popcorn and end of the year edition it's december twenty sixth as we taped this show and so that means that we're in the throes of another jam packed season for good interesting movies i'm tonight's moderator my name is janet stern and i'm happy to be joined by two of our panel regular panelists bob brown and marilyn campbell so tonight we're discussing two of those films i just referred to one is called the shape of as we are have them you'll appreciate what he does with camera work and imaginative storytelling and sort of a dreamy sequence of events that  this takes place in the sixty's and it's set in i guess a kind of secret experimental center that the government controls military perhaps and there has been captured a creature which was taken somewhere in south america a water man which they're trying to figure out what to do with how i he's the asset as they call him so they want to keep him away from the russians of course and then figure out a way that maybe he could be helpful and in the exploring space or some kind of military project but meanwhile the cleaning monster while others are trying to beat and beat it into submission and they develop a kind of or a poor which then becomes troublesome because she is very concerned with say and my my take on it i want to i want to find out what you think my take on it was that it had to do with this sort of it was almost an environmental film because it was like how we use up resources and discard them when we don't need them anymore just get dismiss and whatever is utilitarian of the time we take we used to it the extent that it can help us in then that's it but my husband felt that it was really much more about not being able to appreciate the other and there are four people in this film who are you could say or the other there's as you mentioned octavia spencer who's a black woman and a cleaning woman there is giles who's a gay man someone to be another to recognize another in other words can the can there be empathy those were two kind of different and maybe somewhat related to kind of different when you think i think they're related but i had i haven't yet another look at on it which was that in some ways it reminded me very much of his other film pan's labyrinth aria which mixed up sort of fairy tale and contemporary political yes war in that mystical powers that the workaday people wouldn't recognize understand or recognize or in fact are afraid of them and and there is that sort of quality of this film is that it it's partly realistic and partly not at all relistening so i thought there was a sort of a religious or spiritual dominion i think you're probably right given that isn't there i'm not catholic but isn't began with the same letter or something like that there's some etymological thing involved that that's where they used to fish as a symbol of their rights like an acronym but yes of course i saw all kinds of other little bits and pieces of other films and yes especially of course the fifty's film called creature from the black no use which race place in south america and is a very similar looking only fishermans very much who and giles live above a movie theater right and the movie theater is playing constantly while they're there the story of ruth which of course is the story of a woman who decides to that do to any of those or did you like get of course i think there's so many layers to this i saw it as a very it's very relevant to political concerns today and you could see it almost as almost trompe and in a way but there's also might what it might blow up you know into in society in some way wow so this is actually quite got several layers that there's about there are a thousand things to think about what is the title well it's interesting because of course water doesn't have a shape that's right yeah water only has a shape if you freeze around in fact but if you can you can make but it's accepting and accommodates yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's going to be a clever title and i think it's a very clever title now sally hawkins as we noted plays a new woman so she doesn't have her voice to work with this in the actress in this film  many people have said that she's just brilliant and it just using sign language and her and her facial gestures and so forth we've seen her several times we've discussed her in happy go lucky  starts out looking very plain i think it's part of her posture that she is sort of hunchy in the beginning and then as she falls in love she her posture becomes more upright and she begins to go right manages to to become a person because she starts like that like the creature she starts in a way to be not quite fully accepted as a human because she doesn't speak even though she can hear she sat damage apparently this one will line in the movie that she had some damage to her voice box when she was an infant so she she's because she doesn't have a voice box not because she can't  hear and she the way other people treat her is to dismiss her to not see her i think is interesting in this because it's to the religious thing is that michael shannon who plays the chain villain out of course does do villains very well how is this god complex where he he lectures the cleaning staff at one point bad bad of course the amazon had worshiped this creature as a god and had given floral offerings into the thrown into the river for for him and all that kind of thing and but of course we know this isn't god because god looks like me and writes god looks like  human he says and he says to tavia spencer of course you're human too but i think it probably who looks more like me i know a white man and actually he's come a long way given that this is just the early sixty's to say that you're a human too yes because there was and it wasn't long before that they were not married it is silly there are black and white workers working together in that facility  p s and black cleaning staff a long with the what equal status to the whites which contrasts with the city of baltimore which is still segregated now but he he the whole god complex that he has is i think also sort of related to not only racial problems in the united states at that period and now but also the cold is is that this is a this is a different a different theology and also you just made me think something that i'm sure this is not true it's just a stretch on my part but with the cold war looming including the use nuclear weaponry there was probably also a fear of mutations you know patients i mean they don't know what this creature is is it a river guide