WELCOME TO MARWEN (2018)

Rated:  PG-13

STARS: Steve Carrell, Leslie Mann, Merritt Weaver, Diane Kruger, Janelle Monae, Eiza Gonzales, Gwendoline Christie
DIRECTOR: Robert Zemeckis
GENRE; Drama/ Fantasy

Mark Hogancamp's story is the stuff that movies are made of. And that brings us to Welcome To Marwen. Mark, an artist in upstate New York, goes out drinking one night at a local bar where he meets some guys who seem friendly. They yuck it up for a while, and then the  tipsy Hogancamp reveals that he is a cross-dresser--he likes to wear women's clothing--with a special fascination for shoes, of which he has a closet full. As he's leaving the bar, he is attacked by the men--who turn out to be neo-Nazis--and beaten to within an inch of  his life. 

When he emerges from a coma, a good chunk of Hogancamp's memory is wiped out. He reverts to an almost childlike emotional state, reacting to his  PTSD by creating a fantasy art installation--a village set in World War 2 Belgium where he is the fighter pilot hero--with a bevy of fetching dolls who are counterparts for some of the real women in his life--played by Leslie Mann, Janelle Monae, Eiza Gonzales, Merritt Weaver and others. Together they set about kicking some Nazi butt. This is his therapy.

Steve Carrell--and you'd be hard-pressed to name a finer thespian today--is Hogancamp in the flesh, and director Robert Zemeckis brings the village and the dolls to life in animated sequences that will blow you (as well as the Nazis) away! Welcome To Marwen has to be commended on its sheer inventiveness alone. The back and forth from Mark's fantasy world to his real life where he is avoiding a court date to face his attackers has come under fire (I'm using a lot of puns here) from critics. They say: it's not quite a comedy and not quite a drama;  gooey dreck;  it's disjointed...  
   
If there's one thing you can count on from film critics, it's a tendency to over analyze. Because they think that's their job. (I've touched on this in previous reviews.) So they seize upon it and dissect it in a cold and calculating way. As if there were ever a perfect film. (Last Tango In Paris notwithstanding!) 

I operate on a more human level. I like what touches me. Sometimes that's difficult to define. I like scenes where I'm going OH WOW--as in when Mark's dolls are marching in lockstep toward the Nazis...looking seductive...with machine guns tucked behind their backs...to the thumping beat of Robert Palmer's "Addicted To Love." That's worth the price of admission right there. 

I liked Welcome to Marwen.  Because I so respect the sincere artistic effort and vision that goes into the making of any film, especially one that takes the chances and flat out goes for broke as this one does. But everyone isn't going to look at a painting and see the same thing. And that's the beauty of movies. You read one review. You read another that's totally different. Someone saw something or got something out of it that you didn't, or vice-versa. Just like real life. 

Grade : B +  

JILL'S TAKE

Call me just another nasty critic but Welcome To Marwen left me colder than a nazi-killing doll. Aside from those other reviewers' quotes that Tim already mentioned, I'd add 'meandering, even meaningless' – unless you find dolls easier to communicate with than humans. But while I'm on the subject of dolls, I must give tremendous credit to those doll designers and digital artists that made these imaginary figures come to life. (Too many names and categories to mention.)

Still, the story was hard to understand and even harder to relate to. And Steve Carrell's performance often reminded me of the character he played in Dinner For Schmucks. He is such a gifted actor, I'm sorry he chose to appear in this movie. Especially since he was so good in another film out this year called Beautiful Boy. Ironically, both films focused on the destructive effects of alcohol. Only in different ways.

If any of you are Nurse Jackie fans (Showtime) or Godless (Netflix) followers, you will no doubt recognize Merritt Weaver in this film as the owner of the doll boutique. I'm impressed with the range of her acting. But I'd rather watch 20 reruns of Nurse Jackie or Godless than be subjected to visiting Marwen again. Once is one time too many!

Grade: D

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

TIMOTEO SEZ...

ON ACTING:

We cannot pretend in our minds to NOT be doing something that we're ACTUALLY doing, and then dismiss it as just "acting." Acting is living out one's fantasies without having to take responsibility for it.