The Shape of Water [Includes Digital Copy] [Blu-ray/DVD] [2017]

An alien creature has been caught by the government and being mistreated. The Russians are trying to steal the information. A blue collar worker falls in love with the creature and is able to communicate with it. Excellent movie premise with an excellent storyline and excellent actors and actresses. A five star production.

I have to say, I wasn't too sure what to expect going into this movie. I ended up loving it, its so weird and quirky. It's beautifully put together and will keep you entranced throughout the whole movie. Definitely recommend buying.

I love this movie. I'm a big fan of Guillermo del Toro's films & this is my second favorite. (Crimson Peak is my top choice.) As always, it is beautifully filmed. (Adore the themed color palettes he always chooses.) Brilliantly acted. Touching story.

One of the finest looking 4Ks I’ve checked out. Definitely pick this up.

Guillermo del Toro is today’s master of fantasy, having been a childhood lover of monsters growing up in Guadalajara, Mexico, before making some of the finest films of recent years -- from the ghostly horror of “The Devil’s Backbone” in 2001 to his gothic horror/romance, “Crimson Peak” in 2015. Indubitably, however, his greatest film is “Pan’s Labyrinth”, the 2006 film many of us consider the finest fantasy film ever made. Now he’s broken new ground with “The Shape of Water”, one of the year’s most beautiful films. Set in Baltimore in the year 1962 at the height of the Cold War, the plot follows a mute janitor at a secret government laboratory who forms a bond with a captured amphibian of the “Creature of the Black Lagoon” variety. Her name is Elisa, and Sally Hawkins plays her with an artistry that seems to reach back to the silent days of Chaplin and Keaton. Michael Shannon, with devoted viciousness, plays the right-wing Colonel Strickland, someone more interested in dissecting the creature for exploitation purposes than he is concerned over the space race with the Soviets. Del Toro saw “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” on TV at 7 years old and it changed his life. Wishing a different ending for it in which the Gill Man and co-star Julie Adams would consummate their romance and live ‘happily ever after’, he wrote various scripts of a remake through the years that Universal studio executives wound up rejecting. “The Shape of Water” is the result of del Toro’s dream, and now today, with more permissive filmmaking allowable, he’s able to deal with the previously verboten issue between fish and human. The resulting film is a worthy accomplishment not only for its production design (embodying various shades of green) and its special effects, but also for attaining the level of a genuine adult fairy tale that deals with issues of trust, tolerance, and love in the human condition -- but most of all what it’s like to be an outsider (whether a lonely mute woman, gay man, overweight black woman, or an amphibious sea creature). “This is a healing movie for me,” del Toro states; one likes to think it would be for viewers as well.

Guillermo del Toro finally did it, he made a movie that blew me away. I've enjoyed most of his other films (though not his Hellboy movies or Crimson Peak), and The Devil's Backbone is a near masterpiece in horror (and maybe it is, need to see it again), but The Shape of Water is the first of his I absolutely "love." Sure, it's deeply nostalgic to the style of old school Hollywood, harping back to the studio era of filmmaking. So in that way it is already directly speaking to me and holding my interest. Del Toro's film geek leanings are on full display here, and yet he's able to make a - mostly - mainstream sort of movie with it. Every area of craft in the movie is excellent; acting, directing, writing, score, art direction, cinematography, etc. Sally Hawkins is great in her mostly mute performance, she would have done well in silent pictures. I love Richard Jenkins in this, what a wonderful character as well. Octavia Spencer is always good and here her scene with Michael Shannon is electric. Michael Shannon, is, well, Michael Shannoning himself a lot in this, lol. Not to deride his performance, because no ones plays unhinged and angry better than him. Michael Stuhlbarg gives a surprising depth to such an usually stock type of character, he needs to be given more larger roles. The Shape of Water is a movie about outsiders, like many of del Toro's movies, and it feels very socially relevant and inclusive for our times. I'm happy - and surprised - it won Best Picture, the first time in awhile that my favorite film of the year won Best Picture (probably since LOTR: Return of the King).

