Movie Review

7 Days in Entebbe feels like … well … seven days in Entebbe.  Don’t waste your time.

7 Days in Entebbe (Daniel Bruhl, Rosamund Pike, Eddie Marsan) – Why in the world would a studio “green light” another movie about the 1976 raid on Entebbe Airport in Uganda where Palestinian and German terrorists took the plane they hijacked?  And if you were going to do it, wouldn’t you want some A-list stars telling the story with new revelations?

7 Days in Entebbe tells the story mostly through the eyes of the two German hijackers, Wilfried Bose (Daniel Bruhl) and Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike).  They are revolutionaries who believe in the Palestinian cause.  Almost immediately after the plane lands in Entebbe, Bose is bothered by the way his compatriots treat the hostages, isolates the Jews, and embrace Idi Amin the Ugandan strongman.   Kuhlman is colder and more calculating.  For her, this is about change, publicity, and making a statement.

The daring raid by the Israelis managed to free all but four of the hostages with only one military casualty.  The clandestine operation conducted without the knowledge or acquiescence of Amin served as a shining example of the bravery of the Israeli soldiers and the resolve of Israel’s prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and his cabinet.

What seems clear in an underlying pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli bent of the film.  It isn’t that RoboCop director Jose Padilha or writer Gregory Burke absolves the kidnappers, but they go out of their way to call Israelis fascists (really?) and thieves of the land that previously was part of Palestine.  No matter how one views the age-old Middle East conflict, making such political statements in the context of a 1976 hijacking, kidnapping, and racially motivated extortion is more than a stretch.

From a cinematic point of view, 7 Days in Entebbe spends too much time between the hijacking and the raid.  The re-telling of the hijacking and the raid itself are handled deftly but the script bogs down while the pacing is uneven.  By the seventh day – the day of the raid – the ending was anti-climatic. The movie covers no new ground.

Destined to be a box office flop, 7 Days in Entebbe is just a poor remake of the star-studded TV movie Raid on Entebbe (starring Peter Finch, Charles Bronson, Yaphet Kotto, Martin Balsam, and Jack Warden) without the big stars but with a political motive.  Pass.

7 Days in Entebbe feels like … well … seven days in Entebbe.  Don’t waste your time.

7 Days in Entebbe (Daniel Bruhl, Rosamund Pike, Eddie Marsan) – Why in the world would a studio “green light” another movie about the 1976 raid on Entebbe Airport in Uganda where Palestinian and German terrorists took the plane they hijacked?  And if you were going to do it, wouldn’t you want some A-list stars telling the story with new revelations?

7 Days in Entebbe tells the story mostly through the eyes of the two German hijackers, Wilfried Bose (Daniel Bruhl) and Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike).  They are revolutionaries who believe in the Palestinian cause.  Almost immediately after the plane lands in Entebbe, Bose is bothered by the way his compatriots treat the hostages, isolates the Jews, and embrace Idi Amin the Ugandan strongman.   Kuhlman is colder and more calculating.  For her, this is about change, publicity, and making a statement.

The daring raid by the Israelis managed to free all but four of the hostages with only one military casualty.  The clandestine operation conducted without the knowledge or acquiescence of Amin served as a shining example of the bravery of the Israeli soldiers and the resolve of Israel’s prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and his cabinet.

What seems clear in an underlying pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli bent of the film.  It isn’t that RoboCop director Jose Padilha or writer Gregory Burke absolves the kidnappers, but they go out of their way to call Israelis fascists (really?) and thieves of the land that previously was part of Palestine.  No matter how one views the age-old Middle East conflict, making such political statements in the context of a 1976 hijacking, kidnapping, and racially motivated extortion is more than a stretch.

From a cinematic point of view, 7 Days in Entebbe spends too much time between the hijacking and the raid.  The re-telling of the hijacking and the raid itself are handled deftly but the script bogs down while the pacing is uneven.  By the seventh day – the day of the raid – the ending was anti-climatic. The movie covers no new ground.

