Movie review by Greg Carlson

A welcome addition to the teen canon’s virginity-loss-quest subgenre, “Blockers” is a confident feature directing debut for multi-talented screenwriter/producer/performer Kay Cannon, previously best known for her work on “30 Rock” and the “Pitch Perfect” series. Smoothly mixing the hallmarks of bawdy situational humiliations and of-the-moment slang/profanity with the earnestness and sentimentality of many an afterschool special, Cannon does not need to clear a particularly high bar — but “Blockers” turns out to be mostly funny and sweet.

Lisa (Leslie Mann), Mitch (John Cena), and Hunter (Ike Barinholtz) are parents to a trio of childhood best friends now approaching the conclusion of high school. An on-a-whim pact made by Julie (Kathryn Newton), Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan), and Sam (Gideon Adlon) to engage in prom night sex is discovered — the emoji and hashtag-heavy translation sequence in which the grown-ups figure it out is a highlight — and the desperate mama and papas rush to prevent any and all carnal relations. The subsequent action toggles between the foolhardy misadventures of the hapless protectors and the casual will-they-or-won’t-they turnarounds of the young women.

Nothing in “Blockers” is particularly innovative or unexpected, but several self-congratulatory articles, including Joanna Robinson’s “Vanity Fair” pieces, applaud the film’s handling of homosexuality, sex positivity, and affirmative consent. Robinson’s observations point to the incremental changes taking place within the studio system, but also serve as a reminder that for the time being, stories featuring central female characters consistently depicted with agency — especially in this genre — are the exception and not the rule.

Despite the big laughs and the big heart, “Blockers” does not hit a grand slam. Cannon errs on the safe side by spending a little more quality time with Mann, Cena, and Barinholtz during a crucial stretch when being with the kids would have added strength and depth to their characterizations. Even so, the director deftly handles a central theme that might have easily been lost: parents struggling to accept the impending adulthood and independence of their offspring and the looming reality of no longer being needed by their children in the same reassuring and familiar way.

That reality check shows up in a number of successful gags. Mitch may have the body of a professional fighter, but he cries easily and often. Hunter, a perpetual screw-up and embarrassment to Sam, is fully tuned-in to her fears and anxieties. Lisa, in a circumstance of supreme awkwardness that mirrors a nearly identical moment in “Why Him?,” realizes when it’s time to walk away and stop interfering. In parallel, the daughters make decisions of such responsibility that Manohla Dargis lamented the movie’s “aggressive squareness” and overall lack of freakiness/weirdness in her “New York Times” review.

I won’t disagree with the great Dargis, but I was satisfied by Cannon’s efforts large and small. Gary Cole and Gina Gershon roleplaying their own prom night fantasies top the heavily trailer-featured “butt chugging” ridiculousness. Viswanathan’s foulmouthed frankness works every time. Sarayu Blue, Hannibal Buress, June Diane Raphael, and Colton Dunn make the most of limited screen time. And the commitment of the film’s core sextet stays on target enough to imagine that “Blockers” will one day be remembered at least as fondly as “American Pie,” if not “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”    

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Wes Anderson returns to animation with “Isle of Dogs,” a showcase of expectedly eye-popping production design and art direction that partially obscures a pricklier, flintier corner of the world than the one adapted from Roald Dahl’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” in 2009. Writing the screenplay from a story credited to himself, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, and Konichi Nomura (who also performs in the film as Mayor Kobayashi), the particular auteur embarks on an often melancholy dystopian odyssey set in a hyper-stylized near future in which an infectious “dog flu and snout fever” epidemic sees the entire pooch population of a fictionalized Japan quarantined on the grim Trash Island.       

Predictably paying wall-to-wall auditory and visual homage to influential cinematic heroes (both Japanese and non-Japanese), Anderson doesn’t achieve the masterful emotional storytelling of Vittorio De Sica’s “Umberto D.” (for my money the greatest dog movie ever made), but anyone who has ever stared into the soulful eyes of a loyal hound will cheer the mission of protagonist Atari Kobayashi (Koyu Rankin), a boy determined to reunite with his best friend Spots (Liev Schreiber), the very first pup to be banished. Aided by a pack of four-legged exiles, Atari’s quest is merely the pretext for Anderson’s latest manifesto on the politics of resistance and rebellion.

