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ChaosKitty

Queen Bitch From Hell
I really love Guillermo del Toro's sweeping style, always dark, ethereal combined with gritty reality, voluptuously beautiful, gothic scenes compete with incredible relics, objects, statuary and artwork that can look ancient to help set the mood. This is the tale set during a time that del Toro truly shines in unwinding elaborate stories: the Spanish Civil War. A time of fascist dictator Franco and his sadistic military heads that lived like kings while treating the peasantry like abused cattle. This tale starts out with a little girl whose mother had hooked up with a sadistic military captain after her father, a simple tailor, has died. Mom is pregnant with the captains child and married to him and together with her daughter is traveling to a mountain keep command station of her husbands maintained to route out the rebels still trying to fight. They stop the motorcade by the by the roadside on the way to the keep as mom is violently ill and already reprimanding the little girl, demanding her call the guy father when they meet as well as being too fanciful. While stopped the girl wanders off and finds an ancient monument statue that the chunk of rock she had already picked up fits into the broken part which was the eye of the representation of some deity. when she puts it rock in it's spot a beautiful praying mantis flied out of the stone pieces mouth and the little girl is delighted she has seen a fairy. It goes on to mix stark reality and brutality with the girls visions and dreams leaving it to the watcher to decide what is real and not.
 
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One of the greatest movies of all time. Del Toro is amazing.

SHape of Water didnt come to any theaters near me, which is infuriating. Cant wait to see it. Appears to be a return to his brilliant early Pans Labrynth and Devils Backbone(his 2nd best) form.
 
One of the greatest movies of all time. Del Toro is amazing.

SHape of Water didnt come to any theaters near me, which is infuriating. Cant wait to see it. Appears to be a return to his brilliant early Pans Labrynth and Devils Backbone(his 2nd best) form.
it was a debate to whether to put Devils Backbone or this up first as they are two of my favorites, my friend says she cant wait for me to see Water
 
Pan's Labyrinth was a revelation to me. So beautiful and intricate. Del Toro is a god.
 
meh... the bad guy is so bad even when he is staring at the mirror while shaving...
[doublepost=1520311209,1515883938][/doublepost]and, obviously, the people who knows more about movies, cinema, film making, etc..., than me have given Del Toro's veredict: he knows his art and craftsmanship... chapeu @JackBurton you have a great eye for the movies. :hattip:
 
I know this thread isn't to list your favorite films by Guillermo, but here's mine.

  1. 2001 The Devil's Backbone
  2. 2006 Pan's Labyrinth (still has two of the best creatures on film)
  3. 2017 The Shape of Water (technically, almost perfect -- but we've seen this story told so many times before. Michael Shannon was so good).
  4. 1997 Mimic (I'm a sucker for creature flicks, especially one I haven't seen before... and a kid gets brutally murdered)
  5. 1993 Cronos
  6. 2015 Crimson Peak (Not my favorite story, but goddamn it looks good)
  7. 2013 Pacific Rim (fairly forgettable, but it has big robots and gave me everything the Transformers did not)
  8. 2008 Hellboy II: The Golden Army (may have liked it more had I not already been a fan of the comics)
  9. 2004 Hellboy (see above)
  10. 2002 Blade II (total crap and has aged horribly. Can't even watch as a guilty pleasure)
 
but we've seen this story told so many times before.

But the way Del Toro tells it?

That's what makes him so amazing. Yeah we've had Creature from the Black Lagoon, yeah we've had Beauty and the Beast, but the way he takes these stories and all the tropes that go with it and unflinchingly puts it into our real world, with all the creepiness and ugliness that would understandably go with it, is phenomenal. The way he mixes in all the themes of equality and civil rights and certain members of society being rendered silent amidst the more powerful that seek to control/squash them, was all fucking brilliant and def makes for something incredibly unique.

I mean he takes a movie about a woman banging a fish-man and turns it into one of the greatest civil rights films of all time.


2002 Blade II (total crap and has aged horribly. Can't even watch as a guilty pleasure)

Really? I strongly dislike some aspects of it. The action sequences leave a lot to be desired and hip hop during a Blade fight scene = trash. Still, it has enough to offer otherwise to be a solid followup and satisfyingly entertaining. Doesnt hold a candle to the BRILLIANT original, which is one of the greatest action movies of all time, but still a solid sequel. And that new monster vampire design, holy shit sooooo great.

I'm always surprised by the amount of people who feel it's stronger, even far stronger, than the original. Rarely come across someone who outright hates it.

What rubbed you wrong about the Hellboy movies? I always thought they were a lot of fun, and def brought a level of care and depth to the characters that is seldom, if ever, seen in a comic book/superhero movie. The first is def bogged down by the inclusion of the human character, but outside of that, very solid.

Pacific Rim was a ton of fun, but Charlie Hunnam is an unbearably awful actor and the dialog did not help. I was very dissapointed to see Del Toro not even attempt to elevate the standard blockbuster popcorn flick at all, which is something i feel he DID accomplish with the HEllboy movies. How do you go from Hellboy, which again had very well written characters that a great deal of care went into, into the celebration of mediocrity that is Pacific Rim? Some of the cast, like Pearlman and Elba, knew what they had in front of em and knocked it out of the park delivering some delightfully intentionally hamfisted overblown performances, but others like the trash asian actress and Hunnam clearly are not on the level. It reminded me of Starship Troopers, where Clancy Brown and Ironside were AMAZING and EVERYONE else causes physical pain to witness the abomination that is their "acting" performances.

If Hannibal Chow was the focus, I would have fucking loved it. Def best character.

Cool to see Devils Backbone get some attention/love. Criminally underseen gem.

I would go...

Pans Labyynth
Devils Backbone
Shape of Water
Hellboy 2
Hellboy
Blade 2
Mimic - awesome creature design and some cool creepy bits, but overall i'm kind always left wanting more, always left thinking it could be a LOT better.
Cronos - kind of a tie betwene Mimic and Cronos honestly. Cronos has one of the most interesting and creative takes on vampires, but overall it too leaves me kinda wanting more. I think it def shows that it was Del Toros first film.
Crimson Peak - found it pretty damn "meh", and again, charlie hunnam, ugh
 
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But the way Del Toro tells it?

Yes. You may not agree with me, but there wasn't anything introduced any different than the other stories of "who is the real monster?" type stories. Don't get me wrong, it's a good movie and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but already knew the story he was telling and how it was going to end.

What rubbed you wrong about the Hellboy movies?

Nothing rubbed me the wrong way, really. They are just ranked low in my list of Guillermo movies. They wouldn't be that low in my list of action-type movies. My biggest issue has nothing to do with the movies from an acting, technical, or entertainment aspect, but just mostly on how the feel deviated from the comics so much.

For example, I still love the first Conan movie with Schwarzenegger, but it is not truly a Conan movie as they strayed so far from who the comic character is... if that makes any sense. Like the Hellboy movies, there is the movie character and then there is the comic character. With both Hellboy and Conan, I knew them first through their respective comics.

This reboot of Hellboy will be sticking to the comics, so we'll see what they do with it.

Charlie Hunnam

He's what you would get if Channum Tatum and Chris Hemsworth had a baby that was born without any talent or on-screen charisma..Althoooouughhh... he did really good in Lost City of Z - so maybe Guillermo is seeing something in the guy that just hasn't totally come out yet.
 
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