Destined to be a box office flop, 7 Days in Entebbe is just a poor remake of the star-studded TV movie Raid on Entebbe (starring Peter Finch, Charles Bronson, Yaphet Kotto, Martin Balsam, and Jack Warden) without the big stars but with a political motive.  Pass.

Post Oscars, there usually isn’t much to watch.  Now comes Red Sparrow, the latest collaboration of Hunger Games’ director Francis Lawrence and mega-star Jennifer Lawrence.

Red Sparrow (Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Mathias Schoenaerts, Charlotte Rampling, Jeremy Irons) – Why, if you have the #1 female star in the world, do you wait to release her latest tour de force until March? Could it be that the film wasn’t viewed as Oscar worthy?

The answer says a lot about Red Sparrow, the slick spy flick starring Jennifer Lawrence as the Russian ballerina-turned-spy.  Lawrence plays Dominica Egorova as icy cold as she adopts a new career after an on-stage accident permanently renders her unable to dance anymore.  As a star of the ballet, she is a celebrated ward of the government, which quickly terminates her free housing when she is no longer useful to them.  Tending to her crippled mother, Lawrence is a determined realist who finds herself without portfolio.  Her uncle, an associate director of the Russian Secret Service, recruits her into the service, knowing that she has few options and believing that her steeliness will make for a perfect “sparrow.”

The sparrows are trained as killers and sexual toys, manipulating their prey to gain information and secrets.  Taught through intense, no-holds-barred methods, these Russian operatives stalk and pounce, learning to control their emotions and sacrifice all dignity, shame, and feeling for the good of the Mother Russia.

But Dominika is different.  Her drive comes from her love for her mother, her commitment to overcome her fate, and her desire to survive.  She is a savant, able to morph into her characters but not with evil purpose.  She wants to find a way out but it won’t be easy.

Meanwhile, the Americans are doing spying of their own, and Dominika is in their sights.  A discredited American agent, Nate Nash, who sacrificed his own career to save a Russian contact, is sent back in to try to turn Dominika and protect the identity of the mole inside the inner reaches of the Russian government.

That’s the set up.  The rest is taut, tight spy stuff with a few doses of torture, nudity, and gore, a tempting trio that keeps the 160 minutes deliciously juicy.

Lawrence re-teams with her Hunger Games’ director, Francis Lawrence (no relation), to create a first-rate yarn with plenty of twists and turns. Adopting a Russian accent, Lawrence is credible as both the ballerina and the spy, hiding behind bangs and never winking at the camera.  I found myself trying to find slippage in her Russian accent but never finding any fault.  

She is a once-in-a-generation talent who can play tough and smart, wisecracking and deadly serious.  She can be glamorous or gritty, cunning or calculating.  At 27, she almost has the range of Streep with all the sexiness of Bacall … and that is saying something.  Her career arrow points only one way: up!

Red Sparrow is not for everyone.  The torture scenes are merciless; the sex training is uncomfortable.  This movie is edge-of-your-seat engrossing, which will be appealing to some and too tense for others.

A top-flight supporting cast, led by the Matthias Schoenaerts as the maniacal uncle and Charlotte Rampling as the matron of the Sparrow School, make Red Sparrow perhaps the only must-see film of the post-Oscar season.

I have now seen all of the nine films nominated for Best Pictures and all but one of the acting performances. Call Me by Your Name is probably on the bottom of my list. Critics love it.  Me: not so much.  Long and brooding, I would tell you to skip it until it comes out in video, pay-per-view or on demand.

Call Me by Your Name (Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg) – If movies were judged solely on their cinematography, Call Me by Your Name would be a wondrous film.  If dialogue were the most critical element of motion pictures, this film would also be really good.  Unfortunately, great films must include much more.

Call Me by Your Name was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Film, Best Actor (Timothy Chalamet), Best Adapted Screenplay (James Ivory), and Best Song (The Mystery of Love).  But it won’t … and shouldn’t … win for any of them except possibly screenplay.  James Ivory, the writer here and also a three-time Academy Award nominee for best director (A Room with a View, Howards End, The Remains of the Day), is 89, which might be an Oscar record.

