Pure movie magic in my favourite film of 2017

Rating: 10/10 (3 February 2018)

I fell in love with this movie from the opening scene. It is everything a great movie should be -- a compelling story with wonderful characters; it looks amazing, both through natural cinematography and visual effects; it is familiar enough to be warm yet new enough to be boldly original; the casting is perfect.

I originally saw this at a press screening at The Toronto International Film Festival in September and I was so enthralled that I did something I have never done before: I went back to see the same movie again at the same film festival. The second viewing was in The Elgin Theatre in Toronto which is used as a key location in the film, so the audience erupted into applause when we reached the main scene set there -- we were watching the characters standing in a cinema in 1960s Baltimore, yet they were in the very cinema in which we were watching them! It was the icing on the cake in terms of sealing the magic into the viewing experience. I even sat in the same row of the cinema as the characters in the movie were placed.

I had the privilege of attending writer/director Guillermo del Toro's screen talk at The London Film Festival and hearing more about the production, including its childhood connection to Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). Simply wonderful.