Concerns, critiques, and misgivings about Anderson’s potential for cultural appropriation/insensitivity have driven an online conversation about “Isle of Dogs” that exists independently of many of the frontline reviews. Perhaps the key example, and certainly the one that most effectively articulates a real value question, is provided by Justin Chang in his insightful “L.A. Times” essay. Following an explanation of Anderson’s deliberate choice to provide the canines with the voices of recognizable American stars while withholding subtitles for the humans who speak Japanese, Chang writes, in part, “…all these coy linguistic layers amount to their own form of marginalization, effectively reducing the hapless, unsuspecting people of Megasaki to foreigners in their own city.” For what it’s worth, Chang has since distanced himself from the way in which this portion of his thorough and nuanced assessment has been isolated as a “battle cry.”

Additionally, Emily Yoshida extends the no-subtitle conversation in an intriguing anecdotal survey summarized for “Vulture” with the explanatory lead “What It’s Like to Watch ‘Isle of Dogs’ as a Japanese Speaker.” Like Chang, Yoshida stops short of full condemnation, placing the movie’s narrative and design flourishes in a category she describes as a “kind of opportunism,” resulting in a “heightened essence of the Japanese culture as filtered through a Western understanding.” Beyond the pair of reactions cited above, many critics have tagged American exchange student Tracy Walker (Greta Gerwig) as a white savior, while others have remarked on the function of Frances McDormand’s Interpreter Nelson.   

And despite the inclusion of Scarlett Johansson (more or less inhabiting the Felicity Fox role of coolheaded wisdom-imparter), Yoko Ono, Kara Hayward, and a scene-stealing Tilda Swinton, Anderson once again identifies most closely with the conversation-dominating male participants. No females belong to the central group of mutts made up of Chief (Bryan Cranston), Rex (Edward Norton), King (Bob Balaban), Boss (Bill Murray), and Duke (Jeff Goldblum) — the last four Anderson regulars — and that gender-divided reality is at least as awkward and problematic as any overt or covert stereotypes.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Only Lynne Ramsay knows the details behind her departures on a couple of movies, but we have been fully rewarded by her picky, methodical project choices. With just a trio of previous features, all undeniably brilliant, the Scottish filmmaker delivers an instant cult classic with her fourth, the visceral “You Were Never Really Here.” Once upon a time, Ramsay circled “The Lovely Bones,” “Jane Got a Gun,” and a long-rumored sci-fi “Moby-Dick” without completing any of them. While the latter could still happen, the first two surely suffered when Ramsay moved on. Incapable of the ordinary, the undistinguished, or the routine, “You Were Never Really Here” easily cements her position as one of the most exciting visionaries working today.

Making the most of a completely engrossing central performance by Joaquin Phoenix that rises to the level of his work for Paul Thomas Anderson, Ramsay also creates magic with several other key collaborators, including, but certainly not limited to, composer Jonny Greenwood, cinematographer Thomas Townend, and editor Joe Bini. Ramsay’s films are all about the details, and like the best of her best, “You Were Never Really Here” establishes an idiosyncratic and original landscape that engulfs the willing viewer in a universe so subjective, our level of identification with the central protagonist feels at times almost physical.

Phoenix is Joe, a deeply damaged ex-FBI agent and combat veteran who now retrieves the missing, the kidnapped, and the lost by any means necessary. Working under the radar as a private contractor, Joe — often armed with a hardware store hammer — is freakishly good at his terrifying vocation. As the grim events unfold, it dawns on us that Joe’s fearlessness is wired directly to a deep well of self-loathing and suicidal ideation. It’s one of Ramsay’s great gifts to the audience, deliciously complicated by the wonderful presence of Joe’s mother (an outstanding Judith Roberts) and a handful of “Psycho” references.

“You Were Never Really Here” has also drawn multiple comparisons to “Taxi Driver,” with which it shares a relentless and not entirely stable antihero, themes bringing Joe into the world of politicians, and the violent rescue of a young woman being sold for sex. In addition, the grit, the sleaze, and the nocturnal New York action are braided with enough pounding heartbeats of woozy mania to make you wonder just whose fantasy is being visited. Not everyone will thrill to Ramsay’s adaptation of the novella by Jonathan Ames, but if you are game, the filmmaker proves she can run with — and in several cases outrun — Chan-wook Park, Jee-woon Kim, Dan Gilroy, Nicolas Winding Refn, and other contemporary crafters of cinematic cool.              