If Call Me by Your Name centered on the romance between a man and a woman who meet in the Italian countryside in the summer of 1983, it would be considered quaint, soapy, and a little too sappy; you know, a Hallmark Channel flick.  But this story is about a homosexual relationship from a time when being gay wasn’t as open as it is today.

This works both for and against the movie.  If it had come out 35 years ago, it might have been scandalous and drawn an NC-17 rating.  But Ang Lee’s 2005 film, Brokeback Mountain, changed all that.  And today, gay relationships are commonplace in today’s films and even dot the TV landscape thanks to Modern Family and Will and Grace.  Call Me by Your Name is a beautifully film period piece that can’t escape its schmaltzy treatment.  It is more compelling than a simple skin-flick (the guys have their shirts off most of the time) because of the coming-of-age sub-text and the beautiful landscapes.

Call Me is the tale of romance between a bored teenager named Elio and Oliver, an older graduate student interning with a professor of archeology (Michael Stuhlbarg).  All this takes place in the aforementioned Italian countryside in a beautiful villa where the Perlman family spends their summers and holidays.  (Apparently, being a professor pays better in Europe than in the U.S.)

Elio (Timothee Chalamet) is a brilliant and personable (though a touch shy) teen who is well read and an accomplished pianist.  But in matters of love, he is immature and inexperienced.  Oliver is the opposite.  He is a confident, handsome, fun-loving, free-spirited American exploring Italy while studying with a renowned professor.  At first, the two appear to have little in common.  Oliver quickly finds a girl while Elio hangs with Marzia (Esther Garrel), a local who has clearly fallen for him.  But eventually, the two men are attracted to each other.  The rest is Nicholas Sparks romance without someone dying in the end.

The problem with Call Me by Your Name is how tortuously long it is.  It takes forever for these two to start their affair and even longer to get to the third act.  After all, Oliver has to go back home to America in six weeks, which is about how long this 2 hour-and-12-minute movie feels.  By the inevitable parting, you just want to scream: “Do they stay together or not!”?

The film has a very foreign feel thanks to its overseas funding; its Italian director, Luca Guadagnino; its frequent use of sub-titles; and its odd interjection of new songs over the shots of the lush countryside. 

Almost every year, the Academy nominates one low-grossing independent movie (it has brought in less than $10 million before being nominated) that has no chance of winning the award but is socially relevant.  This is it.  Call Me is beautiful and relevant.  But it is also tedious and saccharine.

Two Oscar nominations but no Best Picture nomination for I, Tonya.  This film is better than you might think.

I, Tonya (Margot Robbie, Allison Janney, Sebastian Stan) – Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan will forever be linked though neither of them won an Olympic gold medal.  At one time, they vied for #1 among U.S. women figure skaters.  Who doesn’t think that Tonya Harding had her husband whack the knee of Kerrigan before the Olympics?  Who can’t close their eyes and see Kerrigan crying out “Why me?” after the attack?

I, Tonya isn’t just a look into (what the movie calls) “the incident.”  In fact, very little of the film involves the attack.  Instead, this is a slick biopic into Harding’s screwed up life.  Australian Margot Robbie stars as Harding, the skating prodigy but redneck product of a verbally abusive mother.  Harding was to skating what John McEnroe was to tennis or Dennis Rodman to basketball: anti-heroes.  We loved Kerrigan, Connors, and Jordon; we loved to hate McEnroe, Rodman and Harding.  Harding was a pariah in the skating community because she wasn’t dainty, classy, sexy, respectful or deferential; she was the bad girl.

Robbie is mesmerizing both off the ice and on.  She reportedly spent five months learning to skate and it shows on screen.  There was no faking what we saw.  She did for this film what Ryan Gosling did in La La Land.  No fancy camera work.  But that is only half of it.  As Harding, she is both unrelenting and a victim.  She is determined and focused.  And she is both damaged and strengthened by her mother, LaVona Golden, who pushed, insulted, and harassed her while providing every cent of her wages as a waitress to her daughter’s skating.

