Whatever Container It's In

Year: 2017

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon 

Run Time: 2 hours 3 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Guillermo del Toro is one of the few visionary directors we have on hand today, but he’s also one of the most inconsistent. I tend to abide by the rule of thumb that his Spanish-language work is stronger than his English films (Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone are masterpieces, whereas Crimson Peak or Pacific Rim are pretty but a bit empty-headed), but I was greatly intrigued by The Shape of Water, his quasi-remake of The Creature from the Black Lagoon. I must say that rule of thumb still applies, but it’s certainly an interesting beast that I’m excited to discuss.

And if there’s one thing del Toro knows a lot about, it’s interesting beasts.

So, the plot. Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a mute cleaning woman who works at an aerospace institute in a fairy tale vision of 1960’s Baltimore. When the scientists at work bring in their newest asset – an amphibious sea creature from South America (Doug Jones, who is not the Alabama senator, though I’m sure he wishes he had that on his CV instead of The Bye Bye Man) that they’re hoping will help them make major steps in the space race once they figure out how its breathing apparatus works – she begins to teach it sign language and they become fast friends… and maybe more.

When the Evil Scientist Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) decides to vivisect the creature, Elisa must face the loss of this new relationship with a creature that makes her feel less alien and alone in this world of people who look down on her, either for her lack of speech or the fact that she’s a woman. She is supported by her coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and her aging painter neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), but she might just have to take action.

And I mean “action” in every sense of the word.

I don’t know what it is about this Oscar season. Normally I’m not a huge fan of big awards contenders in general so it shouldn't be surprising that I'm not feeling into it, but this slate of flicks seems tailor-made for my tastes. A non-AIDS/death related gay romance? A romance starring the Gill Man? A film bringing to life the story of The Room?! Don’t mind if I do! And yet I’m liking these films even less than normal. OK, I don’t think I’ll ever dislike anything as much as The Revenant or Birdman, but this year I’m kind of longing for a Her, or a Brooklyn, or even a The Descendants. Just something that doesn’t promise high genre heights yet still manages to evoke something quiet and engrossing. Meanwhile I’m stuck with empty promises of things I’ll love that end up delivering something messy and flawed, ultimately redeemable but impossible to fall head over heels in love with.

I at least enjoyed The Shape of Water more thoroughly than Call Me By Your Name, because del Toro is a consummate entertainer even when he’s operating in a lower gear. But this film fails so hard at delivering most of what it promises that when it hits one of its many truly great scenes, it just doesn’t have the punch you wish it did.

I think my biggest issue is that The Shape of Water is just a little bit – I hate to say it – twee. The easiest comparison that comes to mind is Amélie, another film that spins a grand fairy tale fantasy out of regular life. Del Toro has proven himself adept at that kind of thing before, but Pan’s Labyrinth is no Jean-Pierre Jeunet romp. The particular register he’s working in feels utterly alien, and the central romance suffers because of it.

Fairy tales have the ability to smooth the edges off the snags and quibbles of real life love (Prince Charming hardly ever knows the Princess for more than a week before they’re hitched), but del Toro’s instincts toward blending the epic fantasy with gritty, violent reality hobble his ability to do that.  And despite the stellar performances of both Hawkins (who whips up a dazzling internal life for a character who doesn’t speak a word) and Jones (whose posture is so utterly alien that you don’t for a second remember he’s a man in a suit), the script underserves them. Their romance is too rushed-through to evoke the huge swell of emotion the movie clearly wants you to feel toward the midpoint, and the characters are too whimsical to really take the stakes seriously, even when they are raised through the roof.

The amount of time it takes you to look at this caption is about the time the script devotes to their chemistry before tossing them into another movie entirely for about forty minutes.

But let's not pretend that there is not some terrific material at work in The Shape of Water, it just tends to be in the stuff circulating around the central relationship. The lead actors might be great, but their supporting players are even better. Well, I mean Octavia Spencer is doing her Octavia Spencer thing, and that's just dandy, but Richard Jenkins and Michael Shannon are pure magic.

Michael Shannon has made a habit of getting accolades for movies I don't really care to see, but he has more than won me over to his side here. The metaphor about his character (a white man with a hilariously perfect 50's suburban family) being the true monster here isn't particularly subtle, but boy does he sell it by being f**king scary. Every second he's onscreen pulses with nerve-shattering tension, and he has the audience wrapped around his little finger within two frames.