In each of her previous films, Ramsay has applied varying layers of sticky black comedy to grave and horrific circumstances, and “You Were Never Really Here” continues the streak with generous opportunities for death to laugh at Joe and those unlucky enough to be in Joe’s path. The self-destructive tough assuredly smiles back, and some of the most electrifying moments in the movie catch you cracking up in shock and disbelief. As always, Ramsay has a way with the perfectly placed pop song. Even though “You Were Never Really Here” doesn’t drop the needle as frequently as “Morvern Callar,” a scene featuring Charlene’s “I’ve Never Been to Me” is as funny/sad and perfect as anything you are likely to see this year.    

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A captivating lead performance by Lene Cecilia Sparrok anchors the stout and handsome “Sami Blood,” winner of the award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2018 Fargo Film Festival. Set principally in the 1930s, director Amanda Kernell’s inaugural feature film identifies fiercely and intimately with Sparrok’s teenage Elle-Marja, who plots to leave her family and way of life for a different future in the city. A member of the indigenous Scandinavian people known as the Sami, Elle-Marja has grown up participating in the semi-nomadic reindeer herding traditionally identified as one of the main livelihoods of the group.

“Sami Blood” debuted at the 2016 Venice Film Festival, earning a pair of key awards before moving through additional festival successes. Interestingly, the near present-day sections of the film that offer a framing device tracking the now almost 80-year-old Elle-Marja (the older version of the character is played by Maj-Doris Rimpi) are incorporated into the feature directly from Kernell’s short “Stoerre Vaerie” — known in English as “Northern Great Mountains” — which showed at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

The Sami people have faced institutionalized racism and government-supported discrimination for centuries, a reality that Kernell makes crystal clear in both the contemporary and period eras she depicts. Additionally, the director’s decision to shoot on location constructs a layer of documentary-like realism. The audience accompanies Elle-Marja in both the rural and semi-urban places she visits, and Kernell is especially good at communicating tiny details of emotional identification. The proximity to animals and the joy of a bracing and cleansing dip contrast sharply with the adrenalized fear lit up by a group of bullies. The awful result of the encounter with the latter functions for the remainder of the story as a symbolic marker of Elle-Marja’s permanent link to her culture.  

Kernell’s own heritage — her father is Sami and her mother is “traditional” Swedish — illuminates the movie in significant measure. The filmmaker insisted on casting a pair of real sisters fluent in South Sami, a language estimated to be spoken by fewer than 500 people, and that commitment pays off in the stunning verisimilitude crafted by Kernell and her collaborators. The most memorable sections of “Sami Blood,” including one painful reconstruction of the grotesque physical examinations forced on schoolchildren to drum up state “evidence” of Sami inferiority, directly and unflinchingly confront the horrors and humiliations — large and small — perpetrated against Elle-Marja.  

As our protagonist navigates the impossible realities outside the life she feels is suffocating her, the brilliance of Kernell’s rendering straddles the universal and the specific. Countless stories explore the liminal passages of painful adolescence and the yearning for adulthood that accompanies experimentation with grown-up desires. Elle-Marja joins many youthful literary runaways, hiding her origins to the extent that she can, and seeking what immediately appears to be an ill-fated romance with a boy met at a dance. But just as we encounter some element we have seen before, the director draws on her rich knowledge and personal experience to visualize all kinds of singular wonders that should satisfy even the most voracious consumers of world cinema.  

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Iconic feminist and women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred is the subject of Sophie Sartain and Roberta Grossman’s “Seeing Allred,” now on Netflix instant watch following its debut at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. documentary competition. The veteran filmmakers craft an unapologetically worshipful highlight reel of Allred’s life and career, successfully recontextualizing the widespread public and media perception of the lawyer as a publicity-seeking celebrity who never turns down an opportunity to appear on television. Instead, “Seeing Allred” makes good on its title — illuminating many details of the now 76-year-old’s long crusade against gender-based discrimination.

Like so many personality-driven documentaries, “Seeing Allred” appears to soften criticism and scrutiny in exchange for access to its subject. The archival content spans several decades (the movie opens with a snappy 1977 clip from Dinah Shore’s talk show) and easily beats both the fawning talking heads and the endless supply of images illustrating the road-warrior realities of Allred’s life in airports and hotel rooms. Footage of Allred holding press conferences with victims of sexual misconduct and assault constitutes another of the movie’s key categories.

