Set in the 1960s, Elisa works in a secret research facility as a janitor. Elisa is a rather lonely person. Mute, her communication abilities are limited to those who take the time to learn how to sign. Her only friends are her next-door neighbor, Giles, and her co-worker, Zelda. She goes about her days in a routine, but it’s clear that she yearns for more. One day a mysterious specimen from South America is brought into the facility. It’s a large, fish-like being, and Elisa quickly finds out that this creature is far from a dumb animal that the handlers think he is. It’s an intelligent being that can communicate and understand her.

The Shape of Water is a fairy tale made for adults. Leave it to master director Guillermo del Toro to make a story like this work. It’s a tough idea to sell, a woman falling in love with a fish man. It’s so weird but I think it works because of the careful steps that are taken to get to the end.

Elisa’s character is set up well right away. We get a good idea of her wants and needs in the first few minutes and we get to see what space in this world she occupies. The characters of Giles and Zelda are strong ones, filling in the gaps of communication and feelings for the viewer.

The creature is frightening at first, one that is totally foreign to the above-ground world. But in time, as Elisa gets closer, so does the audience. It’s slow at first, how all good courtships go. Every day, Elisa makes hard boiled eggs and her first outreach to him is to offer him one. And that leads to the first communication: she signs “egg” as she gives it to him. From there she goes to visit him whenever she can, keeping their meetings as secret as she can. When the life of this creature she deeply cares about is threatened, she goes to great lengths to save him.

This movie got way more adult that I thought it ever would. There’s cursing, violence, nudity…this movie doesn’t hold back its punches. del Toro wanted to make a complete movie about love and yes, she does have sex with the creature. It’s all done rather beautifully and nothing explicit is shown, but you know exactly what’s going on. It’s a believable relationship and Giles and Zelda are used as guidance in understanding Elisa’s actions. They don’t judge her and the scene with Elisa begging Giles for his help to save the creature is one of the most effective parts of the movie.

The cast and production go a long way to make this world seem so real. Fantastic acting and the work done to make Doug Jones into the creature is absolutely top of the line. Lots of prosthetic make up make the creature a real presence and subtle CG augmentation puts that final touch of life into him. It’s a good trick, designing the creature to share strong male human traits while making him look completely foreign.

Guillermo del Toro often makes decisive movies. You either dig ’em or you don’t. Everyone agrees that they always look gorgeous but wether you go along for the ride is another question. I think this is one of del Toro’s strongest movies. It’s a take on the surreal, but one that revolves around one of our most powerful emotions and universal need: love.

I think I read Stephen King’s IT twenty years ago or so. It’s probably in the top three of his most well known novels. It’s a massive and weird book and the TV mini-series (1990) did it’s best to adapt the tome. So twenty seven years later Pennywise is given another crack at turning Derry, Maine into an all you can ear buffet.

In 1988, a lot of kids start disappearing in the small town of Derry. On of those kids is Georgie, little brother of Bill Denbrough. He was last seen next to a storm drain during a big rain storm. His body is never found leaving the Denbrough’s with a lot of questions. Bill thinks he could have been swept into the storm drain but no one will listen to him. When his friends help him try to find Georgia in the summer of ’89, the rag tag group of kids discover that a shape shifting monster lives under their home town.

Some (wise) choices have been made with this take, moving the story from the 50s to the 80s being the most obvious. I don’t remember all the details but watching this brought up a lot of memories so I think the movie is succesfull in hitting all the most important parts of the book. It focuses soley on The Losers Club when they’re kids, there’s no time jumping to adulthood. That keeps the direction of the story clean and straight forward.

The casting of IT is absolutley perfect. In a movie that is 99% kids, the whole film rides on the finding the right actors. All seven of The Losers is spot on. They’re believable, they act the hell out of every scene. They all have a legit chemistry with each other so that makes their friendship on screen come across as geniune. Friendship is what the movie is about so that’s insanely important for this project to work. Right down to the small moments, like when they are shooting quick insults at each other (Richie and Eddie are hilarous) are really endearing. The joy, sadness, and fear that the kids get whipped through feels real. Jackson Scott, the kid who plays Georgie, is adorable. He’s the quintecential little brother and when IT pulls him into the sewer as he sceams for his big brother’s help is absolutley heart breaking.

So is IT scary? A shape shifting monster is something to behold, but it depends. If you are scared of clowns, yeah. It’s nuts. Otherwise, not really. They got me once in the garage scene. There’s some really wild imagery and great set ups. Pennywise in the sewer talking to Georgie is riveting. It’s brilliantly shot (as is much of the movie) and Bill Skarsgard’s choice of voice is fantastic. It’s this childish…meanace that’s hard to forget. Pennywise looks striking so the voice completes the movie monster. A big reason why I liked this was because it’s very Nightmare on Elm Street. Pennywise knows it’s victims fears and it dredges them up in fantastic and horrible ways. The creativity for when IT goes after each kid is awesome. I found the problem to be that (much like the NOES remake) the filmmakers relied on the same scare tactic too much. Pennywise feeds on fear and they make it very clear that IT loves scaring people. Probably more than actually eating them. There’s this glee to it that’s a great monster character trait but it gets undercut by the constant bum rushing IT does. I think in every scene Pennywise is in, they had Skarsgard do the “shake your head while you run and we’ll speed it up in post” thing. That’s effective two or three times until it gets routine and dumb.

