{"id":7093,"date":"2018-02-26T07:17:45","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T12:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7093"},"modified":"2018-03-14T07:45:17","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T11:45:17","slug":"award-nominated-movies-the-shape-of-water-the-greatest-showman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7093","title":{"rendered":"Award-Nominated Movies: The Shape of Water & The Greatest Showman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ShapeThe Shape of Water<\/span>
\n<\/strong>The acting alone is a good reason to see writer-director Guillermo del Toro\u2019s romantic fantasy (trailer<\/a>), written with Vanessa Taylor<\/a>, although the origins of the story are now in dispute<\/a>. The film received 13 Academy Award nominations, the most for any 2017 movie, including best picture, writing, directing, best actress, best supporting actor and actress (Jenkins and Spencer), cinematography, and costumes.<\/p>\n

Elisa Esposito (played by Sally Hawkins, who was terrific last year in Maudie<\/em><\/a>) plays a mute young woman who, with her friend Zelda (Octavia Spencer), is a cleaner at a sketchy 1960s military research facility. The researchers bring in a merman-like creature (the unrecognizable Doug Jones) found in the Amazon, whom they mistreat, believing him violent, but whom Elisa befriends. If you\u2019ve seen the previews, you get the idea.<\/p>\n

Playing the heavy is a furious Michael Shannon, \u00a0Elisa\u2019s neighbor and friend is Richard Jenkins, and a scientist more interested in saving the \u201cmonster\u201d than killing him is Michael Stuhlbarg. All three are super!<\/p>\n

Even if you aren\u2019t a fantasy fan, there\u2019s lots of drama and a warm core to this film you may enjoy. I did. As \u201can enchanting reimagining of \u2018Beauty and the Beast,\u2019 it is an unforgettably romantic, utterly sublime, dazzling phantasmagoria,\u201d said Colin Covert<\/a>, reviewer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics\u2019 rating: 92%; audiences, 78%.<\/p>\n

\"GreatestThe Greatest Showman<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/strong>By contrast, this movie musical of the P.T. Barnum story (trailer<\/a>) directed by Michael Gracey disappointed, especially because the songs were by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (fellow U-Mich grads!) who wrote lyrics for La La Land<\/em> and music and lyrics for the Tony-winning Broadway hit, Dear Evan Hansen<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Talented Hugh Jackman (as Barnum) sells it, but there\u2019s little \u201cit\u201d there. He apparently wanted to do Barnum\u2019s story for some time<\/a>, but couldn\u2019t get backing. Although the film received three Golden Globe nominations (best musical or comedy, best actor in a musical or comedy for Jackman) and won for best song (Pasek and Paul), Oscar took a pass.<\/p>\n

You may enjoy the movie\u2019s spectacle aspects, but it will require you to pause your brain. Plot holes make it hard to stay interested in the story, which is in part Barnum\u2019s highly fictionalized career and in part the love story between him and his wife (nicely played by Michelle Williams).<\/p>\n

OK, it\u2019s a musical, so it\u2019s the musical numbers that should shine. The pop-music songs were just bearable until Barnum met The Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson). She has an eye-roller of a pop number (lip-synced, by the way; the real singer is Loren Allred), so contrary to how an internationally famous singer in 1850 would have sounded that the artifice of the whole production collapses under its own absurdity. As San Francisco Chronicle<\/em> reviewer Mick LaSalle<\/a> wrote, \u201cIt\u2019s an awful mess, but it\u2019s flashy,\u201d calling it \u201cThe perfect realization of a really bad idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 55%; audiences: 89%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Shape of Water The acting alone is a good reason to see writer-director Guillermo del Toro\u2019s romantic fantasy (trailer), written with Vanessa Taylor, although the origins of the story are now in dispute. The film received 13 Academy Award … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Award-Nominated Movies: The Shape of Water & The Greatest Showman - dazzling phantasmagoria and failed spectacle","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59,366,57,359,394,104],"tags":[1250,1249,218,1251,1125,1248],"class_list":["post-7093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academy-awards","category-drama","category-movies","category-review","category-romance","category-the-morgue","tag-greatest-showman","tag-guillermo-del-toro","tag-hollywood","tag-hugh-jackman","tag-sally-hawkins","tag-shape-of-water"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Qp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7096,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7093\/revisions\/7096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}