#6: The Shape of Water (2017)

Pretty whimsy, also amphibi-fucking.

From the man who bought us Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Backbone, Pacific Rim, and Crimson Peak.

 A very cool thing was how I didn't realize how caught up I was getting with these characters. I was watching the film kind of passively and then there's the scene where Shannon's character is like "You can't talk that makes it even better if I rape you," (I'm paraphrasing) and I was like "??????? YOU HAVE TO KICK THIS MAN'S ASS ELIZA!!!!"

And when her roommate was in the diner trying to flirt with the guy behind the bar and the guy was being racist to the black people who came in, and the roommate was like "Hey that's not cool," and the employee was like "You can take your pansy ass out of here too," like you forget, because of how fantastical it is, that it's still 50's America.

There are a few too many sideplots for my liking, and while they all revolve around the Asset, who is nothing more than...an asset, it gets a little jarring.

The technicality is there, I just didn't feel that the romance was genuine, and that's what this entire thing needs to mostly hinge upon.

SPOILER WARNING

Also a startling amount of Del Toro movies end with the heroine being shot in the chest and taken to a kingdom by a monster where they live forever.