The Shape of the Water is an excellent film. But know this: when the movie started up and the MPAA warning said “Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence and language”, I made a handful of jokes about what various entries in that list would entail.
Well, let me tell you: The MPAA is not lying at all. If anything, it’s soft-pedalling what happens in the movie. So if you’re down with seeing a movie with sexual content, graphic nudity, graphic violence, torture, and language in it, you *TOTALLY* need to see this movie.
The movie won four Oscars: Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, and Best Picture. While we could quibble over Best Picture and Best Director (hey, there were a lot of good movies in 2017), it’s the Production Design that makes me say “yes… this movie not only deserves the Oscar for this, I’m thinking that they got robbed for Best Cinematography.”
Anyway, if you’ve been living under a rock (the way that I do!), this is the Guillermo del Toro love story that he wrote after getting a lot of letters from people who saw Crimson Peak and said “I really liked it, but I was kind of hoping for something a little more like Pan’s Labyrinth.”
Well, if you saw Pan’s Labyrinth (an absolutely *AMAZING* movie that I never need to see again) and wished that he would make a love story for adults instead of an old-school (like Brothers Grimm old-school) children’s story, this is that film. Just close the post now and order it off of amazon (link above!) or get it from your local Blockbuster or Redbox or whatever it is that the kids today use.
The movie is one of the few that benefits from having the fewer spoilers the better, so I don’t want to get too much more into it here but take the warning from the MPAA seriously and, if you still want to see it, you should do so and you’ll be absolutely entranced.
If you’ve seen the movie… WOW! The colors were *SO GOOD*! And the motifs of red on green, the left pectoral muscle, the conflicts between the people in the society who have a voice and the people in the society who don’t have one! The COLORS! (Now, I do think that the morality depicted in the movie could stand to be as mature as the other content in the flick… but, hey, complaining that a fable doesn’t have sufficient depth is kind of missing the forest for the trees, here.)
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
Rewatching Legion from the beginning because when I started in on Season 2 I realized I was totally lost. I suspect I would be having an easier time of it if I’d read the comic book… or maybe not, this is a seriously weird and confusing story. I figure bingeing it is my only hope.Report
Pans Labrinth as Grimm tale… The best analogy I have heard in a while. I am always accused of having the wife watch “Aaron movies” meaning super depressing, “He Dies, She Dies…” art house films. So I am looking forward to this, and have my eyes on I, Tonya.
Rereading Ellroy’s LA Confidential (don’t bother with the movie, the book isn’t just better, it is Crime Novel as Literature) and just picked up Travells in Tartary by Pere Huc (early 18th-century travel for the win)Report
I’d say that Shape of the Water isn’t really a Grimm Tale as much as a retelling of E.T. (and whatever stories E.T. may have been lifted from (No Religion)) plus a smattering of, ahem, “graphic nudity”.Report