The only legendary actor brave enough to let his final role involve serious bowel trauma.

Phantom Thread: didn’t love it. I’m sorry! Lots of people did, and that’s cool. It was certainly pretty.

Generally I’d rather not try to review a movie that didn’t do it for me. But okay, just a little.

Maybe because in a love story where the love feels unmotivated, it undercuts my investment in the whole story –like The Shape of Water, but from a darker perspective.

Maybe because the movie seemed to both celebrate and have contempt for its main character, portraying him as a foolish blowhard but also lovingly praising his brilliance, which left me confused and even a bit angry — much like Wolf of Wall Street. (Man, I do not like that movie.)

In fact, that made me think that in particular, I’m pretty well over movies about terrible men that we are supposed to be entertained by, and that the films seem to glamorize for the majority of their stories, but that, *wink*, all us smart viewers know in our hearts are awful, so it’s ok to spend hours laughing at their misdeeds. I’m not really buying that argument.

So instead of talking about the deep themes of a movie I didn’t like, a simpler question:

Who’s more over-rated, Martin Scorsese or Paul Thomas Anderson?

You can answer this even if you love both! I personally like several of the movies by both of them. But… definitely not all, nor would I call either “The Best Living…” anything, based on my tastes.

Controversial!

Also, they could have made the fish guy way hotter.

Here’s the thing about this beautiful, fanciful, fairy tale about seeing beyond the surface of a person, misfits banding together against conformity and fascism, and accepting your weirdness as something that can be loved.

I totally wasn’t into it.

I realize on paper that it has those messages, all of which I’m for. Aesthetically, it did all sorts of things I tend to love. But The Shape of Water left me totally tepid.* And now it’s getting all this award season buzz up against movies that I absolutely understand why everyone loves.

*my best guess for why: the creature never intentionally does anything to make Elisa fall in love with him; it just happens because of what he is. so there’s no wooing, no courtship, no earning it, no “falling” in love, just a woman in love with an idea, which makes for an unsatisfying romance.

Some of my favorite critics loved this movie. I just don’t feel it. I almost feel guilty about not feeling it. It’s the kind of thing that makes me question how my own brain works.

What’s something lots of people love, that you just don’t get? What is it about that thing that keeps you from loving it?

What does not loving that thing say about you — or about why everyone else is wrong and you’re not?