Allison Janney, who is among Hollywood’s most versatile actors, plays abusive and foul-mouthed LaVona with unrelenting gusto. Wow, what a performance!  Best known for playing C.J. Creeg on The West Wing and Bonnie on TV’s Mom, her character in I, Tonya is most like the strict mother she played in Hairspray rather than the mouthy stepmother in Juno.  There are no redeeming qualities in LaVona.  

Tonya is the product of her mother but with the hope of escape through her skating. Tonya is attracted to the wrong man, Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan of The Martian).  He loves her but, like so many abusive husbands and boyfriends, beats her while, all the while, proclaiming his love.  Gillooly hangs with the wrong guys, which eventually leads to the Kerrigan “incident.”

In I, Tonya, we dive much deeper into Harding.  We learn all that led up to her quest for gold, her involvement in “the incident,” and her life afterward.  During the credits, we even get to learn what has happened to her this century and get to see clips of the real Harding and her mother.

The portrayals are uncanny.  Writer Steve Rogers’ (Hope Floats, Kate & Leopold) script “breaks the fourth wall” often, allowing the characters to be more intimate with the audience.  Director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl, Fright Night, Million Dollar Arm, The Finest Hours) allows the actors to shine.

I, Tonya is a really good film with a great cast that deserved the tenth slot for Best Picture.  With Oscar nominations for both Robbie and Janney, everyone should go see it.

In 1971, I became a journalism major.  That was the year the Pentagon Papers were published by the NY Times and the Washington Post.  A year later, The Post began reporting on a break-in at the Democratic National Committee that eventually brought down a president. The First Amendment is once again under attack by a President of the United States.  Some things never change.

The Post (Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks) – The long-awaited screen pairing of Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg’s The Post makes movie magic.  Streep and Hanks smoothly, comfortably, and seamlessly settle into their roles as Washington Post Publisher Katherine (Kay) Graham and Editor Ben Bradlee in this dramatization of the publishing of the Pentagon Papers in the summer of 1971.

These were the glory days of modern journalism, a confirmation of the essential role of a free press in a democracy.  Yes, back then, the news media were called “the press” because newspapers were the dominant medium of journalism.  Standing atop the heap was the New York Times, the Gray Lady herself.  The Washington Post was considered mostly a local paper owned by the Graham family with deep roots in the D.C. social and political scene.  After all, Kay Graham, who inherited the paper from her father, was a friend of Lyndon Johnson principals and Bob McNamara.  Ben and Tony Bradlee were best friends with Jack and Jackie Kennedy (Jack and Tony were rumored to have had an affair).  The relationships between the Post’s principals and the government were too close, as both acknowledged later.

The Post came of age with the Pentagon Papers, the scathing, objective, secret multi-volume report about U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War commissioned by McNamara.  Stolen from the Rand Corporation, then copied and leaked by former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg, the Papers revealed the lies that the Administrations of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon told the American people about U.S. political and military involvement in Indochina.

The movie opens up in Vietnam as Ellsberg goes into the field to assess the progress of the war.  After telling McNamara that nothing has changed despite the addition of 100,000 troops, McNamara steps right off the plane and tells the assembled media that things are going swimmingly.  Ellsberg goes rogue and leaks the document exclusively to the New York Times’ Neil Sheahan.  After publishing two reports, the Nixon Justice Department goes to court and forces the Times to publish no more, arguing national security.  This sets up a potential constitutional crisis between the First Amendment rights of the press and the government’s obligation to protect the citizenry. 

The Post, clearly scooped by the Times, plays catch-up, gets a copy of most of the report, and has to decide whether to publish.  Graham and her all-male board of directors had just taken the paper public.  So publishing the Papers in direct opposition to the Nixon Administration and despite the court order against the Times could render the public offering a failure.  Graham has to balance the interests of her Board and possibly the future of the newspaper against press freedom.  Bradlee has no conflict whatsoever.  He sees it as a historic moment.