Guillermo del Toro is today’s master of fantasy, having been a childhood lover of monsters growing up in Guadalajara, Mexico, before making some of the finest films of recent years -- from the ghostly horror of “The Devil’s Backbone” in 2001 to his gothic horror/romance, “Crimson Peak” in 2015. Indubitably, however, his greatest film is “Pan’s Labyrinth”, the 2006 film many of us consider the finest fantasy film ever made. Now he’s broken new ground with “The Shape of Water”, one of 2017’s most beautiful films. Set in Baltimore in the year 1962 at the height of the Cold War, the plot follows a mute janitor at a secret government laboratory who forms a bond with a captured amphibian of the “Creature of the Black Lagoon” variety. Her name is Elisa, and Sally Hawkins plays her with an artistry that seems to reach back to the silent days of Chaplin and Keaton. Michael Shannon, with devoted viciousness, plays the right-wing Colonel Strickland, someone more interested in dissecting the creature for exploitation purposes than he is concerned over the space race with the Soviets. There are also elements of religious allegory (“We’re created in the Lord’s image. You don’t think that’s what the Lord looks like, do you?”). Del Toro saw “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” on TV at 7 years old and it changed his life. Wishing a different ending for it in which the Gill Man and co-star Julie Adams would consummate their romance and live ‘happily ever after’, he wrote various scripts of a remake through the years that Universal studio executives wound up rejecting. “The Shape of Water” is the result of del Toro’s dream, and now today, with more permissive filmmaking allowable, he’s able to deal with the previously verboten issue between fish and human. The resulting film is a worthy accomplishment not only for its production design (embodying various shades of green) and its special effects, but also for attaining the level of a genuine adult fairy tale that deals with issues of trust, tolerance, and love in the human condition -- but most of all what it’s like to be an outsider (whether a lonely mute woman, gay man, overweight black woman, or an amphibious sea creature). “This is a healing movie for me,” del Toro states; one likes to think it would be for viewers as well.

Guillermo del Toro films are typically notable for their aesthetic choices, their production design, and their attention to detail. One can look back at the filmmaker's body of work and quickly see that there are countless themes that re-surface time and time again, much of this happening within the realm of the types of stories del Toro likes to tell and the visual prowess with which they are presented in. With his latest, The Shape of Water, the director is still very much working within his wheelhouse, but for the first time in some time it feels as if there is nothing more important to the movie no matter the extravagance of the sets and costumes or the practicality of the monster make-up than the story itself as well as the core relationship that both grounds this story and lifts it up. Now, if you know anything about The Shape of Water prior to going into the film then you know that this core relationship is formed between a human woman and a mysterious sea creature that is housed in the bowels of the top secret facility where she works as a maid. If that initially weirds you out a bit just think of it as the opposite of Ariel and Prince Eric; this way you can find some solace in the fact you at least understand you were holding a double standard against the picture. I understand there is a slight difference in the two because of the full-on creature feature being portrayed in this film whereas the scenes featuring Ariel and Eric being romantic in The Little Mermaid were ones where she was walking on land, but the concept still supports it and more, The Shape of Water completely owns this relationship from the moment we first glimpse our meager protagonist in Sally Hawkins' Elisa Esposito. Yes, of course The Shape of Water is a gorgeously rendered portrait of some alternate universe in the early sixties where government experimentation goes as far as studying a God-like merman and feels like a fairy tale of sorts for adults where not everything is perfect, ideal, or even necessarily magical, but what The Shape of Water does find and allow are these fantastical elements that breathe a fresh life and perspective into what are otherwise some dark and troubled times both in this universe and in the lives of characters who were seemingly never given a fair shot at life in the first place. This is effectively why The Shape of Water succeeds for as much as one can go on about all of the beautifully crafted extraneous factors it is this belief that comes to be sustained in this abnormal relationship and the beauty of the affection it conveys in its own right that we are, maybe unexpectedly, moved.