water won Best Picture.

It's not at all the Academy's usual sort of thing. And now I'm seeing people call it the "safe" choice and it's like, all right, in a year where it was up against a radical racial horror-satire, a women's coming-of-age story, and a non-tragic, non-biographical queer male romance, maybe I can kind of see how a het fairy tale would get that? But it's still a movie where the villain was explicitly toxic masculinity and the lady fucked the fish! In three or four simultaneous genres! And Technicolor!

If any of the other nominees had won over Get Out, I would have grumbled that it was robbed, but I was fine with this choice, especially since Get Out won for Best Original Screenplay.

Yes. And that was well deserved. (I still think he could have gotten Best Director and nobody would have died.)

I'd liked Lady Bird a lot less than I'd expected to, but I was still surprised it was completely shut out.

I heard very good things; I just didn't hear very good things that made me want to run out and watch it. What about it didn't work for you?