The movie manages to create tension despite the fact that everyone over 50 knows what happens. In Spielberg’s superb directorial hands, we easily see the parallels between 46+-year-old history and the epic battle currently being waged by Donald Trump against the media.  And in Kay Graham’s life, we see the incredible difficulties a woman faced in a man’s world where she was viewed as a debutante without the standing or intestinal fortitude to make a decision that would ultimately lead to the affirmation of the importance of the First Amendment.

The acting is superb, particularly Streep.  She manages to capture Graham’s patrician manner and speech without over-playing it.  She shows Graham gaining strength and standing by the day, ultimately siding with her smug editor over her financial advisors, lawyers and board members.  Hanks has the unenviable task of taking on an Oscar-winning role made famous by Jason Robards so expertly in All The President’s Men. He is up to the task, playing Bradlee as in love with his job and relentless in the pursuit of journalistic justice.  He is the one male character who treats Graham as both an equal and his boss.  Hanks more than holds his own with Queen Meryl. 

The Post may not end up being as celebrated as All The President’s Men but it should.  It manages to serve as both historical drama and relevant social commentary.

I guess I wish they had left Kevin Spacey in All the Money in the World because then I would have skipped it in protest of the serial sexual predator.  Instead, I went.

All the Money in the World (Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, Mark Wahlberg, Charlie Plummer, Romain Duris) – This movie was doomed from the day Kevin Spacey was accused of sexual assault.  I remember seeing the trailer featuring an almost unrecognizable Spacey as billionaire J. Paul Getty.  Next thing I knew, Director Ridley Scott was announcing that he would re-shoot all the Spacey scenes with veteran Christopher Plummer and do it without jeopardizing the Christmas release.  I wish he had just taken his time and released it later.

All the Money in the World is an overly long, boring mess.  Yes, it has fine performances by Michelle Williams and the pressed-into-action Plummer.  Both received Golden Globe nominations that are well deserved.  It’s just too bad it had to be such a snooze-fest.

My wife sheepishly mentioned that she dozed off early in the movie.  And the guy wheeling his wife out of the theater ahead of us told her the same thing. And it wasn’t just them.  I nodded off a couple of times, too, in the first 45 minutes of this 132-minute marathon.  That’s a sample size of three out of three.

For those who don’t remember the story: Oil magnate J. Paul Getty’s grandson, Paul (played by Charlie Plummer – no relation to Christopher), is kidnapped in Italy in 1973.  The Calabrian kidnappers want $17 million to release the kid, who is not exactly your model citizen.  His mother, Gail Harris (Michelle Williams), who is divorced from Getty’s son, begs the old man to pay the ransom.  J. Paul, who sheltered almost all of his billion in a foundation, says no.  Instead, he uses his fixer, Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg), a former spy, to work for Gail to negotiate his grandson’s release.  Working with the local authorities, they almost rescue the kid but, instead, the Calabrians sell young Paul to the Italian Mafia.  Anyway, the bad guys are bad except for Cinquanta (Romain Duris) who really cares for young Paul.  Mom is alternately stoic, tough, and vulnerable.  Chase, if his character is portrayed correctly by Wahlberg, is useless.

Maybe … just maybe … people will go to see this movie to see how Scott replaced his lead actor just weeks before the movie opening.  I, for one, would love to see the original with Spacey in it.  Frankly, that is the only reason to waste your money on this film.  Well, THAT, and if you need a nap.

Warning: It’s not a comedy!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, movie fans!

Downsizing (Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Kristen Wiig) – If I told you this holiday season offers a big-budget, star-laden, special effects-heavy film that explores the global issues of over-population, climate change and poverty my guess is that you wouldn’t put it near the top of your Christmas movie list.  On the other hand, if I told you there was a big-budget, star-laden, special effects-heavy comedy romp about people being shrunk and moving into an idyllic community where everyone is a millionaire, where would you put it on your holiday list?