Sartain and Grossman gamely press Allred with a few pointed questions, even though they seem to know their “witness” will elect to withhold information. This particular kind of back-and-forth applies most obviously to a short passage on the contentious break-up of Allred’s second marriage, but also pops up when Allred speaks to her daughter Lisa Bloom’s decision to briefly represent Harvey Weinstein in the fall of 2017. The moviemakers, favoring breadth, fare much better on the solid ground of topics like Allred’s participation in the efforts that led to the passage of California’s SB 813, removing the statute of limitations for the criminal prosecution of rape and sexual assault.

Allred’s involvement in so many cases forces Sartain and Grossman to skip enough material for an entire miniseries on their subject, even though the filmmakers take time to highlight the famous suit against Sav-On Drugstore, the membership policies of the Friars Club, and Allred’s work with the family of Nicole Brown Simpson. The lawyer exudes comfort with her own level of fame — a running gag is that people on the street frequently mistake a gracious Allred for retired Senator Barbara Boxer. Given the film’s prominent coverage of Allred’s representation of the alleged victims of Bill Cosby and Donald Trump, the absence of comment about her lengthy history of taking on clients in suits against celebrities was a missed opportunity for more richness and depth.  

The strongest and most satisfying thread in “Seeing Allred,” however, traces the tireless and significant contributions made by Allred to the modern legal history of feminism, civil rights, and the dismantling of workplace-based inequities. Allred, who we learn came to the law following a gig as a high school teacher, dispels any number of constructed myths framing her primarily as a fame-seeking ambulance-chaser. Sartain and Grossman convincingly upend that narrative by showing that Allred’s relentless use of the television camera has given voice to the unheard and spoken truth to power inside a system designed to marginalize and silence.    

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Considerably less accessible than his directorial debut “Ex Machina,” veteran writer Alex Garland’s “Annihilation” very loosely adapts Jeff VanderMeer’s novel into a demanding thought experiment bound to frustrate viewers counting on some of the trailer’s promise and premise. As multiple critics have pointed out, the new film owes a thematic debt to Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Stalker,” a movie that Alissa Wilkinson suggests is, like “Annihilation,” about the “complicated nature of desire.” More precisely, Wilkinson claims, “What we truly desire… is what will ultimately take us apart from the inside.” That concept certainly drives a viable reading of “Annihilation,” though its success or failure resides within the eye of the beholder.

A bookend device communicates to the viewer the information that Natalie Portman’s soldier-turned-academic(!) Lena has survived an incredible and inexplicable ordeal within the Shimmer, a time-bending, DNA-blending, electronic device-resisting, magnetic field-defying region within an energy “curtain.” Flashbacks fill in the rest: Lena’s husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) returned home after a protracted absence within the Shimmer, and his trauma compelled Lena to volunteer with Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Dr. Ventress to seek answers on a new mission into the weird territory.

Ventress and Lena are joined by physicist Radek (Tessa Thompson), paramedic Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez), and anthropologist Shepherd (Tuva Novotny). Lena’s relationship to Kane is withheld from the new team members in a questionable ploy that makes little narrative sense beyond functioning as a moment of manufactured conflict provided by its eventual and inevitable disclosure. Both the emphasis on Lena’s primacy as key protagonist and the presentation of the Shimmer’s wide variety of effects — from rainbow-colored flora and fauna to stomach-churning gore — reduce the overall effectiveness of the supporting characters.   

Despite the familiarity of the pick ‘em off sequencing associated with “And Then There Were None,” “Alien,” “The Thing,” and dozens of lesser examples, Garland can be commended for resisting the more conventional pace of recent, less-effective genre sibling “The Cloverfield Paradox,” even if the action-horror highpoint of “Annihilation” is a j’accuse confrontation that introduces a terrifying hybrid certain to provide nightmare fuel to people who get seriously creeped out by the kind of unholy mergers glimpsed in “Pinocchio” and the 1978 version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”        

The filmmaker’s commitment to a more cerebral and abstract investigation of the death instinct/todestrieb comes at the expense of rich characterization — especially outside Lena, and “Annihilation” arguably would have been improved through a more deliberate exploration of the reasons why each woman is drawn toward her personal impulse to self-destruction. The final sequences, despite Garland’s bold, CGI-aided trippiness, are simply no match for anything in “Under the Skin” or “Arrival,” a pair of films that have already popped up several times in writings and conversations on “Annihilation.”   

Sexual desire, and the aching longing for physical intimacy in the absence of one’s partner, form an intriguing motif contained within the flashbacks, but curiously given the time spent on the set-up, Garland omits a deeper or more rigorous examination. That choice diminishes certain aspects of Lena and Kane’s connection to the Shimmer and to one another, especially in light of the film’s ambiguous conclusion.  