And then there's poor Richard Jenkins, who digs deep to unearth some raw loneliness in character as a gay man who has allowed himself to grow old hiding in the shadows and regrets letting his life and potential love pass him by. His character is probably the funniest, warmest presence in the film, but every three scenes or so he gets it into his head to rip out your heart with his bare hands and play the strings like a maestro of human misery.

The Shape of Water has a lot to say about alienation and loneliness, and those themes live and breathe in the performances even when they aren't present on the page. This is probably the best ensemble of the year, and the fact that they get to act out a story this weird on sets this sumptuous in their grotty glory, with cinematography this sleek and stunning is a small miracle. It doesn't come together quite enough for me to give it a wholehearted recommendation, but god damn can it draw some real beauty from its murky depths.

TL;DR: The Shape of Water is a gorgeous, well-acted film with clumsy script execution.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1165

The Night HE Came Home

Year: 2009

Director: Rob Zombie

Cast: Scout Taylor-Compton, Tyler Mane, Malcolm McDowell

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Trick or treat, mother f**kers! It may have taken a year longer than it was supposed to, but my All Hallow’s Eve present for you all is the final entry in our Halloween marathon! To be completely honest, I would have gotten to it sooner, but I’ve seen Rob Zombie’s Halloween II before and knew better than to approach it unarmed. It took me so long to psychologically prepare that it was almost the next October, so I decided to save it up to use as an endcap to my all-too brief Exorcist marathon.

[EN: For the record, this review is of the Director’s Cut, which seems to be the version that’s most readily available these days.]

So, Halloween II. Back in the days when a remake could actually get a theatrical sequel, not that it happened much anyway. The only one I can recall is the prequel Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, and then a handful of DTV follow-ups to Fright Night and I Spit On Your Grave for some reason. I can see why Rob Zombie’s Halloween was one of the lucky few. As shrill and mean-spirited as it is, it struck a chord with the edgier youth demographic. It’s popular with a small but rabid group, and it’s the prerogative of the Akkad family to keep pumping these films out as long as there are wallets to receive them. But boy do I wish they hadn’t made Halloween II, because that story had nowhere to go and it does exactly that.

At least there’s no Ken Foree diarrhea scene.

In Halloween II, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) is living with the only other survivor of the Michal Myers (Tyler Mane) rampage two years ago – Annie (Danielle Harris) – and her dad, Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif). Still dealing with the trauma of that fateful Halloween night and newly reeling from the revelation in fame-hungry Dr. Loomis’ (Malcolm McDowell) tell-all book that she’s Michael Myers’ sister, Laurie goes through life vaulting between the equally pleasant poles of Nasal Shouting and Complete Emotional Breakdown. 

She’s plagued by nightmares, and of course Michael picks this moment to show up again, emerging from the backwoods looking beardy, filthy, and uncannily like Rob Zombie himself. He wreaks havoc by killing her new friends whose names I didn’t bother to learn, as well as some amusingly random townsfolk. So yeah, Michael is haunted by visions of his mom (Sheri Moon Zombie), who’s convincing him to kill people, kidnap his sister, and also hang with a dream horse, because hey- Rob Zombie had to fit his wife in there somewhere, I guess.

And she needed an excuse to dress like she was going to a Fleetwood Mac concert.

One thing I will say about Halloween II is that it improves greatly upon its predecessor, though that bar is so low you could crawl over it. But in attempting to craft his twisted new mythology for the Myers siblings, Zombie finally lets go of the alit vestiges of John Carpenter’s property, freeing himself from slavishly copying the original film, only with more Annoying. The unsettlingly brutal kills are toned down, as is the lewd clowning of every single character. In fact, everything is toned down, because Halloween II is barely a movie.

Once you get through the 25-minute dream sequence that opens the movie (it’s supposed to be jarring, but it’s mostly just an excuse to replace exposition with chase sequences and give Octavia Spencer one of her final sassy Black Coworker roles before she starred in The Help – this scene is so obviously not trying that her character is actually named “Octavia”), you’re stuck on a rockabilly merry-go-round for an hour, cycling endlessly between any of these three scenes:

1) Dr. Loomis is a giant, throbbing asshole to his publicist while on tour for his book, simultaneously adding nothing to the narrative and demolishing his character from the ground up.

