I watched it yesterday. I think it was well shot, directed, acted et cetera
yet it was unbearably boring and predictable. Every 30 minutes I had to stop it and go do something else so I watched it in a sitcom lenght snippets. I would never say it is a bad film though. Just utterly not for me, apparently.
I love almost all of del Toro’s previous filmography though.
I agree with you Paul.
I got the twist about two minutes into the movie and cannot believe that anyone could miss it. Del Toro might have well broadcasted it with a bullhorn.
The lead actress was quite wonderful in it. The rest of it was little more than a Kanye West Gay Fish being fed eggs by the girl while the mustache-twirling villian acts irrationally because reasons. It ends exceptionally predictably and there really was no point. As someone who loves Pan’s Labyrinth this movie seemed like a mediocre stale sequel. A few years hence this Best Picture award will rank right up there with Shakespeare in Love for a poor choice for an award.
This is such an awesome movie. It’s not that it tells some fantastical tale that leaves you breathless, but the way it tells the story. I came away with so many thoughts about each of the characters. So rich and so well rounded are the characters, that each can stand on its own.
I rewatched it the following night & chased down cast interviews and read with much abandon to see what kind of insights I could gather.
I loved the short bit on the guy with the cake with one slice taken out. It stood out for me and I remarked how sad it was to have only one slice out of a cake.
The interview where Del Toro says that words are lies and without words you have truth.
How color was used in each of the rooms / locations so specifically.
I loved how all the actors and actresses didn’t even read the script before accepting the job because they would jump at the chance to be in a Del Toro film - and even though he had never met them, Del Toro knew so much about Sally & Octavia and had written the roles just for them!
Of everything I watched or read, I really enjoyed this article:
So awesome that characters so rich can resonate with so many.
Saw this last night and Mrs. Kub and I really liked it.
I loved the art direction and use of color in characters. Especially the red shoes, and all their symbolism.
I tried watching it over the weekend, and was bored to the point where I had to turn it off after 15 minutes. Give me Rico Browning any day.
Good call to me: I dragged my wife to the theater a couple of months ago, thinking she’d like it (she likes weird stuff and I thought she’d love Pan’s Labyrinth so what could go wrong.). It was both conventional and boring.
Although I had planned to not watch it, I stayed for the extra seance: it was Three Billboards outside Ebbing, and that no-so-little and even great movie saved my night.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who didn’t feel this was special or even well crafted at all. Cinematography is good, as it’s mise-en-scene. But acting and story were subpar imho, and really incoherent thematically at points (that dance number infuriated me).
I was everything you just said, but the opposite. 3 Billboards wasn’t horrible but it was a story that left me pissed off by the end of it. The Shape of Water wasn’t a monster movie, it was a fairy tale, and one with a Beauty and the Beast bent. I loved it.
You are not alone though, it was very polarizing for a lot of the folks on this forum.
That would be a great thread/discussion topic: Films that actively angered or frustrated you. It’s one thing to not like a film. It’s another to actually have one offend one’s sensibilities.
We liked both. I think we liked Shape better, and I definitely agree that 3 Billboards was missing some sort of resolution, even if that’s the point, it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel like I wanted to see it.
As we streamed both from HBO, I’m not sure if maybe there were bonuses/deleted scenes/alternate endings which they tried.
It’s hard to compare Shape to 3 Billboards, since they cover two completely different stories.
Shape is just beautiful. Plot is not original, yes, yet Del Toro is a wonderful storyteller. Characters are quite unusual, and I liked Sally Hawkins a lot.
3 Billboards is heavier, I think. I felt uneasy after watching it. The only thing I didn’t liked at all was already mentioned - there’s no proper resolution, so I was quite upset.
I know it’s not the story GDT wanted to tell, but I think it would have been a much more interesting movie if the fishman turned out to actually be malevolent (given GDT’s love of Lovecraft, it would have been amazing if the fishman was a deep one from Shadows of Innsmouth - who also slept with human women - it almost feels like that’s where GDT started and moved to happier fairy tale).
GDT wanted a fairy tale, which works with his imagery and Sally Hawkins’s stunning performance (she is really incredible in everything), but more nuanced morality where the creature wasn’t a noble god, and may have even liked Sally but was mainly using her to escape, and the scientists/military were still cruel, but their actions were somewhat more explicable by the fact that they were dealing with potential existential threat, etc. Sally gradually realizing that maybe she is being duped but deciding it is still worth proceeding because she is in love and maybe thinks she sees good things in Lovecraftian monster, but is wrong. Yet in the end the creature saves her and the ending is essentially the same.
I just find GDT’s use of color and atmosphere very fitting for the fairy tales he likes to tell, but I wish he’d also tell more grounded, less heavy-handed, stories.
Agreed. This movie affected me that way more than anything since Signs. I think it has to do with confounded expectations.
Oh boy… I suspect any thread of this nature will just devolve into a neverending tirade of hate directed at Last Jedi.
(Unfortunately I can’t even claim that I wouldn’t be part of that attack either…)
It would have to be caveated:
“A Non-Star Wars related thread. There are already 5 threads devoted to Star Wars-related frustration on these forums.”
It’s an interesting topic I’d like to hear about, because I can’t think of a movie that ever induced such an acute reaction with me.
Whethere I watch something terrible that ruins something that was great for me before, or something terrible on its own, the biggest reactions I ever seem to have and that I can remember were some facepalming.
I can get angry at books or games or even some especially wasted opportunities on TV series, but not at movies.
Saw t his on HBO a few weeks ago. Visually lovely film that was utterly predictable. Sally Hawkins’ performance was the highlight for me.
You know what fits the bill for that?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H3N5Q63?ref_=imdbref_tt_wbr_aiv&tag=imdbtag_tt_wbr_aiv-20
It’s not great, but I was pleasantly surprised. Its Xavier Gens, who seemed like he was going to be part of the French new extreme movement in horror after a movie called Frontiers. Then he instead veered off into a few different directions, mostly unsatisfying. For instance, the Timothy Olyphant Hitman and the survivors-in-a-bunker yarn The Divide. But Cold Skin, although it’s clunky, has character.
-Tom
Titus Pullo too - appreciate the find and will definitely check it out. I hadn’t heard of it.
Just racking up the movies here now that I finished this series.
This movie was a bit grosser than I appreciated, darker too, and some of the scenes were ridiculous, but the fact I finished it says a lot about how compelling the setting, the various characters and the hints at what the real story really was. It also probably helped I watch a much worse movie just before it
I can’t say that I loved it, but I did enjoy and respect the attempt especially the way the story was weaved together and there seemed to be no real throwaway a characters to do it. It might be the precision and the careful crafting of the world and the characters is the very reason I did not fully connect because it went into the too perfect to be real category pretty fast even though I am not talking about the characters… they are very flawed just… there was something that felt artificial about it all even while I remained intrigued enough to keep going.