THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017) ****

Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is further proof that most women just want a quiet guy with a great set of abs.  The fact that he’s a fish man is kind of beside the point.  In del Toro’s universe, love is blind.

It’s also mute.  As in, Elisa (Sally Hawkins) the heroine is a mute.  She works as a cleaning lady in a top-secret government lab.  One day, an amphibian humanoid known only as “The Asset” (Doug Jones) is brought in by his handler, Strickland (Michael Shannon) for observation and experimentation.  Strickland rules over the creature with an iron fist, gleefully giving him shocks from his trusty cattle prod (“The Alabama Howdy-Doo”) whenever he acts up.  Elisa shows The Asset kindness by… Hold on, I can’t keep calling this guy “The Asset”, because that just sounds too funky.  We’ll just call him Gill.

Anyway, Elisa shows Gill a little kindness and even develops a crush on him.  When she learns that Strickland intends on killing Gill, she ropes a coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and a neighbor (Richard Jenkins) in on a plan to help him escape.  Naturally, that sends Strickland on a warpath, and he’ll stop at nothing until he gets his hands on Gill.

The Shape of Water is Guillermo del Toro’s seamless blend of late night creature feature, forbidden love story, and fairy tale.  It works as an exemplary take on each of those conventions.  Imagine if Douglas Sirk and Jean Cocteau had teamed up to direct The Creature from the Black Lagoon.  

Del Toro does a great little shorthand to endear the character of Elisa to the audience early on by showing her masturbatory routine.  I mean you have to respect anyone who can rub one out just before work.  It’s exactly the sort of thing that makes her instantly relatable to the audience.

I also love del Toro’s childlike nonjudgmental handling of Elisa and Gill’s relationship.  At one point, they even partake in a black and white song and dance number.  Forget Fred and Ginger.  Wait till you get a load of Gill and Elisa.  

Del Toro contrasts this by showing us Strickland’s own sexual routine.  Let me tell you this.  When you see the matter-of-fact way Strickland sticks it to his wife, Gill’s treatment of Elisa is downright beautiful.  One thing is for sure:  Fish men mating techniques have come a long way since the days of Humanoids from the Deep.

Hawkins is good and all, and Jones can do this sort of mo-cap creature work in his sleep by now.  Jenkins gives us yet another classic Richard Jenkins character.  They’re all solid, and give ample life to the characters they play.

It is Shannon who dominates the screen.  He’s played some slimy, creepy assholes before, but this is some next level shit.  It is a tour de force in every way. He’s maniacal and disgusting, yet wickedly funny at the same time.  Whenever he’s on screen, you can’t take your eyes off him.  It’s one of his most mesmerizing performances and is easily one of the best performances of the year. 

A CERTAIN JUSTICE (2014) **

Cung Le stars as a soldier with PTSD who accidentally kills three men roughing up a hooker (Briana Evigan).  Her pimp (Dolph Lundgren) lashes out by burning Le’s family alive.  Enraged, Le sets his sights on bringing Dolph’s operation down.

The first fifteen minutes look like they were chopped up in a blender and edited with a hot glue gun.  It’s hard to make heads or tails what's going on half the time.  I don't know if directors Giorgio Serafini and James Coyne were trying to put us in Le’s PTSD mindset or what, but it's damned irritating.  

Things improve when Dolph arrives on the scene.  He's great as the scary, soft spoken, and manipulative pimp.  While the movie is decidedly less than stellar, Dolph still manages to do some genuinely interesting character work.  He’s especially despicable when telling Evigan the harsh truth about their relationship.  Although his fight scenes leave something to be desired, he does get a decent shirtless training sequence.

A Certain Justice is generally more meanspirited and unpleasant than most of its ilk.  That doesn’t necessarily make it better.  Even though the beginning is poorly executed, the camerawork, editing, and action gets better as it goes along.  I can’t say it’s “good”, but it’s about on par with your average DTV actioner.  

It does lose points for the dumb ending.  I mean Dolph has Cung tied up and on his knees with a gun to his head.  All he had to do was pull the trigger.  Naturally, his stupid flunky wants a piece of him, so Dolph unties him so they can fight.  Predictably, Cung schools him, which leads to the big Le vs. Lundgren finale.  

