“The Shape of Water” Review

Guillermo Del Toro’s newest film The Shape of Water is an unconventional romantic drama that tells the tale of a mute woman who falls in love with a fish guy. Yep, you read that right. If you haven’t heard any of the Oscar buzz around this movie, then know that it has a really good chance of winning best picture. This film has all the hallmarks of something that Hollywood would love. It is beautifully directed, acted, and tells a very poignant message that is reflective of our current times and political climate. This is easily the most progressive movie I’ve ever seen, and it couldn’t have come out at a more relevant time.

There is definitely an undeniable charm to this film. GDT is an excellent director and filmmaker; he has a very imaginative eye for cinema and all his previous movies have shown that. The setting of this film, coupled with great music from Alexandre Desplat, really conveys a sense of wonder and magic in every shot. Sally Hawkins is absolutely wonderful in her performance as the main character. She is able to show a lot of her emotions even though she can’t utter a single word, and there’s one specific scene where I was really impressed with her performance.

As much as I am heaping praise upon praise on this movie, I ended up not really liking it. That all comes down to one thing: this movie made me uncomfortable. I understand that it’s basically like a Beauty and the Beast type movie for adults, but a lot of the scenes made me uncomfortable watching. Many of the antagonists are very one-dimensional, and similar to my review of characters in Three Billboards, they are very much caricatures of stereotypical characters. It was hard for me to buy into the romance between Sally Hawkins and the fish man, mostly due to the animalistic nature of the fish. It was difficult to be invested in both characters, even though Sally Hawkins was fantastic in her role.

I very much wanted to like this film. It’s beautifully directed and created, but I couldn’t buy into the story or the characters. It’s a bit too preachy at times, but ultimately the main thing was that I felt uneasy during most of the movie. The story is really out there and didn’t do it for me. I think some people will absolutely love this movie because they will love the romance between the two, but I just couldn’t get into it. However, I’m glad to see that GDT is always doing his thing and continues to make unique and original movies. I look forward to seeing what’s in store for him next.

Grade: C/62

“Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi” Review

Woops, a bit late to the party reviewing this one. While I assume that everyone on the planet has already seen this movie, I’ll continue to refrain from spoiling the movie and give a broad review of my impressions.

Never in my life could I imagine a post-Disney acquisition Star Wars movie be so divided amongst fans. Critics praise this movie as the next best Star Wars since Empire Strikes Back (a title they also gave to The Force Awakens), yet the average moviegoer and die-hard fan outright hated this movie.

Based on what I was hearing among my friends, I found that the people who disliked the movie the most were people who were big fans of the franchise. I personally do not have a deep attachment to Star Wars, although I definitely preferred it over Star Trek as a kid. I felt like my neutral stance on the franchise would help me enjoy the movie more, because of all this talk about how The Last Jedi “betrayed the franchise.” I went in with utmost curiosity and undecided expectations. I watched The Last Jedi the Monday after opening weekend, and it took me until now to write my review because…well…I didn’t much care for it at all.

Let me get one thing straight: this movie is nowhere near as bad as the fans made it out to be. The fact that this movie has a 52% on RT from the users is kind of baffling to me. I’ve definitely seen worse movies this year that did not have any rating as low as The Last Jedi. However, this movie also definitely does not deserve the high amount of praise that the critics are giving it. I guess I’m in the middle of the road when it comes to this movie, although slightly leaning more towards agreeing with the fans. I didn’t think this movie was very good. At this point, I’m glad I held off on writing this review because so many articles have been written ad nauseam about the pros and cons of the movie, so I can just briefly go over it. I didn’t like the plot; I felt like it went nowhere, and I felt like Disney couldn’t help themselves but “Marvel-ize” the movie. There were so many untimely jokes from characters who typically wouldn’t say something humorous, so many unnecessary one-liners, and so many attempts to shift back and forth between serious and light-hearted. Some movies can make it work, but this one definitely did not.

I also felt like this movie was a 2.5 hour long Dragon Ball Z episode. Random people get random powers that the average Star Wars moviegoer wouldn’t understand, and things just happen to progress with no reasoning behind it. I’m normally the type of viewer to look past plot holes and not nitpick; I feel like it’s a waste of time and I’d rather have the director tell me a story without me trying to actively deconstruct everything. However, I definitely felt like there were some plot holes in this movie that were unavoidably noticeable.

My biggest criticism is very similar to my biggest praise for this movie. The one thing I always knock Disney for is that they always play it safe with their movies. When it comes to Marvel movies or The Force Awakens, Disney naturally finds that playing it safe will be the most profitable, and that it’d be better for them to make money with most people having been fed their fan service than do something daring and creatively bold. That’s the one thing I really admire about The Last Jedi. Rian Johnson really laid it all out with this movie, and subverted a lot of fan expectations by drastically changing up the story. That definitely led to the huge backlash from fans, but the fact that Disney signed off on it made me wonder if there’s a space in Disney’s catalogue of franchises to do more bold things like this in the future (which will remain to be seen seeing the strong negative reaction from fans). However, I ultimately wasn’t a fan of most of those decisions because I felt like they didn’t strengthen the story. My biggest criticism was that Johnson established a lot of really interesting themes with this movie, but in the end ultimately backpedaled on a lot of them and try to make it somewhat familiar with Disney’s formula for movies. They definitely should have doubled down on a lot of the things they introduce in the movie, but the slight backtracking near the end made me a bit disappointed.

