Cinephillia 005 | The Shape of Water

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What I think I enjoyed the most about The Shape of Water is it’s melding of two old Hollywood genres, their accompanying tropes / cultural conceits and plays with them in way that no mainstream director has done before, to make a definitive statement thats fitting for our current political and social climate.

You can draw a clear line of influence from The Birth of a Nation to King Kong to The Creature from the Black Lagoon — classic Hollywood films that are ultimately about the fear of the other and the need of strapping white men to protect cultural standards of beauty/purity (white women) from monsters (immigrants, POC).

It’s not a stretch to see how marginalized groups, LGBTQ, POC, and also interracial couples as well, could empathize with more contemporary versions of those stories that subvert those tropes. You might think Beauty and the Beast counts here, and in a way it does, but the act of The Beast changing into an traditionally attractive man as a reward, disqualifies it in my eyes. Shrek comes closer but doesn’t fit the bill either.

This is what makes Del Toro’s Hellboy and The Shape of Water unique. The “monster,” never has to change and neither does their significant other. What they look like on the outside already matches what’s on the inside and is excepted and loved for it.

“Much like fairy tales, there are two facets of horror.”

— Guillermo del Toro

Del Toro has said many times that as kid, watching films like The Black Lagoon, and such, he always connected with the “beasts” of these stories more than he did with the human characters. So those parallels are not lost to him. Del Toro is obsessed with the idea of monsters as sympathetic characters — it’s one of the defining elements in his storytelling toolbox and what I take from him in my own writing.

The Shape of Water is an adult fairy tale about misfits that exist on the margins of society. I can see why Del Toro chose to write a mute protagonist with a black female and gay man as supporting characters, taking place in the 1950’s during the height of civil rights activism.

The white male antagonist of the film has a line about how humans were made in God’s image and casually says to the black female supporting character that God looks more like him than he does her. Then there’s the subplot with the gay supporting character and a bartender he has a crush on, that I would rather not spoil.

But anyway...The Shape of Water is amazing. The cinematography, the practical effects, the costume and set design, the acting, the color palette and the score are all incredibly well realized in Del Toro’s signature passionate voice and meticulous attention to detail, on a meager 20 million dollar budget. It’s not for everyone (and no film should be in an ideal world) but it so very much deserved it’s Oscar win for film of the year. 

The second (or first, I can’t decide) best film of 2017 for me.

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Cinephillia 003 | Spider-Man: Homecoming

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Mostly just throwing out things I subjectively liked only, since I don't have time to get into too many technicals. *NO SPOILERS* *NO TRAILER THIS TIME...GO IN BLIND*

So yea; here we go:

In my OPINION...THE BEST Spider-Man film, so far. In fact, the ones that came before don't even exist to me anymore and feel dated by comparison. Tom Holland is the definitive Peter Parker in my mind now.

Every time I tell myself, “I'm tired of superheroes.” (And ultimately I am. I don't even read superhero comics anymore) Disney / MARVEL surprises me and manages to convince me of how much potential still exists. This felt fresh to me aaaand I hope they can keep it up post-Infinity War.

“In my opinion, the best Spider-Man film so far. Tom Holland is the definitive Peter Parker in my mind now.”

Not perfect but still a tight, small scale, self-contained slightly above street level story, unconcerned with setting up future MCU installments, and not involving any sings of a world ending sky-beam of death.

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An origin story sans the traditional trappings of an origin story, complete with a new expanded version of the "Great power" mantra, in the form of "If you're nothing without the suit then you shouldn't have it."

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I loved both costumes and the story driven function each served. The practical solution for justifying moving eye lenses, ala the comics, was a nice design touch.

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The Harry Potter meets Ferris Bueller / 80's teen comedy approach — taking Peter back to high school (9th grade?...10th grade?) — feels like an angle that should have been a no-brainer from the jump. (I acknowledge that Sam Rami's films came about in a different time.) It almost makes me wish I was a 12 year old again so that I could enjoy this from that perspective.

(No seriously...pitching this new version of S-P as roughly, Harry Potter, with superheroes — this film ostensibly being, "Year One," — is a really cool idea to me, just from a brand / franchise building standpoint.)

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Displaying the ethnically mixed environment of a melting pot like New York and casting people who actually are, and or look/act like kids!

In Kevin Smith's review of Homecoming, he noted the audacity of the line, “He's just a kid,” in reference to a then 75 year old Toby Maguire, from Spider-Man 2, and how this film makes that train scene a tad ridiculous in retrospect.

