THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017)

Rated:  R

STARS: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Octavia Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg
DIRECTOR: Guillermo del Toro
GENRE: Drama/Sci-fi/Fantasy


The Shape of Water wants to be an endearing movie. It tries really hard. It wants to be E.T.  It wants to be La La Land. It wants to be Creature From The Black Lagoon.  It wants to be Beauty And The Beast. That's too many films for me to keep track of in my head.  It wants to be poetic...and yet there's an overabundance of gore. It's like having Freddy Krueger reciting Emily Dickinson at the end. What the hell was that? Bottom line, it doesn't know what it wants to be.

Elisa Espisoto (Sally Hawkins) is a cleaning lady who hears just fine but doesn't speak. She works at a secret government lab that is housing an "Amphibian Man" who looks a lot like the Gill Man from Creature From The Black Lagoon. The merman was captured in the Amazon by government agent Strickland (Michael Shannon), who gets his kicks by abusing the poor thing with a cattle prod. (Fish Guy gets a measure of revenge by biting off a couple of Strickland's fingers.) The evil fed wants to kill the amphibian (played by Doug Jones) and study him like a dead frog in a biology lab. Strickland is opposed by scientist Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), who wants to keep the scaly being alive. It's 1962--in the thick of the cold war--and a subplot has the Russians trying to get their mitts on Amphibian Man for their own nefarious purposes.

Elisa, being an outcast herself, repeatedly sneaks into the chamber (security seems to be really lax for an "asset" of this magnitude) where the creature sits in a tank tethered by a chain around its neck. She and Amphibian Man hit it off right away. Cut to the chase: An escape plan must be hatched, as the creature's days are numbered. With the help of Elisa's unemployed artist neighbor (Richard Jenkins), and her co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer), she springs the fishy dude from his confines (like I said, security is really lax) and takes him to her abode. That's where the real fun begins, as Elisa ends up naked in the shower with him and discovers he's a lot more like a regular guy than meets the eye!

Okay...The Shape of Water is a fantasy, so anything goes. But to buy into it hook, line and sinker, the willing suspension of disbelief must kick in. That was hard for me because Amphibian Man looks sorta like Frankie Valli in a wet suit with barnacles hanging off him. At no point are you going to think it looks like anything but an actor dressed up in a cheesy rubber costume--a la those laughable creature features from the fifties. The only reason I can imagine why  director Guillermo del Toro--in this era of CGI wizardry--chose to go this low tech would be as a way of paying homage to that era of cinema, which he seems to love.

But The Shape of Water does have its visual delights, and one of them is Sally Hawkins. They've got her made up to look really plain--as befitting a lowly toilet cleaner--but they couldn't hide her light under a bushel for the whole movie, and that becomes abundantly clear when she strips down for the steamy shower scene.

There are aural delights as well, with a big band flavored soundtrack from Alexandre Desplat. There's Andy Williams, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and a silky rendition of "You'll Never Know" from opera singer Renee Fleming.

Nice touches...but not enough to make me gush about this movie.

Grade:  C +

JILL'S TAKE

Finally. Tim and I disagree! I found The Shape Of Water to be absolutely brilliant, even Oscar-worthy. (Hell, it's already nominated for seven Golden Globes.) For starters, the opening underwater sequence deserves a special award for its dank and delightful originality. I was not prepared to like this film since sci-fi and/or fantasy is not one of my favorite genres. But I'm so glad I allowed myself to see it!

The girl I went with, a visitor from Oregon, liked it too. But afterwards, she mentioned how similar this creature was to the creature in Hellboy. I later looked up that movie and was blown away by the physical similarities. And the fact that both films were directed by Guillermo del Toro!

I do agree with Tim about the lax security. But by then, I was hooked on saving the poor creature from any more cattle-prodding. And since Tim gave away the finger chomping bit, another friend pointed out how the smell of rotting flesh would have been apparent to both Agent Strickland and anyone else long before those blackened digits departed. Sure, there were a lot of implausible scenes in the The Shape of Water but romances between humans and non-humans have worked for a long, long time. (Beauty and the Beast, Phantom of the Opera, King Kong, etc.)