2) Laurie Strode shrieks/cries/vomits at/on her friends/therapist/self.

3) Somebody around town does vulgar, despicable things for 2 ½ minutes, then Michael Myers teleports in and murders them.

The actual plot, insofar as this shattered pile of unfathomable motivations can be called a “plot,” doesn’t kick in until the final 20 minutes. It’s actually pretty reminiscent of the dire Halloween 5, down to the detail that the characters go to a pointless barn dance in the beginning of Act 3, only to lazily drift over to the true location of the finale. And then it’s just… over.

I guess I should thank it for not sticking around.

Although Halloween II is less grating overall than Halloween 2007, that doesn’t mean Zombie’s not up to his usual “Tobe Hooper turned up to 11” tricks. Every single cluttered, dingy set either looks like a punk club’s bathroom or an episode of Atlanta Trailer Park Hoarders. And every single character is an unlikeable fountain of vitriol, whether they’re facing a serial killer or eating pizza at the kitchen table. People in Halloween II don’t talk. They either shout or they whine or they die. There’s no in between, no calm before the storm. Everything is just storm.

It certainly doesn’t help that the ensemble has less of a grip on the material this time around. Harris and Taylor-Compton can’t find the shreds of humanity they clung to in their roles last time, because there aren’t any. And Malcolm McDowell is completely wasted in a role that violates continuity to resurrect him, only to have him do nothing useful at all (to be fair, that’s  pretty much what they did with Donald Pleasance the last three times). Then there’s Sheri Moon Zombie, who talks to her onscreen son like he’s a girlfriend she ran into a Starbucks. Even the infallible Brad Dourif can’t find his footing and serves up a huge tray of ham during a supposedly heartfelt moment.

While I could go on and on about the obvious metaphors, the mask that makes Myers look like Sideshow Bob, or the ultimate violation of the character by having him speak, and any number of vicious complaints, let’s end the review on an uncharacteristically positive note, shall we? Rob Zombie really does know how to shoot moonlit streets at night, and Halloween II is chock full of beautiful suburban imagery with pristine, almost elegant lighting. So that’s nice, I guess. It certainly helps in making this sequel much more bearable It’s undoubtedly a bad movie, but its bisected narrative helps it fly by and the jagged tonal edges are at least sanded down a little bit. ¡Viva Halloween II!

Killer: Michael Myers (Tyler Mane)

Final Girl: Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton)

Best Kill: Michael Myers dies, meaning we won’t have to deal with this incarnation of him anymore.

Sign of the Times: The fact that this remake sequel even exists is a pretty clear sign it’s the 2000’s.

Scariest Moment: After a car crash, a paramedic spits blood from his mouth and shouts the F word for approximately five minutes, and you realize this is how the movie is gonna be the whole time.

Weirdest Moment: Weird Al Yankovic has a cameo in this movie

Champion Dialogue: “Bad taste is the petrol that drives the American dream.”

Body Count: 19

1. Coroner Hooks dies in a car crash.
2. Gary Scott is decapitated with a glass shard.
3. Nurse Octavia is stabbed to death.
4. Nurse has her eyes gouged out offscreen.
5. Buddy is axed in the back.
6. Floyd is impaled on antlers.
7. Sherman is stabbed to death.
8. Jazlean is stabbed to death. 
9. Howard has his face stamped in.
10. Lou has his head smashed into a wall.
11. Misty Dawn is repeatedly mashed into a glass case.
12. Wolfie is stabbed in the back.
13. Harley is strangled.
14. Deputy Neale has his neck snapped.
15. Annie is stabbed to death.
16. Mya is stabbed in the stomach.
17. Becks is thrown through a windshield.
18. Dr. Loomis is stabbed in the gut.
19. Michael Myers is shot to death.

TL;DR: Halloween II is boring, vulgar, and mishandled, but at least it's better than the last one.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1366
Reviews In This Series
Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)
Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)
Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

Here's The Kickoff

Happy Super Bowl, everybody! Although it would be uncouth of me to reveal my psychic powers on such an important day in sporting history, your jaw is gonna drop when the Seahawks win and you realize you read it here first.