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Hungarian filmmaker Ildiko Enyedi, whose 1989 debut “My Twentieth Century” won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, achieved another career highlight recently with an Oscar nomination for her most recent feature. “On Body and Soul” has been selected to compete for Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards. The movie is currently available to view on Netflix.

Despite the bloody immediacy of the film’s slaughterhouse setting, “On Body and Soul” is an often ethereal and meditative romance. Endre (Geza Morcsanyi) is the lonely CFO at a meat processing plant on the edge of Budapest. Maria (Alexandra Borbely) joins the staff as a by-the-book quality inspector. Despite not knowing one another, Endre and Maria somehow share an identical series of dreams — a seemingly impossible coincidence revealed in the course of interviews conducted during an investigation into the theft of a potent dose of bovine mating stimulant.

Enyedi slyly observes both very familiar human behavior and the more cerebral and poetic dreaminess that addresses the challenges of making meaningful and intimate human connections in a modern world. The director’s interest extends briefly to a few supporting characters, including Reka Tenki’s psychological tester/human resources consultant and Ervin Nagy’s cagey, nervous new hire. Zoltan Schneider, as Endre’s leering, impolitic lunch partner, might have been given a little more to earn the payoff Enyedi prepares for him.

“On Body and Soul” is patient and deliberate. Those qualities effectively serve Endre and Maria from start to finish, but do put some strain on the movie’s secondary storylines. Viewers seeking muscular plotting should look elsewhere — Enyedi is far less engaged with the idea of a deep investigation of the meanings/possibilities of the parallel dreaming (a real shame) and the outcome of the missing vial than she is in the unique contours of the leads, even if Maria’s quirkier markers, like her comprehensive and superhuman memory, will test the patience of some.    

Enyedi concentrates primary attention on the lives of her two protagonists, shifting among scenes at the abattoir (including several awkward and deadpan exchanges in the company cafeteria) and scenes of each character outside of the workplace, often, though not always, alone. Once the mysterious double-dream motif — a forest scene in which a doe and a buck forage for juicy leaves under the snow — links Endre and Maria early in the movie, the narrative appears to place the characters on pathways that will inevitably intersect with one another. Enyedi, however, exhibits less concern for the barriers that separate the two and much more interest in the idiosyncratic details that shape and govern their personalities.

The almost painfully reserved and taciturn Endre seems practically outgoing next to Maria, who blurts out declarations of raw honesty that alienate her from the rest of her coworkers. Despite the scarcely concealed ridicule of Maria by several employees, Enyedi methodically aligns audience sympathy with her, and Borbely commits to the character’s prickliness. The dream motif unsurprisingly brings Maria into close proximity to Endre, but the director withholds a payoff related to that theme in favor of an intense climactic exchange that deftly balances on a tightrope stretched between potential tragedy and black comedy.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Given the film’s somewhat odd marriage of style — the personality-driven presence of chatty neophyte documentarian Bryan Fogel — and substance — the ugly realities of the longtime Russian doping program for Olympic competitors — the inclusion of “Icarus” as one of the five Oscar-nominated nonfiction features came as something of a surprise. But as the winter games get underway in Pyeongchang, South Korea on February 9, coverage of the Russians continues to dominate headlines in a bit of timing fortuitous to the profile of Fogel’s movie.

Prior to being added to Netflix’s catalog in August, “Icarus” premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, where it received a special jury commendation dubbed the Orwell Award. The movie begins with Fogel’s argument that the use of performance-enhancing substances offers the only pathway for him to rank with the long-distance cyclists at the very top of the sport. As diarist/guinea pig/deliberate cheater, Fogel seeks to partner with someone who can assist him with a drug regimen potentially undetectable by official testers. He intends to film the whole process.

The provocative plan for Fogel to record his own complicity in both the use of banned cocktails and the measures to obscure those drugs under testing prefigures the bombshells driving the story that soon emerges in “Icarus.” Fogel seeks out an expert in doping unafraid to collaborate with him on his wild plan and crosses paths with Grigory Rodchenkov, the former director of Russia’s anti-doping lab. The colorful, garrulous Rodchenkov then displaces Fogel as the film’s center of attention, and the drama turns from Fogel’s “Super Size Me”-style stunt to a heavier examination of state-sponsored fraud.