AKA:  Puncture Wounds.  AKA:  Lethal Punisher.  AKA:  Lethal Punisher:  Kill or be Killed.

JIM AND ANDY: THE GREAT BEYOND (2017) ****

Milos Forman’s Man on the Moon is one of the most unsung dramas in recent memory.  If anything, I hope Jim and Andy:  The Great Beyond will give viewers a chance to go back and rediscover that wonderful film.  If you ever wanted to know how Jim Carrey transformed himself into Andy Kaufman, look no further.  This is a fascinating documentary of Carrey's Method acting.  By staying in character throughout the entire shoot, it caused friction behind the scenes between him and members of the crew.  It would've been one thing if Carrey had been playing an ordinary guy.  Andy Kaufman was anything but.

The film is essentially comprised of Carrey reminiscing about the filming while we see behind the scenes footage of him running wild on set.  We’re not talking about any old “making of” documentary either.  This is some unprecedented stuff.  It’s intimate, personal, and challenging, which helps to blur the line between real and reel.  

Take for example how Jim, as Andy, mercilessly taunts wrestler Jerry “The King” Lawler.  Even when Lawler confides that in real life, he and Andy were good friends and had a respectful relationship, Jim refuses to back down, which causes tension in between takes.  Finally, they come to blows and Carrey has to be taken out by ambulance.  

The funniest moments come when Carrey is dressed up as Kaufman’s aggressive, insulting alter ego, Tony Clifton.  The scene where he busts in to Amblin’s offices demanding to see Steven Spielberg is a riot.  Even better is the part when Clifton crashes a party at the Playboy Mansion.  I’d like to think somewhere Kaufman was smiling.

Even though Carrey’s dedication to his craft ruffled some feathers, it had an oddly healing effect for some of Kaufman’s family members.  Carrey interacted with them as if he was the real Andy; giving them all a sense of closure.  Like Kaufman’s work, there’s a bit of heart to go along with the madness.

Carrey himself proves to be a fascinating interview subject.  He is shockingly honest and forthright and offers a lot of insight into his career and personal life.  Even if you’re a casual fan of either man, you really owe it to yourself to check this out.  It’s one of the best documentaries of the year.

AKA:  Jim and Andy:  The Great Beyond:  Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton.  

CITY RATS (1986) **

A guy takes his kid to the amusement park and afterwards, while getting a snack from a roadside stand, an undercover cop hits the boy with his car.  Since the cop is well-connected, no charges are filed.  Outraged, the father slugs him and winds up going to jail for a long time.  Meanwhile, his now homeless kid joins up with a bunch of sewer-dwelling killer children who roam the streets in packs and stab hapless passersby for their money.  When his father is released from prison, he sets out to find his long-lost son.

This is a really weird movie.  It partly plays like a killer kid movie while another aspect tackles the corrupt Mexican police and prison systems.  Don’t be fooled by the fact that this flick makes your typical Mexican prison look like an ordinary parking garage.  Looks can be deceiving, especially when said prison is filled with guards who can’t wait to hook car batteries up to your gonads. 

The scenes where the killer sewer-dwelling children accost and murder innocent people are hit-and-miss.  Luckily, there are plenty of explosions in the third act to keep you awake.  When something blows up, it blows up good.  Unfortunately, the sound was so poor that most of the dialogue is unintelligible. I'm willing to give it a mulligan though based on the explosions alone.  Even then, you have to put up with a lot of long, dull stretches in between the good stuff.

SAVAGE DOG (2017) ***

Scott Adkins is a prisoner in ‘50s Indochina who fights in jungle boxing matches for the warden’s amusement.  When he is paroled, he goes to work at Keith David’s bar as a bouncer.  Eventually, he gets roped back into fighting for money.  When David loses a bet, the thugs kill him and take his bar.  They also come THIS CLOSE to killing Adkins’ girlfriend.  That of course sends Scott on a bloody warpath for revenge.

From the outset, there’s nothing really remarkable about Jesse V. Johnson’s Savage Dog.  I mean you’ve seen this type of scenario played out hundreds of times before and Johnson does little to distinguish it from the various other actioners.  The first half is unimaginatively ordinary in just about every way and I found myself sinking into my seat in dismay at around the halfway mark.