For those of you (like me) who are merely impartial commercial observers who couldn't care less what the outcome of the game is, here's a couple mini reviews to help you pass the time.

The Lost Boys

Year: 1987

Director: Joel Schumacher

Cast: Jason Patric, Corey Haim, Kiefer Sutherland

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

The Lost Boys is less successful as a vampire film than a snapshot of the excessively fabulous, mildly homoerotic, glittery electronic culture and fashion of 1987. Directed by Joel Schumacher of Bat Nipples fame, who could expect anything different?

Brothers Michael (Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim) have just moved into the seaside city of Santa Carla (played with great distinction by Santa Cruz) with their mother (Dianne Wiest). Michael falls in with a biker punk crowd led by David (Kiefer Sutherland) and it's a legitimately tough question as to which aspect of his personality is more terrifying - the fact that he's an undead creature with a thirst for human blood or his bleached blonde mullet.

Because Michael is a dude who doesn't even unpack his suitcase before he starts lifting weights (As a matter of fact he doesn't even go upstairs. He just walks in and starts pumping iron in the living room.), he is irresistibly drawn to this buff and charismatic leader. Ostensibly he wants to join the group due to his attraction to Star (Jami Gertz), the sole female member, but it's quite obvious that he can't resist a man with a mane.

Also the tossed off love scene between Michael and Star reeks of post-production reshoots to give the character even a tiny glimmer of heteronormativity. This is a boy who drinks some of another man's bodily fluid (blood, you sicko) and becomes an uncontrollable thirst monster as evidenced by his newly pierced ear and leather jacket.

And though there is a plot in there somewhere, it mostly takes the backseat in favor of a sparkly explosion of 80's signifiers. With most horror films of this decade, there are some laughable pop culture moments or outfits, but The Lost Boys is literally comprised of them. We're talking Dynasty and Flying Nun references. We're talking Rob Lowe posters in a young boy's bedroom. We're talking a pre-insane Corey Feldman playing a young vampire hunter. We're talking a soundtrack that sounds like Cyndi Lauper after eating a bad burrito.

We're talking severe homoerotic tension between literally every single set of actors, even the ones who play brothers. Michael and Sam can only talk with their faces two inches apart, practically shouting into each other's mouths.

I rate it lower because the vampire action is lacking somewhat (although anyone who has seen the film's finale might beg to differ), but as a campy 1987 time capsule of the absurd, this film is number one.

Rating: 7/10

The Help

Year: 2011

Director: Tate Taylor

Cast: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer

Run Time: 2 hours 26 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

As much as I may resist it, I have to thank Sergio for making me watch Powerful Drama films. Without him, I'd certainly never have seen August: Osage County, Lee Daniels' The Butler, Mildred Pierce, and countless other esteemed pictures. I also thank him for his infinite patience when I turn into a whiny six-year-old after being forced to sit through a movie for longer than 100 minutes.

And although I don't have much to add to the discussion about the already three-year old period drama film The Help, I did enjoy it for what it was. Also I enjoyed riding down the sloped aisle of the classroom on my roll chair. Seriously though. I may get restless by the two-hour mark but the film wasn't a waste of time.

Emma Stone plays Skeeter, a young journalist who was raised by a black nanny during the time of segregation. As racial tensions begin to rise, she goes behind the backs of her hoity toity friends and interviews their maids (Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer) to get true life testimonials for the book she's writing. You get a shiny nickel if you can guess the name of that book.

Although The Help can't escape a lot of the pitfalls of the genre (White People Solve Racism, the Wise Old Black Character, an undeservedly bloated run time), it makes up for it where it counts. Bryce Dallas Howard shines in an enormously nuanced performance as a being of pure domestic evil, Davis and Spencer pick up most of the weight with their capable hands, the romantic B-plot about pretty white people is shunted to one side (exactly where it should be in a movie with this subject matter), and also Jessica Chastain owning a role that almost went to Katy Perry.

Although I would have loved to see that movie, this casting impacts the film undoubtedly for the better. For an Important film, it's never as dull as its brethren, but the story it tells is a thematically unraveled bastardization of what I hear is a vastly superior novel so as such it gets less points than perhaps it should have.

Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 900