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Funny in surprising ways. The film did one thing with SP, during his day to day goings on, involving a carjacking that was hilarious-as-balls and something I never expected to see in a superhero film.

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Zendaya's character was also hilarious and I really love the role she's playing. She reminded me of Daria somewhat. I wish the film was more straightforward about who she's CLEARLY meant to be, but whatevs. She also has a nice joke (not joking?) about slaves that was mad unexpected for a Disney/MARVEL film.

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The easter eggs and world-building (aka setting up future villains and character arcs) stuff was subtle and non-distracting.

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The movie did a really good job of getting me to feel just how somewhat irresponsible, often mundane, tedious and dangerous being a superhero is for a character who is essentially a child, in a way that I've personally never seen before, outside of something more akin to Kick-Ass. BUT also raises a lot of questions for me about the kind of person Tony Stark is to pull a kid into that world.

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The emphasis on the fact that despite what Peter can do, he is still just a kid who's clumsy, naive, annoyingly hyperactive, an over reaching chronic screw up and gets genuinely scared (a trait showcased in several very effective 3rd act scenes in particular) really spoke to me.

Wherever Peter became distraught, saddened, frightened, etc I found myself feeling those things too.

*side note: One of those 3rd act scenes I'm talking about is the best Vulture / Spider-Man scene in the film and it doesn't involve costumes or fisticuffs of any kind!*

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For the first time in...idk...ever, in the MCU? Adrian Toomes aka The Vulture was smart, relatable and genuinely frightening villain (if I were someone's Peter's age, at least), whose motivations and actions I completely understood and kind of empathized with in a weird, Corrupt capitalistic / prohibition breeds Mob mentality / I have friends who were shit on by the system all their life and turned to selling drugs to feed their families, kind of way. The guy was basically Walter White

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Needless to say, I will be buying this movie on blu-ray and watching it with the director's commentary ON.

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Cinephilia 002 | Get Out

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So, firstly, there are no spoilers here. However if you intend on seeing Get Out. Don't read this. It's best to go into the theatre with no expectations.

The Premise:

Now that Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams), have reached the meet-the-parents milestone of dating, she invites him for a weekend getaway upstate with Missy and Dean. At first, Chris reads the family's overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter's interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.

The Technicals:

Get Out was brilliant, in concept and in execution. I went into this thinking it would be passable at best -- a few chuckles here and there mixed with the heavy handed racial commentary you'd expect from a film that, I assumed would basically be "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" meets "The Stepford Wives." Spike Lee (but infinitely more subtle) meets M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan...not The Happening, Shyamalan). Get Out has the DNA of an episode of Black Mirror. In fact, the lead of the film, Daniel Kaluuya, stared in an episode of the show, Fifteen Million Merits. Check it out if you haven't already.

It's rare that a thriller / horror film is any good these days, much less one as hyped as this one. But bruh...Get Out was a revelation -- a wholly unexpected, terrifying and appropriately comical / satirical experience, that plays with and subverts your expectations, while providing fresh, subtle, and uncomfortably sharp / poignant commentary, to boot. This was a really impressive first outing, from Jordan Peele, of Key & Peele fame. Peele has a knack for crafting sharp and hilarious reflections on race in America, but I had no idea that he was such an avid student of the horror genre. This guy did not come to play games.

- The pacing was right on the money -- a slow burn that didn't feel at all like a slow burn.

- Efficient and structurally rock solid in terms of its narrative. The rules of this world are clearly set up and pay off in ways that hit the, surprising yet expected, sweet spot. There are no narrative shortcuts -- no cheap jump scares (save for one), no lazy deus ex machinas, nor does the protagonist make unessecarily stupid decisions -- any missteps he makes are essential aspects of his character or come as a result of a lack of information, as opposed to the writer not knowing how to properly construct a scene.

- The twist is competent and functions on multiple levels. This is a film that rewards you upon a second viewing -- all the pieces were set up organically and hidden in plain sight. Dialogue and character traits carried weight and significance beyond the surface, with not much of it wasted as filler.

- The use of visual and auditory symbolism was a high note for me. Utilizing Childish Gambino's "Redbone", as a nice bit of foreshadowing, cautioning the audience to "stay woke." That was a particular standout for me.

“[Get Out] also sheds light on the kind of benevolent racism that comes from polite, well meaning, unassuming, wealthy, often liberal minded, white people.”