That all changed once Adkins rose from his grave and set out to get revenge.  It’s here where Savage Dog turns into something truly special. The scene where Adkins hacks off a guy's head with a machete, strolls into a bar, and nonchalantly places the head on the bar is some of the best badass acting he's ever done. From then on, things get even gorier. Hands are lopped off and faces get blown off in a hail of gunfire and grenade shrapnel. 

By the time Adkins ditches the machete in favor of his fists, things really get into gear.  The scene where Adkins goes toe to toe with Cung Le is solid, but the finale where Scott squares off against Marko Zaror is incredible.  I was literally standing and cheering by the end.  This fight might be even better than their brawl in Undisputed 3, which is about as high of praise as one can get.

So, if you can get past the first forty-five minutes, you'll be treated to some kickass fun.  Even the usually magnetic Keith has trouble carrying the clunky first half.  Just stay with it though.  Once Savage Dog gets savage, it’s savage af.

MY SUCKY TEEN ROMANCE (2011) **

A bunch of dorky teens gather at a science fiction convention.  Paul (Patrick Delgado) is a meek grocery store clerk who was recently bitten by a vampire.  He thinks the convention will be the perfect place to blend in while he waits to bite his first potential victim.  Paul meets the adorkable Kate (Elaine Hurt) and they instantly hit it off.  When he leans in for a goodnight kiss, he accidentally bites her on the neck.  (Awkward!)  Kate then calls on her geeky friends, who are all fans of horror movies, to help her find a way to reverse her vampire curse.

My Sucky Teen Romance makes a lot of easy jokes at Twilight’s expense.  It also takes a lot of jabs at geek culture and the sci-fi convention set.  These aren’t exactly pointed observations to be sure, and they aren’t especially funny either.

All of this was done on an obviously low budget with a lot of non-professionals, which is admirable I guess.  However, the convention scenes suffer from the small budget as it looks more like a birthday party than a sci-fi convention.  The amateurish special effects also hinder the horror aspects of the story, making it feel cheap and sloppy.  I could’ve also done without the Scott Pilgrimesque video game sequences.

The actors do what they can, but they just aren’t quite strong enough to carry the film.  It doesn’t help when they are stuck playing cliched nerdy characters.  Seeing disgraced Ain’t It Cool News founder Harry Knowles turning up as a so-called vampire expert who calls bloodsuckers “sexy things that are predatory” is a bit odd too.

Hurt gets the best line of the movie when she sums up why she can’t talk to guys:  “Bad things happen when I say words.”

JACK’S BACK (1988) ***

Rowdy Herrington made this a year before his magnum opus Road House.  It’s a twisty little thriller that relies on springing several surprises on the audience, most of which occur before the end of the first act.  Because of that, giving a plot description is a bit of a precarious task.  Just know that Herrington isn’t above using the Kitchen Sink theory of moviemaking.  He uses every plot device from identical twins to psychic links to hypnotism and grafts them onto a solid Jack the Ripper thriller storyline.  

Now, there were plenty of Jack the Ripper movies in the mid ‘80s that capitalized on the hundredth anniversary of The Ripper’s murders.  In addition to Jack’s Back, we also had Terror at London Bridge and The Ripper.  This one is easily the best of the lot.  Whereas those films had a lot of supernatural trappings that made them feel hokey, Jack’s Back concentrates on the psychological aspects on not only the murderer, but the victims as well.

Harrington uses a few cribs from Hitchcock, but adds his own brand of cinematic panache, which makes the old chestnuts feel fresh.  Sure, there’s a few ideas that don’t quite pop like so many kernels in a bag of popcorn.  The climax is a bit needlessly drawn out to boot.  Still, it’s stylish and engrossing enough to keep you entertained.

James Spader is excellent in the lead.  He’s clearly having a ball playing a dual role.  What’s great about his work in this film is it never feels like a casting stunt.  He’s able to develop two distinct characters in a relatively short span of time, each with their own faults, quirks, and ambitions.  So, if you’re a Spader fan like I am, you’re in for a real treat.  The interesting supporting cast includes Cynthia Gibb, Robert Picardo, and Chris Mulkey; all of whom make a memorable impression given their limited screen time.

AKA:  The Ripper.