Well, make no mistake; Downsizing is the former not the latter.  Paramount Studio knows this, too, so they have been promoting the film as the latter.  Don’t be fooled!  Only about 1/3rd of this 2 hour 15 minute film resembles a comedy.  

Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig’s’ Paul and Audrey Safranek are a happily married couple from Omaha who are cash-strapped.  He is an occupational therapist for Omaha Steaks; we don’t know what she does.  But both are intrigued by the new, totally safe technology that shrinks people down to five inches and allows them to live in their own little upscale communities with lots of amenities.  Their $100,000 of net worth translates into $12 million in Leisure World.  When Audrey changes her mind after Paul undergoes the irreversible change, he finds himself alone in a strange new world.

Exit Kristen Wiig; enter Christoph Waltz as Dusan Mirkovic, Paul’s neighbor sees nothing but fun and profit in this new little world.  Act II is all about Paul’s adaptation to the new world, how he meets a Vietnamese activist-turned-cleaning lady (Hong Chau as Ngoc Lan Tran), and discovers that Leisure World isn’t all glamour and fun.

Act III takes Paul, Dusan, Ngoc and some other superfluous character to Norway where the shrinking technology was invented.  There, we meet the shrunken inventor/scientist, his wife, and the original volunteers who pioneered the technology.  Amidst the beautiful fiords and glorious sunsets there is sadness because the real news media tell us that methane gas is breaking through the depleted ozone layer over Antarctica.  Both the old world and the little new world won’t last long.

Paul, whose life was small and inconsequential back in Omaha, now has to decide whether to become the next pioneer or return with Ngoc and Dusan to Leisure World.

Downsizing is the latest project from Director/writer Alexander Payne who brought us About Schmidt, Election and Sideways, three exceptional films.  Downsizing is not as good but it is thought provoking.  That’s great.  But it is just not fair to suck the audience into what they think is a comedy.  If you’re looking for that scene where the little people drain an Absolute bottle into a bucket – never makes it into the film!

The good news is that the special effects are, indeed, special.  There are four pages of CG artists, animators, compositors, etc.  The photography and visual effects are fabulous.  The acting is just fine with Damon leading the way.  The always-wonderful Waltz is generally wasted however.  Thai-born Hong Chau almost steals the film.  She uses an odd, stereotypical broken English even though she was raised by her Vietnamese parents in New Orleans, graduated from Boston University, and has no accent whatsoever.  Incidentally, she uses the “f” word more times than a cop in a Martin Scorsese film so, parents, you might not want to take the kids.

From my perspective, you can wait to see Downsizing on video.  I wish I had.

Pitch Perfect 3 is a harmless, though bad, sequel to the fabulously successful singing franchise about college singing nerds.  This one doesn’t include the TrebleMakers, which doesn’t make it better.

Pitch Perfect 3 (Anna Kendrick, Brittany Snow, Rebel Wilson, Elizabeth Banks, John Michael Higgins, Hailee Steinfeld) – 3 is not the charm.  The out-of-nowhere Pitch Perfect franchise made its name by presenting a gaggle of acca-nerds who sang perfectly but otherwise were losers.  The Bellas won the national championship and eventually the a cappella worlds but then had nowhere to go.  But when Pitch Perfect II, directed by producer/actor Elizabeth Banks, brought in $287 million in worldwide box office, the Handelmans (Max and the aforementioned Elizabeth) couldn’t help but produce another one.

So how do you lure Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick, worldwide music sensation and Oscar nominee Hailee Steinfeld, and the rest of the Bellas to commit to another sequel?  You promise them Spain, Italy and a slew of money.

Pitch Perfect 3 suffers the fate of almost every third sequel.  It pretty well sucks … it’s acca-awful!  But the music is really good again though it lacks a certain spontaneity. The competition this time comes from a bunch of professional rock groups that join the reunited Bellas on a USO Tour hosted by the real-life record producer/radio personality DJ Khaled.  The eclectic assemblage of talent performs for the troops overseas while each tries to impress Khaled enough to be selected to open his upcoming worldwide tour.  That’s the plot, stupid as it is.