The Russian plot was, for me, unnecessary. But I did find it interesting that the roles played by the two Michaels (Shannon and Stuhlbarg) were reversals of the roles they played in the HBO series "Boardwalk Empire." In that one, Stuhlbarg played mafia boss Arnold Rothstein and Shannon was a bumbling FBI agent. And Richard Jenkins, who never turns in a bad performance, was superb. (I wept for him at the end.)

Grade: A

HIDDEN FIGURES (2017)

Rated: PG

STARS: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Mahershala Ali
DIRECTOR: Ted Melfi
GENRE: Biopic/Drama

Hidden Figures, the "based upon a true story" tale of three young black women who worked for NASA in the Jim Crow era of segregation in Virginia in the early sixties, is the feelgood film of the year--so far (though the year's still young!)

Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) was a math genius who spit out blackboards full of equations that would prove instrumental in getting John Glenn into space as the first man to orbit the earth in 1962. Her two friends and cohorts, Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), had their own stories: Vaughn in her struggle to rise to a supervisory position within an organization that was male dominated and overtly racist; and Mary Jackson, who had to petition the court to allow her to attend classes at the all white University of Virginia so that she could fulfill requirements to get into NASA's engineering program.     

Just as it takes many hands and many minds to put a manned rocket into space, there are many hands and many minds that go into the making of a film. In the beginning, there was the word. Or rather, the book by Margot Lee Shetterly. The movie, reportedly, is not a faithful rendering of the book--some creative license was taken with timelines, and some events were invented--all for dramatic effect--but that's typical of nearly all such film adaptations. So no demerits there.

A gold star goes to Pharrel Williams, Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch for a musical score that adds punch to the most dramatic and uplifting scenes. And yes, they are manipulative scenes that will make your eyes water. After all, Hidden Figures is about some brave and spunky women who dealt with and overcame the astounding ignorance--the total disregard for human dignity--that was our American apartheid system which existed prior to the enactment of the groundbreaking Civil Rights legislation of 1964. 

BUT...all the white folks portrayed here are one dimensional. To the man (and woman), they are all condescending racist creeps, to one degree or another. Even the most sympathetic of the lot--project supervisor Al Harrison (Kevin Costner)--is so wrapped up in his work that he has to be shown by the women themselves the inherent unfairness of some of the workplace conditions they had to put up with. Like walking half a mile to the "colored" restrooms. But by stereotyping ALL of the Caucasians in this manner, Hidden Figures paints a skewed portrait of the way it really was in the early sixties, when a growing consciousness and the movement for civil rights was beginning to form. I was around then (as a young'un) and can attest that while not all of us were Bernie Sanders, not all of us were George Wallace either. So a few demerits for some blatant stereotyping.

As for the acting, Taraji P. Henson deserves an Oscar nomination for "Running In High Heels," as she dashes back and forth to the restroom on her breaks!

Grade:  B


JILL'S TAKE

Having seen the trailer for Hidden Figures at least a dozen times before actually viewing the film, I had some preconceived notions about what I'd be going to see. Ho hum, just another women's rights flick with black chicks. Boy, was I wrong! Not about the content but about how I would be drawn in emotionally. Racism is always 'box office gold' in film-making parlance. And Hidden Figures is no exception. What makes it unique is the woman's angle. And being about NASA doesn't hurt, either.

The performances were all top notch. But as I am a devoted Oscar follower, I must say that Octavia Spencer's "Best Supporting Actress" nomination is a bit puzzling. Yes, she was good as the never-getting-promoted victim of racial prejudice. But compared to the other two African American ladies who are nominated? Gimme a break. (I'm referring to Viola Davis in Fences and Naomie Harris in Moonlight.) I guess last year's all white brouhaha is to blame... Still, Hidden Figures is a must-see movie and definitely deserves its Best Film nomination.

I find very little to criticize. And at the end of two hours and seven minutes, I still wanted more. I especially loved how they showed the real women at the end of the film -- at different ages and stages of their lives. Very uplifting, indeed.

Grade: B+