thread to discuss Guillermo del Toro's THE SHAPE OF WATER

Heh yeah her "plan" is defiantly half-arsed, like neither characters or writers have bothered to think it through - this high-security facility should prob have considered installing at least one security camera in the actual room where the fish man is kept, for one thing

It's not really a script kinda film (see: pie shop, see also: everything)

oh and isn't it obvious that she's pregnant after their first intercourse (the drops of water on the bus window describing a fertilization) ?
Which would also confirm that they are more or less of the same species (which would explain their instant initial attraction)...

this made me lol but anything that is open to interpretation is more interesting than something that isn't imo :)

eheh, after the "raindrops on the bus' window" scene, I told that theory to my wife and she was like "wha ?"
to me it was so obvious : they just had intercourse, she's all happy on the bus then close up on the raindrops looking like sperm cells rushing towards an egg then a zygote which starts to divide !

I actually quite enjoyed this second time around, which was surprising because I *really* took against it first time round and only gave it another shot because all the positivity made me think I must have missed something, somewhere.

Weird gratuitous nudity with bad guy wife, when she gets her boob out to tempt him to sex then has her bra firmly on while they're actually doing it. All the stuff with the main character seemed entirely in context, although weird because I've most recently seen her as the mum in Paddington 2.

This was the most teal film ever though, right?

If "teal" is a euphemism for "overrated" then, yeah.

No, actual teal as in teal & orange teal. It felt like every single surface up to the point where he gets his new car (also teal, in a teal showroom) was teal (or, at a pinch, duck egg blue).

yeah, definitely teal but for once it was on purpose and related to the story (mostly aquatic).
I loved the design. It actually reminded me of an old video game : Bioshock !

Yeah, I kind of think Paddington would be a better mate than the fish.

Just wait for Paddington 3.

https://static.rogerebert.com/uploads/review/primary_image/reviews/ted-2012/hero_EB20120627REVIEWS120629973AR.jpg

very interesting (and wow "the wave" on the wall in her flat !)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z7gJ5C1muo

That review linked above is pretty good.

Yeah, Nayman's Cinemascope review is excellent: informed, well-written and worth thinking about. I disagree in that I quite like the film and think it generally succeeds in its ambitions, but most of Nayman's criticisms hit their mark.

Mike d'Angelo otm:

Del Toro is the kind of auteur who conceives a cartoon sadist (every damn time, come to think of it) and decides to hire Michael freakin' Shannon for the role. Everything's a hat on a hat. It's like having someone yell "Surrender to the magic!" in your face for two hours. Maybe I could if you'd stop yelling.

Shannon has really got to stop playing the cartoon villains, or risk being Walkenized.

Or risk being someone who always gets paid?

at some point you've got enough

just get paid every other role

my red hook friends and acquaintances speak well of him as a neighbor and bar regular iirc

I'm sure he's a great person. But boy, he even looks more than a little like Walken, doesn't he?

Shannon works so much, didn't Walken's career really drop off in the 80s? I mean was he in everything after The Deer Hunter like Shannon has been in everything for the last... 4-5 years?

I hate the name of this movie, it just screams oscar bait you will forget about in 10 years.

Walken starred in The Dead Zone and A View To A Kill in '83 and '85, and some other pictures like Brainstorm that people probably expected to be slightly bigger than they were. It's only after that that his profile kinda dropped for a while. If you compare it to Shannon's side by side I feel like there's about the same ratio of "big" movies and stuff most people haven't heard of or kind of forgot about already.

It's not godawful... I'm impressed that a film can win Best Picture while resurrecting Alice Faye's biggest hit AND featuring severed fingers, ripped-open throat, etc. And still come off like Amelie Does the Gill Man.

In a Details profile published in late '93, Walken said, "An agent can't say 'Get a Chris Walken type!' I am the type. I own it. Which means I will work for a very long time."

rote-type

That quote at the top - hat on top of a hat - is perfect. This whole film screams "I Love Monsters! And Whimsy! And! And!". Gimme "Pan's Labyrinth" any ol' day instead.