The Shape of Water

The Shape of Water

Guillermo del Toro is one of my favorite directors. He is a master of fantasy story telling. His oeuvre includes Pan’s Labyrinth, Hell Boy and The Devil’s Backbone. This is a tender love story between a lonely mute woman and an Amphibious man (merman) captured by the government for nefarious research. The mute is played by Sally Hawkins who is a janitor at the governmental facility. In contrast to the cruelty inflicted by Michael Shannon, who plays a military officer who found the “asset” in the Amazon, Hawkins affectionately secures the creature’s confidence and affection.  Since the creature cannot speak sign language becomes their common bridge.

The movie is set in the 60’s. Dresses, cars, music and bigotry all 60’s. Racial discrimination, homophobia and disparaging the handicapped were all prevalent. The creature is an avator for these derogations and his loving relationship with Hawkins is a repudiation of blind hate.

Sally Hawkins plays a difficult role as a mute, but this constraint does not limit her expressive performance. The signing was an interesting feature of the film (in real life Hawkins is not mute). Octavia Spencer is also a janitor and Hawkins’s friend. She helps to facilitate the romantic affair between Hawkins and the merman. She gives her usual understated performance which belies her strength and guile.

Michael Shannon has created on a franchise of being mean. His sadistic performance as Colonel Strickland is over the top and intense. He torments Hawkins and Spencer which in turn makes them cohorts to protect the merman. Richard Jenkins plays a terribly lonely middle aged closeted commercial artist who is Hawkins’s neighbor and close friend. Their mutual loneliness bonds them together and Jenkins is very supportive of the burgeoning romance between Hawkins and the merman. He puts himself in peril for their love.

Some parts of the movie are quite brutal. There is also magic, but I refrain from revealing it. One benefit, by the end of the movie you will be able to sign F… You.

The Orphanage

I was channel surfing Italian TV in Milan. My first hit was a typical RAI variety

  program featuring Amazonian women showing more leg than talent and some old guy with bad dye job hosting. My next hit was a news format with six intense journalists seriously discussing the history of Dragon Boat Racing (what the …..). Fortunately I found a foreign language (English among others) channel. The feature movie was “The Orphanage” which I never heard of. It was in Spanish without subtitles. What caught my attention was Guillermo Del Toro’s name. He was not the director but the producer. Del Toro is a great director and writer. His credits include Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devils Back Bone and the Hell Boy series. I decided to watch the film. It was 11pm and past my bedtime but what the hell let’s get wild.

Even without subtitles the movie was intriguing. The acting was so good you had a basic idea of what was going on. A family took over an abandoned orphanage and were living there. There was a mother a father and their beloved son Simón. Flashbacks showed the original orphanage with the orphans happy and running around in play.  Later you find out something terrible happened to the orphans. In the present Simón befriends one of the orphan ghosts. Simon has a bad fight with his mother and runs away and disappears. The rest of the movie focuses on the parent’s efforts, especially the mother’s, to find Simón.

Basically this is a ghost story. The atmosphere of the movie is more sad than gloomy. The ghosts are not the main focus rather it is the parents efforts to find their son and their crushing heart breaks. Even in disappear some parts are touching and tender. This film definitely has a Hitchcockian feel. It has consistent style but when it wants to scare you it does so effectively. In one scene the mother is pushed into the bathroom by a ghost and tumbles into the tub ripping a shower curtain as she falls; sound familiar?

After the movie, which ended at 1am, I looked it up on Wikipedia.  What I found out made the movie even more interesting. I am ordering the movie on Netflix with subtitles. This was a gem of a find which I highly recommend it. Maybe I will stay up past 1am more often.

Pacific Rim

Ladies you can skip this review. This is for the man-child or man-children or whatever.

This movie is homage to those cheesy Godzilla movies cranked out by the Japanese in the 1960’s. Godzilla was some guy in a rubber suite flaying around killing Mothra or destroying office buildings. This movie is a bit of an upgrade influenced by the Manga culture (Japanese comic books). Kaijus monsters, the size of buildings, attack the planet destroying cities bent on world domination. To battle the Kaijus human depend on Jaegers (not the drink) which are robots the size of buildings also. The Jaegers are so large they need two pilots operating the machinery in unison from the inside (just like old Godzilla). It was very silly to see how the pilots maneuvered the Jaegers. For the Jaeger to walk the pilots actually move their legs and to fight they move their arms inside the Jaeger. I guess these guys never heard of hydraulics.

The director Guillermo del Toro, is one of the best Sci Fi/ fantasy directors around. He directed Pan's Labyrinth  and the Hell Boy movies among others. Visually this film is full of action and epic battles. The film is like an expensive version of the cartoon show Dragon Ball. The actors are grade B, which is good enough. A recognizable actor is Charlie Day. This is the dental hygienist  from Horrible Bosses who refused to be sexually ravished by Jennifer Ashton (schmuck). Charlie plays a scientist who is an expert on Kaijus anatomy. Idris Elba is the guy who played the captain in the movie Prometheus and had a go with Charliz Theron (Yes!). He is the very serious chief of the Jaeger operation. He is so stiff he can imitate a 2 x 4. Rinko Kikuchi is the gender breaker female pilot. I have no idea who she is but she is easy on the eyes. Ron Perlman (Hell Boy himself) has a small role as a black marketer in Kaijus carcasses as Aphrodisiacs, yuk?

The film actually has a plot, but I will not to spoil it for you. I am not sure if there will be a Pacific Rim 2. But if you are nostalgic for Godzilla flicks or collected Dragon Ball trading cards go see the movie. This may be the latest in kitsch.