That grip asise, I thought IT was a ton of fun. Really looking forward to Chapter Two.

I remember seeing the ads for this and later seeing this up for nomination for the Academy Awards. Considering that endorsement it caught my interest and I went into this not knowing what to expect. A film that lives on it’s interesting characters and propped up by it’s terrific cast, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a thought provoking piece.

Seven months after her daughter’s murder, Mildred (Frances McDormand) is still looking for justice. In order to put pressure on the local police, she pays for three billboards to publicly shame them. It works…sorta. The move certainly gets attention and Mildred find that she gets little support from her community. The police are certaintly none too pleased.

When the credits rolled, I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. The story basically just ends and on first impression, I felt ripped off, left in a lurch. There’s no closure and what’s shown in that last scene has a lot of implications. Ending at two hours or so, there was definetly more story to tell.

After thinking on it for a few days I’ve realised that the story of Three Billboards had been told. This movie is very much a slice of life. A mother still in mourning, her family broken apart. Her ex-husband is no help, nothing more than another source of stress. Her son has been devestated and she struggles to keep her relationship with him. Mildred is angry. Knowing that her daughter’s killer is still out there is infuriating. She feels she has to do something or her anguish is going to eat her alive.

I think this movie is a good reflection on life. Everything doesn’t work out. Sometimes the pit you get shoved into doesn’t get filled in and the rescue ladder that gets put down for you isn’t long enough. You have to find a way to claw your way up and the marks you get in doing so don’t completely heal. Life isn’t fair and people are flawed.

Mildred feels like the police have given up, or worse, don’t care about the case. Police Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) explains to her why the investigation stalled and they are very good reasons. But that’s not good enough for Mildred. Her daughter is gone, the killer is out there, and she’s still furious.

Willoughby also has his own problems he’s dealing with in his own life. Terrible and unfair things happen to everyone. Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell) is his own problem. The guy is a terrible person and has a lot of growing up to do.

Through the course of the movie, Mildred wades through pushback the entire way. Some people stand by her side and she ends up pushing some of them away with her own shortsighted and arrogant behavior. Dixon isn’t the only one who lashes out at whomever is nearest.

I think at it’s strongest moments, Three Billboards tries to show that we’re all messed up people. By upbringing or circumstance, your world view can skew to see things a certain way. When you make up your mind on something, it can be easy to dismiss the facts around you. Anger can make you do stupid and bad things. It might seem like the right (and justified) thing to do at the time, but afterwards you’ve changed who you are and that has consequences. But we’re all people. And people can change, the possibility is there for everyone. That change isn’t immediate though and it takes a lot of work. You have to listen to other people sometimes.

The movie ends on a twisted note. One of darkness that may or may not play out. A road has been chosen but the chance to stop, go a different route, or turn back is there. Your choices make you who you are.

Peter Parker is alive and well!

Spider-Man has had quite a few movies in the past decade or so and this one is the start (ignoring Captain America: Civil War) of a new run with a new cast and crew. Put simply, this is a great movie.

A large part of how good Homecoming is the casting. Tom Holland as Peter is perfect. He’s awesome and adorable. We finally have someone playing a high school student who is actually the appropriate age. This kid is basically ripped right out of the comic pages, he’s got the perfect attitude and line delivery for Peter and Spider-Man. Tony Stark is used just right (I was afraid he’d be used too much and overshadow the main character) and gadzooks they made The Vulture cool! Spider-Man’s rogue’s gallery is more or less a collection of people wearing animal costumes and they’re pretty goofy. Brilliant move getting Michael Keaton to play the part.

The plot is terrific too. It sidesteps Spider-Man’s origin story and gets right into Peter’s struggle of being a kid with superpowers. His awkward balance of social life, school, and his desire to fight crime while he waits for Stark to “bring him up” to the big leagues. He’s learning with every step he takes and it’s a joy to watch.

This movie puts Spider-Man in the MCU so the story can play off of everything that’s happened. Peter was a little kid during The Avengers movie so he’s grown up in a world where these heroes have made a name for themselves. Peter was there for the invasion and he admires The Avengers. And with that event comes the idea of what happens when the superheroes leave? There’s all of this cleanup and trauma to a place so how do we deal with that? One of the things is the scrappers who come in to clean up after the fights. All that tech from other worlds is just left behind smoldering in the streets. Adrian Toomes (Vulture) makes a company to clean it up and when he gets the boot when the feds push him out of his job, he decides to pivot his business. I’ll keep skimming everything I can and make weapons out of this tech to sell. He manages to keep this business secret for awhile but when his employees get a little too loosey goosey with the tech, it catches Spider-Man’s attention.

It’s a nice and condensed story that’s easy to follow. The whole world isn’t at stake (yet), but Peter’s world is. It’s a personal story wrapped in homemade webbing with great comedy and action to keep it humming along.

The movie looks great in every way and Spider-Man is realized really well. The big thing that makes him stand out from other heroes is how agile he is. With the benefit of being super strong as well, what he can physically do is much different than anyone else and that makes for some big action set pieces that are really creative and unique.

Like this a lot, it might be my favorite MCU movie (I’d have to watch Captain America 2 again to be sure). This Tom Holland kid has a bright future!