is it something not an animal in between human and animal something else altogether out of something else altogether so they really believe him in some ways but they rescind their entry i don't want to get into the details the reason they're interested in the space race is because they can breathe both in the water and out of the water and so they're thinking that that this mutation or whatever adaptation this creature has to be able to breathe in different atmospheres might be useful for space where there might be aliens know wow that that i was going to ask why this was set in the cold war but you answered it you really answered it because i wasn't actually sure i think the part of the film that i came out when i came out of it i thought this isn't as good as i thought it was going to be it's good it's interesting it's gorgeous production design isn't on but your level everybody see the film just for the production design it's the composer that are there for me before but i think that the end of the romantic score because of the lives of the drama part of this dramatic part of this where the villainous part of this really gets going toward the end where there are a number number of know with this fable like quality of the whole thing i mean it was sort of out outlandish you know in the way that a story that's beyond real this yeah i stepped in it i didn't find it i think  the character that monk michael stole bard plays who is russian spy within this facility that's not a spoiler which is yeah which is not a spoiler is very interesting in that he is of course the opposite of michael shannon he is in a scientist interested in studying the creature and perhaps even communicating with it and michael shannon's character you name it i think richard richard land is not interested  in communicating he's interested in down money being pure and simple as is the whole american army apparent yes because he's very much backed up to a point by well general exact up more than he is he is directed to the army and stricklin represent this kind of also this conformist one nine hundred sixty s way of living which is just filled with rules and regulations whereas i think you're modelled torah would be the first to say it's really the imagination that to imagination except what it wants to make it so is monday in practical all right rising in your in your work you know on dominating and and making other people abandon you whereas is the opposite of what he's interested what about the actual romance parent lee they really i think it was a it was got is and they don't just go part of the way they go all the explanation oh man you know even when they're flat down there i'm going for yeah i did that did the relationship seem natural to you but the point that it i thought it was inevitable musicals in the background in his work off his apartment slash work whatever it is i think it's probably the best scenes of wearing a toupee of any mood i'm in how he deals with wearing your toupees very funny that he's it do i not i like that ok well we have to a few minutes left so marilyn and i not bob but will tell you all about it now i got to ask question you can ask questions we saw heard a film called kami by your name which is getting it as i said before a tremendous amount of acclaim with him and one of them the young man falls in love with and they have an affair differences in ages seven years difference and he seventeen they're seventeen and they're very careful to show you that it's initiated by the the subject of a lot of this art is the beautiful young man and it's gorgeous it's like you know all of the films by you and fled to italy and then eventually america and he this the book one mamta award for best you know gay fiction or whatever here was and we should say that as other definitely in it i i said at that time when we discussed that film that i was very own moved by watching all of these very beautiful people in both both i thought i am love was much much better but i felt the same way in this i compared it i couldn't stop comparing it with moonlight where you have two men we are where you have men who are young boys who are who are a bill situation living conditions and are still able to retain dignity in this and finding their themselves through home their own sexual desires in this film there's no opposition whatsoever and everybody's nice everybody's understanding  gorgeous food yet to be happy i was supremely backyard yeah but he's wanting us to kind of take this actually a let me just bring quickly up what this is what ails scott said once about another film but i'll never forget it he said if you're going to do a rite of passage film it's remember that the rite of passage is transformative for the person going through it you cannot expect the audience to go through it with the same passion is they have unless there's something more there and that to me some says some there wasn't anything more there except for this idea of finding yourself through love and becoming yourself and not letting yourself not not  not not wanting to have not shutting yourself off from something just because you might lose it well here and our resistance you know well there's a little bit of resistance in that the older young that the sensuality of the characters isn't mirrored in nature in their surroundings i still can't that i know what you're saying and other people have said that i just don't talk about the sweat it's not grunting sweat it's just nicely placed sweat which is mirroring the do on the you know on the swimming ponds where the at i don't get it but i understand that other if everyone else does i don't know what we'll see both of them here shaper water has seven golden globe nominations sally hawkins has been nominated for best actress and pretty much every good and where places you can get nominated for best actress including the sag it's sort of her version of gaining weight for  is able to communicate without that if people are willing to listen the same way with the creature if you were willing to communicate with him or try to communicate with him he will communicate with you right but people didn't make the effort so do we make you want to see it yeah i've seen the previews it looks interesting i it's not a must see for me there are many must sees coming in yes yeah well we have about a minute left and i wanted to quickly get your your let's start with you bob about them too michael shannon plays a little bit the same character played in broadway empire but it's less realistic than i and and so it's like it's like the the