The Shape of Water

(Guillermo del Toro/2017/USA)

A romantic fantasy wrapped up in cold war espionage and military secrets The Shape of Water left me a bit cold. Guillermo del Toro does his best to warm your heart but there’s not enough substance to it. Styled very much in the vein of Jeunet et Caro’s Delicatessen the mood and feel of the film leans to the quirky and surreal and sets you up for the weirdness to come. Sally Hawkins is excellent as Elisa, a master class in exuding emotion without uttering a word. Elisa is mute and we are brought into her world most wonderfully in the first ten to twenty minutes of the movie. However once the plot begins to turn around the mysterious “Asset” that arrives at the military base where Elisa works as a cleaner, things begin the get a bit flakey.

I have no problem with the fantastical, I can readily accept the introduction of a merman into a story and the aspect of non verbal communication, acceptance and love that flourishes between Elisa and Mr. Fish has wider connotations for today’s world but there are questions that kept popping into my head. What would The Shape of Water be like if the fish man character was, say, a Russian spy? Would there be as much fuss about it as a storyline? No, obviously, but this leads me to believe that the creation of the character as a fish is more about being weird for weird’s sake. Ok a merman more readily represents “the other” than a boring old Russian spy but there's a clumsiness to The Shape of Water too. I can’t believe a cleaning lady could manage to siphon the time and access required to develop the relationship we see on screen or the fact that one security camera being put out of action enables an escape route from a military facility. There’s too many drop outs in story logic and they held me back from running with the fantasy of everything else. Del Toro is an excellent film maker but this is a poor outing by his standards in my opinion. It's derivative in style and a bit hokey in execution but I'll give it this much, it's the best movie about falling in love with a fish I've seen in a long time.

(2/5)

The Post

(Steven Spielberg/2017/USA)

Recounting the Pentagon Papers exposé on the Vietnam War in the early 70’s The Post never really goes beyond a historically interesting retelling of events. It’s all about the Washington Post obviously but the New York Times gets short shrift for its part in the revelations. That’s because the focus is on the personalities and relationship between Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee the owner and editor respectively of the Post. Hanks and Streep are in fine fettle but there are a lot of chummy, luvvey type scenes. Maybe I’m misreading things and these were the characters of the people at play but I detected an underlying self satisfaction in the performances. Also the blunted reshaping of Katherine Graham as a sort of feminist hero is a kind of revisionism that works against an honest recounting of history. It’s a bit cack handed to be fair and the plot is not in any way dynamic. The story is spoon fed to you and lacks any real intrigue or political paranoia like All the Presidents Men which is the obvious film to compare it to. Other comparisons with the current administration in America are obvious too but the plot of this film seems to have been moulded to allow these comparisons along with the feminist reading of Graham rather than them being natural by products of the original story. This is the core reason it falls a bit flat for me.

(2.5/5)

Thor: Ragnarok

(Taika Waititi/2017/USA)

I don’t really follow the whole Marvel/DC comics to film universe thing but I used to read comics like X-Men from time to time as a kid so I have a general awareness of most of the superheroes involved. However when I saw Taika Waititi’s name against the latest Thor instalment I didn’t need any further encouragement to give it a watch. Luckily this is a standalone story with enough of a recap that you can dive in without having seen the previous film. The first thing that hits home is the action; it’s full on, high octane and fun. Full of laughs and not afraid to be irreverent this has got Waititi all over it. Style and look wise it nods towards the Guardians of the Galaxy a little bit which is grand. It’s great to see this director get his hands on a big budget franchise and put his stamp on it but without taking away from the source material. Bending it to his slant just enough to create something unique within an established brand. It’s a couple of hours of kick ass fun.

(3/5)

Alone in the Dark

(Jack Sholder/1982/USA)

Early 80's horror flick but with a little more substance than usual, Alone in the Dark has all sorts of questions about what insanity is or means and how we treat those diagnosed as not sane. Sholder lays off the gore in favour of a more cerebral tension. There are some genuinely odd and unsettling moments throughout, the scene with Fatty Elster and the young girl Lyla alone in the house being a stand out one. Apparently Donald Pleasance’s character, Dr. Leo Bain, was based on the radical Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing so the probing of the narrative into the nature of madness makes a lot of sense. The performances from the leads, Palance, Schultz and Pleasance are great and slightly kooky but Martin Landau as “Preacher” and Lee Taylor-Allan as Toni are superb. As a fan of The Fall it was more than interesting to hear the lines of Dr. Leo Bain, “Always remember what the Hindu mystics say: Mind moving fast is crazy, Mind slow is sane, Mind stopped is god” which has to be a direct source for these Mark E. Smith lyrics in the song Craigness, “Mind moving slow is sane, Mind moving fast is mad, Mind left stopped is god.”

(2.5/5)

No Escape

(John Eric Dowdle/2015/USA & Thailand)

A nightmarish scenario of a family stationed in a foreign land for work purposes when a revolt against the government occurs which involves anti-western aggression. If dealt with properly this is a perfectly valid set up and plot line but No Escape deals solely in cheap thrills and the unnamed country and its crazy, rioting rebels, borders on outright racism. There is so little detail given to the back story of the political upheaval and the conceit of the main character as a target for the aggression as a representative of American corporate/colonial power is so flimsy that there really is no escape from this paper thin plot. To sympathise with the central characters is to blithely paintbrush Asian cultures into a mush of potentially crazy left wing rent a mobs, like it’s so unstable over there in generic Asialand country dude, this could so happen. The introduction of white knight super agent Pierce Brosnan takes the biscuit altogether and raises it to a whole other level of shite. Absolute zero effort at creating a believable script. It’s just out and out bad.

(0/5)

Killing Ground

(Damian Power/2016/Australia)

A horrific tale of rape and torture in outback Australia, Killing Ground tries to unsettle a bit too much before devolving into a grim chase to the final moments. Thankfully there are no scenes of the sexual assaults but the aftermath and cruel torture that are shown strays dreadfully close to unnecessary provocation or even what’s called torture porn these days. There’s no reason why the fates of the people onscreen can’t be shown in several split second gruesome flashbacks that could easily jar and shock the audience effectively. In fact there’s no reason we need to see their deaths at all. However the director makes a conscious choice to show an elongated five minute scene of the torture endured. We are subjected to that and it begs the question why? It’s already established that the bad guys are bad and the audience are led into the scene more or less knowing the fate of the people involved. In that sense we are set up to know the outcome and therefore know what’s coming next. So is it titillation? I felt it was too close to the bone and it spoiled the film because otherwise Damian Power creates a menacing tension and carries the viewer along with the terror of the main characters. The flashbacks mentioned lack any subtlety really but then again the current trend in Australian horror thriller films seems to be the more shocking and gory the better.

(2/5)

Coco

(Lee Unkrich/2017/USA) 

After 2016’s Moana, which came in for criticism of its homogenised depiction of Polynesian cultures, Disney/Pixar went the extra mile for Coco, which focuses on Mexico and specifically its traditions around the Day of the Dead. Some care was taken to be respectful and it worked by all accounts as the film has been a great success in Mexico due to its faithful depiction of La Dia Del Muerte. The titular character is an elderly woman who is great grandmother to the hero of the film, Miguel. He gets transported to the land of the dead and discovers the truth about a family secret which leads to greater unity and love within the family. I’ll say no more than that, it’s a beautiful film that combines adventure, comedy and music into a unique cultural perspective that opens up and becomes accessible to all with its message.

(3.5/5)