Currently in witness protection in the United States based on credible threats to his life, whistleblower Rodchenkov presents himself as an almost too-good-to-be-true character. “Icarus” tends to play up Rodchenkov’s willingness to spill the beans on every facet of Russia’s doping enterprise, connecting the dots all the way to Putin (even though the cover-up goes back long before the current leader of the Russian Federation assumed his job). As Fogel and Rodchenkov develop a close relationship, the filmmaker intersperses his new friend’s disclosures with updates on key players in the unfolding World Anti-Doping Agency response.

The timeliness of the Olympic connection and the broader, ongoing concerns related to Russia’s hand in world affairs — especially related to the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issuing a joint statement asserting interference by Russia in the 2016 United States presidential election — add some aspect of intrigue to “Icarus.” One can expect to see more of these kinds of stories in the pipeline.   

The extensive use of video chats on laptop screens burdens the movie with a cheap and fuzzy DIY quality unsuited to the importance of the subject matter, and several reviewers have mentioned the awkwardness of the bifurcated structure that juggles Fogel’s narrative alongside Rodchenkov’s. A section detailing the elaborate urine-swapping procedure and the process of defeating Swiss manufacturer Berlinger’s supposedly tamper-proof, locking-cap glass containers is arguably the film’s most compelling bit of storytelling, but “Icarus” concludes as a disjointed, mixed bag of half-formed hypotheses about the future of sport and sportsmanship that leaves the viewer wanting something more substantive.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Of the great designs in the history of movie monsters, there are few as satisfying as Universal’s stunning Gill-man. First envisioned by William Alland by way of Gabriel Figueroa’s Amazonian campfire story, the look of the Creature from the Black Lagoon belongs principally to Milicent Patrick. Christened “The Beauty Who Created the Beast” for a promotional tour, Patrick’s contributions to cinema iconography were unfairly squashed by jealous makeup artist Bud Westmore, who would for years claim sole credit for the scaly swimmer’s conception.

Patrick’s tale — among other things she also designed the influential Metaluna mutant for “This Island Earth” — would make a tremendous Hollywood movie by itself, and in one sense, Guillermo del Toro’s gorgeous “The Shape of Water” evokes any number of parallel Cold War-era realities for women in industries dominated and controlled by men. As one inspiration for the script he would write with Vanessa Taylor, del Toro has cited his childhood desire that the Gill-man and Julie Adams’s Kay Lawrence physically and romantically end up together. And while he’s not the only one who imagined cross-species love and romance while marveling at the poetry of Adams and Ricou Browning during their underwater ballet, “The Shape of Water” is quintessential del Toro.

Set in Baltimore in the early 1960s, del Toro’s meticulously imagined universe evokes via Paul Austerberry’s production design and Nigel Churcher’s art direction a stunning variation on Atomic Age nostalgia. Much of the action is set at a secret government lab that employs Elisa (Sally Hawkins) and Zelda (Octavia Spencer) on the custodial staff. Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) arrives with an otherworldly “asset” (Doug Jones) an aquatic humanoid that can breathe in and out of water. Scientist/mole Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) secretly witnesses the special bond that develops between Elisa and the Amphibian Man.

It’s impossible not to read “The Shape of Water” as a paean to queerness, to otherness, to love triumphing over hate. The captivating wonder of its frankness and vulnerability in matters of sexual expression, which are rendered fiercely and concretely by the incredible Hawkins, is rare in a genre film — or film in general for that matter. Nobody put it better than Anthony Lane, who wrote, “The lust that is, of necessity, thwarted and dammed in Disney productions of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is released, and allowed to flow at will, through the fable of Eliza [sic] and the Creature. So grimly accustomed are we to sexual violence onscreen that to see sex flourish as a rebuke to violence and a remedy for loneliness, which is what ‘The Shape of Water’ provides, is a heady and uplifting surprise.”     

“The Shape of Water” is also, to the shock of no one given del Toro’s affinity for the movies, an intertextual kaleidoscope of references and homages to silver screen dreams. Elisa’s apartment over the cavernous auditorium screening “The Story of Ruth” in CinemaScope and DeLuxe Color may remind you, like it did me, of the sanctuary provided by your most beloved movie palace. Dual Astaire references dazzle. Glenn Miller and Alice Faye are elegant choices for Elisa to communicate some counterpoint to the brutal electric shocks administered by the inhumane Strickland. The film’s flights of fancy, as weird and sublime as anything del Toro has done, outstrip the ambitions of a messy subplot involving the Russians. The giant-size heart belonging to del Toro, however, is indisputable. He believes, makes believe, and subsequently makes us believe.