What “The Shape of Water” ultimately amounts to is Guillermo Del Toro’s own adoration for monster and romance cinema. Del Toro constantly evokes shades of “The Creature Walks Among Us,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” while also channeling Woody Allen’s “Purple Rose of Cairo.” Much like the latter, “The Shape of Water” depicts a somewhat whimsical romance in a world filled with misery and darkness at every corner. Del Toro has a lot to say about the ugliness of humanity and the ideas of what monsters truly are in this world and others.
The Bootleg Files: The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh
BOOTLEG FILES 615: “The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh” (1984 short directed by and starring Orson Welles).
LAST SEEN: It is on YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: The rarest and least known of Welles’ output.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: The full short deserves to be a special feature on a future DVD release.
Everybody is aware that Orson Welles began his filmmaking career with the biggest bang imaginable – you know, that film about the megalomaniac newspaper publisher obsessed over his childhood sled. However, few people are aware that Welles ended his filmmaking career with a whisper: a three-minute short intended as a private video for an ailing friend.
Inoperable (2017)
As a hurricane approaches, a woman wakes up in an evacuated hospital. As she tries to figure out what is going on, she discovers that she must escape to survive.
Another WolfCop (2017)
If you loved the out there nature of “WolfCop,” you’ll be happy to know that director Dean Lowell rewards fans for their long wait for a sequel with “Another WolfCop,” a sequel that is so far out there, it’s surreal at times. Director and writer Lowell channels a lot of classic films once again, centering on our vigilante WolfCop as he protects his small town in the most violent methods, all the while concocting a premise involving the furry vigilante that feels like an amalgam of “Halloween III,” “V,” and “Howling II,” if you can believe it. That’s not where the wheel stops spinning though, as director Lowell deals his furry crime fighter a new villain that is beyond anything he’s ever experienced.
The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
The last thing we need is another film version of “A Christmas Carol.” And even less necessary is this idiotic effort to remake that too-familiar tale by pretending to offer the story of how Charles Dickens wrote about Scrooge’s adventures.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) [Blu-Ray/DVD]
What a lot of horror directors fail to understand about filmmaking is that sometimes what we don’t see can be more terrifying than what we can. That’s why Robert Wise’s “The Haunting” is still so impeccably terrifying, while the remake is such a lemon. There’s no room for imagination or perhaps the concept that what is menacing these characters is too horrendous for our minds to comprehend. The main reason why “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” is so incredible is because director André Ovredal is brilliant about restraint and time and time again introduces us to a villain who remains a specter in our imagination. “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” genuinely spooked me, and that’s because director André Ovredal combines all the strongest elements of a horror tale and creates one of the most unlikely horror villains of all time.
Kill Order (aka Meza) (2017) [Blood In The Snow 2017]
A teenager with strange abilities discovers why he has these and has to decide what he wants to make with them and himself.
Written and directed by James Mark, the film is a nice long string of fight sequences with other scenes and sequences in-between to build the story that unfortunately come off as forgettable, especially next to those fight scenes. The fighting in Kill Order is where it’s at. It’s rousing, exciting, and fun to watch. Which makes the in-between stuff this much sadder being that they are some much fun and the rest of the film feels a bit forgettable. The story is interesting but it’s not developed in a way that keeps the attention. The only reason this reviewer kept watching was all the awesome fighting. Fans of stuff like Ong Bak and B13 will love the action, but will probably check out during the rest of the film. Also not helping this are scenes that have subtitles that are white on white, thus extremely hard to read.