The Complex:

If you watched the trailer, you possibly discerned that Get Out is about black people's fear of white people's fear of black people (did you get that?) -- the abject paranoia that we sometimes experience while in predominantly white and unfamiliar spaces. The film could have stuck with that as it's primary thematic focus and still succeeded as a relatively solid piece, but luckily for us, Jordan Peele decided to bring his A-game and digs much deeper, focusing heavily on less obvious, and arguably darker, aspects of race relations in America.

The brilliant thing about Get Out goes back to what I said earlier about the narrative subverting your expectations. Hollywood loves to make emotionally manipulative heavy handed movies about racism -- whether it be about the overtly racist social structures that burdened black people during slavery and Jim Crow, or movies about one-toothed hillbilly Neo-Nazi's and Klan members. These are films that essentially make the modern white person feel good about themselves -- as to say, "Isn't it great that we're not like those people anymore?"

Jordan Peele was smart enough to avoid the obvious message and construct a narrative that speaks to the more subtle aspects of systematic racism that black people know and understand well, but are harder to pin down with simple verbiage. The movie doesn't contain a group of villainous confederate flag waving rednecks out to enslave unsuspecting black people. If this were the case then there would be no narrative tension because the audience would already know what's coming. The story and it's caucasian antagonists' motivations are far more complex.

I, once upon a time, wrote a facebook post about how I'm not in the least bit worried about the KKK. I know they hate me and I can willfully avoid those people. I'm worried about the nice old lady down the street in the predominantly white upper middle class neighborhood that I live in, who could call the police on me while I'm running down her street, in a black hoodie, because I look "suspicious."

In addition to touching on eugenics, the institution of slave auctioning, white people's expectations of black behavior, and the painful history of white rape / appropriation of black bodies and culture (see. Thomas Jefferson or Kylie Jenner), Jordan Peele seems to want to point out that we're all a little racist and posses cultural blind spots that need filling.

Peele not only use horror to dissect the complex lingering effects of long standing colonialism, within a given population — on both the colonizer and the colonized — but also sheds light on the kind of benevolent racism that comes from polite, well meaning, unassuming, wealthy, often liberal minded, white people. The kind of racism that tries way too hard to make black people feel comfortable by pulling out a mental list of "black history facts" and "things that negroes like to do" and unloading it all in the form of misguided greetings, compliments, ice breakers, cheerful banter and unwanted physical contact.

The kind of racism that assures black people that, "I am most certainly not racist! I voted for Obama two times." The kind of racism that's oblivious to it's maliciousness. The kind of racism that genuinely comes from a good place, but because of willful ignorance, is none the less misguided and short sighted. The kind of racism that fetishizes black bodies. The kind of racism that looks down on us while simultaneously cherry picking desired traits — positioning us as something more akin to costumes to be worn, instead of fully formed human beings.

I feel like there will be a stark difference in the way that white people and black people process certain scenes. There are moments in the film that some white people might laugh at, passing it off as quirky parody, but to black people -- the barrage of micro-aggressions thrown at the protagonist -- will undoubtedly conjure a fuck ton of heavy emotions and disgruntled moans, leaving their palms sweaty by films end. There are moments where the expressions on the protagonist's face will be instantly recognized by, and all too familiar to, black people, but may go completely over the heads of everyone else. This is the first film I've ever seen that articulates the stress we feel of having to constantly having to defend our fears to those who don't understand. For us, Get Out is potent psychological anxiety trip, through and through, laying bare the uncertainty we feel towards the dozens of tiny everyday social interactions we have with white people — the mental negotiations we make within ourselves to avoid confrontation, and then go home to laugh about it amongst our own to keep from crying.

Get Out spoke to me on a viscerally emotional level. It truly unnerved me and masterfully contextualized an aspect of my experience as a black man in this country that is so often extremely difficult to articulate.

I hope that people who see the film come to understand its true depth as a modern fable and cautionary tale. It's a film that asks us to take a step back, look at ourselves and reanalyze how we choose to relate to, and treat one another. I'm impressed that it even exists, much less has had a successful wide release thus far.

No film is without flaws, and neither is this one, but Get Out succeeds on so many fronts and gets so much right, that it's flaws are small potatoes and do not affect the overall quality and potency of it's message and purpose.

Get Out stuck with me hours after I left the theatre. I can't stress enough how amazing it was -- a testament to the inherent value of black people telling their own stories -- and is destined to be a classic. This is an absolute game changer, not to mention, being arguably the first good black horror film ever conceived...like...ever.

Damn near perfect.

...but seriously, who threw that deer at the car though?

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