Skip to main content

The shape of water - review


Not sure what to make of this film.  It is directed by a Mexican, has an English woman and American dude as its main actors along with a strange amphibian of Amazonian origins.  It is part love fest and part heist movie, showing a gay man harboring an undocumented alien who in turn goes out and sublets to another undocumented alien.  Eventually the first alien has sex with the subletee.

It is beauty and the beast meet Mission Impossible where both beauty and beast are mute.  Set in the late 50s the film portrays a creature captured by the US military and brought to Washington for research given that it is a unique specimen that glows and looks like a giant mudskipper.

So as far as the plot goes we have a bunch of handicaps including the dictatorial military man (his ego being his handicap) prodding the amphibian to discover its secrets and therefore beat the Russians (who just launched a dog in space on a Sputnik) in a game of one upmanship.

It is fantasy in a very different light that moves slowly like swimming underwater.  Guillermo del Toro  in his directorial hat is entertaining to a degree but loses an audience like myself with a lot of what appears to be diversity and inclusion mumbo jumbo masked with overt sexual activity in the name of liberal art.

Saving grace - Octavia Spencer's character is hilarious and well played in the supporting role.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...
2 comments
Read more

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...
Post a Comment
Read more

Of Jims and Johns

Here is another essay on the subject of first names. As in birth names. Or names provided to an offspring at birth. While the developed world tends to shy away from the exotic like Refrigerator or Coca Cola for their new production there is a plethora of Jims and Johns and Bobs or Robs. Speaking of which I do not think there is a categoric decision point at the time of birth if a child will be hereafter called as Bob. I mean have not yet met a toddler called Bob or Rob for that matter. At some point though the parental instinct to mouth out multiple syllables runs out and they switch from calling the crawler Robert to simply Robbie to Rob. Now speaking of - it is strange that the name sounds like something you would not want Rob to do - i.e. Rob anyone. Then why call someone that? After all Rob Peter to Pay Paul is not exactly a maxim to live a young life? Is it? Perhaps Peter or Paul might want to have a say in it? Then there is this matter of going to the John. Why degrad...
2 comments
Read more