Overall, this isn’t a great movie. I wouldn’t even say it’s good. I can see how people would like it though, and that’s fine. Again, I think it deserved an unrealistic amount of praise and criticism from both sides, but ultimately what came of it was a mediocre, middle of the road film. Some of my friends had drastically changed opinions upon further rewatches, but I have zero intentions on rewatching this movie again.

Grade: C+/66

“The Disaster Artist” Review

“Oh hai Mark.”

These were the words from a film that eventually spawned a massive cult following. Decades later, people are still watching The Room religiously, a film that has been given the honorable title of the Best Worst Movie Ever. I had the privilege of watching this with some of my friends for the first time a few weeks ago to prep for The Disaster Artist, and I can indeed confirm that it is the Best Worst Movie Ever. There is a tangible charm and passion put into this movie, even though it has such terrible writing and acting. It’s simultaneously hard to watch and to look away from, and whether or not it was Tommy Wiseau’s intention to create a comedic masterpiece, it’s here to stay.

Because of its legacy, we have been given the gift of an adaptation from the book with the same title, The Disaster Artist. This movie highlights the making of The Room along with the growing friendship between Tommy Wiseau and his friend Greg Sestero. There has been some debate as to how accurate the book describes the making of The Room, as Tommy Wiseau originally said it was 40% accurate and then saying it was 99.9% accurate; but nevertheless it was interesting to see just exactly what the heck was going on in the making of such a crazy film.

James Franco, who directs and stars as the enigmatic and alienish Tommy Wiseau, does a fantastic job here. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he gets an Oscar nomination. He has all of Wiseau’s weird mannerisms and accent down, and he is constantly entertaining whenever he is on screen. Tommy’s friend Greg, played by Franco’s brother Dave Franco, does a decent job as well. There were some parts where I felt like his acting felt kind of bad, but I couldn’t tell if it was intentional because the character he’s playing is a bad actor or not. Either way, it wasn’t outright distracting but his acting did fall flat sometimes. Alison Brie (who I absolutely adore) plays Dave Franco’s girlfriend in the movie, but kind of pops in and out of the movie and doesn’t really add as much to the plot than I thought she would. I would have hoped for her to have a bit more of a role, or not be included in it at all. None of that really seems to matter in this movie, since Dave Franco really steals the spotlight and does a great job carrying the movie.

Making a movie like is definitely difficult in that there is a large expanse of things to cover. Because of that, the movie sometimes has to jump forward quickly thus making the pacing a bit rough at times. It wasn’t ever frustrating, but there were moments where I wish they had developed a bit more on a certain aspect of the story before going to the next part. It’s a minor critique, because it’s definitely hard to try and fit everything in a relatively short movie, clocking in at 1 hour and 43 minutes.

Movies about making movies are pretty rare to come by, so I think regardless of whether you found The Room to be absolutely agonizing to watch or utterly hilarious, it provides a very unique perspective on the moviemaking industry and how hard it is to get started. Beneath the outright hilarious movie is a heartwarming tale about friendship, pursuing your dreams and never giving up. It’s unexpectedly inspiring and really makes you both sympathize and cheer on Wiseau and Sestero. As much as I’d like to know how authentic the portrayal of the movie was to real-life events, it was all in all a very entertaining movie. For those of you who have not watched The Room, I’d recommend gathering a bunch of friends together and enjoying how good/bad it is. It’s not necessary to watch it before The Disaster Artist, but it’ll make you appreciate some of the jokes a lot more.

Grade: B+/81

“Logan Lucky” Review

Director Steven Soderbergh returns from his brief retirement from filmmaking with Logan Lucky, a movie that is very similar to the films that made him popular, the Ocean’s Trilogy.

Based on all of the movie news websites that I follow, everyone seems to really love Soderbergh’s work, more so than other directors. I’m not entirely sure where this infatuation comes from, but I certainly haven’t seen enough of his work to really make a well informed opinion on it. I’ve enjoyed all of the movies that he has directed, and that sentiment is the same with Logan Lucky. I noticed that there’s kind of a disparity between critics and regular moviegoers on this movie, in that critics absolutely loved this film, whereas everyone else thought that it was just okay or good. I think if you go in with the right expectations, it makes for a really fun and entertaining movie.

The best way for me to describe Logan Lucky is that it’s the redneck version of Ocean’s Eleven. There’s an ambitious heist involved, and that heist requires the uniting of a bunch of misfits and quirky characters. The George Clooney/Brat Pitt Combo here is replaced with Channing Tatum and Adam Driver, who are brothers that have a history of doing heists together. Both actors have great performances and are equally goofy as they are charming. This was also probably my favorite role I’ve seen from Adam Driver. But when you talk about performances in this movie, you have to talk about Daniel Craig’s role in the movie. He is by far the star of the show, because of his incredibly weird accent that seems to shift between awesome and questionably bad at times. I loved his eccentric behavior and it really shows that Craig has a bright future after his time with the James Bond franchise is over. Riley Keough and the rest of the cast is great as well, as they bring a dysfunctional family dynamic that is both believable and funny.

As far as the movie goes, the first two acts are pretty much standard fare but very well done. It’s really the third act that is quite unconventional and unique, of which I will not reveal here. However, I will say that it has the potential to put some fans off, but I found it to be an interesting take on a heist movie. The characters in the movie really tie everything together, and was what kept me engaged throughout.

I think if you go into this movie with the expectation of having a good time and not listen to the critics’ insanely glowing reviews of this film, then chances are you’ll have a great time. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and hope that they’ll return to these characters some time down the road.

Grade: B+/82