There is a ludicrous subplot about Fat Amy’s (Rebel Wilson) larcenous father (John Lithgow in a wasted opportunity) trying to reconnect with his daughter.  Then there is the even dumber subplot about Aubrey’s (Anna Camp) relationship with her military dad, who gets them the USO gig but doesn’t have the time to see her perform.

But the plot is not what any of the Pitch Perfect movies features.  It is all about the music – the a cappella mash-ups.  In 3, the music is just fine.  It’s a little more contemporary, hip-hop and new age, which makes it less appealing to more mature audiences (like me).  In fact, as one of three men in the audience, this film is clearly aimed at young females and the mothers who accompany them on holiday weekends.

Anna Kendrick and Hailey Steinfeld are genuine talents.  I would love to see them in concert but they seem way above this piece of dreck.  The film is harmless enough with just enough sexual innuendo to tease the teens, provide a guilty pleasure, and make a few of the moms in the audience a touch squeamish.

This is one of those movies that is worth paying a matinee price to be with your daughter.  Otherwise, wait for the video.

The trailers for The Shape of Water are misleading.  These previews make you think that this is some esoteric science fiction exploration.  But it is really a love story — admittedly an odd love story about a creature, a mute, some spies and a sadist.  Have fun!

The Shape of Water (Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Doug Jones) – The Shape of Water easily stands as the most unusual movie of the year and one of the oddest love stories since Beauty and the Beast.  Set in the Cold War, Water takes place in a small town that houses a super-secret military installation (think Roswell, New Mexico).  

Inside the base, a team of scientists led by a maniacal security officer, Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), inspects, prods, pokes, and tortures an alien creature (Doug Jones in a reptilian costume).  Viewed as hostile, this human-like form lives in a water tank.  It is a cruel existence broken only when a lonely, mute janitor named Elisa (Sally Hawkins) puts a hard-boiled egg on the edge of the pool where the creature exercises.  An immediate connection is made between this stranded alien and the verbally deficient Elisa.

Elisa lives with an aging, unemployed, gay artist named Giles (Richard Jenkins).  They both live sad lives made tolerable only by their mutual love of old black-and-white musicals that they watch incessantly. 

Elisa’s only other friend is Zelda (Octavia Spencer), her partner in cleaning the floors, bathrooms, and laboratories in the installation.  Zelda talks all the time, which suits Elisa just fine.  The two share time, intimacies, and secrets.  Zelda knows something is up with Elisa’s weird feelings for this creature.  But it isn’t until Elisa hatches a plan to kidnap aquaman before Strickland kills him that Zelda becomes a co-conspirator.

Meanwhile, the Russians have penetrated the installation through one of the scientists, Dr. Bob Hoffstetler (played by the wonderful Michael Stuhlbarg).  As Elisa and Giles execute the escape, Hoffstetler inadvertently stumbles on the plot and helps them.

The rest of the movie is a pure, warm fantasy chase tinged with stereotyped spies, a one-dimensional bad guy, and a scene right out of La La Land.  While Water is certainly unique, it borrows liberally from Cold War spy flicks, E.T., Splash, and Beauty and the Beast.  Thus, it scores high in originality though it feels familiar.  

As for the acting, let’s face it: Any movie with Michael Shannon is guaranteed to be wonderfully strange.  Sally Hawkins is surprising even though she doesn’t speak.  Spencer steals every scene in which she appears, and I mean that in a good way.  And Jenkins hasn’t been this lovable since The Visitor.

Director/writer/producer Guillermo del Toro may best be known for helming and penning Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy but he enters a new level here.  The Shape of Water is not a masterpiece, but it manages to cover new ground while plowing old themes in a mystic, engaging and hopeful way.  

With lots of Oscar buzz, The Shape of Water is well worth your time this holiday season.